Matchmaking Discussion [Merged Threads]

Comments

We want fair matchups thats all we are asking.
Please dont give opponents with 10 times higher rating in war matchups this is not fair.
And those who are saying that this is better and will show you your right place than let me ask this that earlier one used to get opponent of same prestige and strength and then skill would come in game and become a reality test not the broken system of now. Face same strength and than go ahead thats the real skill test not the otherway around that squash tiny one and go ahead.
Honestly those saying that it earlier lower skill alliance used to go up tell me which is real test of skill facing opponents of same strength and than progressing or just killing tiny ones.
The game is not about showing tiny people their place or where they belong and if you really think that way then im sorry but probably you are taking away fun of playing and that joy of game from a lot of tiny players like us.
Be fair do justice.
But you are still not addressing the fact a lower level alliance such as yours has gotten a bye for the past while to get better rewards than deserved you didn't have to fight the 30 million rated alliances stuck in G3/S1 that would have thrashed you. After this season your alliance will be where they actually should be and that is fair.
Another thing you guys are saying is that skill matters so tell me where is actual test of skill facing an equally strong opponent and then progressing or just squashing the tiny ones.
Every ally reached at their current place by there skill being better against their opponents of same strength and that's how they merit that place and now all that hard work is being ripped off and that hurts.

War rating is a numerical value given to your alliance that represents its ‘skill’ and roster relative to EVERY OTHER ALLIANCE, you can not argue that a 15mil and 30mil alliance both at 2k war rating deserve equal rewards and then in the same breath say it shouldn’t be possible for them to match each other.

CaptainGame

I see the same two arguments.

Waaaah we want our old rewards despite being low level : No you dont deserve it.
No but we are "skilled"! : Nah, not really.

Increasing prestige based matchups have an exponential increase in difficulty for the same rewards. Facing a 4/55 sig20 vs an r5 sig200 is exponentially harder, if you have r4 vs r5 on attack (node increases the difficulty, maybe take some math classes?)

Stop complaining, if you are "skilled" enough, beat the defenses in front of you.
Well and if so called stronger alliance are skilled enough than tell me where is actual test of skill either in facing opponent of same strength and than progressing or to kill of the tiny ones.
The so called smaller ones reached there because of their better skill against opponents of their equal strength and tell me that if so called stronger one didn't have the skill to reach there against opponents of equal strength then how come they merit it now.

Because both of those stronger teams are better and more skilled than you. Therefore both rank higher.

Mtl55

I see the same two arguments.

Waaaah we want our old rewards despite being low level : No you dont deserve it.
No but we are "skilled"! : Nah, not really.

Increasing prestige based matchups have an exponential increase in difficulty for the same rewards. Facing a 4/55 sig20 vs an r5 sig200 is exponentially harder, if you have r4 vs r5 on attack (node increases the difficulty, maybe take some math classes?)

Stop complaining, if you are "skilled" enough, beat the defenses in front of you.

Belive me i have never stated about rewards and will never do it in future, because its not about rewards,its about that joy of playing that happiness you get when you play with your fav champs and that makes your day, but now this matchmaking is only giving that sadness and ripping of joy of playing, now when we see matchup we can only feel sad and that is most important thing.
Its taking fun away and giving sadness opposite of what it meants to be.

Jaymix79

Missing link... There are a lot of veteran alliances in that 30m 9-10k prestige bracket, all much of a muchness.
Been around for years, don't spend or grind enough to be near the top but play a lot, completed most content in the game, have spent, spend, and grind a reasonable amount.
These alliances know the game, are mostly well organised but only ever got matched against each other, hence why they ended up with a roughly 50% win rate. This is how they are pushed slowly down the tiers by lower prestige alliances they were never allowed to match.

This is the truth of the old system.

pseudosane

I see the same two arguments.

Waaaah we want our old rewards despite being low level : No you dont deserve it.
No but we are "skilled"! : Nah, not really.

