This needs back tracking or sticking to the original template laid out in the infographic.
Unfortunately, according to Kabam, it is impossible for war to schedule as the graphic implied because it is impossible for them to start all wars simultaneously at one time. Some people don't believe Kabam when they state this, but there's no technical reason to believe this is false. And even if it is false, even if Kabam is wrong, it doesn't change the fact that if they believe it to be true, they will not under any circumstances attempt to implement it that way, thinking the system will simply fail to function.
Just like AQ cannot possibly be started at the same time for every alliance or event quests started for every player at the same time as it is too much for the servers. I’m sure this is where you go back to hardware maintenance (we have enough as it is so what exactly do they do?) as opposed to software maintenance and include a larger test volume for beta
This needs back tracking or sticking to the original template laid out in the infographic.
Unfortunately, according to Kabam, it is impossible for war to schedule as the graphic implied because it is impossible for them to start all wars simultaneously at one time. Some people don't believe Kabam when they state this, but there's no technical reason to believe this is false. And even if it is false, even if Kabam is wrong, it doesn't change the fact that if they believe it to be true, they will not under any circumstances attempt to implement it that way, thinking the system will simply fail to function.
Just like AQ cannot possibly be started at the same time for every alliance or event quests started for every player at the same time as it is too much for the servers. I’m sure this is where you go back to hardware maintenance (we have enough as it is so what exactly do they do?) as opposed to software maintenance and include a larger test volume for beta
As has been discussed previously, there's no reason to believe that the workload required to start AQ is even in the same order of magnitude as the workload required to start AW. Its not like the difference is a letter. The difference is the difference between starting content in which the map is essentially the same for all alliances (or rather, there's only six different AQ maps) and starting content in which the map is essentially completely different for all alliances (because defense placement means every node has different champions at different ranks, ratings, signature levels, and masteries that all affect the combat on that node).
Because all you have to really track for every alliance running AQ is: map number, prestige, the current health level of every occupied node, and the current status of the players including location and state of their attackers, but AW requires tracking the specific identity of every defender on top of the status of the attackers, I wouldn't be surprised if AW required several hundred times more data to initialize and track than AQ per map.
On the other hand, even though the AQ "clock" starts for everyone at the same time on day one, there's actually nothing much the game servers have to do prior to the first person entering the map. So on top of everything else, it isn't even true that everyone starts AQ at the same time in terms of actual server load.
Idea: make enlistment phase 12 hours. As they enlist place into a table system ( like the one used for war rating (already in play)) Rank them high to low and create a random selection for matchmaking between say 1-10 11-20 etc once matchmaking starts everyone will be in a set place would take less than 60 secs for an algorithm to match them with them parameters therefore no pre-designed match making. All wars would correspond to a usual game time (AQ) and no longer having unfair matches.
This needs back tracking or sticking to the original template laid out in the infographic.
Unfortunately, according to Kabam, it is impossible for war to schedule as the graphic implied because it is impossible for them to start all wars simultaneously at one time. Some people don't believe Kabam when they state this, but there's no technical reason to believe this is false. And even if it is false, even if Kabam is wrong, it doesn't change the fact that if they believe it to be true, they will not under any circumstances attempt to implement it that way, thinking the system will simply fail to function.
Just like AQ cannot possibly be started at the same time for every alliance or event quests started for every player at the same time as it is too much for the servers. I’m sure this is where you go back to hardware maintenance (we have enough as it is so what exactly do they do?) as opposed to software maintenance and include a larger test volume for beta
As has been discussed previously, there's no reason to believe that the workload required to start AQ is even in the same order of magnitude as the workload required to start AW. Its not like the difference is a letter. The difference is the difference between starting content in which the map is essentially the same for all alliances (or rather, there's only six different AQ maps) and starting content in which the map is essentially completely different for all alliances (because defense placement means every node has different champions at different ranks, ratings, signature levels, and masteries that all affect the combat on that node).
Because all you have to really track for every alliance running AQ is: map number, prestige, the current health level of every occupied node, and the current status of the players including location and state of their attackers, but AW requires tracking the specific identity of every defender on top of the status of the attackers, I wouldn't be surprised if AW required several hundred times more data to initialize and track than AQ per map.
