AW Matchmaking Parameters

Hm... could be that prestige is being weighted in there. Our last 10 wars have opponents basically within about 400k rating of us - from 10.4 to 11.4M. So pretty close. What’s weird is that this went from about tier 3 to tier 8. Tier didn’t matter we just keep getting similar rated matchups.

We’re an 11M ally with a 4800-ish prestige, which I think is typical. If you just have a high prestige for your rating, you’d get higher rated matchups.

Could be an honest effort to avoid having rating purely decide a lot of matchups, since every war is basically a race to 100% on both sides. In our case, I think out of the past 10 wars only two bosses (out of 60) were not KOed.

FingerPicknGood wrote: »

Hm... could be that prestige is being weighted in there. Our last 10 wars have opponents basically within about 400k rating of us - from 10.4 to 11.4M. So pretty close. What’s weird is that this went from about tier 3 to tier 8. Tier didn’t matter we just keep getting similar rated matchups.

We’re an 11M ally with a 4800-ish prestige, which I think is typical. If you just have a high prestige for your rating, you’d get higher rated matchups.

Could be an honest effort to avoid having rating purely decide a lot of matchups, since every war is basically a race to 100% on both sides. In our case, I think out of the past 10 wars only two bosses (out of 60) were not KOed.

Its good to know you are getting reasonable matchups. The only reason I even make mention of prestige is because our prestige is significantly higher than the one you mentioned but our rating is only slightly higher. I have just been trying to figure out what we could potentially have in common with our matchups as it cant be such a long streak of dumb-luck.

Yeah, prestige has got to be in play these days. My guess is that there’s a window for making matchmaking decisions. ally’s probably get paired up with some kind of basic “sort by tier and prestige”. Then at the end of the window it just pairs everyone up.

Doesn’t feel as random as it used to.

Personally i dislike it. it feels kind of like a secondary “shadow tier” for which we get much harder matchups without reward. If a 7M ally goes on a win streak it seems like they might be able to hit tier 2-3 much easier then an 11M ally. Just by virtue of being paired with other likely 7-8M alliances.

FingerPicknGood wrote: »

Yeah, prestige has got to be in play these days. My guess is that there’s a window for making matchmaking decisions. ally’s probably get paired up with some kind of basic “sort by tier and prestige”. Then at the end of the window it just pairs everyone up.

Doesn’t feel as random as it used to.

Personally i dislike it. it feels kind of like a secondary “shadow tier” for which we get much harder matchups without reward. If a 7M ally goes on a win streak it seems like they might be able to hit tier 2-3 much easier then an 11M ally. Just by virtue of being paired with other likely 7-8M alliances.

That makes tons of sense. See, pre 12-.0 it wouldnt really matter at least in my opinion. Wars were tough regardless (and fun). But now, it just doesnt make sense to derive the matchup as such considering its not really an alliance war its a roster war. By matching us up against such high PI alliances, its almost a given that the rosters they provide for D will outscore ours. We are ripping through boosts at an unbelievable rate to even come close to countering. 100% is meaningless. I dont want to derail from the question into personal preference of war layout but yea, I hear you man.

Roninitup

My alliance is going through these same issues as well. We started as a brand new alliance just before the AW 2.0 update (all coming from alliances that were in tier 1/2) and expected that we'd climb the ladder back up to tier 1 or 2 quickly. Instead, we're stuck in tier 8 being matched up against 15M alliances who also shouldn't be there.

We also are going to be short a war this AW cycle because matchmaking takes well over an hour and no match was found before the 10pm PST cutoff last night.

If AW matches are going to be decided based on prestige and not solely by war rating, that should have been communicated by the mods and everyone's war rating should have been reset to even the playing field.
I understand that it stinks for a 2M alliance to get crushed by a 10+M alliance that is climbing the AW tier ladder, but it also isn't fair for that 10+M alliance to be stuck in a low tier collecting 3* shards that don't benefit them in any way.

Roninitup wrote: »

My alliance is going through these same issues as well. We started as a brand new alliance just before the AW 2.0 update (all coming from alliances that were in tier 1/2) and expected that we'd climb the ladder back up to tier 1 or 2 quickly. Instead, we're stuck in tier 8 being matched up against 15M alliances who also shouldn't be there.

We also are going to be short a war this AW cycle because matchmaking takes well over an hour and no match was found before the 10pm PST cutoff last night.