Increasing prestige based matchups have an exponential increase in difficulty for the same rewards. Facing a 4/55 sig20 vs an r5 sig200 is exponentially harder, if you have r4 vs r5 on attack (node increases the difficulty, maybe take some math classes?)

Stop complaining, if you are "skilled" enough, beat the defenses in front of you.
Belive me i have never stated about rewards and will never do it in future, because its not about rewards,its about that joy of playing that happiness you get when you play with your fav champs and that makes your day, but now this matchmaking is only giving that sadness and ripping of joy of playing, now when we see matchup we can only feel sad and that is most important thing.
Its taking fun away and giving sadness opposite of what it meants to be.

You can wait a couple weeks and your fun will return.

Mtl55

We want fair matchups thats all we are asking.
Please dont give opponents with 10 times higher rating in war matchups this is not fair.
And those who are saying that this is better and will show you your right place than let me ask this that earlier one used to get opponent of same prestige and strength and then skill would come in game and become a reality test not the broken system of now. Face same strength and than go ahead thats the real skill test not the otherway around that squash tiny one and go ahead.
Honestly those saying that it earlier lower skill alliance used to go up tell me which is real test of skill facing opponents of same strength and than progressing or just killing tiny ones.
The game is not about showing tiny people their place or where they belong and if you really think that way then im sorry but probably you are taking away fun of playing and that joy of game from a lot of tiny players like us.
Be fair do justice.
But you are still not addressing the fact a lower level alliance such as yours has gotten a bye for the past while to get better rewards than deserved you didn't have to fight the 30 million rated alliances stuck in G3/S1 that would have thrashed you. After this season your alliance will be where they actually should be and that is fair.

I see the same two arguments.

Waaaah we want our old rewards despite being low level : No you dont deserve it.
No but we are "skilled"! : Nah, not really.

Increasing prestige based matchups have an exponential increase in difficulty for the same rewards. Facing a 4/55 sig20 vs an r5 sig200 is exponentially harder, if you have r4 vs r5 on attack (node increases the difficulty, maybe take some math classes?)

Stop complaining, if you are "skilled" enough, beat the defenses in front of you.
Well and if so called stronger alliance are skilled enough than tell me where is actual test of skill either in facing opponent of same strength and than progressing or to kill of the tiny ones.
The so called smaller ones reached there because of their better skill against opponents of their equal strength and tell me that if so called stronger one didn't have the skill to reach there against opponents of equal strength then how come they merit it now.
Because they built their rosters. If you call yourself skilled, why not beat the bigger alliances now? Is it too tough?

Building a roster and being skilled are two different things .there are lot of people who spend to build roster while lot of me who are skilled but don't spend money to build roster so if you want to say that money will talk than great those are your thoughts. But brother or sister don't get so intoxicated in power that you don't see the suffering of those below you. Smaller ones matter too.

Mtl55

I see the same two arguments.

Waaaah we want our old rewards despite being low level : No you dont deserve it.
No but we are "skilled"! : Nah, not really.

Increasing prestige based matchups have an exponential increase in difficulty for the same rewards. Facing a 4/55 sig20 vs an r5 sig200 is exponentially harder, if you have r4 vs r5 on attack (node increases the difficulty, maybe take some math classes?)

Stop complaining, if you are "skilled" enough, beat the defenses in front of you.
Well and if so called stronger alliance are skilled enough than tell me where is actual test of skill either in facing opponent of same strength and than progressing or to kill of the tiny ones.
The so called smaller ones reached there because of their better skill against opponents of their equal strength and tell me that if so called stronger one didn't have the skill to reach there against opponents of equal strength then how come they merit it now.
Because they built their rosters. If you call yourself skilled, why not beat the bigger alliances now? Is it too tough?