On the other hand, even though the AQ "clock" starts for everyone at the same time on day one, there's actually nothing much the game servers have to do prior to the first person entering the map. So on top of everything else, it isn't even true that everyone starts AQ at the same time in terms of actual server load.
And again it is simple server capacity request more servers for peak times and as these will be predesignated the providers should be able to facilitate
We are still actively working to improve the experience with our new Alliance Wars matchmaking system. We are targeting to roll something out to you before the first war of next week.
There won’t be any changes enabled for Sunday’s war, but look for more news early next week.
We are still actively working to improve the experience with our new Alliance Wars matchmaking system. We are targeting to roll something out to you before the first war of next week.
There won’t be any changes enabled for Sunday’s war, but look for more news early next week.
Thank you all for your patience!
Thanks for the update @Kabam Miike . You should delay the season a week so we can see if the changes get the job done in the offseason rather than in the 1st week of the season.
We are still actively working to improve the experience with our new Alliance Wars matchmaking system. We are targeting to roll something out to you before the first war of next week.
There won’t be any changes enabled for Sunday’s war, but look for more news early next week.
Thank you all for your patience!
Thank you again for the update sir! Personally, I'm looking forward to seeing what the changes are. Knowing that there's change on the horizon gives hope that Season 8 will be doable, and hopefully highly competitive in the sense we're getting proper match ups! It's very nice to know we were heard and something is being done. This might need further tweaking as we go. Just knowing it's not gonna be like it was this cycle is enough for me for now. Where it goes from here will be seen soon enough by the sound of it!
This needs back tracking or sticking to the original template laid out in the infographic.
Unfortunately, according to Kabam, it is impossible for war to schedule as the graphic implied because it is impossible for them to start all wars simultaneously at one time. Some people don't believe Kabam when they state this, but there's no technical reason to believe this is false. And even if it is false, even if Kabam is wrong, it doesn't change the fact that if they believe it to be true, they will not under any circumstances attempt to implement it that way, thinking the system will simply fail to function.
Just like AQ cannot possibly be started at the same time for every alliance or event quests started for every player at the same time as it is too much for the servers. I’m sure this is where you go back to hardware maintenance (we have enough as it is so what exactly do they do?) as opposed to software maintenance and include a larger test volume for beta
As has been discussed previously, there's no reason to believe that the workload required to start AQ is even in the same order of magnitude as the workload required to start AW. Its not like the difference is a letter. The difference is the difference between starting content in which the map is essentially the same for all alliances (or rather, there's only six different AQ maps) and starting content in which the map is essentially completely different for all alliances (because defense placement means every node has different champions at different ranks, ratings, signature levels, and masteries that all affect the combat on that node).
Because all you have to really track for every alliance running AQ is: map number, prestige, the current health level of every occupied node, and the current status of the players including location and state of their attackers, but AW requires tracking the specific identity of every defender on top of the status of the attackers, I wouldn't be surprised if AW required several hundred times more data to initialize and track than AQ per map.
On the other hand, even though the AQ "clock" starts for everyone at the same time on day one, there's actually nothing much the game servers have to do prior to the first person entering the map. So on top of everything else, it isn't even true that everyone starts AQ at the same time in terms of actual server load.
And again it is simple server capacity request more servers for peak times and as these will be predesignated the providers should be able to facilitate
Anything is possible with unlimited money, but buying more servers doesn't address singular bottlenecks, like the database that contains all the players' roster information necessary to assemble the defense maps. Algorithmically you could prestage defense placement maps one-sided prior to matching, and then attempt a cached load into the war map servers but prestaging runs into issues surrounding edge cases where the map tier (and thus configuration) might have to change upon matching. Accounting for all edge cases correctly is something I would bet cash no one suggesting this option would actually be capable of doing correctly given five tries. Which makes it a non-trivial thing to suggest.
