AW Match and Multiplier oddities for Season Eight
So now that season eight is over, I want to summarize what match making looked like for my alliance. This is a list of every war in season eight, what our rating was at the time of match making, what our opponent rating was, and what the multiplier was for that war:
1776 v 1771, tier 7 (x3.2)
1839 v 1831, tier 7 (x3.2)
1913 v 1898, tier 6 (x3.4)
1844 v 1838, tier 6 (x3.4)
1777 v 1799, tier 6 (x3.4)
1845 v 1839, tier 7 (x3.2)
1908 v 1911, tier 6 (x3.4)
1986 v 1980, tier 6 (x3.4)
1919 v 1916, tier 6 (x3.4)
1852 v 1835, tier 6 (x3.4)
1913 v 1923, tier 6 (x3.4) [challenger map]
1849 v 1840, tier 6 (x3.4)
So first of all, the tier/multiplier doesn't seem to reasonably correspond to war rating. The highest rating we had that generated a tier 7 match was 1845, while the lowest rating that generated a tier 6 match was 1777. That's a sizeable overlap, and it seems unlikely that the tier cutoffs would move that much in a season (they don't move that much at all in and around this tier). Another player proposed the theory that this has something to do with moving up and down in tier; that the game incorrectly factors in your older tier and not your newer tier. This could explain some of the data. If that were the case, then that could explain the tier 7 match in the middle of the season if we assume that 1777 is actually tier 7 and not tier 6. Then, we got a tier 6 match at 1777 because it was actually matching against our previous rating of 1844, then we got a tier 7 match at 1845 because it was again using our previous rating of 1777.
However, this works if a rating of ~1777 is tier 7. That's mathematically possible, but it seems inconsistent with the data I have. Prior to this season the lowest rating we've ever had as a tier 6 alliance is 1718, and the highest rating as a tier 7 alliance was 1705. That suggests the rating cutoff for tier 6 is closer to about 1710. It isn't impossible for the rating cutoff to move that much, but it seems to be unusual given that I haven't seen such a move in the past (I don't have data for every season, though).
But there's another glitch in this theory. If the game was matching alliances incorrectly by using their previous rating rather than their current rating, or their previous tier rather than their current tier, it doesn't explain the other glitch this season: in war #11 we were still tier 6, still got the multiplier for tier 6, but was placed on a challenger map (tier 4-5). Separate from the fact that the map didn't match the tier, it also doesn't align with being just after the highest rating we achieved. The highest rating we achieved was 1986, which we hit in war #8. If the only problem was a one-off fencepost error in using war ratings, I would expect this bug to show up one war after that highest rating level, i.e. war #9. Instead, it showed up when all surrounding ratings were significantly lower. So it must be something more complex than that going on.
It has been suggested in other threads which mention this problem that the reason for sometimes getting the wrong map is because the map is actually appropriate for the *opposing* alliance. But in this case that also seems unlikely to me, because if 1986 is tier 6 (both that war and the next war was a tier 6 match) then it seems unlikely to me that 1923 would be tier 5 just three wars later in the same season.
So in summary, I see three oddities with match making this season in our own alliance's data. First, war tier cutoffs seem higher than they've been in the past, by the equivalent of about one victory of rating delta (~65 points), and that seems odd. Second, and independently of this, I see evidence which suggests that the game servers are indeed matching alliances based on their current war rating but giving them multipliers based on their prior war rating. And third, it seems that separate from both of those issues the game can hand you a map that doesn't match your war tier and multiplier - even accounting for the game using the wrong day's tier.
This isn't intended to be a complete list of war match making anomalies. Other people have mentioned other weird behavior or in some cases the same weird behavior. I'm just presenting our alliance's data that I've recorded over the past season, and what observations I have based on that data.
In case it wasn't obvious, this seems completely broken to me. The game servers seem, at least in this limited data set, to be using the wrong war rating to assign multiplier, and who knows what it is using to assign the map, and it might even be calculating war tier cutoffs incorrectly from the start.
1776 v 1771, tier 7 (x3.2)
1839 v 1831, tier 7 (x3.2)
1913 v 1898, tier 6 (x3.4)
1844 v 1838, tier 6 (x3.4)
1777 v 1799, tier 6 (x3.4)
1845 v 1839, tier 7 (x3.2)
1908 v 1911, tier 6 (x3.4)
1986 v 1980, tier 6 (x3.4)
1919 v 1916, tier 6 (x3.4)
1852 v 1835, tier 6 (x3.4)
1913 v 1923, tier 6 (x3.4) [challenger map]
1849 v 1840, tier 6 (x3.4)
So first of all, the tier/multiplier doesn't seem to reasonably correspond to war rating. The highest rating we had that generated a tier 7 match was 1845, while the lowest rating that generated a tier 6 match was 1777. That's a sizeable overlap, and it seems unlikely that the tier cutoffs would move that much in a season (they don't move that much at all in and around this tier). Another player proposed the theory that this has something to do with moving up and down in tier; that the game incorrectly factors in your older tier and not your newer tier. This could explain some of the data. If that were the case, then that could explain the tier 7 match in the middle of the season if we assume that 1777 is actually tier 7 and not tier 6. Then, we got a tier 6 match at 1777 because it was actually matching against our previous rating of 1844, then we got a tier 7 match at 1845 because it was again using our previous rating of 1777.
However, this works if a rating of ~1777 is tier 7. That's mathematically possible, but it seems inconsistent with the data I have. Prior to this season the lowest rating we've ever had as a tier 6 alliance is 1718, and the highest rating as a tier 7 alliance was 1705. That suggests the rating cutoff for tier 6 is closer to about 1710. It isn't impossible for the rating cutoff to move that much, but it seems to be unusual given that I haven't seen such a move in the past (I don't have data for every season, though).
But there's another glitch in this theory. If the game was matching alliances incorrectly by using their previous rating rather than their current rating, or their previous tier rather than their current tier, it doesn't explain the other glitch this season: in war #11 we were still tier 6, still got the multiplier for tier 6, but was placed on a challenger map (tier 4-5). Separate from the fact that the map didn't match the tier, it also doesn't align with being just after the highest rating we achieved. The highest rating we achieved was 1986, which we hit in war #8. If the only problem was a one-off fencepost error in using war ratings, I would expect this bug to show up one war after that highest rating level, i.e. war #9. Instead, it showed up when all surrounding ratings were significantly lower. So it must be something more complex than that going on.
It has been suggested in other threads which mention this problem that the reason for sometimes getting the wrong map is because the map is actually appropriate for the *opposing* alliance. But in this case that also seems unlikely to me, because if 1986 is tier 6 (both that war and the next war was a tier 6 match) then it seems unlikely to me that 1923 would be tier 5 just three wars later in the same season.
So in summary, I see three oddities with match making this season in our own alliance's data. First, war tier cutoffs seem higher than they've been in the past, by the equivalent of about one victory of rating delta (~65 points), and that seems odd. Second, and independently of this, I see evidence which suggests that the game servers are indeed matching alliances based on their current war rating but giving them multipliers based on their prior war rating. And third, it seems that separate from both of those issues the game can hand you a map that doesn't match your war tier and multiplier - even accounting for the game using the wrong day's tier.
This isn't intended to be a complete list of war match making anomalies. Other people have mentioned other weird behavior or in some cases the same weird behavior. I'm just presenting our alliance's data that I've recorded over the past season, and what observations I have based on that data.
In case it wasn't obvious, this seems completely broken to me. The game servers seem, at least in this limited data set, to be using the wrong war rating to assign multiplier, and who knows what it is using to assign the map, and it might even be calculating war tier cutoffs incorrectly from the start.
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