If AW matches are going to be decided based on prestige and not solely by war rating, that should have been communicated by the mods and everyone's war rating should have been reset to even the playing field.
I understand that it stinks for a 2M alliance to get crushed by a 10+M alliance that is climbing the AW tier ladder, but it also isn't fair for that 10+M alliance to be stuck in a low tier collecting 3* shards that don't benefit them in any way.

Yep, this seems to be the case. The repetitive nature of the mismatches leads me to believe it must have been altered.

You said it perfect. This needs to be addressed. We are taking an hour plus to find a match. I have a hard time believing that no one in tier 6-8 are searching for a war at 3pm est. Then when war starts we see it’s a 15 mil alliance with a war rating 200 plus higher then ours. We roll through there defense using no items and of course they do the same. Once wars over we see that we lose again by 50 points all do to defender rating. We are putting up near a 1.2 mil defender rating so it’s not like we our throwing out weak defenders. The system is punishing us and we have no idea why. We see people on here with war ratings of 1800 not breaking a mil in defender rating and it’s frustrating us. We would love a comment on whether war is being matched by prestige rather then war rating.

Roninitup wrote: »

...
I understand that it stinks for a 2M alliance to get crushed by a 10+M alliance that is climbing the AW tier ladder, but it also isn't fair for that 10+M alliance to be stuck in a low tier collecting 3* shards that don't benefit them in any way.

Yep. It feels like you're being pushed into a double-secret probation tier. When there's already a tier mechanism in place.

I thought we were having tough times, but man, you guys have it rough.

We just want the same opportunity to move up as everyone has had since aw was started.

CoatHang3r

Speculating here but previously players were gaming the system by switching between alliances to start a cycle where they could easily win wars to farm rewards. If something were implemented to combat this I would think that something might be a combination of defender rating from previous matches and war rating.

I’d like to see if alliance restarts(those with high level champs and low war rating) could field low rating defenders for a couple matches and see if they match quicker. Also if high tier alliances can field low rating defenses for a couple wars to see if defender rating of the enemy alliance changes to match their new one.

Just a thought I am incapable of testing.

CoatHang3r wrote: »

Speculating here but previously players were gaming the system by switching between alliances to start a cycle where they could easily win wars to farm rewards. If something were implemented to combat this I would think that something might be a combination of defender rating from previous matches and war rating.

I’d like to see if alliance restarts(those with high level champs and low war rating) could field low rating defenders for a couple matches and see if they match quicker. Also if high tier alliances can field low rating defenses for a couple wars to see if defender rating of the enemy alliance changes to match their new one.

Just a thought I am incapable of testing.

I never really gave thought to a scenario like this. As with some other mentioned possibilities (under the impression matchmaking has actually changed) this could totally make sense. I feel like all the speculation from all our ends could be quickly cleared up with a concise answer from a mod lol.

Ultimatheory

This was clearly implemented to hurt people using shell alliances. However, it is impacting any others that were not trying to manipulate the matchmaking system and honestly starting new alliances. Would be great for a confirmation on this though. Especially since it was never in any patch notes.

Ultimatheory wrote: »

This was clearly implemented to hurt people using shell alliances. However, it is impacting any others that were not trying to manipulate the matchmaking system and honestly starting new alliances. Would be great for a confirmation on this though. Especially since it was never in any patch notes.

I agree - This is likely. Much like you, it would be nice to obtain further clarification into the suspected change or verification that no change has been made to begin with.

We need clarity on the issue.

Isn’t a matchmaking system that takes into account prestige and alliance ratings, and matches alliances more fairly better?

xNig wrote: »

Isn’t a matchmaking system that takes into account prestige and alliance ratings, and matches alliances more fairly better?

What I was originally getting at was that my recent wars do not seem to be taking into account the alliance rating as we have been the lower alliance by anywhere from 600k through 3.5 million. While 600k-1 million is by all means a do-able war, the rest is not. So yes, I do agree that a system that takes into account prestige as well as AW rating and alliance rating would be ideal. However, I have literally no insight into what the current setup is or how difficult it would be to create a setup like this so im a bit limited.

xNig wrote: »

Isn’t a matchmaking system that takes into account prestige and alliance ratings, and matches alliances more fairly better?

If prestige/ratings also affected the end rankings for rewards, like AQ does, then yes. Otherwise, no.

