War Matchmaking a bit off

This season was delayed supposedly due to war matchmaking issues. I'm not sure of the exact nature of the issue or if there were other things at play but I'm hoping what was looked into will EVENTUALLY be fixed and crazy uneven match-ups a thing of the past.

First 4 wars of this season my alliance which is outside the top 30 in terms of war rating has faced 3 of the top 5 in terms of rating. I won't get into the whole screenshot thing unless a mod asks for them but we've been seeing wild stuff like +50/-10 and +60/-3 against sub 10 death alliances. I've put up multiple posts about this in the past and I've come to realize we're in Season 9 and we still have the same issues....

What EXACTLY is being fixed because this has been going on for 9 seasons and almost nothing is different. Every season I can point out 4-5 wars where I've faced a top 5 regardless of what tier I've been in. I commend the top 20 every season as I know it's tough to get Master let alone top 3 (finished in Masters myself) but how good can anybody feel beating up on alliances that have no chance constantly? I gotta believe there are alliances out there that would like some semblance of a challenge from this game mode regardless of the current lackluster rewards...

I know matchmaking can't be perfect and there will be some tomato cans that get beat up on but when you're the tomato can for 1/3 of a season it gets a little old. It's been mentioned before but at some point the top 10 should be playing each other, and not just at the end of the season when things are pretty much locked in and the result is meaningless. It seems like I've played against top 5's every season more than they've played against each other.

How exactly can an algorithm match a group outside of the top 30 to a group in the top 5 consistently? Personally I think there is some sort of gaming going on where maybe there is a specific time these groups are enlisting that is guaranteeing a soft match-up but that's just a theory. I know this comes off as a whining post but 9 seasons of the same broken mode......

Comments

Lormif

war was not delayed because of matchmaking issues but because of bugs everywhere else in the game.

Also the timing thing should not be an issue anymore since we all start at the same time now.

Greywarden

war was not delayed because of matchmaking issues but because of bugs everywhere else in the game.

Also the timing thing should not be an issue anymore since we all start at the same time now.

yet there are always crazy mismatches which seem to happen for the last 9 seasons.

Greywarden

Mng
Iso8A twice
J11
Kenob

I’d love to know how a group outside of the top 30 in terms of rating has that as the first 5 out of 6.

Greywarden

I know a mod is probably never going to reply to this thread other than possibly shut it down but I do think it merits some discussion. The algorithm is still WAY off. You've changed the way groups have to match up but the same problem exists.

I mean cmon you're giving back to back byes to the top rated alliance in the game.....who knows maybe even 3 in a row.

Meanwhile an alliance outside of the top 30 (almost top 40 actually) has to play the top 5 every single war of the season so far. What was the point of the whole enlistment change if the algorithm is still broken?

FIX WAR MATCHMAKING

Greywarden

Crossing fingers this comment actually bumps this post as the last 3 have conveniently not done so.

Cliffordcan

What is your Ally? Hard to discuss who you are facing without knowing what ally you are in. I think War Rating has taken a back seat to prestige. Which punishes high-prestige AQ Allys when they are in war.

Lormif

I think the issue is that a lot of alliances this season sandbagged in the increased offseason, allowing their ratings to drop severely and that has impacted a fair game. Our alliance, gold 1, won a lot of super easy matches in the start of the off season against high ranked opponents because we were not cheating, now we are paying the price.

Greywarden

What is your Ally? Hard to discuss who you are facing without knowing what ally you are in. I think War Rating has taken a back seat to prestige. Which punishes high-prestige AQ Allys when they are in war.

That may actually be it, ally is super andromeda skrulls and may be a great explanation of what’s happening since we’re a top 15-20 aq group.

Cliffordcan

What is your Ally? Hard to discuss who you are facing without knowing what ally you are in. I think War Rating has taken a back seat to prestige. Which punishes high-prestige AQ Allys when they are in war.
That may actually be it, ally is super andromeda skrulls and may be a great explanation of what’s happening since we’re a top 15-20 aq group.

Yep, they changed the matchmaking to prevent sandbagging by making prestige the major factor. Which is bad for AQ-focused Allys. At least it’s good to know ppl are sandbagging for no reason, lol

Greywarden

@Kabam Lyra care to comment on war match making criteria? Prestige matchups may actually be what’s going on here and personally that makes no sense since prestige has always been an AQ metric.

LeNoirFaineant

Mng
Iso8A twice
J11
Kenob

I’d love to know how a group outside of the top 30 in terms of rating has that as the first 5 out of 6.

Wow, that's rough. We've had two mismatches so far, one in our favor and one on the bad end. Last season we were always on the receiving end so it's been better for us. Probably just luck rather than the system working better.