Spending more on capacity doesn't just automatically make everything faster. You need an underlying architecture that can scale in that way, and if it wasn't written that way in the first place retrofitting it after the fact generally runs into problems. In fact, I've never seen this actually happen correctly the first time, or the second time, even after millions of dollars of expenditure. I've met people who've *claimed* to have seen it work fine in their own house, and then I actually see what happened, and I'm reminded why retirement from the industry keeps looking better and better.
We are still actively working to improve the experience with our new Alliance Wars matchmaking system. We are targeting to roll something out to you before the first war of next week.
There won’t be any changes enabled for Sunday’s war, but look for more news early next week.
Thank you all for your patience!
i seriously hope you consider delaying the season.
it is very hard for alliances to compete in a competition when we dont even know what the parameters of the competition are
We are still actively working to improve the experience with our new Alliance Wars matchmaking system. We are targeting to roll something out to you before the first war of next week.
There won’t be any changes enabled for Sunday’s war, but look for more news early next week.
Thank you all for your patience!
i seriously hope you consider delaying the season.
it is very hard for alliances to compete in a competition when we dont even know what the parameters of the competition are
It isn't even about knowing. If we're getting changes to the system being implemented as late as next week, that leaves very little time to shake those changes out before the start of season eight. I think we should actually have a full week of preseason with a properly functioning match making system before we start the next season, just to make sure it actually works properly. Malfunctions during the season are entirely not worth the risk. At least, they aren't supposed to be worth the risk, if you're trying to avoid inflicting unnecessary pain.
We are still actively working to improve the experience with our new Alliance Wars matchmaking system. We are targeting to roll something out to you before the first war of next week.
There won’t be any changes enabled for Sunday’s war, but look for more news early next week.
Thank you all for your patience!
i seriously hope you consider delaying the season.
it is very hard for alliances to compete in a competition when we dont even know what the parameters of the competition are
It isn't even about knowing. If we're getting changes to the system being implemented as late as next week, that leaves very little time to shake those changes out before the start of season eight. I think we should actually have a full week of preseason with a properly functioning match making system before we start the next season, just to make sure it actually works properly. Malfunctions during the season are entirely not worth the risk. At least, they aren't supposed to be worth the risk, if you're trying to avoid inflicting unnecessary pain.
agree. it will be no time as next week is season scheduled start.
so it would be
here is wat we are doing.
here is season 8.
Kabam.. you want to use the pre season as a live test for changes to war matchmaking. That's fine, but use some common sense.
The current iteration you have implemented has angered your player base. You have acknowledged that this is not working out well.. take the advice of those on the forums and postpone the start of season 8... extend the off season period by another week to test out the changes you intend to implement.
If you go ahead and start season 8 and these changes continue to cause problems, i don't think you will like the consequences.. Most people would much prefer to see more time of off season rather than this aspect of the game losing appeal altogether. Be smart.. and proactive rather than seeing yourselves in the same situation as you are currently, only with a more unfortunate result.
The new matchmaking system sucks. The 11am ET start time for attack has totally screwed up our alliance. We used to start them at 6pm ET or so because we are all US based and we all have real jobs. Losing the ability to pick our start time has made war worse.
We are still actively working to improve the experience with our new Alliance Wars matchmaking system. We are targeting to roll something out to you before the first war of next week.
There won’t be any changes enabled for Sunday’s war, but look for more news early next week.
Thank you all for your patience!
Thanks for the update @Kabam Miike . You should delay the season a week so we can see if the changes get the job done in the offseason rather than in the 1st week of the season.
This is something we are seriously considering. We'll have a more definite answer next week.
Not a big fan of the shifting and changing start times for war. Our next attack phase starts 3 hours earlier than the previous wars, lol. Makes it a pain to figure out when everyone will be on, some will be working during the new times but not old ones, etc.
This needs back tracking or sticking to the original template laid out in the infographic.
Unfortunately, according to Kabam, it is impossible for war to schedule as the graphic implied because it is impossible for them to start all wars simultaneously at one time. Some people don't believe Kabam when they state this, but there's no technical reason to believe this is false. And even if it is false, even if Kabam is wrong, it doesn't change the fact that if they believe it to be true, they will not under any circumstances attempt to implement it that way, thinking the system will simply fail to function.
