Design Spotlight: Medals

[TimTrain]

This Design Spotlight is brought to you by John Hawkins, Lead Designer!

Hello Leaders!

There have been a lot of questions and comments about the medal system in DomiNations. We appreciate everyone’s feedback, and we strive to make your playing experience as good as possible. With that in mind, I wanted to explain how our medal system works.

Currently we match players up with players who are within one age of them (up or down). In the past we have tried letting players attacking two ages down, but that led to bad experiences for the lower age players, and not enough loot to make it worth keeping for higher age players. Granted, it is pretty fun to run over Spearmen with Tanks, but at least you can still get that with the campaigns.

Many people have mentioned a desire for using players’ levels to match players up. There are quite a few problems with this. A player’s level is a combination of the experience they have gained from attaining economic, army, and defensive upgrades. So one problem right off the bat is there’s no reason to use the experience players gain from economic upgrades when calculating matchmaking. Players will not fare better or worse in battle based on how many Farms they have. Another issue is that players can have a lot of defensive upgrades, but few army upgrades, which means they can defend their base against similarly leveled players, but won’t be able to win as many attacks (and vice versa). At best, level is an approximation of a player’s age.

The second factor in matching up players is medal count. This factor is a measure of a player’s skill at attacking other bases and defending their own base. The primary goal with this is to allow for the most competitive multiplayer experience possible. We don’t want a system that rewards players who have played the game the longest to the point that newer players can’t catch up.

Medals gained or lost in a battle are determined by the attacking player’s medal count and the defending player’s medal count, and whether or not the attacking player wins or loses the battle. If you attack someone who has more medals than you, you will gain a lot of medals if you win the battle, while you will lose a small amount of battles if you lose. Conversely, if you win an attack against someone with less medals than you, you will only gain a few medals, but if you lose, you will lose a lot of medals. If the players are evenly ranked, then the number of medals gained or lost will be the same.

This system allows for players to quickly rise in the ranks if they are both good at attacking and defending. However, if you are only good at attacking but haven’t set up a solid defense, then you could potentially lose more medals than you gain. Especially if you focus on attacking weaker bases, which are more likely to have lower medal counts than you (hence why you consider them weaker), because these bases will only provide you a few medals at best. So indirectly the amount of medals you gain or lose per day is in your hands.

While there are plenty of other systems that we could use, we do believe that the current one allows players to best sort themselves based on their skill at DomiNations. The goal is to give players challenging battles, as well as to reward them for their success. We want to avoid players not being able to find any matches, or any competitive matches, just as much as you do. We also want to make sure that players feel like they are making progress through the medal system when they win battles, and not losing too many on defense.

Like I said in the beginning of this, we are open to changes to matchmaking, and we certainly have made tweaks in the past to provide the best experience possible to all our players. A few months back we increased the amounts of medals players could win or lose in battle. Because not only does it feel better to win more medals, but also it allows skillful players to more quickly rise in the ranks.

I wanted to also let people know that we are working on fixing the issue that a few people have seen with Peace Treaties. This has been a high priority for us for awhile, but it is something that has defied easy fixes despite our top engineers working on the problem. We are deeply sorry for this inconvenience and understand that it is a significant issue particularly for people at the top of the leaderboards. We hope to have a fix soon and will update people with new information as we have it.

As always, we are listening to your comments, and doing our best to try to address your feedback. We care a lot about providing the most fun experience possible. Not only because we want players to enjoy our game, but because also at the end of the day we are players too!

Take care,
​John Hawkins

 

[Cannibals]

I happen to like the current medals system ... It makes perfect sense to me for all the balanced reasons you mentioned. The issue is that several of the underlying mechanics that make it work are broken.

First, there is the issue of treaties breaking. This has the effect of exposing top medal players to undue risk of high medal loss because they get hit more often than they should. It also makes it hard to coordinate play time when you can't count on the timing of your peace treaty expiration.

Second, there is the issue of players forcing quitting the game or crashing. This issue makes it nearly impossible to get a defensive victory because the unscrupulous player can simply close the app if the attack doesn't win. The defending player sees the result of the exploit as traps that have been triggered for no reason, missing allies, inactive generals, etc. that cost resources or crowns to be reset.

Third, there is the issue of No Opponents whenever you go to try and earn some medals. It is not fun to press two buttons and see the try again message for 15 or 30 or even 90 minutes between opponents. This problem is only getting worse. Top medal players are finding themselves stranded in upper leagues with no opponents to raid so citizens are idled. Without opponents you can't earn medals to offset medals losses.

