Alliance War Matchmaking

Hello all,

I just wanted to vent about this new matchmaking setup for wars...So our alliance worked our tails off all last season and went from a 400K rating to a 4 million and finally ended with silver 3 which was cool. During the off season we ran wars and ended with a war rating in the 1700s.

Now with the new matchmaking for the current season it sliced our war rating in half..which was fine. Then the new season started..WOW! Place us against a 16 million and a 10 million opponent for our first 2 wars..not fun and not fair. So we decided to all leave and start a new alliance (which sucked but we play the game to have fun not get massacred). Everything was good, we built our team rating up to 7.6 million thru advancement and had very minimal turnover. Then the matchmaking messed up and we missed out on 3 wars just like everyone else, but unfortunately the wars were necessary to earn points and move up in rank. So now we're Silver 2 and close Silver 1 ranking..BUT..guess what..the matchmaking placed us against a 20 million rated Gold 3 alliance for our last war, so no chance at Silver 1 now.

I just can't believe that this is Kabams idea of good matchmaking..its absolutely NOT fun and VERY frustrating for us lower rated alliances. We're not going to create another account for next season but I've seen new alliances with a war rating less than 100, with a team rating of 20 million. Whats going to stop these top allys from constantly creating new alliances every season and massacring all of us lower rated alliances???

I really hope you do something about the matchmaking because going by prestige is the MOST fair to all..

Thank you for letting me vent and voice my concern.
--ABOMB--

Comments

Greekhit

Your pre last paragraph says a lot about your perception on the “fair”.
Prestige wars are a shady past that finally the game got rid of.
Get over it, get good and fight a better position, if you think you deserve it over more powerful alliances.

GroundedWisdom

The OP made a reasonable point. Telling them to get good and get over it is just disrespectful.

AngryYoshi

Prestige is not most fair. You can alter alliance prestige by having low level inactive accounts to offset higher accounts. And run 1bg war and therefore you get match to Weak alliances who cannot get past first section of defenders. You will have the easiest war season get enough points once high enough tier for gold rewards for barely even trying.
Know how I know this. I did this for a season because I knew I could take advantage of wars being focused on prestige and not war rating only. Wanted easy season rewards while I took a break from hardcore grind.

Greekhit

The OP made a reasonable point. Telling them to get good and get over it is just disrespectful.

Where is the reasonable point cause I really can’t find it?
Is it that an 7,6mil ally probably wants a gold bracket or even better, that prestige matchmaking is the MOST fair to all.
Because the second statement is a candidate for the dumbest phrase posted today 🤣

Mr_Platypus

We're not going to create another account for next season but I've seen new alliances with a war rating less than 100, with a team rating of 20 million. Whats going to stop these top allys from constantly creating new alliances every season and massacring all of us lower rated alliances???

Well quite simply, because the rewards are literally worthless to the big alliances. If they started a new alliance every season they’d be shooting themselves in the foot, stomping little alliances for 3* shards is pointless.

Mr_Platypus

As for your point about prestige based matchmaking being the most fair. It’s not, and that’s fact, not opinion. Fairest system is to base it on war rating, which is what it’s based on at the moment.

GroundedWisdom

The OP made a reasonable point. Telling them to get good and get over it is just disrespectful.
Where is the reasonable point cause I really can’t find it?
Is it that an 7,6mil ally probably wants a gold bracket or even better, that prestige matchmaking is the MOST fair to all.
Because the second statement is a candidate for the dumbest phrase posted today 🤣

The part that you skimmed over to tell them their problems don't matter because you prefer this way.

DNA3000

I really hope you do something about the matchmaking because going by prestige is the MOST fair to all..

1. It isn't. This has been rehashed not only over the last couple of months, but literally over the last couple of years. I will explain it to you if you want, but otherwise I won't bother rehashing the entire argument here.

2. If Kabam goes back to prestige matching, I will assume they are idiots.

3. There are issues with *starting* war rating that can be addressed, along with things like shells and just plain transfers. Some of those edge case options sometimes involve prestige. But none of them involve *matching* by prestige, only adjusting war rating under extreme circumstances factoring in prestige.

ABOMB

Thanks for the comments everybody..
And to be clear it's not about getting Gold or higher (which would be cool if we earned it..but in good time, we have a ways to go yet)
Its just not fun competing against allys with such higher prestige. A good challenge is what makes it fun but not when its skewed so badly. War rating may be the best way to go but maybe they could atleast implement something to keep the two teams competing to a reasonable prestige difference of one another.

