Update to World War Glory Matchmaking

[jpsfm]

Taking into consideration everything that has been written above I want to highlight few of them
- WW preparation time can and should be reduced to 12 hours. WW day should remain at 24h so everyone with the different time zones and RL to be able to do their 2 attacks
- Surrender button is a great idea. But we have to make sure first that it won’t be taken advantage of by alliances for free glory.
- the phenomenon of sandbagging is not IMO a problem. You can’t really win top alliances if you use sandbaggers. At the top 50 there are only 2-3 alliances that use low level allies. And you have to think that that is not happening only to have low weight and deal with easier opponents. Some of these alliances are breeding spaces for new players. A lot of new players come to this alliances, learn how to play the right way fast and some of them love the game and keep playing. Domi is not a game only for Drone Age players who play 7 years.
- 10v wars getting almost 50% of the share may be due to the problem that many alliances have to find players to join and play. That’s why the past year we have seen some alliances to merge. Old players are leaving the game, tired or frustrated and new players are not climbing fast ages and get disappointed. Maybe reducing the capacity of each alliance from 50 to 30 allies would address this problem.
- 10vs and 20vs only would really help a lot the matchmaking system. 30vs are rare and 15vs could easily be covered by 10vs or 20vs

 

[theBobNamedDan]

I am going to SCREAM this. Do NOT shorten war times, either prep or war day. Some of us have lives and are hard pressed to play more than once per day. If you shorten, then those of us people with lives will likely start missing wars and can’t participate. #1 terrible idea there… (no offense intended to those of you poor souls who have no life and can play a game 24/7, I was there at one point in my life.)

I think the option of wars all starting at set times is more doable. Increasing the number of alliances that enter the pool at the same time. Alliances opt in and then at 0:00 UTC and 12:00 UTC war assignments are made for everyone that opted in in the previous 12 hours….

I also hate the idea of a surrender button. I hate bad matches, but get over it when it happens. Not the end of the world. It is a GAME. Attack harder opponents and practice getting better.

 

[LordStark263AC]

I've recently visited @Tedi925 of Hrvatska Elita, and their match ups are atrocious. Absolute dogshit.

They have/had like 12 Drones or so and the team we've matched had 28 Drones.

 

[jpsfm]

I am going to SCREAM this. Do NOT shorten war times, either prep or war day. Some of us have lives and are hard pressed to play more than once per day. If you shorten, then those of us people with lives will likely start missing wars and can’t participate. #1 terrible idea there… (no offense intended to those of you poor souls who have no life and can play a game 24/7, I was there at one point in my life.)

I think the option of wars all starting at set times is more doable. Increasing the number of alliances that enter the pool at the same time. Alliances opt in and then at 0:00 UTC and 12:00 UTC war assignments are made for everyone that opted in in the previous 12 hours….

I also hate the idea of a surrender button. I hate bad matches, but get over it when it happens. Not the end of the world. It is a GAME. Attack harder opponents and practice getting better.

I won’t SCREAM at all as I don’t live my life on edges. I never “surrendered” my life to addictions of any kind(not even a game). So I’ve never been there to see how you feel. It must have been hard for you.
My proposal was to reduce preparation time for WW, since to fill some bases and put your coalition in doesn’t really take so much time. I also proposed to keep the duration of WW at 24h for the reasons I mentioned, which reasons you must haven’t read, since you tell the same things with me but with a very disrespectful way.
War starting at set times doesn’t offer anything IMO.
The surrender button would solve exactly the problem that you say that we should get over. If we can solve something why having to get over it? I am happy that you also see it as a problem but I am not happy with this passive stand of you. That means QoL. To resolve issues and move forward. As you did with your addiction with the game.

 

[jpsfm]

The counter proposal would be a button "preparation completed" for both teams, so that the war day can start earlier if and only if both teams agree on it.

That’s an even better proposal. I totally agree with the preparation completed button.

 

[theBobNamedDan]

@jpsfm you did not mention shortening war day times, but others did.

The fact that I am not in the game 24/7 and addicted to it is the reason I argue against shortening times. I really only check in 1-2 times a day and reducing time would make me unable to participate.

It was one mention of shorten time and it took off like it was a great idea all on its own. I didn’t articulate my response the best, but I don’t agree with shortening the days.

As far as my current addictions go, they are of my own choice and they are not drugs or games or even social media. I have kids… 4 of them and so most of my time is with them and their extracurricular activities. Shortening prep day and war day would just be the nail in the coffin for Dominations as the game does not win that fight. I typically can only fill war bases and make attacks after 9pm as life is just busy. If the 9-11pm time is removed then I don’t fill war bases and I don’t make war attacks. The 24 hours is kind of important to people with lives who still enjoy games when they have time for them.

The preparation ready button is an OK alternative that would probably work.

 

[Memnock]

Our team is ranked #1319 and we are match with #260..
Can we call it a bad match ?

3 days later, the next war, we are match with #572….
About 50% of our war team cannot do even 1 star against them…

We are very active in WW, and 50% of time we are matched against team ranked 500+ point less then us…
So no chance to win…

At least with a matching more close, more chances and more fun..