Fourth, the issue of cheaters including attack hacks, bases maxed with illegitimate crowns, and players that somehow are never available to be attacked.

These issues all make the top medals game unplayable.

It takes awhile to fix these issues, but there are some things you can do in the meantime if you really wanted to help. For instance, you could reduce the range of medals from 20 plus/minus 19 down to say 10 plus/minus 5. This would take the sting out of broken treaties and increase the minimum rewards for the few opponents that can be found. You could allow one reset a day of the single player campaigns so resources could still be obtained when there are no opponents. You know better than we what would be effective mitigations to these obvious problems.

 

[GailWho]

Speaking from a mid medal range player perspective I like what you had to say Tim but what you are saying only appears to be the theory behind it and not reality. When I go out with my EA account in the Gold1 medal range what I see are a lot of bases with a 1 win/39 loss medal availability. I find some 5-10 win bases but the loss number amount wavers from the 20s to 30s range. And on occasion I'll find over 10 medal win with the same 20s or 30s loss. Now if I win the amount I get depends on how many stars I get. But if I lose no matter how much % I destroyed from the base I get the full penalty. This means that I could be winning for hours just to have it all or more taken away by one loss. This makes it very tempting to use the close app glitch (which I must confess I have) to avoid this situation as I know when I close down I will also lose some medals. What I'd like to know is... Could you possibly tone down the loss amounts or have a prorated medal loss at the same ratio as the medal win scenario? This would take the sting out of losing and possibly keep honest people honest with the close app glitch. You also need to look into why the availability of multiple medal wins is so low. By your explanation that would mean that I am a much better player than my medal count or track record shows as I have have to cycle thru lots of tough looking bases that would only gain me 1 medal no matter how many stars I win.

 

[Nathan Win]

Thanks for the clarification on the medal system. Although, in practice it doesn't work well. I'm currently in GP and when I encountered EA bases that are well upgraded and level higher than me, I'll get 1 medal if I win and lose 30+ if I lose. That seems unfair and not worth attacking. I think we should be rewarded for attacking people with higher level and age.

 

[polo1967]

The problem I find with you saying age should not be a factor is this.......when you move up to a certain age you have the same access to upgrades as everyone else who has moved up to that age. The fact that someone decides to upgrade their farms instead of their defenses or vice versa should not have anything to do with whether or not they should be attacked or not. Because someone does a better job at upgrading their army and defenses doesnt mean that someone else who belongs to that same age cant as well. In my case, I decided that I wanted to max out my gunpowder age village before I moved up with the "big boys" in the Enlightenment and Industrial Age. By doing that I'm at level 97 and getting attacked by units that werent/arent available during my time period. So using your theory, its more realistic for me to be attacked by attackers on motorcycles and in tanks, than people in my own age with troops (or access to troops) like mine.

 

[Xhavius]

I think the medal system is good the way it is. Top players need to work hard to keep their spot or someone more active will take it. The real issue here is the "no opponents found". This game is all about raiding and the "no opponents found" takes that away. I am currently sitting at 2700 medals and I have no problem climbing medals, but I chose to stay in this range so I can still raid and farm resources for upgrades. Maybe instead of getting a "no opponents found" give us a random clone of someone on our range that we can raid for resources even if we do not get medals from winning against a clone and still lose medals when we lose the battle against a clone.

 

[The Prince]

This Design Spotlight is brought to you by John Hawkins, Lead Designer!

Hello Leaders!

There have been a lot of questions and comments about the medal system in DomiNations. We appreciate everyone’s feedback, and we strive to make your playing experience as good as possible. With that in mind, I wanted to explain how our medal system works.


The second factor in matching up players is medal count. This factor is a measure of a player’s skill at attacking other bases and defending their own base. The primary goal with this is to allow for the most competitive multiplayer experience possible. We don’t want a system that rewards players who have played the game the longest to the point that newer players can’t catch up.

Medals gained or lost in a battle are determined by the attacking player’s medal count and the defending player’s medal count, and whether or not the attacking player wins or loses the battle. If you attack someone who has more medals than you, you will gain a lot of medals if you win the battle, while you will lose a small amount of battles if you lose. Conversely, if you win an attack against someone with less medals than you, you will only gain a few medals, but if you lose, you will lose a lot of medals. If the players are evenly ranked, then the number of medals gained or lost will be the same.