Right now, I've had alliances rated 3-4M _lower_ then our alliance regularly play and get consistently matched up with much, much easier alliances in 2-3 tiers _higher_. This means the lower rated alliances are getting better rewards and more opportunities to win, purely because they're lower, and haven't invested in the game as much.

I find the AQ system to be more fair and generally better balanced. Teams that have tough rosters are also presented with significantly tougher nodes on map 5/6 days 4-5. Thus, they score higher but have to do it, and it seems to be pretty stable.

Ideally the AW system is similar. The problem is that the latest iteration of AW is a design disaster. The tweaks we've received so far have not changed the fact that it's nearly 100% clearance every war. The adjustment to matchmaking seems to be a way to cover up a scoring system that effectively just blesses the team with higher rating, instead of a fair method for creating intra-team competition.

Bump until we get an answer.

Scottydoosmash

I’d also like this answered. We’re just under 12m Alliance and we were always tier 1 & 2 in War but since the latest update we’re constantly matched up with alliances 2-3m higher than us that we can’t possibly win against even with perfect diversity defence boosted and 100% exploration. Now we’re in tier 4. How is that fair? It’s absolute garbage. And if the changes were to stop people using shell alliances it’s not worked because we’ve never used one and have been screwed ever since the changes.
IMO they need to bring back defence kills for points to help as well. Diversity and defender rating were supposed to split close matchups, now it decides the outcome before anyone even starts

Scottydoosmash wrote: »

I’d also like this answered. We’re just under 12m Alliance and we were always tier 1 & 2 in War but since the latest update we’re constantly matched up with alliances 2-3m higher than us that we can’t possibly win against even with perfect diversity defence boosted and 100% exploration. Now we’re in tier 4. How is that fair? It’s absolute garbage. And if the changes were to stop people using shell alliances it’s not worked because we’ve never used one and have been screwed ever since the changes.
IMO they need to bring back defence kills for points to help as well. Diversity and defender rating were supposed to split close matchups, now it decides the outcome before anyone even starts

I’m guessing you’re not running maxed diversity. Are you? Just curious.

I run a 12m alliance in tier 2. Matches are harder than usual but we usually jump for joy when we get an undiversified opponent and would spend our stashed items to clear them. 100% and it’s a guaranteed win, regardless of defender rating.

Whereas against undiversified opponents we tend to hold back as we aren’t assured a win.

Scottydoosmash

xNig wrote: »

Scottydoosmash wrote: »

I’d also like this answered. We’re just under 12m Alliance and we were always tier 1 & 2 in War but since the latest update we’re constantly matched up with alliances 2-3m higher than us that we can’t possibly win against even with perfect diversity defence boosted and 100% exploration. Now we’re in tier 4. How is that fair? It’s absolute garbage. And if the changes were to stop people using shell alliances it’s not worked because we’ve never used one and have been screwed ever since the changes.
IMO they need to bring back defence kills for points to help as well. Diversity and defender rating were supposed to split close matchups, now it decides the outcome before anyone even starts

I’m guessing you’re not running maxed diversity. Are you? Just curious.

Yes we have been running maxed diversity.
Although after a run of 10 in a row unwinnable we ran a couple with strongest defence just to try it and won one. But ultimately went back to full diversity.
The fact we haven’t faced an alliance with a lower defender rating than us in months is rediculos to me, EVERY war we have to hope the opponents suck at fighting and don’t get 100% to win

Scottydoosmash wrote: »

xNig wrote: »

Scottydoosmash wrote: »

I’d also like this answered. We’re just under 12m Alliance and we were always tier 1 & 2 in War but since the latest update we’re constantly matched up with alliances 2-3m higher than us that we can’t possibly win against even with perfect diversity defence boosted and 100% exploration. Now we’re in tier 4. How is that fair? It’s absolute garbage. And if the changes were to stop people using shell alliances it’s not worked because we’ve never used one and have been screwed ever since the changes.
IMO they need to bring back defence kills for points to help as well. Diversity and defender rating were supposed to split close matchups, now it decides the outcome before anyone even starts

I’m guessing you’re not running maxed diversity. Are you? Just curious.

Yes we have been running maxed diversity.
Although after a run of 10 in a row unwinnable we ran a couple with strongest defence just to try it and won one. But ultimately went back to full diversity.
The fact we haven’t faced an alliance with a lower defender rating than us in months is rediculos to me, EVERY war we have to hope the opponents suck at fighting and don’t get 100% to win

What’s your defender rating like?