LeNoirFaineant

What is your Ally? Hard to discuss who you are facing without knowing what ally you are in. I think War Rating has taken a back seat to prestige. Which punishes high-prestige AQ Allys when they are in war.
That may actually be it, ally is super andromeda skrulls and may be a great explanation of what’s happening since we’re a top 15-20 aq group.

Well on the bright side you are getting better rewards from AQ than you would from Plat1/master war. If I were running 7x5 I wouldn't worry about where we ranked in war. Not that that makes up for garbage matchmaking. The burnout rate is high for people doing both though.

Greywarden

What is your Ally? Hard to discuss who you are facing without knowing what ally you are in. I think War Rating has taken a back seat to prestige. Which punishes high-prestige AQ Allys when they are in war.
That may actually be it, ally is super andromeda skrulls and may be a great explanation of what’s happening since we’re a top 15-20 aq group.
Well on the bright side you are getting better rewards from AQ than you would from Plat1/master war. If I were running 7x5 I wouldn't worry about where we ranked in war. Not that that makes up for garbage matchmaking. The burnout rate is high for people doing both though.

That’s what worries me, people tend to leave when **** luck like this happens.

Jus77

Hey Grey! I agree, I think that prestige is playing too much a factor. Coming from a traditionally Gold 1 alliance, we are getting consistently difficult wars, no matter how many we lose. I believe that Kabam has set it up so that prestige has factored in and almost creates tiers for war. The leaderboard for Gold 1 is littered with alliances that are much much smaller then many of the others. It seems that there are a certain set of matchups that you can get for war. If you're a 9 million alliance and you have some skilled players, you can quickly climb to the top of Gold 1 or even Platinum 3 because you will never have to face an alliance that is 20+ million, even if that alliance is around the same war rating or even lower in rankings.

DTMelodicMetal

This thread is more evidence the current war multiplier system favors manipulation - all of the alliances the OP lists tank in the off-season except for MNG. If Goggy or DK read this, please consider replacing the current war multiplier system with one that determines max possible points based on alliance rating and opponent alliance rating.

Ultra8529

The current matchmaking criteria definitely weigh prestige heavily into the algorithm. That makes zero sense whatsoever because the idea of war rating is that 2 alliances at the same war rating have the same abilities in war.

Matching a 2200 with a 2500 war rating (which has happened numerous times from what I have seen), simply because they have the same prestige or alliance PI, is setting up the alliance with 2200 rating to lose. The evidence and historical fact, based on their war rating, is that they are a weaker war alliance than the one at 2500.

Will matching based on war rating lead to skewed match ups in the form of a 20m alliance facing a 10m alliance? Yes that can happen, but it is not an unfair match up since obviously to both be at 2200, they both have been winning/losing at the same rate at that war rating, and therefore they are equally competent. The problem of matching at prestige is that the game is artificially segregating alliances into sub-tiers at the same war rating.

Greywarden

At this point I think it’s relatively obvious that prestige is what groups are being matched on. Matchups by ratings were obviously not perfect but I’ve never seen a season this bad across the community. You have groups in masters/high platinum 1 right now who don’t even have 4 r5’s but are there solely because they’re only getting matched up by prestige...

I’m leaning towards this being worse due to a few things.

1) there are only 20 top 20 groups (duh) so the match pool is smaller than if you went by rating. There are quite a bit more groups that are 2900 rating and higher.
2) prestige can’t be what is used for aq and aw. For years it’s only purpose has been to rank groups doing the same aq map and now it’s going to be used for groups doing the same war map??? If that’s the case why even have war rating to begin with. Just go with prestige caps that give certain multipliers. And COMMUNICATE it.
3) the difference between high prestige groups that don’t have a ton or any whales versus a group of all whales is pretty massive. I don’t want to say our normal death total for competitive reasons but under normal circumstances where we’re actually trying and know we have a shot we stand no chance against sub 10 death groups, not many do.
4) you’re not only pushing people away from war but from the game. There are only so many +60 matchups in a row you can see before you start thinking about moving on.
5) along the lines of #2 there has been zero communication regarding a shift in the match making criteria. I understand you can’t divulge the secret sauce to the algorithm but moving from ratings to prestige is pretty massive and I think it’s fair to say that communication from this company has been far from acceptable for years now.

There’s probably more that I’m not thinking about but this went from my favorite game mode to the one I just want to be over.

BPH2000

You and your alliance are as much to blame for the disfunction of AW as Kabaam is. For example, why did you leave so many nodes up for your last opponent and not for your first opponent? You and other alliances that chose to roll over and leave nodes up for some and not others manipulate the outcome of AW seasons more so than matchmaking

Greywarden

You and your alliance are as much to blame for the disfunction of AW as Kabaam is. For example, why did you leave so many nodes up for your last opponent and not for your first opponent? You and other alliances that chose to roll over and leave nodes up for some and not others manipulate the outcome of AW seasons more so than matchmaking

??? Are you somehow in MNG and Kenob? Because that was our first and last war match-up. MNG had 2 byes so,....there's that. Think about what you just asked though.