 

[Toni]

In the last 28 days, we've played against the same alliance twice. First, the opponent had 4 Auto players in the world war. Yesterday - only one. We were always in the same position (1 Auto, 1 Drone, 1 Info). So once there was a massive difference in ages and levels and once not. I wonder what the logic is here?

 

[Spaceboy]

Again one dogshit Matchmaking..
our top 4: Da 332, da314, sa292, da283
they: auto 375, auto 377, drone 370, dr 348..

Can one from bhg/Nexon tell me how we can beat their top 4 bases? Of course, we will loose 509 points…the other bases of the enemy are just small ones, so the average weight is really not working. A weight should be applied to the base weight, the higher the level, the more you weight. Right no?

But I know that there are just not enough clans anymore, so you get more and more bad matches. Please try something out! This is ongoing for 6-7 years no?

 

[SirBiggun]

Hey! Nice to meet you.

WW matchmaking is one of the most discussed topics in dominations cause all the hardcore players are devoted to this part of the game.
We are competitive players and our alliances battle other alliances for glory. We may indeed not use the exact same players every time BUT in a competitive environment, the leaderboard SHOULD BE LIKE A LADDER.
i.e. You win #112, You get matched with something close by. You win that too? Expect to get matched with #100-#120 alliances...
IF that alliance wins most of their matches, then their next match-ups should be against #70-#90 ranked alliances and so on.
IF they lose at some point, then give them opponents around the same rank for a few more times. See if they lose or win again. IF they keep losing then they reached their ceiling and that's where they should be.
IF they lose a couple wars but still win some others then the algorithm should give them alliances higher ranked than them.

That way, every alliance expects the alliances on top of them to be more competent and battle rdy than the ones beneath their ranking.
This goes all the way to council stats, museum stats, paid TTs, paid buildings etc etc
This totally eliminates sandbagging and alliances like Den of Thieves that have few drone/auto age players , yet they are so high on the leaderboard. Also, the ranking achieved is the rank of the ALLIANCE and not of individual player ranking, therefore it should reflect exactly that, regardless if we use our best 15 players or our "worst" line up.

The main issue here is that alliances do not all select the same WW size. And here comes the real riddle!! How do you do the above setup when you can have this:

• 10v10 48%
• 15v15 26%
• 20v20 21%
• 30v30 5%

This needs some radical thinking. The one I can think of is rather simple. We have been playing this game for many years and nothing has changed on the WW part of the game. It remains exactly the same. Although we like it, we all need a new look, new rules and a new setup. Probably faster paced than the current one.

- So, ditch the 47 hour per WW and the 4 pools of matchmaking (10/15/20/30) and make it only one. The 15vs would be ideal for every alliance as it doesn't require that many players. Now we all play in the same pool and matchmaking can be faster and more to the point.
- Also, those big alliances with 30+ active players... Why constraint such alliances to only a single war? Allow those alliances to have 2 wars at the same time with 2 different line ups. If that is not doable, then allow only 15 and 25vs wars.
- And last of all , make the WW shorter. It is commonly accepted that we like to play WW. Let's make it faster then!
- But sometimes we are bored when we get a mismatch . So, create that "Surrender" button and lets go to the next WW. Why waste 2 days for it? Why should it be 2 days in the first place? 12-16 hours prep, 12-16 hours attack day should be enough for all.

If the single pool of 15vs matchmaking looks too extreme to you, then the middle ground might be a nice alternative. The possibilities are endless. We could have two pools, 10vs and 15vs only which cover 74% of the wars in this game.

I think i said too many things at once but WW is the best aspect of this game and there are so many possibilities that it is a shame to play 8 years the same WW format while we could do so much more.

I like the Idea of ladder as well as making fewer choices in pool like just 15v and have 2 wars per alliance . Or 15v and 25v
good ideas oddin
now we just need someone from BHG weigh in.

 

[Doc-Sandy-Baggy]

Out of curiosity, about how often are you seeing sandbagging take place?

@IDaedalusI

First some context for my answer. I started playing in April 2016 and developed 3 accounts which all attained space age by 2021. One of my accounts generally stayed put and I became (for a year or more, I think) the leader of a large, active, but average-strength alliance. We ranked between 500 and 1000. The other two accounts travelled, sometimes staying in an alliance for a while, often just visiting for a week or two. I served in a few of these alliances as a council member or co-leader.

Schemes to mislead the war matching algorithm into thinking a team was weaker than it actually was were rampant, as were schemes to mislead other players in war about the strength of individual opponents. Some of these schemes were called "sandbagging"

The scheme described by @Helmsman was very common:

Part of the war matching problem is having a real heavy top part of the line up, and then having bases in the lower half of the line up with just a couple of buildings, but the user has been as high as drone age, known as Sandbaging. With each player in the war having 2 attacks the sandbagers are able to wipe out the other alliance, cause most times the match up is against an alliance that has a balanced line up.