Scottydoosmash

xNig wrote: »

Scottydoosmash wrote: »

xNig wrote: »

Scottydoosmash wrote: »

I’d also like this answered. We’re just under 12m Alliance and we were always tier 1 & 2 in War but since the latest update we’re constantly matched up with alliances 2-3m higher than us that we can’t possibly win against even with perfect diversity defence boosted and 100% exploration. Now we’re in tier 4. How is that fair? It’s absolute garbage. And if the changes were to stop people using shell alliances it’s not worked because we’ve never used one and have been screwed ever since the changes.
IMO they need to bring back defence kills for points to help as well. Diversity and defender rating were supposed to split close matchups, now it decides the outcome before anyone even starts

I’m guessing you’re not running maxed diversity. Are you? Just curious.

Yes we have been running maxed diversity.
Although after a run of 10 in a row unwinnable we ran a couple with strongest defence just to try it and won one. But ultimately went back to full diversity.
The fact we haven’t faced an alliance with a lower defender rating than us in months is rediculos to me, EVERY war we have to hope the opponents suck at fighting and don’t get 100% to win

What’s your defender rating like?

It’s as high as we can be, we boost up. Makes no difference to the result when we’re playing teams millions ahead by alliance rating full of multiple 4/55’s feature champs from each person all through their defence. We can’t get near that even though everyone places at least 1 4/55, some place multiple.
We’re sick of wasting units on boosts and pots when there’s no chance of winning war after war. We’re close to boycotting war, it’s a joke

wappykid

what tier should a 3m ally be if we only do 1 BG

Scottydoosmash wrote: »

xNig wrote: »

Scottydoosmash wrote: »

xNig wrote: »

Scottydoosmash wrote: »

I’d also like this answered. We’re just under 12m Alliance and we were always tier 1 & 2 in War but since the latest update we’re constantly matched up with alliances 2-3m higher than us that we can’t possibly win against even with perfect diversity defence boosted and 100% exploration. Now we’re in tier 4. How is that fair? It’s absolute garbage. And if the changes were to stop people using shell alliances it’s not worked because we’ve never used one and have been screwed ever since the changes.
IMO they need to bring back defence kills for points to help as well. Diversity and defender rating were supposed to split close matchups, now it decides the outcome before anyone even starts

I’m guessing you’re not running maxed diversity. Are you? Just curious.

Yes we have been running maxed diversity.
Although after a run of 10 in a row unwinnable we ran a couple with strongest defence just to try it and won one. But ultimately went back to full diversity.
The fact we haven’t faced an alliance with a lower defender rating than us in months is rediculos to me, EVERY war we have to hope the opponents suck at fighting and don’t get 100% to win

What’s your defender rating like?

It’s as high as we can be, we boost up. Makes no difference to the result when we’re playing teams millions ahead by alliance rating full of multiple 4/55’s feature champs from each person all through their defence. We can’t get near that even though everyone places at least 1 4/55, some place multiple.
We’re sick of wasting units on boosts and pots when there’s no chance of winning war after war. We’re close to boycotting war, it’s a joke

Same issue here - Its less about the champs (because my alliance is somehow stuck in tier 8 so the nodes are a joke) but more about using units to purchase boosts. We are in tier 8 losing with defender ratings of over 1.15 million. Not only are we losing with that defender rating, we are losing alot. We lost our last war in tier 8 with a 1.17 million defender rating......

shingbab

Just chiming in to say this is definitely our experience.
No matter how many we lose or tiers we fall - we always get suspiciously similar sized alliance match-ups now.
It used to be that if say, you lost 3 in a row, you would then face off against much easier opponents. Not anymore.

It’s a shame that we can’t get a response on this topic.

Speeds80

Yes this is our experience as well, we have fallen from
Tier 3 to tier 8 with this system and were hoping to start getting easier matchups as would have happened in the old system, still consistently 10m allies, in tier 8, the nodes are a joke we are finishing wars with 2/3 of our attackers still alive, we don't boost, we are an aq focussed ally and so we have never asked for people to spend on war. If we werent running map 5 aq we would happily boycott, but we can't get enough loyalty anywhere else. War has gone from my favourite part of the game to my least favourite