There is a limit to everything man even skill. So please don't make fun of others no matter how small they are they are still a part of it.

unknown

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Mr_Platypus

We want fair matchups thats all we are asking.
Please dont give opponents with 10 times higher rating in war matchups this is not fair.
And those who are saying that this is better and will show you your right place than let me ask this that earlier one used to get opponent of same prestige and strength and then skill would come in game and become a reality test not the broken system of now. Face same strength and than go ahead thats the real skill test not the otherway around that squash tiny one and go ahead.
Honestly those saying that it earlier lower skill alliance used to go up tell me which is real test of skill facing opponents of same strength and than progressing or just killing tiny ones.
The game is not about showing tiny people their place or where they belong and if you really think that way then im sorry but probably you are taking away fun of playing and that joy of game from a lot of tiny players like us.
Be fair do justice.
But you are still not addressing the fact a lower level alliance such as yours has gotten a bye for the past while to get better rewards than deserved you didn't have to fight the 30 million rated alliances stuck in G3/S1 that would have thrashed you. After this season your alliance will be where they actually should be and that is fair.
No
I see the same two arguments.

Waaaah we want our old rewards despite being low level : No you dont deserve it.
No but we are "skilled"! : Nah, not really.

Increasing prestige based matchups have an exponential increase in difficulty for the same rewards. Facing a 4/55 sig20 vs an r5 sig200 is exponentially harder, if you have r4 vs r5 on attack (node increases the difficulty, maybe take some math classes?)

Stop complaining, if you are "skilled" enough, beat the defenses in front of you.
Well and if so called stronger alliance are skilled enough than tell me where is actual test of skill either in facing opponent of same strength and than progressing or to kill of the tiny ones.
The so called smaller ones reached there because of their better skill against opponents of their equal strength and tell me that if so called stronger one didn't have the skill to reach there against opponents of equal strength then how come they merit it now.
Because they built their rosters. If you call yourself skilled, why not beat the bigger alliances now? Is it too tough?

I see the same two arguments.

Waaaah we want our old rewards despite being low level : No you dont deserve it.
No but we are "skilled"! : Nah, not really.

Increasing prestige based matchups have an exponential increase in difficulty for the same rewards. Facing a 4/55 sig20 vs an r5 sig200 is exponentially harder, if you have r4 vs r5 on attack (node increases the difficulty, maybe take some math classes?)

Stop complaining, if you are "skilled" enough, beat the defenses in front of you.
Well and if so called stronger alliance are skilled enough than tell me where is actual test of skill either in facing opponent of same strength and than progressing or to kill of the tiny ones.
The so called smaller ones reached there because of their better skill against opponents of their equal strength and tell me that if so called stronger one didn't have the skill to reach there against opponents of equal strength then how come they merit it now.
Because they built their rosters. If you call yourself skilled, why not beat the bigger alliances now? Is it too tough?
Building a roster and being skilled are two different things .there are lot of people who spend to build roster while lot of me who are skilled but don't spend money to build roster so if you want to say that money will talk than great those are your thoughts. But brother or sister don't get so intoxicated in power that you don't see the suffering of those below you. Smaller ones matter too.

Building a roster comes with being skilled.
War seasons pit your alliances roster and skills TOGETHER to put EVERYONE in order from best to worst, therefore it must be possible for anyone to math anyone else so long as war rating is equal, as the war rating is a numerical value given to your alliance that signifies its combined roster and skills.

Agent_X_zzz

We want fair matchups thats all we are asking.
Please dont give opponents with 10 times higher rating in war matchups this is not fair.
And those who are saying that this is better and will show you your right place than let me ask this that earlier one used to get opponent of same prestige and strength and then skill would come in game and become a reality test not the broken system of now. Face same strength and than go ahead thats the real skill test not the otherway around that squash tiny one and go ahead.
Honestly those saying that it earlier lower skill alliance used to go up tell me which is real test of skill facing opponents of same strength and than progressing or just killing tiny ones.
The game is not about showing tiny people their place or where they belong and if you really think that way then im sorry but probably you are taking away fun of playing and that joy of game from a lot of tiny players like us.
Be fair do justice.
But you are still not addressing the fact a lower level alliance such as yours has gotten a bye for the past while to get better rewards than deserved you didn't have to fight the 30 million rated alliances stuck in G3/S1 that would have thrashed you. After this season your alliance will be where they actually should be and that is fair.
No
I see the same two arguments.