Just like AQ cannot possibly be started at the same time for every alliance or event quests started for every player at the same time as it is too much for the servers. I’m sure this is where you go back to hardware maintenance (we have enough as it is so what exactly do they do?) as opposed to software maintenance and include a larger test volume for beta
As has been discussed previously, there's no reason to believe that the workload required to start AQ is even in the same order of magnitude as the workload required to start AW. Its not like the difference is a letter. The difference is the difference between starting content in which the map is essentially the same for all alliances (or rather, there's only six different AQ maps) and starting content in which the map is essentially completely different for all alliances (because defense placement means every node has different champions at different ranks, ratings, signature levels, and masteries that all affect the combat on that node).
Because all you have to really track for every alliance running AQ is: map number, prestige, the current health level of every occupied node, and the current status of the players including location and state of their attackers, but AW requires tracking the specific identity of every defender on top of the status of the attackers, I wouldn't be surprised if AW required several hundred times more data to initialize and track than AQ per map.
On the other hand, even though the AQ "clock" starts for everyone at the same time on day one, there's actually nothing much the game servers have to do prior to the first person entering the map. So on top of everything else, it isn't even true that everyone starts AQ at the same time in terms of actual server load.
And again it is simple server capacity request more servers for peak times and as these will be predesignated the providers should be able to facilitate
Or they can just rewrite the game to run faster. Or rewrite the laws of physics to make the computers run faster. Its all words on a page until you have to actually do it.
You wouldn't happen to be an Oracle third party developer, would you?
We are still actively working to improve the experience with our new Alliance Wars matchmaking system. We are targeting to roll something out to you before the first war of next week.
There won’t be any changes enabled for Sunday’s war, but look for more news early next week.
Thank you all for your patience!
Thanks for the update @Kabam Miike . You should delay the season a week so we can see if the changes get the job done in the offseason rather than in the 1st week of the season.
This is something we are seriously considering. We'll have a more definite answer next week.
best thing that any mod has said on this forum in a very long time
We are still actively working to improve the experience with our new Alliance Wars matchmaking system. We are targeting to roll something out to you before the first war of next week.
There won’t be any changes enabled for Sunday’s war, but look for more news early next week.
Thank you all for your patience!
Thanks for the update @Kabam Miike . You should delay the season a week so we can see if the changes get the job done in the offseason rather than in the 1st week of t
This is something we are seriously considering. We'll have a more definite answer next week.
Please don't make us go into war season without some practice around any new implemented system I'm sure the whole community would be massively pleased.
Pre season is about getting used to changes etc. I don't believe any of have had that chance.
I must be the only one who doesn’t have an issue with the system, our war started 7 hours earlier and we finished the map about an hour earlier than usual, worked well.
I must be the only one who doesn’t have an issue with the system, our war started 7 hours earlier and we finished the map about an hour earlier than usual, worked well.
Good for you.
Glad to hear you are one of the lucky few alliances that the fixed timezone suits perfectly.
This can be a real easy fix. If they just made war defense placement period 24 hrs instead of 20 it would put us right back in the same time frame when wars started before this new system was put in place.
We’re very happy to announce that Season 8 of Alliance Wars will introduce a brand new Matchmaking system that will improve the quality of matches for Alliance Wars!
Super Summarized Version:
A New Matchmaking System is coming for Season 8! Alliance Leaders and Officers will have to choose to Enlist in an upcoming War early. Make sure your Alliance is Enlisted before Matchmaking starts.
There will be no Wars between February 6th and February 13th. Pre-season for Season 8 lasts from February 13th to February 20th.
The New matchmaking System comes into effect on February 10th! Read on for more details!
Enlistment Matchmaking
This new system will include an opt-in period where Alliances will choose whether or not they would like to take part in the upcoming war.
The system will then match your Alliance with other Alliances that have opted-in for the upcoming war as well.
This new system will help to improve the following:
Helps ensure that Alliances are being matched against other Alliances with similar capabilities.
Minimizes Alliances missing Wars based on matchmaking time.
Helps to minimize Collusion.
These are all important steps in making Alliance Wars and Alliance Wars Seasons a fair, and competitive mode!
How does it work?