This was an effective strategy -- when the top 60% of the roster were both, advanced era AND very skilled. The most irritating opponents were the ones who, in a 20x20 war, played 12 solid players at the top and then 8 essentially fictitious accounts that were created for the purpose of playing as obviously weak accounts, they didn't make attacks, had little or no library research and few (or no) defensive buildings.. In a match like this, they could usually score 95 to 100 against us. We could of course wipe out their low bases but the average strength of their higher bases was much higher than the average strength of our higher bases often creating an impossibly unfair match.

I found these matches irritating, especially because they demoralized some of the promising players in our alliance(s) and as leader or co-leader, anything that demoralized our war team was a problem that I had to deal with (if I wanted to keep a stable war team).

I finally got frustrated with the game in 2021, because of very common unfair matches, blatant and apparently consequence-free cheating, and some BHG customer service problems that affected me or people on my team. So I took a 2 year vacation from the game. I came back few months ago and am a coleader of The Mandalorian.

There seems to be less obvious cheating now.

Gaming the war-matching algorithm is still very common. I think I've seen inappropriate matches in about 2/3 of the wars that I've played in or watched since coming back. I created a fourth account back in 2020 or 2021 called Sandy, which is now a spacer (will be digital in 5 days) that had strong offence but minimal defence as a way of gaming the war-weight calculator with a legitimate, active account. I recently created another account (Baggy) (now gunpowder era) with the same design philosophy. No defense, just offense and economic. Having a few accounts in the alliance that are like Sandy and Baggy seems to significantly help an alliance protect itself from the sandbagger teams. I think several of the Top-350 teams have several strong lightweight attackers, but there are not so many of these players. Not many in the 800-and-lower world. I visited a couple of teams I used to play on, and talked with folks from others and my sense is that they are still being hit regularly with unwinnable wars many of them unwinnable because of dummy accounts at the bottom, and it has strikingly affected their morale. I'm not sure why these teams still exist and why their longer term players still play (a lot have left). You are doing those players a disservice, and you are getting a lot less income from them than you should because so many of them don't believe that spending a bit on the game would have a positive effect on their situation.

 

[Doc-Sandy-Baggy]

my sense is that they are still being hit regularly with unwinnable wars many of them unwinnable because of dummy accounts at the bottom, and it has strikingly affected their morale

@IDaedalusI

Let me suggest a simpler heuristic for war matching.

Look at the top half of the roster.

1. If the top half of Team 1 has more than one account that is at least an era higher than the top account in Team 2 (and has been at that level long enough to do upgrades that capture the power of the new level), Team 2's situation is probably hopeless.
2. If the match passes the first test, add up the levels of the top half. Automation is 17, Drone is 16, etc. Just add the levels. In a 20x20 war, the maximum sum possible for the top half (top 10) is 17x10=170. Suppose Team 1 has 2 automation players, 2 drones, and a mix of other experienced players. The total score of their top 10 might be 150. Suppose the other team has a score of 120. They are hosed. They can't win the war.

I could tell you how to calculate the statistical significance of the difference in totals between team 1 and team 2, but I am not sure that a statistically significant difference is the right number to predict a hopeless mismatch. But with your historical database, you could probably identify a delta between teams where every match with a delta that large was lost by lower-total team 90% of the time. Those matches should be rejected. This is a fast calculation, the time needed for calculation would not slow down your war-matching time, and people would not have to keep restarting their war search to avoid getting hit with truly terrible matches.

Maybe the best criterion is an absolute difference (20 points) or maybe it is a ratio (say, a difference between teams greater than 15% of the maximum possible score, where the maximum is the score you would get if everyone on the team had the same age as the highest-age player in the war). The win-loss war records would tell you which criterion (simple total or ratio) would best separate somewhat-winnable matches from hopelessly-unwinnable.

If necessary, I could help you analyze the data to find a good criterion (but probably your staff could do this type of analysis without needing outside help).

 

[SirBiggun]

In our case we are a top 20 team and have 40 players and spin 30v , but there is a small pool of 30v teams , so we end up with very few choices of opponents , we frequently get mismatches With alliances that we beat too easily or have no chance . So we could use some solutions to that.

I like the idea of ladder system for wars, like @oddin stated

also maybe reduce to one or 2 war size for bigger pool. and allow big alliances to spin more than one war at a time , so if there are only 15v wars then a large alliance can spin 2 15v. Or maybe make wars only 20 or 30v wars . If some alliances don’t have enough players they can merge alliances to be bigger .just some thoughts .

I also like the idea of a **surrender button**. So in really bad match a team that knows they will lose can surrender and **if accepted ** by other team , that team gets the win and they can both re spin .

i also like the idea of preparation finished button , so if both teams finish before 24 hrs prep they can start war

** Please weigh in @Harlems369th

 

[nobodyknowsthetrouble]

Or maybe make wars only 20 or 30v wars . If some alliances don’t have enough players they can merge alliances to be bigger .just some thoughts .

an overwhelming majority of 75% play 10v and 15v.
Adapt to this majority instead of demanding that we follow your fantasies. It is easier to split an alliance than to merge several foreign alliances; the same language, leadership style, trust etc cannot be created with one click.