Waaaah we want our old rewards despite being low level : No you dont deserve it.
No but we are "skilled"! : Nah, not really.

Increasing prestige based matchups have an exponential increase in difficulty for the same rewards. Facing a 4/55 sig20 vs an r5 sig200 is exponentially harder, if you have r4 vs r5 on attack (node increases the difficulty, maybe take some math classes?)

Stop complaining, if you are "skilled" enough, beat the defenses in front of you.
Well and if so called stronger alliance are skilled enough than tell me where is actual test of skill either in facing opponent of same strength and than progressing or to kill of the tiny ones.
The so called smaller ones reached there because of their better skill against opponents of their equal strength and tell me that if so called stronger one didn't have the skill to reach there against opponents of equal strength then how come they merit it now.
Because they built their rosters. If you call yourself skilled, why not beat the bigger alliances now? Is it too tough?

I see the same two arguments.

Waaaah we want our old rewards despite being low level : No you dont deserve it.
No but we are "skilled"! : Nah, not really.

Increasing prestige based matchups have an exponential increase in difficulty for the same rewards. Facing a 4/55 sig20 vs an r5 sig200 is exponentially harder, if you have r4 vs r5 on attack (node increases the difficulty, maybe take some math classes?)

Stop complaining, if you are "skilled" enough, beat the defenses in front of you.
Well and if so called stronger alliance are skilled enough than tell me where is actual test of skill either in facing opponent of same strength and than progressing or to kill of the tiny ones.
The so called smaller ones reached there because of their better skill against opponents of their equal strength and tell me that if so called stronger one didn't have the skill to reach there against opponents of equal strength then how come they merit it now.
Because they built their rosters. If you call yourself skilled, why not beat the bigger alliances now? Is it too tough?
Building a roster and being skilled are two different things .there are lot of people who spend to build roster while lot of me who are skilled but don't spend money to build roster so if you want to say that money will talk than great those are your thoughts. But brother or sister don't get so intoxicated in power that you don't see the suffering of those below you. Smaller ones matter too.

The fact is lower level alliances are getting rewards they don't deserve by not fighting higher level alliances who are stuck at that G3/S1 area. Essential the low level alliances are getting a bye, due to not fighting these higher level alliances who would crush them, but are unable to due to flawed matchmaking, at the end of this season your alliance will be where they are supposted to be whether that is P1, G1, or S3.

Corby11

Damn it’s maintenance today 2 day wait before my G2 alliance gets chance to crush another P3 rated one.

unknown

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Greekhit

Building a roster and being skilled are two different things .there are lot of people who spend to build roster while lot of me who are skilled but don't spend money to build roster so if you want to say that money will talk than great those are your thoughts. But brother or sister don't get so intoxicated in power that you don't see the suffering of those below you. Smaller ones matter too.

The question is: Have YOU seen the suffering of those below you for more than 10 seasons now? No. All those 30mil allies that were taking 3* shards from war, while tiny allies were getting 5*s and in some cases 6*s shards? You prefer to ignore it, and blinded from the rage of your easy 5*s loss, try to justify nonsense 🤫

unknown

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unknown

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Corby11

I like how these lower alliances claim that they win EQUALLY matched opponents because they are so skilled when we all know the reality is that the vast majority of them are made up of low prestige players but then have 5 or 6 massively rated players in their alliance whose defence team they use to bolster their boss spots and whose attack team they wheel out like a panzer tank to decimate their opponents vastly lower rated defences and they get away with it because the matches are based on overall alliance prestige and not the prestige of their top half dozen individuals

Corby11

Wanted 6 10k+ boss killers and 24 3k+ mediocre players for P3 rated alliance

Corby11

Kabam should be compensating us for wasting our time trying to compete in their rigged system

unknown

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mrfootball1988

Anyone or everyone know about where alliances will place when all said and done? I know there's allot that goes into that. Doesn't hurt to ask. Ive been in several alliances so know my roll and place so it sucks for most and has for allot of hard working peeps for awhile. It all comes out in the end! Finally maybe?