There are 3 Enlistment Periods each week. Alliances must opt-in to their next war during these times.
Enlistment will begin Sunday, Wednesday, and Friday from 3PM PST. (11PM UTC)
When your Alliance enlists, the Matchmaking window will start.
The Matchmaking window is from 11AM to 3PM PST (7PM UTC - 11PM UTC).
You may be matched at any point within this window, however the Matchmaking system prioritizes Alliances with higher prestige and war ratings.
Once matched the game will send the matched Alliances a push notification, please turn your notifications on.
As soon as 2 Alliances are matched, the Defence Placement Phase starts.
Once the Defence Placement Phase ends, the 24hr attack phase begins.
When you arrive at the Alliance Wars screen, you’ll notice a brand new Tab titled “Next War”. Here, Alliance Leaders and Officers can decide on the number of Battlegroups that they want to participate. They must then choose to “enlist” in the upcoming war.
If you change your mind on how many Battlegroups you would like to run prior to Matchmaking starting, you can simply un-enlist, change your Battlegroup choice, and then re-enlist!
Your Alliance MUST enlist prior to the Matchmaking Phase beginning. If you do not Enlist before Matchmaking starts, you will not be given a match for the next Alliance War, and will not be able to participate.
What if there is an odd number of Alliances?
While one of the benefits of this system is that matchmaking will now be done when all Alliances have opted-in, and will eliminate the issue of Alliances not being able to match for long periods of time and missing a war, it does mean that upto 3 Alliances per week (because of Battlegroup choices) may not find a match.
The System will work with a top down method for matchmaking, so these Alliances will likely be brand new, or consist of less experienced Summoners.
For those Alliances, we will be offering a “Bye”. They will be awarded the points, and the rewards for that match. There is a limit to how often an Alliance can be given a Bye, so it cannot be abused.
Season 8 Schedule
In order to put this new system into place, and ensure that all Summoners have updated to the latest version of the Game, there will be an extended downtime for matchmaking.
There will be no Wars from Wednesday, February 6th - Wednesday, February 13th. Enlistment for War will kick off on Sunday, February 10th at 3pm PST.
Season 8 pre-season will run from Wednesday February 13th until February 20th.
We hope you’re looking forward to this brand new Matchmaking System, and the improvements it will bring to your War Matches!
You’ve probably got questions, so ask away! We’ll update this post to better reflect any clarifications we should make.
I hate this new matchmaking system. My alliance always starts war at 6pm cst cause it is the best time for everyone in the alliance. Now wars are starting at **** 8am. This is ridiculous. I had to get on everyone's ass just so we would have ppl place because of the time change. This has to be changed stupid.
The change in timing really negatively affects our alliance both in placement phase and attack phase where it occurs while most of us are at work we used to be able to start it after people got home so everyone was able to participate. The time and lack of flexibility is a real problem for us.
Ya. Last war started at 12pm est and today’s war starts at 10am est. Based on the post I was under the impression that matchmaking would have us start war between 2pm est and 6pm est. But maybe I’m missing something.
We didn’t even get 24 hours to place today. Only 22hours and 15 min! The matchmaking started at 12pm Cst. Yesterday and the defense phase ended at 9:15am cst?! These bugs are really hurting our war score and prizes that most of us cover so much. It’s incredibly difficult to manage people in different time zones as well. We’ll start losing members soon too. Please just cancel matchmaking until you get it sorted. It’s very negatively affecting the contest at the moment.
Comments
Just like AQ cannot possibly be started at the same time for every alliance or event quests started for every player at the same time as it is too much for the servers. I’m sure this is where you go back to hardware maintenance (we have enough as it is so what exactly do they do?) as opposed to software maintenance and include a larger test volume for beta
As has been discussed previously, there's no reason to believe that the workload required to start AQ is even in the same order of magnitude as the workload required to start AW. Its not like the difference is a letter. The difference is the difference between starting content in which the map is essentially the same for all alliances (or rather, there's only six different AQ maps) and starting content in which the map is essentially completely different for all alliances (because defense placement means every node has different champions at different ranks, ratings, signature levels, and masteries that all affect the combat on that node).