GroundedWisdom

The real point here is the effect this drastic change has had on Alliances who are honestly just trying to progress, and it's affected their Season. There are more people playing and affected than just the handful of Alliances that were "out of place".

GroundedWisdom

Thanks for the comments everybody..
And to be clear it's not about getting Gold or higher (which would be cool if we earned it..but in good time, we have a ways to go yet)
Its just not fun competing against allys with such higher prestige. A good challenge is what makes it fun but not when its skewed so badly. War rating may be the best way to go but maybe they could atleast implement something to keep the two teams competing to a reasonable prestige difference of one another.

Believe me. I agree. There should be reasonable limits for variations in fire power. Unfortunately, people have argued ad nauseum that it doesn't matter. Apparently a fair fight is a foreign concept.

Greekhit

They should have reseted war ratings to values according to each alliance prestige, instead of cutting them to half to manage the matchmaking change more smoothly.
Not doing that, resulted to a rough transition to many small alliances, having these mismatches.
Anyway, these mismatches are very rare anymore, as the biggest percentage of alliances are very close to their true war rating after all those wars.

GroundedWisdom

No, they're not very rare. They're still very much present. Which is why I suggested coming up with an easier transition for Season 20.

DNA3000

Thanks for the comments everybody..
And to be clear it's not about getting Gold or higher (which would be cool if we earned it..but in good time, we have a ways to go yet)
Its just not fun competing against allys with such higher prestige. A good challenge is what makes it fun but not when its skewed so badly. War rating may be the best way to go but maybe they could atleast implement something to keep the two teams competing to a reasonable prestige difference of one another.

The problem is rewards for the season are based essentially on a singular rank. In other words, all the alliances are ranked in order based on the number of points they earn, and the higher you are the higher your bracket, and thus the higher your rewards. And points are largely determined by multiplier, which itself is determined by war rating, which is basically determined by wins and losses. Two alliances with the same number of wins and losses regardless of prestige are going to end up with roughly the same war rating and tier, and thus multiplier. So two alliances with roughly the same win/loss record will end up with roughly the same amount of season points, and thus season rewards.

So if you tell the game servers to *never* match alliances if their prestige is widely separated, it has the net effect of narrowing the competition so low prestige alliances only face each other, no matter how often they win, and high prestige alliances only face each other, no matter how often they win. That sounds to some people like that's more "fair" but it isn't, because now you have low prestige alliances winning just as many wars as high prestige alliances, and thus getting the same multiplier and points, but not actually having to face the same competition.

To give an extreme example, an alliance with 500 prestige that faced nothing but other 500 prestige alliances and always beat them could end up in tier 1 and the master bracket. Which is absurd. Nothing that extreme happened in reality, but alliances that had zero chance of beating the top competition was nevertheless placing very high. And even moderate alliances were placing in platinum or gold brackets without any ability to beat comparable alliances. But they were not only getting those high rewards, they were bumping vastly stronger alliances out of those brackets and costing them rewards.

The point to a competition is not to make the individual wars seem fair. It is to make the competition as a whole fair. We expect that in a fair competition everyone has to face comparable competition to place similarly. If two alliances both place in the master bracket, we expect them to be at least similar in strength. We expect all the gold 1 alliances to be roughly comparable in strength. When you match with prestige, this doesn't happen. Instead, in an effort to hand low prestige alliances "fair fights" you insulate them from every facing strong competition, but you keep rewarding them as if they were facing and beating stronger competition.

Demonzfyre

3 weeks ago called and wants it's post back.

GroundedWisdom

Thanks for the comments everybody..
And to be clear it's not about getting Gold or higher (which would be cool if we earned it..but in good time, we have a ways to go yet)
Its just not fun competing against allys with such higher prestige. A good challenge is what makes it fun but not when its skewed so badly. War rating may be the best way to go but maybe they could atleast implement something to keep the two teams competing to a reasonable prestige difference of one another.
The problem is rewards for the season are based essentially on a singular rank. In other words, all the alliances are ranked in order based on the number of points they earn, and the higher you are the higher your bracket, and thus the higher your rewards. And points are largely determined by multiplier, which itself is determined by war rating, which is basically determined by wins and losses. Two alliances with the same number of wins and losses regardless of prestige are going to end up with roughly the same war rating and tier, and thus multiplier. So two alliances with roughly the same win/loss record will end up with roughly the same amount of season points, and thus season rewards.