Agent_X_zzz

Anyone or everyone know about where alliances will place when all said and done? I know there's allot that goes into that. Doesn't hurt to ask. Ive been in several alliances so know my roll and place so it sucks for most and has for allot of hard working peeps for awhile. It all comes out in the end! Finally maybe?

I am very confused right now

Speeds80

The previous system rewarded low prestige, by ignoring tiers and war ratings. This was not about appeasing the top, it was about appeasing everyone that wasn’t low prestige. Who have been underperforming due to the systemic imbalance. The imbalance that came from focusing too much on one factor and ignoring the others which in all sense are actually more important for determining “ability”
Prestige is NOT the truest and best factor for determining ability, we are not rewarding prestige now, we are ignoring it. Those whose alliance grew up being over rewarded for the focus one that one factor: low prestige. Have become used to the rewards they received by avoiding fair competition on an even playing field. This season is a shambles but I don’t think any solution will appease those in the long run who have become used to rewards above their game progression level, and think they were performing well due to being shielded from fair competition by a systemically unfair system. If gw is correct with his claims that prestige was brought in due to his suggestions then he and kabam are to blame for leaving that system in place for so long, prestige is not a good factor for determining ability for progression. I also point out once again that the true new bronze and low silver alliances were also being shafted by having to fight over and over again the alliances 6 tiers above them and gold 2 reward bracket. And those of you arguing for the broken system are actually supporting a system that shafted them for the manipulators too.
Systemic inequality causes problems, this season is purely an indicator of how broken it was and how badly it needed fixing
Better late than never

DNA3000

The problem is: now the bigger alliances need much smaller effort to get higher in ranks faster, where we shall fall back and back and back and then sometimes get again a matching opponent as you said, and if we invest again a lot, then well be able to climb back where we once were.

This is now the compensation for the bigger allies, who spend a lot, to put them high enough where they “should” be. Not funny for us... it feels like a punch in the face. Call me a moron, but i feel like it

That's a consequence of the previous match system, which was completely broken. But I don't think it is clearly stated often enough *why* it was broken, and why it is the cause of all of this, not the current system.

We *want* to match approximately comparable alliances most of the time. But how do we do that? We can't match based on alliance rating or prestige: those only measure roster. They don't measure playing strength. We want to match roughly equal *competitors* and that has to take both into account.

But there's no way to just look at an alliance and know this. The only way to know if two alliances are roughly equal is to have them fight each other over and over, and see if they win and lose about half the time. That's impractical, so that's out.

An *approximate* way to figure this out is to have a bunch of alliances face each other collectively, and if they win against each other collectively about half the time, then we can say very roughly they are probably all equally matched. It is the best we have.

So we invent this thing called "war rating" which is our best guess as to how strong an alliance is. Every time they win, we increase this. Every time they lose, we decrease this. We assume that if their actual war rating is lower than their actual strength they will keep winning until they face equal competition, and then they'll start losing. When they win and lose about half the time, their war rating matches their strength. We assume this is happening to everyone.

No system is perfect, so there will be glitches. Alliances will form, disband, players will progress. An alliance's true fighting strength is never going to be exactly equal to their numerical rating. But if we keep matching them against everyone else at their numerical rating, they will only *stay* at that rating if they can win about half the time. If they can't, if they start losing more than winning they will drop in rating. If they win more than they lose they will rise. The system corrects itself over time, because you cannot have the "wrong rating" for long: actual competition self-corrects.