This system allows for players to quickly rise in the ranks if they are both good at attacking and defending. However, if you are only good at attacking but haven’t set up a solid defense, then you could potentially lose more medals than you gain. Especially if you focus on attacking weaker bases, which are more likely to have lower medal counts than you (hence why you consider them weaker), because these bases will only provide you a few medals at best. So indirectly the amount of medals you gain or lose per day is in your hands.

While there are plenty of other systems that we could use, we do believe that the current one allows players to best sort themselves based on their skill at DomiNations. The goal is to give players challenging battles, as well as to reward them for their success. We want to avoid players not being able to find any matches, or any competitive matches, just as much as you do. We also want to make sure that players feel like they are making progress through the medal system when they win battles, and not losing too many on defense.


As always, we are listening to your comments, and doing our best to try to address your feedback. We care a lot about providing the most fun experience possible. Not only because we want players to enjoy our game, but because also at the end of the day we are players too!

Take care,
​John Hawkins

Hi Tim,

Thanks a lot for your explanation but I believe most of us are aware of the above current system which is not simplified enough for most of the top players to sustain. I dont mean to hurt them bcz I am only 2.4k medal range but there are several reasons being at the top, either be an active and skillful player in terms of attacking ( 4-5 stars every game ) and won numerous defensive battles or, there are also some top medalists who keep on winning most of their battles by 1-2 stars ( stars no longer important due to 1 or 2 medals per battle ) and but just lost 1-2 battles a day, in this case, some of the high medalists are not that skilful as the other pool but just active in longer period more than any other top player. It's not hard to win a battle by hunting down a 50% damage or just aim the TC, bcz defensive is pretty useless and sucks for most of the battles.

I am an EA, in 1-2 of every 50-60 searches, I able to hunt down a strong IA base with just 2 stars but gained 10 medals or some lplucky battle 1/100, I could gets off 25 medals off a weaker IA base. When I am lucky, I just lost 1 medal off 4-5 stars by an max IA guy and when I am unlucky, I could even lost 20-25 medals to high attacking power IA guy, both of the firepower was same only the difference was the medal range of them against myself. So, I couldnt imagine if the one with 2.6k medal who killed me is better skill than the same firepower IA who sits at 2.2k medals.

In this case, I hope firepower in terms of offensive and defense ability should be accountable in the future medal awards system bcz it is more important factor compare to medals vs medals player. 1/39 battle is really too sucks for us to sustain and continue playing. Perhaps, kindly review the min medals per game to 5 medals ( where, 1 medal per 1 star ) and collectively, awards more medals to those below 1k or below 2k to assists them to grow further.

At the end of the day, we just wish to get more opponents, regardless medals. That would be critical if to match a GP vs IA, thats unplayable but that would be great if the GP who loaded IA but willing to gamble all his troops and risk the lives of them for not getting home.

Understand it is not easy to accommodate everyone of us, but I hope you able to hear us and pass the messages to John Hawkin.

 

[The Prince]

Thanks for the clarification on the medal system. Although, in practice it doesn't work well. I'm currently in GP and when I encountered EA bases that are well upgraded and level higher than me, I'll get 1 medal if I win and lose 30+ if I lose. That seems unfair and not worth attacking. I think we should be rewarded for attacking people with higher level and age.

I am concurring this.

My GP was doing well at 1400 medals, and this pool, GP still able to get good medals vs GP or EA, but I am not willing to climb higher.

But my EA account at 2400-2600 medals, I always try to sits here and not willing to grow since top medalists mentioned "no opponent found" can go up to an hour. Plenty of battles are 1/39 but just 2-3 are lucky battles where max 15 medals against maxed level IA I admit I have difficulty to get more than 3 stars against such base with level 12 or 13 walls.
I dont mind to lose 20-25 medals againsts a similar EA or even GP, but thats anonymous for me to lose 15-25 medals against level 150+ IAs but my most painful was not medals but 5 resources ( 3-4 of it were diamonds )

Having said above, it was funny that this morning, I lost a defensive battle against IA, level 157 who sitting medals more than me at 2900, took me 8 medals from 2 stars. I thought, shouldnt it be 1 medal for him againsts someone who was 1 age lower and almost 400 medals lower? Strange.

