Alliance War Matchmaking

[Thevinegru]

If you would simply match alliances by their ages, the matchups would be fair AND wars would be in line with the rest of the game. The game this game is modeled after ruined itself by playing games with matchmaking and for some odd reason, you chose to emulate them, even though their system is totally out of whack with the rest of their own game. In these games, the entire point is to build a strong base. By basing matchmaking on level instead of age, you encourage people to jump to later ages and tweak their bases to allow themselves to get matched up against players from earlier ages. I could fairly easily get to global at level 135 and get matched up against players from enlightenment. It's incredibly bizarre that the obvious solution, which is to match solely based on age, seems to be beyond people.

 

[TinSoldier]

World Wars are not matched on level or age, for the reasons you have highlighted. For World War matchmaking, bases are ranked on their strength based on what buildings they have and the research they have done.

 

[GeeGee]

I tend to agree with Thevinegru on this issue. To my way of thinking, the match-up engine is simply not working. Our last four wars here at The Aesir wars have been complete mis-matches.

We run two wars a week. The #MidweekMashup is designed to be played solely by our lower ranked Indy Age and below players. Our weekend war is always for higher end players. But, and it's a BIG BUT...we always build our rosters to one simple rule: the XP differential from top to bottom can be no more than 100 points. WE DO NOT STACK!!!

The reason we run things this is way is simply to give everyone in our Alliance the chance to enjoy wars. It is no fun whatsoever to get matched with teams that are clearly out of our range!!! Therefore, we tend to try as hard as we can, but do a lot less of things like worrying about expending huge amounts of rss stocking war bases. What's the point? The opposition will simply annihilate anything we throw in the mix. Doubly demoralising.

And this is why I agree with Thevingru. It's all very well having a complex match-up engine that looks at defence/offence capability, library/uni research etc etc, but it simply plays into the hands of those players/teams who can afford to buy crowns to rush all that stuff. Don't get me wrong, crown purchases have their place in any revenue intensive game; and none of us want to see the game die through a lack of investment. But, something needs to be done to make wars more evenly balanced. Hence my suggestion would be to simplify the match-up engine and reduce the reliance upon such things as Uni/library research.

A level-ish playing field is what we are looking for. If wars were like motor-racing, things would be simple...give everyone the same car and test their driving ability. For reasons outlined above, wars are not going to be like that because two players on the same Age will likely have different XP depending on obvious upgrades alone. But, things could be levelled in my humble opinion by insisting on the rule we, and many other #fairplay teams out there employ...the 100XP rule.

Now I know what you and others will be thinking and probably then saying in response...this guy is very naive. Maybe so, but the best wars we've ever had have been against teams who employ the same rules we do. Sadly these wars have had to be 'arranged' via the Discord Community as special events. But why does it have to be this way? Where's the fun in competing in unfair wars week in, week out?

Anyway, I've been GeeGee, thanks for at least giving the space to air my thoughts.

 

[Thevinegru]

World Wars are not matched on level or age, for the reasons you have highlighted. For World War matchmaking, bases are ranked on their strength based on what buildings they have and the research they have done.

Okay, you are matchmaking based on experience. You just use your own separate hidden formula, aka, EXACTLY LIKE THE GAME YOU CLONED. Your system can be exploited, which is why you keep the weighting secret, and you know it. Again, just match based on age, LIKE THE REST OF THE GAME. The only reason you don't do that is to help people who rush their bases. That's not exactly a legitimate reason when you clearly have created all these exploits.

The wars should be matched by age just like the rest of your game is. This isn't rocket science. If people want to rush, just like in the rest of the game, they're going to get wrecked. What am I missing here? It's perfectly fine for a level 100 EA to get dominated in normal gameplay but all the sudden, in wars, you need to level the playing field? That makes zero sense at all.

 

[Thevinegru]

If the game came packaged with wars enabled, I would have designed a base specifically to exploit their matchmaking system. I guarantee I could do it. They know people could do it, which is why they keep their algorithms secret.