So if you tell the game servers to *never* match alliances if their prestige is widely separated, it has the net effect of narrowing the competition so low prestige alliances only face each other, no matter how often they win, and high prestige alliances only face each other, no matter how often they win. That sounds to some people like that's more "fair" but it isn't, because now you have low prestige alliances winning just as many wars as high prestige alliances, and thus getting the same multiplier and points, but not actually having to face the same competition.

To give an extreme example, an alliance with 500 prestige that faced nothing but other 500 prestige alliances and always beat them could end up in tier 1 and the master bracket. Which is absurd. Nothing that extreme happened in reality, but alliances that had zero chance of beating the top competition was nevertheless placing very high. And even moderate alliances were placing in platinum or gold brackets without any ability to beat comparable alliances. But they were not only getting those high rewards, they were bumping vastly stronger alliances out of those brackets and costing them rewards.

The point to a competition is not to make the individual wars seem fair. It is to make the competition as a whole fair. We expect that in a fair competition everyone has to face comparable competition to place similarly. If two alliances both place in the master bracket, we expect them to be at least similar in strength. We expect all the gold 1 alliances to be roughly comparable in strength. When you match with prestige, this doesn't happen. Instead, in an effort to hand low prestige alliances "fair fights" you insulate them from every facing strong competition, but you keep rewarding them as if they were facing and beating stronger competition.

I disagree with that. Making the individual Wars fair makes the competition itself fair.

Frosty

Thanks for the comments everybody..
And to be clear it's not about getting Gold or higher (which would be cool if we earned it..but in good time, we have a ways to go yet)
Its just not fun competing against allys with such higher prestige. A good challenge is what makes it fun but not when its skewed so badly. War rating may be the best way to go but maybe they could atleast implement something to keep the two teams competing to a reasonable prestige difference of one another.
The problem is rewards for the season are based essentially on a singular rank. In other words, all the alliances are ranked in order based on the number of points they earn, and the higher you are the higher your bracket, and thus the higher your rewards. And points are largely determined by multiplier, which itself is determined by war rating, which is basically determined by wins and losses. Two alliances with the same number of wins and losses regardless of prestige are going to end up with roughly the same war rating and tier, and thus multiplier. So two alliances with roughly the same win/loss record will end up with roughly the same amount of season points, and thus season rewards.

So if you tell the game servers to *never* match alliances if their prestige is widely separated, it has the net effect of narrowing the competition so low prestige alliances only face each other, no matter how often they win, and high prestige alliances only face each other, no matter how often they win. That sounds to some people like that's more "fair" but it isn't, because now you have low prestige alliances winning just as many wars as high prestige alliances, and thus getting the same multiplier and points, but not actually having to face the same competition.

To give an extreme example, an alliance with 500 prestige that faced nothing but other 500 prestige alliances and always beat them could end up in tier 1 and the master bracket. Which is absurd. Nothing that extreme happened in reality, but alliances that had zero chance of beating the top competition was nevertheless placing very high. And even moderate alliances were placing in platinum or gold brackets without any ability to beat comparable alliances. But they were not only getting those high rewards, they were bumping vastly stronger alliances out of those brackets and costing them rewards.

The point to a competition is not to make the individual wars seem fair. It is to make the competition as a whole fair. We expect that in a fair competition everyone has to face comparable competition to place similarly. If two alliances both place in the master bracket, we expect them to be at least similar in strength. We expect all the gold 1 alliances to be roughly comparable in strength. When you match with prestige, this doesn't happen. Instead, in an effort to hand low prestige alliances "fair fights" you insulate them from every facing strong competition, but you keep rewarding them as if they were facing and beating stronger competition.
I disagree with that. Making the individual Wars fair makes the competition itself fair.

Thank you.

Something you said finally makes sense.

Fair wars for all. The best way to determine fair wars would be war rating as it is determined solely on wins and losses. This matches alliances that win against other winning alliances and matches losing alliances against other losing alliances. It doesn't match possible alliances with big prestige and no skill versus alliances with big prestige and high skill.
Win you move up
Lose you move down
No room for whining

GroundedWisdom

Thanks for the comments everybody..
And to be clear it's not about getting Gold or higher (which would be cool if we earned it..but in good time, we have a ways to go yet)
Its just not fun competing against allys with such higher prestige. A good challenge is what makes it fun but not when its skewed so badly. War rating may be the best way to go but maybe they could atleast implement something to keep the two teams competing to a reasonable prestige difference of one another.
The problem is rewards for the season are based essentially on a singular rank. In other words, all the alliances are ranked in order based on the number of points they earn, and the higher you are the higher your bracket, and thus the higher your rewards. And points are largely determined by multiplier, which itself is determined by war rating, which is basically determined by wins and losses. Two alliances with the same number of wins and losses regardless of prestige are going to end up with roughly the same war rating and tier, and thus multiplier. So two alliances with roughly the same win/loss record will end up with roughly the same amount of season points, and thus season rewards.