 

[Malgrin]

Hello,

While I think your system generally has the right idea, there seems to be a major issue: matchmaking. I've spent the past week working my way up from ~1000 to 2000 medals, and I'm currently at 1900. While it is possible to move up in medals, it becomes a nearly impossible battle around Gold 2-1. While searching for an opponent, at least 95% of the bases I get either 1 or 2 medals for winning, while a loss would result in -38 or 39 medals. Without a perfect record, it takes between 20 and 40 wins to recoup one loss. I have a hard time imagining that there are that few bases at a higher medal count than myself around 1900 medals, so it's either a calculation error or a matchmaking error.
In nearly every defensive loss, I lose between 5 and 20 medals, and this occurs within minutes of logging. This means that I have to do a bunch of raids just to make up for the one loss (every 8 hours -- fortunately I'm not experiencing the broken peace treaties issue) with generally 30 minutes of Training Blessing raiding.

 

[acied]

Tim John,

I have a comment..

What you say is not true, in other words it is a lie.

Now it could be that your programmers made a mistake, but taking this out on the forum, is basically the worst thing you could do, without proper investigation of your matchmaking and medal waging system.
The reason I am so hard, is I've experienced this myself with a major company, who wouldn't admit that a certain fault was in their software... took me 1,5 year to calculate that the thing that was wrong was simply a turn of digits... inches to cm 2.54 was somewhere filled in as 2.45....it can be that simple. But what I hate most is a utterly stubborn company who is so freaking full of itself, it will never admit and therefor never correct their errors.


So With all respect, cut the crap, and fix the system so that the game will be fun to play again.


We the players, are fed up to be treated as idiots and being constantly insulted in our intelligence by nexon-bhg

My experience with CS has made it absolutely clear that you pile mistake upon mistake.

Don´t take this personal, but I really see no other way then to be completely honest, and tell you exactly what it is.

Deal with it and take action !!!

 

[Hunter Killer]

I have already expressed my opinion on this subject and I guess you have read it before as some statements seem to be replies to questions I and others had. The problem has multiple facets and it has to be taken as a whole. The main issues at the moment that makes any other adjustments to the medal system irrelevant are the following:

1) Force quit

If players can close the app when losing, a defender will never gain medals on defense. This makes one third of the buildings and gameplay useless (out of the 3 pillars: defense, offense, economy). If you can't fix force quit, you can't fix the medal system. People wouldn't even care about the +1/-39 if they could win some medals on defense. Currently, the only way to progress on medals is to win 1 medal at a time, then take a hit (up to 39) when logging off. If people were winning let's say 10-20 medals from failed attacks before taking a 39 defeat, it would be fair.

2) Broken peace treaty

You acknowledge it as a bug that needs to be fixed so not much too add here. Except, I think Cannibals theory on how you handle peace treaty may be real. If the peace treaty was a hard check to see whether a player can be added to a pool of targets, it would be easy to fix and already done. But if it's a matter of just reducing probability of being attacked in some kind of tricky algorithm, I can see why it'll take so long and so much effort to fix. The bottom line is a peace treaty should be a hard exclusion from being included in any pool of potential targets. And until you can fix that too, the leaderboard is meaningless.

A few comments on the rest of the announcement:

In the early days, experience level was broken down into defense, offense and economy. You could see that by clicking on your profile and the information may still be stored in the background. If you can use that for matchups, you can let a player with a good offense attack a player with a good defense of similar level, irrespective of medal range.

Attacking players with more than one age difference is unfair, completely agreed. But I still don't see how anyone would complain about being matched with other players within one age difference and irrespective of medals.

Let's suppose I have 3200 medals and I attack a player with 300 medals. Even if that player is really weak and I wipe him out, 5 starring his base. The result will still be I earn 1 medal, he loses 1 medal. I got an opponent to attack and move up. He got a 16h peace treaty protection and only lost 1 medal, which he doesn't even care about. If you are worried about loot, I've already suggested putting a form factor on the amount of loot that can be stolen when there is a major difference of medals.

In terms of matching, you need to have a skewed approach and not symmetrical. More reach down allowed for higher medal players. Dynasty players could attack any player and that defender would never complain about medal or loot loss. The forum has more people complaining about being looted overnight by multiple raiders attack not giving peace treaties than by people complaining about getting a 16h peace treaty for a 1 medal loss.

I'm not talking about a whole redesign of the system, but the 2 issues I mentioned absolutely need to be fixed. Then it's a matter of giving people more opponents to just play the game.

