Wars are a huge money maker for MCOC. They encourage potion and revive usage, and the entire system is geared toward driving sales. It's perfectly fine for me, I manage my item usage as a mostly FTP player. But what happens when the matchmaking doesn't find us a match???
There's two ways I want to improve war matchmaking
- Expand the time frame window as to when you can search
- Change the algorithm/range
Here's a quick back story: So my alliance missed a war due to matchmaking. It was revealed to me that the other alliance had been searching for 3 hours to find a match thus eliminating them, and us from finding a third war on Sunday evening/Monday Morning. This wasn't the first time I observed this; the previous time we matched against an alliance in the final minute before matchmaking would close when we both were searching for 45 minutes plus. We were fortunate as a group to get a war but never-the-less
there are matches out there that we could potentially find, and yet we are not getting matched them them.
No someone is going to say "well you should start your wars earlier too bad for you." And before I call you some expletives for not reading my stance on that, read my stance on it. Yes we do start wars late, that's on us. It is our fault that we missed a war under the rules of the game. End of discussion on that so please don't make it a discussion about that, however,
I feel that the system is broken and that there are matches out there that we could match up against, and we are not getting those matches. Furthermore, why should we have to start match making earlier? It's in our advantage to start wars later in that many of us are on different time zones. We enjoy that dynamic and have thrived in it.
So to quickly fix my first issue with match making is: To expand the matchmaking window by 3 hours. Instead of ending it at 7pm PST, end it at 10pm PST. There's a couple reasons for this
- Diverse alliances can plan better - The 8-9 window while match making is open is sleepy time for some making people completely unavailable for the end of the war. I understand the map is not that large but to best coordinate an attack and to fight at your best is how people should be playing.
- Wars give people enough anxiety as it is. So allow us to take our paths without the added stress of people not being able to finish.
The second way, and this is under the assumption of one noticeable theory about how match making currently operates, is to change the algorithm for finding those wars.
So under this, if anyone says that they know how wars are found you're most likely wrong. No one knows for sure except Kabam. They keep this sort of thing locked up as if it's the recipe for Coca-Cola. I've observed some factors that drive matchmaking.
- Tier - Always fighting an alliance +/- 1 of current tier.
- War Rating
- Time you start matchmaking
- Alliance Prestige/Rating - I'll comment on this in that it could be one or the other or both but this is one of those. Usually you're going to go up against an evenly matched opponent or close to one as possible. I was part of a 20 man alliance that was rated 800k and built it to a 1400 war rated alliance. We always fought alliances that fit into our mold and found that the higher we went, the longer it took for wars to match us. Lastly, this was implemented because people were complaining so much that even though their alliance had a similar war rating that they would get squashed by an alliance twice their alliance rating.
Rather than an algorithm, I'll just describe it as a range that's triggered by starting matchmaking (obviously but since I mentioned it as a factor I'll list mention it).
- Tier +/- 1 for the first 30 minutes. After which increases it goes +/- 2
- Rating +/- 50%.
- Alliances that begin matchmaking first have precedent - I've heard of situations where alliances were not getting paired at all even though other alliances were getting paired that were in the same bracket and tier.
That's really it. Keep it simple. Whatever they have going on over there is not working. Too many alliances are disbanding and struggling to find wars because the system is simply not finding wars for us. Those individuals in those alliances are either finding a comparable alliance which doesn't affect Kabam at all, they are moving down which doesn't help sales, or they stay put which also doesn't drive sales.