This is true if everyone has roughly the same chance to face everyone else of the same rating. If this is true, then everyone at that rating belongs there. Anyone who doesn't belong there will drop lower or rise higher. Only the alliances that win 50/50 (or so) will remain there. Everyone else will leave. This ensures something very very important:

EVERY ALLIANCE OF THE SAME WAR RATING HAS ROUGHLY THE SAME STRENGTH

This is the fundamental basis for how match making works. And if it was working correctly all along so called "bigger" alliances would ALWAYS have to face equally strong competition. They would *never* match against push overs, because push overs would never win often enough to rise in rating high enough to face them. There's a road from push over to top tier alliance, and you would have to go through that entire road to face them.

Why is this not happening now? Because the old system was broken. And this is the only way to fix it.

This doesn't "reward" bigger alliances. If you believe those alliances are getting more than they should this season, you have to believe they were getting less than they should in previous seasons, because rank rewards are a zero-sum game: there are only so many places at the top (and for that matter, basically everywhere). And if you believe alliances are getting less this season than they should, that can only be true if they were getting more than they should have in previous seasons for the same reason.

No one is "winning" or "losing" overall because of this problem with match making, at least not in general terms. I'm sure there are edge cases where someone is coming out ahead and someone else is coming out behind. That always happens when large changes like this occur. But *in general* the "winners" this season were "losers" last season and vice versa. And once every alliance that has the same rating also has the same approximate strength, which is how the system is supposed to work, matches will even out again.

And a year from now when someone posts a picture of them matching an alliance with double the alliance rating but equal war rating and claims that's unfair and the system needs to change, remember people like that were the cause of all of this in the first place. And remind them why they're wrong.

GroundedWisdom

Missing link... There are a lot of veteran alliances in that 30m 9-10k prestige bracket, all much of a muchness.
Been around for years, don't spend or grind enough to be near the top but play a lot, completed most content in the game, have spent, spend, and grind a reasonable amount.
These alliances know the game, are mostly well organised but only ever got matched against each other, hence why they ended up with a roughly 50% win rate. This is how they are pushed slowly down the tiers by lower prestige alliances they were never allowed to match.

Any Alliance, high or low, has to win more than they lose to move ahead. They didn't. It had nothing to do with being pushed down. You can't win only half and expect to go up.

DNA3000

I just wanted to share this ... I run a laid back, 32M semi-retirement alliance and we hardly ever war because it’s frankly terrible and hardly anyone likes it ... but, when we do, it’s a single BG.

Anyway, this is who we were matched up with this week:

And this is my alliance:

Easy win for us, yes - but it isn’t cool and doesn’t feel good to win a war like this.

I haven’t read through every post, but I’m assuming this is some kind of unintentional byproduct of halving everyone’s war rating ... ?

Hoping it eventually balances out, because we should not have been matched with these guys.

PS - We have a spot open, if anyone is interested. DM me for details.

I suspect it is the unintended byproduct of the fact you guys don't really treat war all that seriously. If you don't, you probably don't win as often as you would if you were trying normally. As a result the game "measures" your strength as relatively low, and matches you against other similarly low alliances. You would probably get matched against similarly low tier alliances even before the rating halving.

Also: war is just plain different when you're fighting with less than three BG. The competition is just a lot more random, because obviously the vast majority of alliances taking war seriously would be running three BGs. I'm in a similar position where I sometimes run two and sometimes one BG. The level of competition is wildly diverse. Sometimes we're running up against casual but very strong alliances that aren't full. Sometimes we are running up against up and comers that are still building up their alliance membership. Sometimes we match against people who give even less Fs than we do and look like they are trying to make a statement by placing their defenders in Bizarro arrangements.

War rating is probably going to stabilize relatively quickly among the 3xBG alliances. But in the one or two group alliances, things will probably always be wonky, because they seem to have always been kind of wonky.

Speeds80

Missing link... There are a lot of veteran alliances in that 30m 9-10k prestige bracket, all much of a muchness.
Been around for years, don't spend or grind enough to be near the top but play a lot, completed most content in the game, have spent, spend, and grind a reasonable amount.
These alliances know the game, are mostly well organised but only ever got matched against each other, hence why they ended up with a roughly 50% win rate. This is how they are pushed slowly down the tiers by lower prestige alliances they were never allowed to match.