Thank you for the efforts and for taking the time to discuss ideas here. I understand it's not easy but it's just a matter of prioritization. You need to focus on major issues like cheaters and medal system rather than multiple rebalancing (nerfing) of features that may already work properly.

 

[Eddie F1]

Match-Making and scoring are two separate issues and should be dealt with separately.

Matching on level would be better. It doesn't have to be the Level we can see. Each base could have a 'Battle Level', strip out the roads, farms and caravans.As HK said above, you once did have a breakdown of attack, defence & economy.

Be even better to count troop spaces or defender capability.

A simple example:
IA base has 135 troop spaces, so take that and square it - 135x135 = 18225
EA base has 120 troop spaces - 120x120 = 14400
An early EA base only has 95 troop spaces - 95x95 = 9025

So we have some numbers in ranges for matchmaking, how wide the range should be is trial and error, but a 18225 IA shouldn't be matched up with 9025 EA. Currently with the road level XP bug it's possible to be in EA at something like level 60 and be steamrollered by a max163 IA base or Tanks Vs Spearmen as you put it.

The reason I've squared the troop spaces is:- we know there are existing bugs/hacks and will be more in the future, so anyone with 6 barracks or a 450 troop space hack will get a 'Battle Level' of:-
6 barracks = 270 troop space - 270x270= 72900
450 troops space hack - 450x450 = 202500.

These values are way out of range, so either tagged as 'problems' or matched up with other high value bases - basically cheats automatically remove themselves from the game (No Opponent Found) or end up only fighting each other.

For matchmaking it doesn't matter whether a max 163 IA base is lurking at 200 medals or top of the leader board.

So basically this will get rid of the 'No Opponent Found', be a fairer match and cripples cheats and hackers.

I've only done troop space as an example - can add in mercenaries, generals, tactics, blessings, etc. but the values should be squared or cubed. i.e. Level 10 general = 10x10x10=1000, level 30 general=30x30x30=27000 and a cheaty level 50 general = 125000.

And the same for defence to remove folk with 36 watchtowers from play (or fight only 450 troop space players).

Once matchmaking is fixed then look at medals.

 

[Aurelius...]

John,

Thank you for the clarification.

I've posted extensively enough that adding long paragraphs here won't help.

1. Broaden the matching system. Let people attack anyone within an age, but incentivize certain types of attacks. Let people choose their own attacks. They have the option of skipping a battle.

2. Change the medal awards system to be based on level. This goes back to incentives. The way you do it doesn't work. Why should a lvl 163 get 30 medals for obliterating a lvl 90 base simply because he/she hasn't been pushing medals. High level people who want medals will be forced to attack competitive bases. Wow. What a nice change.

On the subject of lvl, people of equal levels have had the same opportunities to upgrade the various elements of their base. The choices that each player makes defines their strategy. Some strategies are more effective than others, particularly in regard to battles. The game is called dominations. Clearly the focus of the game is on battles. People who are effective in defeating those of greater level should be rewarded, since they've demonstrated skill. The current system is skewed in such a way that very high level attackers who drop medals get very high rewards for attacking anyone with more medals (high or low level). So the game incentivizes dropping medals and attacking high medal, low level bases. I don't think that a medal system should be designed to reward people who thrash weaker opponents. I'm just not impressed.

 

[Ginevra]

While theoretically your post generally makes sense, I still think that lower age/lvl players should get at least rewarded a little for being able to defeat higher age/lvl opponents, and higher age/lvl players should get a little less reward for thrashing lower age/lvl opponents. Or, to look at from another angle, lower age/lvl players shouldn't be penalised so heavily for failing to defeat a base that's higher in age/lvl, and so on. It doesn't have to be a huge reward/penalty, but the way it is now... At where I am now, I very recently got attacked by a player almost 40 lvls above me last night for 35 medals. Then I log in and spend a large proportion of my time getting "no opponents could be found, please try again later" and when an opponent finally appears, most of the time they are one age above me and higher lvl, and I get offered 1 medal to win, 39 medal penalty for a loss. So I'm wondering why people get a big reward for having an easy win, while I have to work really hard for a tiny one.

I don't think your argument about why lvls shouldn't be used really stands up to scrutiny either. If a player gains a lot of experience upgrading economy instead of offense/defense in a game which revolves more around offense/defense, then it's a poor strategy. Makes more sense to 'penalise' a player through matching for his/her poor strategy than simply for not playing long enough to have had upgraded everything yet, since upgrades take forever... Like aurelius suggested above, it seems like the medal system is designed at least in part to hand out easy medals to people who pay lots of money to upgrade faster.

