Ho is matchmaking actually done? How is glory calculated?

[alegs]

Ahead of all for clarification:
I read the help manual and I read and understood the explanations here in this forum.
I used the search function, but I did not find any recent announcements covering a change on those topics.

Matchmaking:
For my understanding the matchmaking should be done with the aim to get two alliances together, which have in the best case an equal war weight (sum of all defensive and offensive upgrades, research and buildings of all participating players).
Anyhow I heard rumours that the algorithm had been changed lately and opponents were now matched primarily taking the amount of total XP (sum of all XP from all participants for the war of each alliance) into account.
To make it simple: Is this true and therefore the description in the in-game help would be outdated and need an update, or is it a hoax and the algorithm and therefore the description was still correct?

Glory:
How is the to-be-gained and -lost glory calculated?
For my understanding it had been adapted in case the match was imbalanced in war weight. Meaning, an alliance which outmatches another one gains less and looses more and the other way around… With the addition that detected sandbagging with some threshold was punished by reducing the amount of to-be-gained glory dramatically.
Rumours here are telling the penalty for sandbagging had changed to a bigger threshold - if not has been removed at all - and more important, the glory was calculated taking primarily the delta of actual glory of both alliances into account. Which means you win more if your alliance has less glory than the other (…and you lose more if it was the other way around)

Thanks in advance for any [in the best case official] clarification.

 

[Bedlam]

That dear sir is a mystery that even Nexon cannot explain.

 

[alegs]

That dear sir is a mystery that even Nexon cannot explain.

I still hope they prove you are wrong.
i mean these are two simple questions which should be covered in a WW FAQ if not in the manual.

 

[alegs]

No Title

Poor, very poor to not get an answer on 2 very basic and non insulting questions... :/
Thats not what I am used to from IG support.

Just an Example of the state of art in this game:
Pressed the button.
Got matched instantly.
Thank you very much Nexon! ;-)

No, they are not rushed.
No, we can not compensate this by going more for the new defencive road.
No, we have no interest in joining the sandbagging alliances.

My Observations:
There is no Algorithm run at all.
Probalbly the excuse will be that those people had to get matched because they waited...
So why not let em wait for another high level alliance, instead of pairing nonsense WWs just to get it done?

You did NOT fix the sandbagging issue.
You did NOT find an apropriate algorithm for MM.

We just treat this as a [no] fun war. So no wining, but we have no interest for going the sandbagging route as we see it as an abuse at least.
The game should work also for those alliances not highly optimizing the player composition to maximaly mess with the algorithm.
The algorithm is just poor.

I suspect the opponent wont have a lot of fun either. :/

 

[True God]

Our latest war had us lined up against a whole bunch of cold war and atomic guys all the way down the list. And we had 1 atomic, couple of globals, a whole load of industrials and a few low age guys. We got smashed.

 

[Belfry777]

I think the matching has to do with your medals but i'm probably wrong.

 

[duckfromhell]

I think ages or lvl's dont have to do anything with the matching. I can be cold war at lvl 90 (but not upgraded a thing) or be lvl 200 just cause i upgraded all economics and useless stuff instead of defenses and attacking stuff)... Behind the scene's everyone has attacking and defending points. The more you have, the stronger you are (every upgrade gives you those points devided into attacking and defense points). So i think (not sure tho), the matchmaking process looks at the sum of those points. It might also take into consideration a cpl of other things, i dunno, but surely not only age and lvl.

 

[Centurion96]

It's just as simple as this: Matchmaking tries to find on opponent with the same average war strength ratio (calculated of offensive and defensive buildings/units/research, not shown anywhere). However, if there is no such opponent in the queue (very probable), it takes an opponent with the closest average war strength (to some degree), or put the request to the queue.

Regarding Glory Points, it's simple too. Gain or loss of GP is calculated as the difference in total GP of the opponents. So bigger is the difference the more you can gain/lose.

 

[Necksahn]

It does match you with someone of equal offense+defense strength and does factor University (level means nothing)

The second part is of glory has a factor. I believe it does but it is a very broad range. So you can be an alliance with 5k more glory than you and they usually kick your butt.

The reason I think glory is factored is because I’ve been in two alliances that when they started new (no glory) you dominate every war. At about 16k glory you start to see some tougher bases. After 20k glory I’d see top 100 alliances.

Over time your alliance normalizes into a glory band where you win 50% of the time

i welcome anyone to tell me otherwise with results from testing or comments from BHG that show I am wrong. This is just from observation.

 

[sileepuppee]

Unfortunately there aren't actual numbers that are seen when they factor your opponent but the consensus is the same, that it just boils down to the average of their side getting to as close to average of your side. I really do hate sandbagging but it's not going away. While it is a strategy (Albeit a bs one, it is still a strategy), no different than tanking on purpose. You'd also find that these are the invite only groups as well and also that the people in there probably own several accounts within that alliance. If it publicly showed the win/loss ratio, you'd see that they don't always win because they aren't that good.

Generally in war I always look at the glory number firs because that almost always dictates to me how the war is going to go though people can have an off dayt. The level of the alliance doesn't mean anything because even the worst alliance can get to level 10 because the difference in xp gain from winning or losing isn't that substantial. The level of the player and position of the player on the list doesn't matter as well. Obviously the lower the glory gain, the easier the fight and reverse is true as well.