Any Alliance, high or low, has to win more than they lose to move ahead. They didn't. It had nothing to do with being pushed down. You can't win only half and expect to go up.

Which is why the matchmaking system was broken, 7/12 wins a season should let you Slowly climb, it didn’t , I wasn’t counting exactly but when I posted those screenshots of my war record we had won 9/10 and still finished in silver 1, because our multiplier was so low when we started we couldn’t climb. Guess what happened, the annoyed people who had sweated to try and just get to gold 3 quit the alliance. because the other alliances in your tier were getting easier matchups and winning 97% by being shielded from similar ability matchups by their low prestige.
Again these broken war ratings are a result of systemically focusing on a dynamic that doesn’t equate to ability.
Technically as I said at the start a numbers system to keep matchups within a big range like 25% of prestige would probably work but during this season it actually would have prolonged the levelling effect

DNA3000

Missing link... There are a lot of veteran alliances in that 30m 9-10k prestige bracket, all much of a muchness.
Been around for years, don't spend or grind enough to be near the top but play a lot, completed most content in the game, have spent, spend, and grind a reasonable amount.
These alliances know the game, are mostly well organised but only ever got matched against each other, hence why they ended up with a roughly 50% win rate. This is how they are pushed slowly down the tiers by lower prestige alliances they were never allowed to match.

Any Alliance, high or low, has to win more than they lose to move ahead. They didn't. It had nothing to do with being pushed down. You can't win only half and expect to go up.

You can in fact be pushed down. Here's how:

Imagine there's twenty 9k prestige alliances and they are all roughly equal in strength. So they match against each other and win about half the time, so their war rating remains roughly stable. Let's say that's 2500.

Now imagine there's two hundred 5k prestige alliances. These are more moderate alliances, and there are more of them, and thus they have a distribution of strength: some stronger and some weaker. They all match against each other as well. They all start around 1500 rating, say. The stronger ones will increase in rating, and the weaker ones will decrease. But if the system keeps matching them against each other only, the stronger ones will keep drifting higher and higher in rating. And the higher they go, the less likely they will match against anyone else besides that same group of two hundred, because it gets increasingly less likely they will find a "suitable match" - the higher their rating gets, the fewer alliances that have that same rating *and* prestige. They become an outlier.

If they keep matching against similar prestige, their rating can just keep climbing without limit. Eventually it can exceed 2500. At that point, they've climbed above all of the 9k prestige alliances. They all continue to fight each other, so their ratings don't rise. But the strongest 5k prestige alliance (in this example) could have 2600 war rating. That means they are now the top alliance in this example, and every other 9k alliance drops down one.

This is a highly oversimplified example, but it illustrates how the older system could cause lower strength alliances to rise above higher strength ones, and then actually push them downward. Because ranking is zero-sum, the rewards that alliance gets come from the alliances they pushed downward.

DNA3000

Technically as I said at the start a numbers system to keep matchups within a big range like 25% of prestige would probably work but during this season it actually would have prolonged the levelling effect

Imagine you're a 5k prestige alliance and you want to break the match system. You buy an alliance shell whose war rating is high enough that the average prestige of the alliances with that rating is say 9k. You jump into that shell, and now the game starts looking for a match at that war rating and 5k plus or minus 25% (1250). When it can't find any alliances with 6250 prestige and that war rating, it starts looking lower. And now you've recreated the problem of the previous system, where that alliance will never get the matches that need to happen to curtail artificial rating inflation.

Remember: with the current system doing this is probably suicide because when those guys jump into the new alliance they will have to face alliances with almost double their prestige and probably much higher war strength. But a prestige match window allows them to dodge that competition and ask the game servers to find them easier prey. And the more often they win, the harder the game servers will be forced to look to find competition, because they will become more and more extreme outliers (alliances with low prestige and high war rating are increasingly rare the more disparity between those values). Which will probably make their matches increasingly weird.