Honestly I wouldn't mind it AS MUCH if it wasn't so hard to even get opponents at all. If I got hit and lost a lot of medals to someone who had played longer/paid more to upgrade faster, I might be able to accept it if it was reasonably doable to compensate by being more active and getting back the medals I lost in one defense over, say, an hour. But the rate I get opponents now, I have to play nonstop with training blessing running for about 3 hours (assuming I don't lose ANY battles even to someone who could be 40-50 lvls above me, which would then set me back another 3+ hours...) just to win back what I lost when getting attacked by that player once. Does that seem a bit ridiculous only to me?

So overall, while I would like to see the medal system tweaked to include a small modifier for lvl for reasons I have mentioned, I still feel the lack of opponents is the biggest issue, to which I have already suggested a solution elsewhere: change the matching to an iterative function which expands the search from the smaller range when unsuccessful to a gradually increasing range. This would have the same benefits as simply expanding the search to have a greater reach down like others have suggested, yet keeps the chances of players lower down getting attacked by high medal players as minimal as possible while fixing the no opponents issue. It also eliminates the need to find another arbitrary range which may be problematic later on if the higher extreme of the leaderboard stretches out over a larger range. This would mean that a search would last longer if it's difficult to find a match for a player, but they wouldn't have to keep pressing the button over and over and over and over and over and over etc...........

 

[Cannibals]

... and over and over and over and ...

 

[GroteKoning]

A lot of good advice to BHG/Nexon.

Yet, none of this really matters if you can not get an opponent. Moderators.... dudes, just answer this simple question; Are you going to fix the no opponent situation? If yes, by when?

 

[acied]

NEXON fix opponents !

 

[Radzeer]

Mr. Hawkins, I don't get the reasoning behind a few of Your ideas:

Medals gained or lost in a battle are determined by the attacking player’s medal count and the defending player’s medal count

Why shall the medal count of the defender or attacker be a parameter of the final reward?
You write later in the post, that the medals might come from defending or attacking, so attacking a base with good defenses (and its owner got all his medals from attacks, while nobody wants to attack him from his rank, as his defenses are strong), could get low medals, as attacking skill of a defender is low?
The medal count of the defender and even the attacker (as this can be artificially lowered) currently has very low informative value about skills in attacking or defending.

This might be helped by separating the medals gained from attacking and defending and thus comparing the "proper" medal counts for calculating the rewards.

Much more interesting medal system could evolve from the comparison of the total hit-points of the base's defensive objects, including walls(he-he cheaters with maxed out walls) and the attacker's troops total damage points including used tactics, blessings additional damage or hit points. The formula can be fine tuned and tested - but the idea could be - if I am attacking a strong base with comparable army, then I shall get "standard" medal amount. If I am attacking the same base with weaker army and still get the victory - the reward shall by higher. The same shall be true for defensing.

We don’t want a system that rewards players who have played the game the longest to the point that newer players can’t catch up.

Eh, and you are doing it with the medal system? Decrease the building/upgrading times. This will allow new players to catch up quickly. Even with the suggested medal system (hit-points vs. damage points comparison) the new players would catch up quicker. Additionally I believe that exactly this medal system is blocking new players to reach 2000 medals as they will be not yet ready to attack EA or IA bases. New players could reach high medals in their leagues. Have a separate ranking for ages and, bang, you have new players up in the ranks in a few days.

The goal is to give players challenging battles, as well as to reward them for their success.

Challenging battle is "guaranteed" by matchmaking, not the medal system. Rewarding is when a well executed attack is victorious against a strong base, vice-versa a good defensive base is victorious over strong army.

 

[Hunter Killer]

Thinking about this again, using experience level for matchmaking even if we break down experience into defense, offense and economy won't work. Otherwise, I could create an account where I only upgrade offense and never build any defense and economy. If I have 0 defense, I'll never come up as a match for someone else to attack me. Or if get attacked, it would be some by stone throwers that won't be able to take down all IA buildings in the 3 minute allocated so I won't lose much. On the other hand, I'll have max offense and can loot any base and climb the medal ladder. But other suggestions I have made about expanding the medal reach are still valid.

 

[Radzeer]

Uhm, Your 0 defence base would be attacked by "stonethrowers" and you might win. Also some deliberate losers would be defeated as well, so I think that it wouldn't be to much of a problem