New Alliance Wars Matchmaking System & Season 8 Details
MCOC Team
Administrator, Admin [en] Administrator › Posts: 595
Summoners!
We’re very happy to announce that Season 8 of Alliance Wars will introduce a brand new Matchmaking system that will improve the quality of matches for Alliance Wars!
Super Summarized Version:
A New Matchmaking System is coming for Season 8! Alliance Leaders and Officers will have to choose to Enlist in an upcoming War early. Make sure your Alliance is Enlisted before Matchmaking starts.
There will be no Wars between February 6th and February 13th. Pre-season for Season 8 lasts from February 13th to February 20th.
The New matchmaking System comes into effect on February 10th! Read on for more details!
Enlistment Matchmaking
This new system will include an opt-in period where Alliances will choose whether or not they would like to take part in the upcoming war.
The system will then match your Alliance with other Alliances that have opted-in for the upcoming war as well.
This new system will help to improve the following:
These are all important steps in making Alliance Wars and Alliance Wars Seasons a fair, and competitive mode!
How does it work?
There are 3 Enlistment Periods each week. Alliances must opt-in to their next war during these times.
When you arrive at the Alliance Wars screen, you’ll notice a brand new Tab titled “Next War”. Here, Alliance Leaders and Officers can decide on the number of Battlegroups that they want to participate. They must then choose to “enlist” in the upcoming war.
If you change your mind on how many Battlegroups you would like to run prior to Matchmaking starting, you can simply un-enlist, change your Battlegroup choice, and then re-enlist!
Your Alliance MUST enlist prior to the Matchmaking Phase beginning. If you do not Enlist before Matchmaking starts, you will not be given a match for the next Alliance War, and will not be able to participate.
What if there is an odd number of Alliances?
While one of the benefits of this system is that matchmaking will now be done when all Alliances have opted-in, and will eliminate the issue of Alliances not being able to match for long periods of time and missing a war, it does mean that upto 3 Alliances per week (because of Battlegroup choices) may not find a match.
The System will work with a top down method for matchmaking, so these Alliances will likely be brand new, or consist of less experienced Summoners.
For those Alliances, we will be offering a “Bye”. They will be awarded the points, and the rewards for that match. There is a limit to how often an Alliance can be given a Bye, so it cannot be abused.
Season 8 Schedule
In order to put this new system into place, and ensure that all Summoners have updated to the latest version of the Game, there will be an extended downtime for matchmaking.
There will be no Wars from Wednesday, February 6th - Wednesday, February 13th. Enlistment for War will kick off on Sunday, February 10th at 3pm PST.
Season 8 pre-season will run from Wednesday February 13th until February 20th.
We hope you’re looking forward to this brand new Matchmaking System, and the improvements it will bring to your War Matches!
You’ve probably got questions, so ask away! We’ll update this post to better reflect any clarifications we should make.
We’re very happy to announce that Season 8 of Alliance Wars will introduce a brand new Matchmaking system that will improve the quality of matches for Alliance Wars!
Super Summarized Version:
A New Matchmaking System is coming for Season 8! Alliance Leaders and Officers will have to choose to Enlist in an upcoming War early. Make sure your Alliance is Enlisted before Matchmaking starts.
There will be no Wars between February 6th and February 13th. Pre-season for Season 8 lasts from February 13th to February 20th.
The New matchmaking System comes into effect on February 10th! Read on for more details!
Enlistment Matchmaking
This new system will include an opt-in period where Alliances will choose whether or not they would like to take part in the upcoming war.
The system will then match your Alliance with other Alliances that have opted-in for the upcoming war as well.
This new system will help to improve the following:
- Helps ensure that Alliances are being matched against other Alliances with similar capabilities.
- Minimizes Alliances missing Wars based on matchmaking time.
- Helps to minimize Collusion.
These are all important steps in making Alliance Wars and Alliance Wars Seasons a fair, and competitive mode!
How does it work?
There are 3 Enlistment Periods each week. Alliances must opt-in to their next war during these times.
- Enlistment will begin Sunday, Wednesday, and Friday from 7PM PST.
- When your Alliance enlists, the Matchmaking window will start.
- The Matchmaking window is from 3PM to 7PM PST.
- You may be matched at any point within this window, however the Matchmaking system prioritizes Alliances with higher prestige and war ratings.