GroundedWisdom

Missing link... There are a lot of veteran alliances in that 30m 9-10k prestige bracket, all much of a muchness.
Been around for years, don't spend or grind enough to be near the top but play a lot, completed most content in the game, have spent, spend, and grind a reasonable amount.
These alliances know the game, are mostly well organised but only ever got matched against each other, hence why they ended up with a roughly 50% win rate. This is how they are pushed slowly down the tiers by lower prestige alliances they were never allowed to match.

Any Alliance, high or low, has to win more than they lose to move ahead. They didn't. It had nothing to do with being pushed down. You can't win only half and expect to go up.
Which is why the matchmaking system was broken, 7/12 wins a season should let you Slowly climb, it didn’t , I wasn’t counting exactly but when I posted those screenshots of my war record we had won 9/10 and still finished in silver 1, because our multiplier was so low when we started we couldn’t climb. Guess what happened, the annoyed people who had sweated to try and just get to gold 3 quit the alliance. because the other alliances in your tier were getting easier matchups and winning 97% by being shielded from similar ability matchups by their low prestige.
Again these broken war ratings are a result of systemically focusing on a dynamic that doesn’t equate to ability.
Technically as I said at the start a numbers system to keep matchups within a big range like 25% of prestige would probably work but during this season it actually would have prolonged the levelling effect

Didn't you say you took a bunch of hits and fell down? It takes time to get out of it. You have to keep rising and stick with a higher Multiplier. 7/12 Wins isn't going to get an Alliance ahead very easily. Not much at all, actually.
The Rewards had to be restructured. I don't argue otherwise. Saying people went down because others were going up isn't wholly accurate. Not when the Win/Loss ratio is so close to breaking even. You need at least 75% wins to make significant progress through the Tiers.
One thing I'm damn sure of is taking advantage of the momentum of coming up against Alliances with 3-4x less strength isn't any kind of accomplishment or solution.

CaptainGame

Missing link... There are a lot of veteran alliances in that 30m 9-10k prestige bracket, all much of a muchness.
Been around for years, don't spend or grind enough to be near the top but play a lot, completed most content in the game, have spent, spend, and grind a reasonable amount.
These alliances know the game, are mostly well organised but only ever got matched against each other, hence why they ended up with a roughly 50% win rate. This is how they are pushed slowly down the tiers by lower prestige alliances they were never allowed to match.

Any Alliance, high or low, has to win more than they lose to move ahead. They didn't. It had nothing to do with being pushed down. You can't win only half and expect to go up.
Which is why the matchmaking system was broken, 7/12 wins a season should let you Slowly climb, it didn’t , I wasn’t counting exactly but when I posted those screenshots of my war record we had won 9/10 and still finished in silver 1, because our multiplier was so low when we started we couldn’t climb. Guess what happened, the annoyed people who had sweated to try and just get to gold 3 quit the alliance. because the other alliances in your tier were getting easier matchups and winning 97% by being shielded from similar ability matchups by their low prestige.
Again these broken war ratings are a result of systemically focusing on a dynamic that doesn’t equate to ability.
Technically as I said at the start a numbers system to keep matchups within a big range like 25% of prestige would probably work but during this season it actually would have prolonged the levelling effect
Didn't you say you took a bunch of hits and fell down? It takes time to get out of it. You have to keep rising and stick with a higher Multiplier. 7/12 Wins isn't going to get an Alliance ahead very easily. Not much at all, actually.
The Rewards had to be restructured. I don't argue otherwise. Saying people went down because others were going up isn't wholly accurate. Not when the Win/Loss ratio is so close to breaking even. You need at least 75% wins to make significant progress through the Tiers.
One thing I'm damn sure of is taking advantage of the momentum of coming up against Alliances with 3-4x less strength isn't any kind of accomplishment or solution.

It’s an accomplishment because they have the stronger team and won a match ranked close to them. A win is a win.