Why are we now after 6,......yes 6 straight wars of completely BS match-ups changing strategy? The answer is right there, at some point you get beat down enough where your strategy has to change. Beginning of the season first bad match-up, whatever. Do your business and get the 100% but after 6 straight match-ups against close to 10 death alliances you have to pick the wars where you actually try.

Do me a favor and don't verbally attack anybody before knowing and thinking through all of the facts.

BPH2000

I didn’t attack anyone. Apparently hit a nerve though. All I did was call out the fact that alliances, like yours, that’s leaving up nodes for “whatever reason,” are manipulating the outcome of AW seasons. And that’s a fact.

Bikemc

Yes they are basing it on alliance prestige. I went looking through gold 1 and plat 3 and there are tons and tons of 8-14 million alliance all throughout. Yes even in plat 3 I found them. It’s completely unfair that a 20 mil gold 1 alliance would never face a 10 mil gold 1 alliance because their pi is different but have the same war rating and war tier. It’s showing in recruiting as well as there are more and more very incapable accounts asking for gold 1 or higher because they are in a low pi alliance in gold 1 or plat 3 and only face other low pi alliances allowing them to stay there.

Greywarden

I didn’t attack anyone. Apparently hit a nerve though. All I did was call out the fact that alliances, like yours, that’s leaving up nodes for “whatever reason,” are manipulating the outcome of AW seasons. And that’s a fact.

How can you say you're not attacking me or my alliance when you're making baseless accusations and generalizing me or my group with other groups out there and insinuating some pretty wild things..... I'd expect anybody to react the same way I did.....anyway

I'm not sure alliances skipping nodes is the problem here. I can't speak to all instances of other groups but we have always been a 100% clear group,...hell we were Master last season, that doesn't happen from skipping nodes. Our strategy may have to change considering we're getting incredibly lopsided matches based on the arbitrary metric of prestige being what we're being matched on.

The main issue I'm trying to discuss is the fact that we're 9 seasons into war and the algorithm is probably the worst it's ever been.

QuikPik

Kabam, your matchmaking system is very broken. There's an alliance in plat3 that is 12.7m. Several of their members are below level 60 and a few them have all 4* R5 on their roster profile. They should be a gold 2/3 alliance and not platinum.

You've basically created a system where a few spots in each tier are reserved for alliances that don't belong there. These smaller alliances keep playing one another and never against larger alliances with the same war rating.

unknown

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QuikPik

And you don't see a problem with how they got that high in the first place? Gold 1 is also littered with sub 12m alliances. They can't all be shells, shells normally don't have full rosters.

unknown

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QuikPik

Found another 13m alliance at rank 138 in plat3.

With the new system, a handful of 12-15m alliances make platinum because they just keep playing similar sized alliances. Same goes for Gold 1 as well, there are quite a few 10m alliances in that tier. Any 20m+ alliance is going to walk all over an opponent's map that filled with only 4*.

Ultra8529

The solution to this imbalance therefore is that if you want easy rewards, go to an alliance that has an average prestige far lower than yours. Your new alliance will constantly be matching up against weak low prestige alliance, while your personal roster and abilities will be at a far higher level, allowing you to coast through war maps.

I did this personally for a season before and found it extremely enjoyable. Coming from a Plat 1 / Master ally, i dropped to a Gold1/Plat 3 ally for a season, and was basically walking through maps taking out minis and final bosses, sometimes noded, without a sweat. If every end game player does this when they want a break, overall spending in AW will go down and everyone will be getting easier rewards this way.

To be clear, this is not the same as shell swapping since it is not about 30 people moving to a new ally (that would trigger the same prestige-based match ups). It is about 1 or 2 moving into a generally weaker alliance so that the match ups are relatively easier for you, but you can still easily get Plat 2/3 rewards depending on which ally you chose.

Greywarden

Not looking for easy rewards but rather an algorithm that works for once. 9 seasons in and still can't get it right and now matches are being determined by prestige.

How is an AQ metric affecting AW (which is a completely different game mode) something that makes any sense to anybody. Currently groups that push AQ are being punished in AW for doing so. Competing in AQ and AW are two completely different animals however AQ is somehow being considered when creating matches.

ZERO SENSE.

Take a look at some of the groups in Masters and P1 and then take a look at some of the Masters groups you now see in P3.....definitely not working as intended.

Greywarden

Quick update. 2 decent matches followed by asr.

Mng
Iso8A twice
J11
Fnx
Kenob
Asr

^^^^ pretty nice string of BS. Relatively certain no other alliance has had that kind of lineup to deal with this season.