So if you tell the game servers to *never* match alliances if their prestige is widely separated, it has the net effect of narrowing the competition so low prestige alliances only face each other, no matter how often they win, and high prestige alliances only face each other, no matter how often they win. That sounds to some people like that's more "fair" but it isn't, because now you have low prestige alliances winning just as many wars as high prestige alliances, and thus getting the same multiplier and points, but not actually having to face the same competition.

To give an extreme example, an alliance with 500 prestige that faced nothing but other 500 prestige alliances and always beat them could end up in tier 1 and the master bracket. Which is absurd. Nothing that extreme happened in reality, but alliances that had zero chance of beating the top competition was nevertheless placing very high. And even moderate alliances were placing in platinum or gold brackets without any ability to beat comparable alliances. But they were not only getting those high rewards, they were bumping vastly stronger alliances out of those brackets and costing them rewards.

The point to a competition is not to make the individual wars seem fair. It is to make the competition as a whole fair. We expect that in a fair competition everyone has to face comparable competition to place similarly. If two alliances both place in the master bracket, we expect them to be at least similar in strength. We expect all the gold 1 alliances to be roughly comparable in strength. When you match with prestige, this doesn't happen. Instead, in an effort to hand low prestige alliances "fair fights" you insulate them from every facing strong competition, but you keep rewarding them as if they were facing and beating stronger competition.
I disagree with that. Making the individual Wars fair makes the competition itself fair.
Thank you.

Something you said finally makes sense.

Fair wars for all. The best way to determine fair wars would be war rating as it is determined solely on wins and losses. This matches alliances that win against other winning alliances and matches losing alliances against other losing alliances. It doesn't match possible alliances with big prestige and no skill versus alliances with big prestige and high skill.
Win you move up
Lose you move down
No room for whining

No. That's not the fairest way at this point in time, and to imply that is arrogant. Before the change to Matchmaking, before War Rating was manipulated, that was the case. After about 9 Seasons of another system being used, War Rating is skewed. So what you have is a system that *will* be fair when it's finished adjusting. Providing nothing manipulates it again. Saying it's fair in light of the switch ignores the actual situation we have now, and simply using it doesn't make things fair. Fair Rewards gotten by unfair means doesn't make everything fair overall.

Rosey

The dudes not whining and has a reasonable concern. Why are they a silver 2 going against a gold 3 alliance this late in season?? That’s absolute horse **** and u know it!!! How long is this new “matchmaking” going to take to level out? Guess it’s too much for all u big dogs in these great alliances to understand his perspective huh?

Frosty

Thanks for the comments everybody..
And to be clear it's not about getting Gold or higher (which would be cool if we earned it..but in good time, we have a ways to go yet)
Its just not fun competing against allys with such higher prestige. A good challenge is what makes it fun but not when its skewed so badly. War rating may be the best way to go but maybe they could atleast implement something to keep the two teams competing to a reasonable prestige difference of one another.
The problem is rewards for the season are based essentially on a singular rank. In other words, all the alliances are ranked in order based on the number of points they earn, and the higher you are the higher your bracket, and thus the higher your rewards. And points are largely determined by multiplier, which itself is determined by war rating, which is basically determined by wins and losses. Two alliances with the same number of wins and losses regardless of prestige are going to end up with roughly the same war rating and tier, and thus multiplier. So two alliances with roughly the same win/loss record will end up with roughly the same amount of season points, and thus season rewards.

So if you tell the game servers to *never* match alliances if their prestige is widely separated, it has the net effect of narrowing the competition so low prestige alliances only face each other, no matter how often they win, and high prestige alliances only face each other, no matter how often they win. That sounds to some people like that's more "fair" but it isn't, because now you have low prestige alliances winning just as many wars as high prestige alliances, and thus getting the same multiplier and points, but not actually having to face the same competition.

