Alliance War Matchmaking loophole/exploit

battleone

I am well aware that the matchmaking "formula" is a secret so that alliances can't take advantage of it and exploit it to their benefit. Unfortunately, I believe it is so obviously flawed by looking at the current 2nd and 3rd place teams in war seasons. They are WELL into tier 1 war rating (3200+) and continue to match similar prestige alliances and not face any top prestige alliances with similar war ratings. There are currently 2 21 million rating alliances in the top 3 season leaderboard. By no means is rating a testament or conclusive deciding factor to the skill of an alliance, but it is part of a measuring stick. If you view their rosters you will find many guys with only 3 r5s. I have participated in 7 wars this season, vs perennial top alliances, majority of the defenders being r5. If we faced an alliance of mostly r4 defenders, we would have very few deaths and be very hard to beat. Same goes for many other top aq/aw alliances. It is becoming widely apparent that matchmaking has a significant weight of prestige in addition to war rating. These alliances appear to be getting matchups vs similar prestige alliances, much further down in war rating.

Once an alliance reaches a threshold in war rating, whatever part of the calculation matching based on prestige there is needs to be eliminated. Matchmaking is luck of the draw a lot of the time and thats fine, but at a certain war rating it should be the best of the best and no handicapping should be in the formula.

I could show a lot of data to support my findings, for example one of them had a +11 matchup in war 8, with many other suitable matchups around them that would have resulted in a +/- 25 to 35 or so matchup. I have a statistics degree and my math spidey sense is tingling far beyond a little bit of bad rng on matchups. If this is the case, this is essentially a loophole. Highly skilled players keeping their prestige down and getting great war matchups as a result. Is that as intended?

I just wanted to voice my thoughts on it, thanks for reading.

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Demonzfyre

I'm not sure how it can be exploited currently. You have to enlist first and then matchmaking starts. Everyone matches during the same time frame. How can that be exploited?

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Demonzfyre

Drooped2 said:

Demonzfyre said:

I'm not sure how it can be exploited currently. You have to enlist first and then matchmaking starts. Everyone matches during the same time frame. How can that be exploited?

Yea im.not seeing the exploit part but 21m allainces in top 3 seems odd maybe sell all your 3s and **** effects who you face season wide now?
Aka kabam made allaince rating matter (which would be stupid)

Yeah....23mil in Gold 1. This is my alliances last opponent. OPs rant doesnt make sense.

Demonzfyre

You are probably right. Average rating of 713k. Probably sold most if not all 1-4*'s.

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battleone

rating is a measuring stick. its a clue to look at their profiles the amount of r5's (and thus) defenders they have. most perennial top alliances would walk through primarily r4 defenses. the point is they are not matching consensus "top alliances" and are undefeated as a result

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Demonzfyre

battleone said:

rating is a measuring stick. its a clue to look at their profiles the amount of r5's (and thus) defenders they have. most perennial top alliances would walk through primarily r4 defenses. the point is they are not matching consensus "top alliances" and are undefeated as a result

Its not a good measuring stick. An alliances overall rating is each members rating added together.

Let's say I had 8 R5 5*'s and 20+ R4 5*'s and 10 6*'s. Throw in a good amount of R1-R3 5*s and ive sold all my 1-4* champs. Lets say that makes a rating of 400k.

Let's take my real profile.

I have a 670K rating with 430 champs. I only have 4 R5 5*'s and 8 R4 5*'s plus 10 6*'s. Just because I have a high rating, doesn't mean I have a better roster. Rating can be manipulated and has little to do with match making.

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Demonzfyre

Drooped2 said:

Demonzfyre said:

battleone said:

rating is a measuring stick. its a clue to look at their profiles the amount of r5's (and thus) defenders they have. most perennial top alliances would walk through primarily r4 defenses. the point is they are not matching consensus "top alliances" and are undefeated as a result

Its not a good measuring stick. An alliances overall rating is each members rating added together.

Let's say I had 8 R5 5*'s and 20+ R4 5*'s and 10 6*'s. Throw in a good amount of R1-R3 5*s and ive sold all my 1-4* champs. Lets say that makes a rating of 400k.

Let's take my real profile.

I have a 670K rating with 430 champs. I only have 4 R5 5*'s and 8 R4 5*'s plus 10 6*'s. Just because I have a high rating, doesn't mean I have a better roster. Rating can be manipulated and has little to do with match making.

