Matchmaking based on glory

[S_How]

Saw this posted as an addendum to the AMA yesterday. Thanks for posting some more detail Nb4powerup

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Q: Has there been any thought into Alliance leagues?

This I think would eliminate 'sandbagging' as you would be matched against opponents of similar strength more often being that you would be matched on Glory points or something similar. it would also stop my Alliance 13'200 Glory points being matched constantly against 20'000+ Glory points. I understand some teams would drop down in a Glory league system for not being all maxed at AA and unable to compete but the top teams would be at the top.



A: We’re looking into possibly matchmaking by Glory. As mentioned in another response, we’re not super happy with our current leagues system so we would want to shore that up before we extended it to another aspect of the game.
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This would probably benefit my team a lot....but, I also see a lot of negatives from it? Not sure if it will help the game or make things worse? Just looking for different perspectives.

The good:

• No reason to sandbag, (due to the fact that war weight literally has no meaning in matchmaking anymore)
• The top 20 heavyweight teams will see a huge benefit, they can go in full weight, get matches quickly and will always remain atop the rankings
• People can upgrade whatever they want without worrying about war weight
• Everyone would see relatively fast matching times
• Might be easy from an implementation perspective? BHG no longer has to worry about managing a seemingly complicated and prone to error war weighting calculation.

The questionable:

• War rankings would, with a few exceptions here and there, be the same as war weight rankings (if such a thing existed). Especially given the very uneven jump in defense from Global to Atomic. The most skilled Global average team, will never have a chance to be ranked better than the worst Atomic average team. The very best IA team, will have very little chance to beat a crappy Global average team, so on and so forth. A system that tries to match people with other teams of similar strength gives a cool 'pound for pound' type ranking, rather than it being just absolute and determined mostly by total upgrades.
• Given the absolute priority of offense and defense upgrades, teams wanting to advance on the leaderboard would be much less likely to accept new/growing players to the team. Might become much harder for these new/growing pre-industrial type players to find a good team to play on. But, it also may be good in that it forces them to join teams that are more in their peer group. Toss up imo.

The bad:

• For the short term, matchmaking discrepancies would become wildly bad except for the heavyweight teams. If people thought matchmaking was wide and bad now...lol. There's no telling how long it would take for the system to balance itself out and until it did, it would be pretty rough for most teams. And, in my experience, a series of very bad war mismatches is one of the worst player experiences you can deliver.
• Middle/Lower weight teams will never be able to climb the leaderboard. If you arent at least global/atomic average, you'll never have a shot.

What do other people think the pros/cons are to this solution?

What do other people think the advantages/disadvantages are to other simple solutions, for example just not counting the bottom 25% of a roster in war weight for matchmaking, which combined with the glory penalty for extreme sandbagging, would also probably eliminate sandbagging....and allow the current system that matches on strength to remain in place?

 

[SebQuattro]

My previous suggestion:

Alliances would be separated into leagues based on their Glory, Copper III to Dynasty I the same as in multiplayer. Each league would have 50 to 100 alliances with the remaining alliances not in a league. Alliances outside of the leagues would use the current matchmaking algorithm which gives newer alliances a chance. Alliances in a league would be matched against other alliances in their league, there would be no other matchmaking involved in leagues which removes any advantage from sandbags.

The top and bottom 10% of alliances in the leagues would be promoted or demoted to another league when the league season timer expires. Once in a league, the glory your alliance has would depreciate daily by a set percentage. This gives a way for the alliances outside of the leagues a way into the leagues, it also means those alliances who don't war will drop out of the leagues.

Alliance members in a league would get bonus resources for winning a battle, the same battle bonus as in multiplayer leagues. Library league bonus research would apply to the bonus like it does in multiplayer.

The alliance rankings would change so instead of the top 100 displayed, it would display the alliances in your league. The top and bottom 10% would have division lines showing that they are due to be demoted/ promoted.

Match up times could be improved by mandating a single war size for each league, 15 for silver, 35 for dynasty etc.