To give an extreme example, an alliance with 500 prestige that faced nothing but other 500 prestige alliances and always beat them could end up in tier 1 and the master bracket. Which is absurd. Nothing that extreme happened in reality, but alliances that had zero chance of beating the top competition was nevertheless placing very high. And even moderate alliances were placing in platinum or gold brackets without any ability to beat comparable alliances. But they were not only getting those high rewards, they were bumping vastly stronger alliances out of those brackets and costing them rewards.

The point to a competition is not to make the individual wars seem fair. It is to make the competition as a whole fair. We expect that in a fair competition everyone has to face comparable competition to place similarly. If two alliances both place in the master bracket, we expect them to be at least similar in strength. We expect all the gold 1 alliances to be roughly comparable in strength. When you match with prestige, this doesn't happen. Instead, in an effort to hand low prestige alliances "fair fights" you insulate them from every facing strong competition, but you keep rewarding them as if they were facing and beating stronger competition.
I disagree with that. Making the individual Wars fair makes the competition itself fair.
Thank you.

Something you said finally makes sense.

Fair wars for all. The best way to determine fair wars would be war rating as it is determined solely on wins and losses. This matches alliances that win against other winning alliances and matches losing alliances against other losing alliances. It doesn't match possible alliances with big prestige and no skill versus alliances with big prestige and high skill.
Win you move up
Lose you move down
No room for whining
No. That's not the fairest way at this point in time, and to imply that is arrogant. Before the change to Matchmaking, before War Rating was manipulated, that was the case. After about 9 Seasons of another system being used, War Rating is skewed. So what you have is a system that *will* be fair when it's finished adjusting. Providing nothing manipulates it again. Saying it's fair in light of the switch ignores the actual situation we have now, and simply using it doesn't make things fair. Fair Rewards gotten by unfair means doesn't make everything fair overall.

Again you said something smart.

Fair rewards gotten by unfair means doesn't make it fair.

Alliances who were outside of where they should have placed before have been getting rewards by unfairly matching easier alliances. This let them claim rewards they didn't deserve. Now all the alliances who have been claiming those unfair war rewards now whine as they can't claim more undeserved rewards. Oh Shame

DNA3000

Thanks for the comments everybody..
And to be clear it's not about getting Gold or higher (which would be cool if we earned it..but in good time, we have a ways to go yet)
Its just not fun competing against allys with such higher prestige. A good challenge is what makes it fun but not when its skewed so badly. War rating may be the best way to go but maybe they could atleast implement something to keep the two teams competing to a reasonable prestige difference of one another.
The problem is rewards for the season are based essentially on a singular rank. In other words, all the alliances are ranked in order based on the number of points they earn, and the higher you are the higher your bracket, and thus the higher your rewards. And points are largely determined by multiplier, which itself is determined by war rating, which is basically determined by wins and losses. Two alliances with the same number of wins and losses regardless of prestige are going to end up with roughly the same war rating and tier, and thus multiplier. So two alliances with roughly the same win/loss record will end up with roughly the same amount of season points, and thus season rewards.

So if you tell the game servers to *never* match alliances if their prestige is widely separated, it has the net effect of narrowing the competition so low prestige alliances only face each other, no matter how often they win, and high prestige alliances only face each other, no matter how often they win. That sounds to some people like that's more "fair" but it isn't, because now you have low prestige alliances winning just as many wars as high prestige alliances, and thus getting the same multiplier and points, but not actually having to face the same competition.

To give an extreme example, an alliance with 500 prestige that faced nothing but other 500 prestige alliances and always beat them could end up in tier 1 and the master bracket. Which is absurd. Nothing that extreme happened in reality, but alliances that had zero chance of beating the top competition was nevertheless placing very high. And even moderate alliances were placing in platinum or gold brackets without any ability to beat comparable alliances. But they were not only getting those high rewards, they were bumping vastly stronger alliances out of those brackets and costing them rewards.

The point to a competition is not to make the individual wars seem fair. It is to make the competition as a whole fair. We expect that in a fair competition everyone has to face comparable competition to place similarly. If two alliances both place in the master bracket, we expect them to be at least similar in strength. We expect all the gold 1 alliances to be roughly comparable in strength. When you match with prestige, this doesn't happen. Instead, in an effort to hand low prestige alliances "fair fights" you insulate them from every facing strong competition, but you keep rewarding them as if they were facing and beating stronger competition.
I disagree with that. Making the individual Wars fair makes the competition itself fair.