Because all you have to really track for every alliance running AQ is: map number, prestige, the current health level of every occupied node, and the current status of the players including location and state of their attackers, but AW requires tracking the specific identity of every defender on top of the status of the attackers, I wouldn't be surprised if AW required several hundred times more data to initialize and track than AQ per map.
On the other hand, even though the AQ "clock" starts for everyone at the same time on day one, there's actually nothing much the game servers have to do prior to the first person entering the map. So on top of everything else, it isn't even true that everyone starts AQ at the same time in terms of actual server load.
And again it is simple server capacity request more servers for peak times and as these will be predesignated the providers should be able to facilitate
We are still actively working to improve the experience with our new Alliance Wars matchmaking system. We are targeting to roll something out to you before the first war of next week.
There won’t be any changes enabled for Sunday’s war, but look for more news early next week.
Thank you all for your patience!
Thanks for the update @Kabam Miike . You should delay the season a week so we can see if the changes get the job done in the offseason rather than in the 1st week of the season.
Thank you again for the update sir! Personally, I'm looking forward to seeing what the changes are. Knowing that there's change on the horizon gives hope that Season 8 will be doable, and hopefully highly competitive in the sense we're getting proper match ups! It's very nice to know we were heard and something is being done. This might need further tweaking as we go. Just knowing it's not gonna be like it was this cycle is enough for me for now. Where it goes from here will be seen soon enough by the sound of it!
Anything is possible with unlimited money, but buying more servers doesn't address singular bottlenecks, like the database that contains all the players' roster information necessary to assemble the defense maps. Algorithmically you could prestage defense placement maps one-sided prior to matching, and then attempt a cached load into the war map servers but prestaging runs into issues surrounding edge cases where the map tier (and thus configuration) might have to change upon matching. Accounting for all edge cases correctly is something I would bet cash no one suggesting this option would actually be capable of doing correctly given five tries. Which makes it a non-trivial thing to suggest.
Spending more on capacity doesn't just automatically make everything faster. You need an underlying architecture that can scale in that way, and if it wasn't written that way in the first place retrofitting it after the fact generally runs into problems. In fact, I've never seen this actually happen correctly the first time, or the second time, even after millions of dollars of expenditure. I've met people who've *claimed* to have seen it work fine in their own house, and then I actually see what happened, and I'm reminded why retirement from the industry keeps looking better and better.
i seriously hope you consider delaying the season.
it is very hard for alliances to compete in a competition when we dont even know what the parameters of the competition are
It isn't even about knowing. If we're getting changes to the system being implemented as late as next week, that leaves very little time to shake those changes out before the start of season eight. I think we should actually have a full week of preseason with a properly functioning match making system before we start the next season, just to make sure it actually works properly. Malfunctions during the season are entirely not worth the risk. At least, they aren't supposed to be worth the risk, if you're trying to avoid inflicting unnecessary pain.
agree. it will be no time as next week is season scheduled start.
so it would be
here is wat we are doing.
here is season 8.
that wont work well at all.
The current iteration you have implemented has angered your player base. You have acknowledged that this is not working out well.. take the advice of those on the forums and postpone the start of season 8... extend the off season period by another week to test out the changes you intend to implement.
If you go ahead and start season 8 and these changes continue to cause problems, i don't think you will like the consequences.. Most people would much prefer to see more time of off season rather than this aspect of the game losing appeal altogether. Be smart.. and proactive rather than seeing yourselves in the same situation as you are currently, only with a more unfortunate result.
This is something we are seriously considering. We'll have a more definite answer next week.
Or they can just rewrite the game to run faster. Or rewrite the laws of physics to make the computers run faster. Its all words on a page until you have to actually do it.
You wouldn't happen to be an Oracle third party developer, would you?
best thing that any mod has said on this forum in a very long time
Good for you.
Glad to hear you are one of the lucky few alliances that the fixed timezone suits perfectly.
I hate this new matchmaking system. My alliance always starts war at 6pm cst cause it is the best time for everyone in the alliance. Now wars are starting at **** 8am. This is ridiculous. I had to get on everyone's ass just so we would have ppl place because of the time change. This has to be changed stupid.