 

[Motaz Tarek]

it would definitely turn the game into pay 2 win game
if it's based on glory, decent upgraded alliances will be matched with max upgraded ones who paid to get upgrades in shorter time and the end result is no chance for ambitious alliances to climb the rank
what if an alliance depending on mix of AA, GA, IA players want to climb the rank? they get matched with korea army? lol that's a definite discouragement for these people that they will never be #1 as long as maxed out alliances persist in top ranks

 

[SebQuattro]

it would definitely turn the game into pay 2 win game

It's already a pay to win game.

alliance depending on mix of AA, GA, IA players want to climb the rank? they get matched with korea army?

They obviously aren't going to be matched against Korea Army, as they aren't going to have anywhere near enough glory to be matched up against them. On average, they'll be matched against a similar strength alliance.

My alliance has over 19,000k Glory, recently we were matched against an alliance with 12,000k glory and just 3 active players even though it was a 25 player matchup. We won that war 125-0, they didn't do a single attack. It was an utterly pointless war and a waste of time.

It also solves the problem of getting just 11 glory for a win, but losing 800 for a loss. Because you'll be matched against an alliance with a similar amount of glory, you should always gain a decent amount for a win.

The only alliances I can see this disadvantaging long-term, are those manipulating the matchup.

 

[Hunter Killer]

This is what would make the most sense, matchmaking based on glory. If a system can allow you to sneak into the top 10 of the leaderboard without being able to beat any of the top 10 alliances then something is wrong. A lot of less upgraded teams bottom feed their glory by sandbagging to find easier matches. They could easily find matches at full strength. So yes a matchmaking by glory will make sandbagging useless.

The leaderboard is not meant to give a fair chance to any alliance of any age. Is anyone complaining that an EA/IA/GA account has no shot at the medal leaderboard? It should be expected that the most upgraded accounts in the game will be on top of the medal and glory leaderboard. And any free-to-play game is a pay-to-win game. Some may hide it better than others but buying crowns and maximising the latest age pretty much guarantees a win. It's not just cards or temporary buildings.

And for people who started later than others, they have created crowns so people can catch up. The non-paying players are here to entertain the paying players, not the other way around. I have never spent money on this game so I'm not looking down on anyone. But some people seem to have unrealistic expectations and just post on the forum ideas that would only benefit their personal situation i.e. "I'm IA and only play an hour a day, create a system so that I can top the leaderboard with my IA alliance. And also, walls are too expensive".

 

[Quang t legend]

the only problem need to solve is establish team don't want new low players.Perhaps we have another reward like a C2 football cup, that allows teams from different league war each others during a year.

Otherwise the low tech need to be happy with a separated rankboard just like the current MP league.

Regards the current MP league system, it is not real equal thing to compare a raid win vs a defense win, but war glory is much like the sport leagues and can use it.

 

[Veldan]

Matchmaking based fully on glory makes the most sense, and I'd love to see this. To adress a few of OPs points:

- Alliances that aren't all atomic can never climb to the top: correct. What's wrong with this? Atomic players are at the top of the game, that's how it already is and how it should be. Reflecting this in the ranking is nothing bad.

- The weakest AA alliance will be stronger than any global etc: not true. My alliance wins against stronger enemies quite often. Not nearly everyone has the skill to use their global or atomic base properly. There have been cases where my alliance (our top players are industrial) was against enemies with an atomic and global top 5, and then we easily won because the enemy, with all their powerful troops, couldn't 5 star any of our bases. Skill will be the determining factor in the end, not upgrade level. And that's exactly how a ranking system should work.

- Alliances are less likely to accept lower level players: I think this only applies to top alliances. I mean, if you're number 2600 in the ranking list, but drop to 2700 because you invited a few new players, who cares? The exact ranking is only relevant for top alliances. For everyone else, the system is only there to provide a meaningful matchup against a worthy but not overpowering opponent.

 

[Quang t legend]

Saw this posted as an addendum to

A: We’re looking into possibly matchmaking by Glory. As mentioned in another response, we’re not super happy with our current leagues system so we would want to shore that up before we extended it to another aspect of the game.

On this MP problems, may be change a win to at least 4 star to call it a win and get medal, and/or didn't subtract the medal of the one being raided?

 

[Festivus]

This would kill my alliance's chances of advancing. We're a diverse alliance with active players from Classical to Atomic, and we try to give the lower age players a chance in war to help them develop and learn. Every attacker is active, but we've got relatively high glory for a mid-range alliance, which would match us against alliances packed entirely with AA/GA players, so our lowers would be a major hindrance.