Just as an example of the majority wars we fight: The last war was 15 player against a lvl 7 alliance while we are lvl 10. The glory numbers were +234/-540.

Their alliance (1) Cold war 260 (2) Cold war 240 (8) Atomic 180-190 (1) global 170 (1) industrial 160 and (2) sand bags under lvl 20. 10 of the 15 had silos and almost all were atomic lvl silos.

Our alliance (2) Atomic 200 (4)Atomic 150-160 (2) global lvl 160-170 (5) industrial 99-150 (2) gunpowder 55 &100. While it's somewhat sad and we don't force people into it because many of our players are casual at best, we only have 5 silos and all lvl 1 with the exception of one player.

Just seeing the overall bases and what they had you wouldn't feel optimistic for our side but the glory numbers really showed what the outcome was. We stuck nearly all of our attacks when we had to and their cold war players really took a nose dive only getting 1 or 2 stars on all their attacks. We won 72-65 while only using 19/30 attacks because some of our members had things come up. We aren't a 0SH group and neither side loaded the strongholds luckily for us.

The problem with war is that it is never consistent. I don't know if the time of day you click the war button matters as well. Perhaps avoiding one country players for another, no way to verify that really. It has always been this way. Than you have wars where its +7/-600 which is boring as hell. We are currently at 20500 glory but the matchup system has never changed since day one. Just have to attack really well and hope for the best. Oddly we have only ever tied maybe 2 times. In those 2 ties we've lost because of average des%. I think it's been said as the better way to play but just upgrade your offensive power first. Use whatever defense you have and try to make lemonade out it. Once you've got your attacks down than upgrade defenses if needed.

 

[LordStark263AC]

Yeah matchmaking needs to improve. We are a relatively new alliance but on a winning streak. We are 1 Atomic lvl160, me Global 190, 160 Global, after that we have 2 or 3 Industrial Age (110 ams 140) followed by Enlightenment, Gunpowder, Medieval and Classical ages. I'm the only one who has Missle Silo.
So we're pretty even alliance when it comes to Wars. Now we've just been paired up with this beastly alliance, no name, their top 7 are either Cold War Age 262, Atomic or Global and not just some random bullshit bases, beastly ones. 7-10 are very good Industrial Age bases, followed by 5 complete fucking shit bases (Classical and Iron age) just to make up numbers. I've counted they have 7 Missle Silos.
How is my Enlightenment age team member gonna hit level 150 Industrial Age? And how am I supposed to hit CWA level 262? We shouldn't be facing these guys yet we are. Sandbaggers needs to be eradicated.

 

[Radzeer]

Matchmaking is done currently by the following algorithm:
Take two alliances who are searching for war with the same size.
If the first ranked members and last ranked members on both sides are not more than 50 levels apart - match is granted.
It was much more sophisticated in the past, but NEXON realized it doesn't make sense to do all the calculus (as they could keep it in secret, and the Korean player base got the details) and has replaced it now with the above mentioned plain simple approach.

 

[KingDarius]

Glory win vs loss is determined 100% on the current glory of each team. The team with higher glory will win less/lose more and the team with lower glory will win more/lose less. Glory has nothing to do with weight of each team.

as far as how matches are made... the nexon fairies just pick alliance names out of a hat and match them for fun and call it an algorithm.

 

[alegs]

I would tend to believe that, but i can prove that it is wrong, because we already had wars with more than 50 levels spread.
So, I have to suspect your claim is just an idea and you have no prove for it at all?

 

[alegs]

So, the consensus is: Nobody knows how it is done and there is a lot of speculation and claims without reasonable prove.

All I'm asking for is a bit of reasonable transparency. If you fight an opponent in a sportive manner you should simply know the rules.
Why not just update the section in the manual with the proper and transparent information?

 

[DUSTY1]

So, the consensus is: Nobody knows how it is done and there is a lot of speculation and claims without reasonable prove.

All I'm asking for is a bit of reasonable transparency. If you fight an opponent in a sportive manner you should simply know the rules.
Why not just update the section in the manual with the proper and transparent information?

The question of the entire game. They've had whole threads on "The road to better matchmaking" - so though I suspect the algorithm gets tweaked, it is not done efficiently nor effectively. If the matchers were actuaries they would only take the top 50% for the match. In the following 20 x 20 scenario, the mismatch is such that the top 50% of the stacked team is the only relevant factor. As each player gets 2 attacks each, they are virtually assured 100 points regardless of either alliances bottom 10 players. This has always been known, yet always unaddressed. I assume the project peeps either don't know how to fix it, or don't care.

 

[No Angel]

Based on my experience, the first theory is correct. They actually just randomize matchmaking, without looking at alliance strength. Just the size of people we are taking in war, and my other speculation is the time when you wage war.
Someone up there, Sileepuppee (sorry for mispronounce ) had similar experience with our alliance.
And sandbagging, though not healthy really does work. Unfortunately for casual alliances like us, we only take people who really want to war. And often meet these sandbagger opponents.
Oh well