That statement is meaningless when you can twist the word "fair" to mean whatever you want it to mean. "Fair" hides the problem under semantics. We *define* fair wars to be wars between alliances with equal war rating *because* we define war rating to be "all the alliances stronger than alliances lower than that rating and weaker than the alliances higher than that rating." By definition if you think a war is "unfair" because it is "unwinnable" against another alliance with the same war rating as you, then one of you has the wrong rating. The game settles that by increasing their rating and decreasing yours. Eventually, wars sort everyone to approximately the correct rating.

When people define "fair" to be "don't make me fight alliances that are stronger on paper than we are" they are making wars unfair for everyone else, by ducking competition. *Those* alliances can fight the strong ones, but *we* get to hide from them. It is an illusion of fairness. But by definition, it cannot be fair if one alliance only has to face a subset of all the competition while other alliances must essentially face all the competition. We have to judge competition based on the whole of competition, not just on making one alliance happy with their match up.

Basically, no alliance can simultaneously claim they deserve a particular war rating and also they shouldn't be matched up against *any* alliance with that rating. If you want that rating, you must face those alliances. An alliance that gets to have a rating but is protected from matching against the alliances they don't want to fight in that rating is asking for unfair treatment. This is the more important fairness criteria.

GroundedWisdom

Thanks for the comments everybody..
And to be clear it's not about getting Gold or higher (which would be cool if we earned it..but in good time, we have a ways to go yet)
Its just not fun competing against allys with such higher prestige. A good challenge is what makes it fun but not when its skewed so badly. War rating may be the best way to go but maybe they could atleast implement something to keep the two teams competing to a reasonable prestige difference of one another.
The problem is rewards for the season are based essentially on a singular rank. In other words, all the alliances are ranked in order based on the number of points they earn, and the higher you are the higher your bracket, and thus the higher your rewards. And points are largely determined by multiplier, which itself is determined by war rating, which is basically determined by wins and losses. Two alliances with the same number of wins and losses regardless of prestige are going to end up with roughly the same war rating and tier, and thus multiplier. So two alliances with roughly the same win/loss record will end up with roughly the same amount of season points, and thus season rewards.

So if you tell the game servers to *never* match alliances if their prestige is widely separated, it has the net effect of narrowing the competition so low prestige alliances only face each other, no matter how often they win, and high prestige alliances only face each other, no matter how often they win. That sounds to some people like that's more "fair" but it isn't, because now you have low prestige alliances winning just as many wars as high prestige alliances, and thus getting the same multiplier and points, but not actually having to face the same competition.

To give an extreme example, an alliance with 500 prestige that faced nothing but other 500 prestige alliances and always beat them could end up in tier 1 and the master bracket. Which is absurd. Nothing that extreme happened in reality, but alliances that had zero chance of beating the top competition was nevertheless placing very high. And even moderate alliances were placing in platinum or gold brackets without any ability to beat comparable alliances. But they were not only getting those high rewards, they were bumping vastly stronger alliances out of those brackets and costing them rewards.

The point to a competition is not to make the individual wars seem fair. It is to make the competition as a whole fair. We expect that in a fair competition everyone has to face comparable competition to place similarly. If two alliances both place in the master bracket, we expect them to be at least similar in strength. We expect all the gold 1 alliances to be roughly comparable in strength. When you match with prestige, this doesn't happen. Instead, in an effort to hand low prestige alliances "fair fights" you insulate them from every facing strong competition, but you keep rewarding them as if they were facing and beating stronger competition.
I disagree with that. Making the individual Wars fair makes the competition itself fair.
That statement is meaningless when you can twist the word "fair" to mean whatever you want it to mean. "Fair" hides the problem under semantics. We *define* fair wars to be wars between alliances with equal war rating *because* we define war rating to be "all the alliances stronger than alliances lower than that rating and weaker than the alliances higher than that rating." By definition if you think a war is "unfair" because it is "unwinnable" against another alliance with the same war rating as you, then one of you has the wrong rating. The game settles that by increasing their rating and decreasing yours. Eventually, wars sort everyone to approximately the correct rating.

When people define "fair" to be "don't make me fight alliances that are stronger on paper than we are" they are making wars unfair for everyone else, by ducking competition. *Those* alliances can fight the strong ones, but *we* get to hide from them. It is an illusion of fairness. But by definition, it cannot be fair if one alliance only has to face a subset of all the competition while other alliances must essentially face all the competition. We have to judge competition based on the whole of competition, not just on making one alliance happy with their match up.