- Once matched the game will send the matched Alliances a push notification, please turn your notifications on.
- As soon as 2 Alliances are matched, the Defence Placement Phase starts.
- Once the Defence Placement Phase ends, the 24hr attack phase begins.
When you arrive at the Alliance Wars screen, you’ll notice a brand new Tab titled “Next War”. Here, Alliance Leaders and Officers can decide on the number of Battlegroups that they want to participate. They must then choose to “enlist” in the upcoming war.
If you change your mind on how many Battlegroups you would like to run prior to Matchmaking starting, you can simply un-enlist, change your Battlegroup choice, and then re-enlist!
Your Alliance MUST enlist prior to the Matchmaking Phase beginning. If you do not Enlist before Matchmaking starts, you will not be given a match for the next Alliance War, and will not be able to participate.
What if there is an odd number of Alliances?
While one of the benefits of this system is that matchmaking will now be done when all Alliances have opted-in, and will eliminate the issue of Alliances not being able to match for long periods of time and missing a war, it does mean that upto 3 Alliances per week (because of Battlegroup choices) may not find a match.
The System will work with a top down method for matchmaking, so these Alliances will likely be brand new, or consist of less experienced Summoners.
For those Alliances, we will be offering a “Bye”. They will be awarded the points, and the rewards for that match. There is a limit to how often an Alliance can be given a Bye, so it cannot be abused.
Season 8 Schedule
In order to put this new system into place, and ensure that all Summoners have updated to the latest version of the Game, there will be an extended downtime for matchmaking.
There will be no Wars from Wednesday, February 6th - Wednesday, February 13th. Enlistment for War will kick off on Sunday, February 10th at 3pm PST.
Season 8 pre-season will run from Wednesday February 13th until February 20th.
We hope you’re looking forward to this brand new Matchmaking System, and the improvements it will bring to your War Matches!
You’ve probably got questions, so ask away! We’ll update this post to better reflect any clarifications we should make.
Post edited by Kabam Miike on
27
Comments
Also are there any changes to global nodes this season or is it another pass for this season?
Yeah. One with with zero wars. One week with wars, but not counting towards seasons.
Will there be an event, side quest to compensate for the no wars week?
Plus, I could be wrong, but from what I’ve read it seems like most of the problems were self-inflicted by those alliances trying to game the system by waiting to start matchmaking out of the hopes of competing against certain alliance…?
That's EXACTLY what I was thinking. We start our matchmaking between 4:30-5 PM EST. Mainly so we don't cross with AQ start end/times. It minimizes issues. This is gonna be problematic. In theory, it's nice. But when dealing with international players, this is gonna be ROUGH for some. Kabam, might want to rethink the timing brackets. Perhaps allow Alliances to provide their timing ahead of time, and then they stick with it. Automatically will start matchmaking at said time, every war.
You can still match outside your Tier/Bracket if that is the best Match for your Alliance. For Instance, if you're in Gold 1, but the matchmaker finds a suitable challenger for you in Platinum 3, you can be matched up.
There are no changes to Nodes this season. We'll have more information on the Future of Global Nodes soon.
I agree with this. I think the changes aren’t bad as a whole concept for how the matchmaking system operates. However, it would be nice to see some tweaks so that there are multiple times slots to choose from for enlistment. It would increase the number of alliances that could potentially go unmatched, but it would still be a relatively small number. I do see how it could lead to top alliances still being able to avoid matching with each other, but how it’s going to be really sucks for alliances in different time zones/schedules that work out better starting war later.
There is! If you receive a Bye one week, you won't get one again for a while, and in that time, the Points you receive for the "win" will push you up anyways.
Yeah, that’s a fail.
You need brackets. Matching top 3 alliances every war will suck too. If you matchsay ny718, kenob, and wah! and lose 1 it should matter more than someone going 3-0 against alliances dying 30 times. It doesn’t the way you’re doing it.
I like what is being done in concept. Further any system that doesn’t get rid of nodes left up as a way to get points is a fail.
Yes and no. The pre-season is still only 1 week, but before that, there's an entire week where there is no Alliance Wars at all. So you'll get 2 weeks off between Season 7 and 8, but Wars will only be active for 1 of those weeks.
This as well. Sometimes a member needs to be replaced in between wars, but this doesn’t allow for changes to happen as smoothly until the end of the war week.