Let's comparison shop this a bit with my profile.
5 r5s
9 6s
11 r4s

Our total champs pretty similiar rating not even close.
If selling down to 660k ensures plat or master rewards cause kabam changed to have rating Matter? Yup I'm going to sell some stuff

100% correct. overall rating really means nothing in AW.

battleone

rating was more a sign to look at their rosters. they have guys that do not have a full slate of r5s in their profile. many of them. as someone who participates in wars vs the likes of mng, ny, asr, kenob and iso8a, I can tell you that you will face very few r4s/6r1 in their defense if any at all. the alliance rating was simply a measurement to say look deeper at these guys rosters. i am saying that alliance prestige is impacting the matchmaking moreso than war rating, thus how these alliances have managed to get into the top 3, by not facing alliances above their overall caliber.

Demonzfyre

battleone said:

rating was more a sign to look at their rosters. they have guys that do not have a full slate of r5s in their profile. many of them. as someone who participates in wars vs the likes of mng, ny, asr, kenob and iso8a, I can tell you that you will face very few r4s/6r1 in their defense if any at all. the alliance rating was simply a measurement to say look deeper at these guys rosters. i am saying that alliance prestige is impacting the matchmaking moreso than war rating, thus how these alliances have managed to get into the top 3, by not facing alliances above their overall caliber.

Or they are winning? Again, I don't see how anyone can exploit the new matchmaking mechanic.

QuikPik

This is what is wrong with the match making system.




Both alliances have not sold champs. They are actually alliances with some people under level 60 and a lot have all R5 4* on their roster profiles. I don't care how much skill they have any 20m+ is going to walk over a map full of R4/R5 4* on defense.

Please don't disregard the current match making mechanic unless you have looked at the leaderboard for alliances that should not belong. 10m alliances in Gold 1, yep they are there too.

Apparently all of these smaller alliances with roughly the same war rating but much lower prestige continually play one another and their war ranking doesn't change that much. Under the old system, those alliances would've played much higher rated alliances 10-12 wars.

5tarscream

We are rated around 5 million and ranked S2. We keep facing 7-8 million rated Bronze 2 teams.
The more we lose the higher the opposition alliance is rated in the next war. It's pretty stupid.

Cliffordcan

Pretty sure Prestige is heavily integrated into matchmaking now. The intended purpose is so you can’t drop rating for easier wars. With that even having a low war rating would still try to match you with someone with comparable prestige. Ask anyone in a top 20 AQ ally who doesn’t focus heavily on war... they aren’t having a good time.

GroundedWisdom

Demonzfyre said:

battleone said:

rating is a measuring stick. its a clue to look at their profiles the amount of r5's (and thus) defenders they have. most perennial top alliances would walk through primarily r4 defenses. the point is they are not matching consensus "top alliances" and are undefeated as a result

Its not a good measuring stick. An alliances overall rating is each members rating added together.

Let's say I had 8 R5 5*'s and 20+ R4 5*'s and 10 6*'s. Throw in a good amount of R1-R3 5*s and ive sold all my 1-4* champs. Lets say that makes a rating of 400k.

Let's take my real profile.

I have a 670K rating with 430 champs. I only have 4 R5 5*'s and 8 R4 5*'s plus 10 6*'s. Just because I have a high rating, doesn't mean I have a better roster. Rating can be manipulated and has little to do with match making.

We have about the same Rating and I have R4s, and I definitely don't sell or manipulate Rating. I agree. There's alot of grey area.

Ultra8529

Prestige wars means war rating should be removed. It is a pointless metric at this point since war rating does not ensure you get matched up against opponents of close or equivalent war rating. You will instead get matched against someone with close or equivalent prestige.

This is creating sub-tiers of allies based on prestige within the broader AW ranking brackets. If we did not have such artificially constraiend matchmaking, we would be seeing a very different Plat 2 and Plat 3 as those tiny alliances that are getting free passes in avoiding bigger ones would, in a fair matching system, be knocked out.

Cliffordcan

Ultra8529 said:

Prestige wars means war rating should be removed. It is a pointless metric at this point since war rating does not ensure you get matched up against opponents of close or equivalent war rating. You will instead get matched against someone with close or equivalent prestige.

This is creating sub-tiers of allies based on prestige within the broader AW ranking brackets. If we did not have such artificially constraiend matchmaking, we would be seeing a very different Plat 2 and Plat 3 as those tiny alliances that are getting free passes in avoiding bigger ones would, in a fair matching system, be knocked out.