Basically, no alliance can simultaneously claim they deserve a particular war rating and also they shouldn't be matched up against *any* alliance with that rating. If you want that rating, you must face those alliances. An alliance that gets to have a rating but is protected from matching against the alliances they don't want to fight in that rating is asking for unfair treatment. This is the more important fairness criteria.

No, you can't twist the word fair. Unless you're trying to divert the actual point that was made. Fair means fair. Within the capabilities of a fair Match. As in, both sides have an actual chance of winning. Also, I'm not splitting hairs on capabilities. We're all aware that if the Points are there, someone will win. Quite frankly I'm not interested in ignoring the issue.

Thanks for the comments everybody..
And to be clear it's not about getting Gold or higher (which would be cool if we earned it..but in good time, we have a ways to go yet)
Its just not fun competing against allys with such higher prestige. A good challenge is what makes it fun but not when its skewed so badly. War rating may be the best way to go but maybe they could atleast implement something to keep the two teams competing to a reasonable prestige difference of one another.
The problem is rewards for the season are based essentially on a singular rank. In other words, all the alliances are ranked in order based on the number of points they earn, and the higher you are the higher your bracket, and thus the higher your rewards. And points are largely determined by multiplier, which itself is determined by war rating, which is basically determined by wins and losses. Two alliances with the same number of wins and losses regardless of prestige are going to end up with roughly the same war rating and tier, and thus multiplier. So two alliances with roughly the same win/loss record will end up with roughly the same amount of season points, and thus season rewards.

So if you tell the game servers to *never* match alliances if their prestige is widely separated, it has the net effect of narrowing the competition so low prestige alliances only face each other, no matter how often they win, and high prestige alliances only face each other, no matter how often they win. That sounds to some people like that's more "fair" but it isn't, because now you have low prestige alliances winning just as many wars as high prestige alliances, and thus getting the same multiplier and points, but not actually having to face the same competition.

To give an extreme example, an alliance with 500 prestige that faced nothing but other 500 prestige alliances and always beat them could end up in tier 1 and the master bracket. Which is absurd. Nothing that extreme happened in reality, but alliances that had zero chance of beating the top competition was nevertheless placing very high. And even moderate alliances were placing in platinum or gold brackets without any ability to beat comparable alliances. But they were not only getting those high rewards, they were bumping vastly stronger alliances out of those brackets and costing them rewards.

The point to a competition is not to make the individual wars seem fair. It is to make the competition as a whole fair. We expect that in a fair competition everyone has to face comparable competition to place similarly. If two alliances both place in the master bracket, we expect them to be at least similar in strength. We expect all the gold 1 alliances to be roughly comparable in strength. When you match with prestige, this doesn't happen. Instead, in an effort to hand low prestige alliances "fair fights" you insulate them from every facing strong competition, but you keep rewarding them as if they were facing and beating stronger competition.
I disagree with that. Making the individual Wars fair makes the competition itself fair.
Thank you.

Something you said finally makes sense.

Fair wars for all. The best way to determine fair wars would be war rating as it is determined solely on wins and losses. This matches alliances that win against other winning alliances and matches losing alliances against other losing alliances. It doesn't match possible alliances with big prestige and no skill versus alliances with big prestige and high skill.
Win you move up
Lose you move down
No room for whining
No. That's not the fairest way at this point in time, and to imply that is arrogant. Before the change to Matchmaking, before War Rating was manipulated, that was the case. After about 9 Seasons of another system being used, War Rating is skewed. So what you have is a system that *will* be fair when it's finished adjusting. Providing nothing manipulates it again. Saying it's fair in light of the switch ignores the actual situation we have now, and simply using it doesn't make things fair. Fair Rewards gotten by unfair means doesn't make everything fair overall.
Again you said something smart.

Fair rewards gotten by unfair means doesn't make it fair.

Alliances who were outside of where they should have placed before have been getting rewards by unfairly matching easier alliances. This let them claim rewards they didn't deserve. Now all the alliances who have been claiming those unfair war rewards now whine as they can't claim more undeserved rewards. Oh Shame

People keep making that point, but one unfair situation doesn't justify the other. All we have is a Season where people took advantage of Wins they never earned themselves. Bit hypocritical really.

Mr_Platypus

The dudes not whining and has a reasonable concern. Why are they a silver 2 going against a gold 3 alliance this late in season?? That’s absolute horse **** and u know it!!! How long is this new “matchmaking” going to take to level out? Guess it’s too much for all u big dogs in these great alliances to understand his perspective huh?