We have never lost a war, but the current "fix" for sandbagging already hits us hard, and already makes it hard enough to advance. Though our attackers are all active, we "look" like a sandbagging alliance because our bottom 5-7 players are typically lower age, and we end up getting crap glory because of it for most wars. But that is preferable to having to be matched against max alliances because of our glory, which would screw us entirely.

I understand the desire to end sandbagging, but this would penalize alliances who are trying to develop lower age players. Only the top alliances stacked with higher age players would actually benefit.

 

[Quovatis]

Top teams would play the same teams over and over, since so few would be in range. Match wait times would be huge.

 

[S_How]

We have only ever seen the glory penalty hit teams that use 30-40% iron age bases mixed with atomics. Even when we match against a team with 25% irons and the rest atomics it is nominal at best. Combined with the fact that it takes days to advance past iron/classical, it confuses me how a legitimate setup actually gets hit by the penalty in the current system. What is your normal war makeup?

 

[S_How]

I guess it probably depends on what the range is, hard to say without knowing this. If they did it on an 'escalating over time' basis, where for 0-5 mins its a +/- 1000 glory gap, 5-10 mins it goes to 3000, 15 mins+ it goes to 5000, 60 mins it goes to 7k....something like that, I guess it probably wouldnt be too bad. There are currently 49 teams between 23k-27k glory, and that is probably the smallest bracket. But, it would suck if it were so narrow a gap that you only matched with other top 5 or something.

 

[Motaz Tarek]

not to that extent, we had a war with an alliance that flooded us with troop cards in defense and offense and we could win at the end because of our skill
getting matched with much more upgraded ones just cuz we have close glory points is the real pay2win thing that could happen in this game

 

[Veldan]

This would kill my alliance's chances of advancing. We're a diverse alliance with active players from Classical to Atomic, and we try to give the lower age players a chance in war to help them develop and learn. Every attacker is active, but we've got relatively high glory for a mid-range alliance, which would match us against alliances packed entirely with AA/GA players, so our lowers would be a major hindrance.

We have never lost a war, but the current "fix" for sandbagging already hits us hard, and already makes it hard enough to advance. Though our attackers are all active, we "look" like a sandbagging alliance because our bottom 5-7 players are typically lower age, and we end up getting crap glory because of it for most wars. But that is preferable to having to be matched against max alliances because of our glory, which would screw us entirely.

I understand the desire to end sandbagging, but this would penalize alliances who are trying to develop lower age players. Only the top alliances stacked with higher age players would actually benefit.

No, it would not. Initially you might see a few bad matchups, yes, because the system would need to stabilize. Your glory would likely be too high for you in the new system, so you'd lose a few wars until you drop to your appropriate level. Then, you'd get good and fair matchups, just like everyone else.

 

[poop_]

Who reads this stuff? 1 person from Nexon?

 

[poop_]

I didn't read all of the above, but the problem is that it would lead to every alliance winning and losing the same percentage. And, no one wants that.

 

[poop_]

I should say approximately.

 

[Quang t legend]

I didn't read all of the above, but the problem is that it would lead to every alliance winning and losing the same percentage. And, no one wants that.

only if your alliance don't improve skill or upgrade! The glory system is based on the Elo system in sport, and the purpose of that system is to give best score to best players, not the players team with an iron age kid!

 

[poop_]

Chess players are all on a relatively equal playing field. They all have ten fingers, two eyes, and a brain.

In Dominations, it is anything but an equal playing field. You have archers to bazookas. Ponies to Tanks. Not really equal.

At a certain point an alliance that wasn't all AA players would reach the limit of where it could win on skill. Especially if it was a good non all AA alliance, they would be in war after war where they were severely outmatched. That the winner of which wouldn't necessarily be the most skilled alliance.

This is why basing it off of the chess system doesn't seem the right way. We are NOT on an equal playing field AND the game certainly doesn't match us so we are. Matching on glory is more in the wrong direction.

 

[Equal]

and why do you care about glory at all? war should be fun, competetive matchups and not a fights of giants against gnoms. i think the only way to match teams by glory points is if they would create leagues. and i see no problem for me or my alliance that we cannot beat teams with multiple +200lvl players all the time. if we are not stronger, then we are not. simple. but i hate when we must fight those teams because they took 5-6 low level accounts for easier wars.