Agree, I think it has been a bad change. Would rather them pause War rating for off season to deter tanking than this BS. It wouldn’t stop Shell Allies but it would get rid of most of the tanking

GroundedWisdom

Ultra8529 said:

Prestige wars means war rating should be removed. It is a pointless metric at this point since war rating does not ensure you get matched up against opponents of close or equivalent war rating. You will instead get matched against someone with close or equivalent prestige.

This is creating sub-tiers of allies based on prestige within the broader AW ranking brackets. If we did not have such artificially constraiend matchmaking, we would be seeing a very different Plat 2 and Plat 3 as those tiny alliances that are getting free passes in avoiding bigger ones would, in a fair matching system, be knocked out.

I have to disagree with that. There are reasons for both to be used. War Rating is the result of performance. Wins and Losses. Prestige acts as a regulator to minimize manipulation of the system. Which it has seen too much of.

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Ultra8529

GroundedWisdom said:

Ultra8529 said:

Prestige wars means war rating should be removed. It is a pointless metric at this point since war rating does not ensure you get matched up against opponents of close or equivalent war rating. You will instead get matched against someone with close or equivalent prestige.

This is creating sub-tiers of allies based on prestige within the broader AW ranking brackets. If we did not have such artificially constraiend matchmaking, we would be seeing a very different Plat 2 and Plat 3 as those tiny alliances that are getting free passes in avoiding bigger ones would, in a fair matching system, be knocked out.

I have to disagree with that. There are reasons for both to be used. War Rating is the result of performance. Wins and Losses. Prestige acts as a regulator to minimize manipulation of the system. Which it has seen too much of.

Prestige is a terrible way to minimise manipulation of the system. The better solution is simply to make it not worth alliances' while to tank, if that is the concern. Give them much lower points or rewards from tanking. Give incentives for people not to tank and the problem will solve itself.

Using prestige as a regulator simply creates a protective bubble around weak and low prestige alliances, and lets them think they are of a certain standard when truthfully they are not.

Night_Owl

Totally agree. It's flawed and gives those low prestige alliances much benefit. They only need to use fewer items and get better rewards.

synergy247

@Kabam Miike


" or others I have an issue which I believe is a bug with the alliance rewards we received from our last war and specifically the tier multiplier.

So in the last two wars we were in the Expert tier map being Tier 3, with additional buffs like vigor on node 34, and bane on the stun immune node 18, plus others like explosive personality and biohazard on certain nodes.

The problem is, we lost the first war and received the tier 3 x5.5 multiplier (correct) but then dropped down to Tier 4 multiplier x4.5 for the second war.

We won the second war 3 boss kills to nil USING THE SAME TIER 3 MAP yet
RECEIVED THE TIER 4 MULTIPLIER x 4.5 points.

I have asked around and this seems to be a glitch and despite many support tickets lodged we’re not getting a resolution. We need clarification urgently as this is the difference for us between dropping out of Plat 3 and staying in.

Before the last war we won, we were Gold 1 rank 6 and after it we only moved up by one place to rank 5... by my calls we missed out on 195k points with the incorrect multiplier.

If you do Act 6, you expect Act 6 rewards not Act 5 rewards.

If you do Uncollected difficulty EQ, you expect those rewards, not those gained from Heroic level. Can a mod please clarify as a matter of urgency thanks and see below for past two wars

synergy247

@Kabam Miike please see above

synergy247

@Kabam Zibiit @Kabam Vydious
@Kabam Lyra @Kabam Porthos

Need this investigated as from memory back in January there was an issue with some alliances receiving double season points so it is not inconceivable that a bug like this can happen.

Need a link to any supporting articles on the forum to prove that this is not a bug. Cheers

QuikPik

@synergy247 I'd be more concerned with all the low rated alliances taking up your plat spots.

synergy247

QuikPik said:

@synergy247 I'd be more concerned with all the low rated alliances taking up your plat spots.

True that, seems very unbalanced tbh

Gold 1 and higher levels should really be 15m rating and higher alliances approx

Lormif

synergy247 said:

QuikPik said:

@synergy247 I'd be more concerned with all the low rated alliances taking up your plat spots.

True that, seems very unbalanced tbh

Gold 1 and higher levels should really be 15m rating and higher alliances approx

So it should not matter how skilled someone is, they should be required to have a specific rating to get the good rewards? Seems pretty classist.