Stop crying. my gold 1 alliance came up against a platinum 3 alliance just last war. Why did we come across a plat 3 alliance? Because we went on a win streak and were borderline tier 4, so it makes perfect sense for the matchup to occur as the plat 3 group had the same war rating.
We didn’t cry about it, I just looked at the opposing alliance, saw the plat 3, saw that 70% have beaten abyss, shrugged and suggested we just pile down 3 paths and kill the bosses to maximise points and minimise item use, which we did. They were much more skilled and developed roster wise than us so they deserved the win, simple.
Guess you little alliances don’t understand that war rankings should be a battle of roster and skill huh?

Rosey

So a silver 2 going against a gold 3 is fair to u??? RIGHT 😂

Mr_Platypus

So a silver 2 going against a gold 3 is fair to u??? RIGHT 😂

Well silver 2 is 2 rankings below gold 3...
Gold 1 is 2 rankings below plat 3...
now that you’ve learnt this new information, re-read what I said.
War rating is equal = fair game for the matchmaking.

DNA3000

No, you can't twist the word fair. Unless you're trying to divert the actual point that was made. Fair means fair. Within the capabilities of a fair Match. As in, both sides have an actual chance of winning. Also, I'm not splitting hairs on capabilities. We're all aware that if the Points are there, someone will win. Quite frankly I'm not interested in ignoring the issue.

Yeah, by your definition of fair, an alliance that keeps winning must keep being spoon-fed matches where they have an even chance of winning, until an alliance with with a prestige of forty three wins twelve wars in a row every season and eventually places Master 1. Because that's fair.

Have fun trying to convince anyone but completely crazy people of that.

Rosey

So a silver 2 going against a gold 3 is fair to u??? RIGHT 😂
Well silver 2 is 2 rankings below gold 3...
Gold 1 is 2 rankings below plat 3...
now that you’ve learnt this new information, re-read what I said.
War rating is equal = fair game for the matchmaking.

I’m glad u can do basic math dude. Glad u cleared that up for us 😂

-sixate-

The problem with prestige matchmaking is 6k prestige alliances can gain a multiplier similar to an alliance with 11k prestige and never face anything above 6k alliance. Is that fair that a 6k prestige alliance can score more points than a 10k prestige alliance that they would get smashed by? It is not.

I'm currently facing a 7k prestige alliance who finished higher than my 10k+ alliance last season. It is now fair that they have to prove they are better than my alliance.

danielmath

No, you can't twist the word fair. Unless you're trying to divert the actual point that was made. Fair means fair. Within the capabilities of a fair Match. As in, both sides have an actual chance of winning. Also, I'm not splitting hairs on capabilities. We're all aware that if the Points are there, someone will win. Quite frankly I'm not interested in ignoring the issue.
Yeah, by your definition of fair, an alliance that keeps winning must keep being spoon-fed matches where they have an even chance of winning, until an alliance with with a prestige of forty three wins twelve wars in a row every season and eventually places Master 1. Because that's fair.

Have fun trying to convince anyone but completely crazy people of that.

It happened, a few seasons ago noname, a plat 2 (guessing plat 2? maybe plat 3?) alliance finished 2nd overall in masters because they played nobody for 12 wars and went 12-0

GroundedWisdom

No, you can't twist the word fair. Unless you're trying to divert the actual point that was made. Fair means fair. Within the capabilities of a fair Match. As in, both sides have an actual chance of winning. Also, I'm not splitting hairs on capabilities. We're all aware that if the Points are there, someone will win. Quite frankly I'm not interested in ignoring the issue.
Yeah, by your definition of fair, an alliance that keeps winning must keep being spoon-fed matches where they have an even chance of winning, until an alliance with with a prestige of forty three wins twelve wars in a row every season and eventually places Master 1. Because that's fair.

Have fun trying to convince anyone but completely crazy people of that.

That's not at all what I said. Fair means they actually have a chance of winning. Didn't say anything about the Rewards. As I said before, fair Rewards gotten by unfair means doesn't make it fair. Unless you think an Alliance that’s 3 times and 4 times the size of an opponent is a fair Win. In which case crazy would apply.
That argument is a diversion. "What is fair?.....What is a competition....What is love, baby don't hurt me..."
We know what fair is, and it's not Matches that are over before anyone can even play it out.