**WINTER OF WOE - BONUS OBJECTIVE POINT**
As previously announced, the team will be distributing an additional point toward milestones to anyone who completed the Absorbing Man fight in the first step of the Winter of Woe.
This point will be distributed at a later time as it requires the team to pull and analyze data.
The timeline has not been set, but work has started.
There is currently an issue where some Alliances are are unable to find a match in Alliance Wars, or are receiving Byes without getting the benefits of the Win. We will be adjusting the Season Points of the Alliances that are affected within the coming weeks, and will be working to compensate them for their missed Per War rewards as well.

Additionally, we are working to address an issue where new Members of an Alliance are unable to place Defenders for the next War after joining. We are working to address this, but it will require a future update.

New Alliance Wars Matchmaking System & Season 8 Details

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Comments

  • MaatManMaatMan Posts: 958 ★★★
    One thing that this matchmaking has done is this:
    it has shed light on the fact that kabam also used alliance rating when finding matches before.

    people were blind before and kept trying to say alliance rating didnt matter. only war rating did.
    that a low rating alliance cant make it to 2000+ WR.

    now we are seeing matches between alliances both rated at 2000 WR whilst one is 8 mil and one is 20 mil.
    these matches never happened before.
    the 8 mil climbed up to same level as you cus it fought only other like rated allies.
    now we see the flaw on the flipside as alliances are getting heavily mismatched in this regard.

    this will all settle down in time however.
    as these weak allies lose a few wars they will drop back down to where they fit and the strong allies will no longer be matching them.
  • MaatMan wrote: »
    One thing that this matchmaking has done is this:
    it has shed light on the fact that kabam also used alliance rating when finding matches before.

    It was pretty well established that at least under certain circumstances (particularly marginal match situations) that alliance rating factored into match making as at least a secondary match criteria to war rating. But I don't think the current system sheds any light on the previous one, because the current one seems to be fundamentally different in at least some ways. Kabam all but stated that they changed they way matches are found in their general statements about how match making works under the new Enlistment system.

    But as to your statement that previously we didn't see matches between alliances of equal rating but wildly different alliance rating, that's false. There were reports of such matches occurring infrequently on the forums including relatively recently.
  • DNA3000 wrote: »
    DNA3000 wrote: »
    Personally, I’d like to see alliances being able to choose “maps” where they can get multipliers based on the difficulty.

    Map1 - 30 min timers, all defenders revealed; .75x standard score
    Map2 - standard AW; no multiplier
    Map3 - global buff active; 1.2 x multiplier
    Map4 - defense synergies active; 1.4 multiplier
    Map5 - global buff and defense synergy active; 1.6x multiplier

    This would alleviate kabam needing to create defensive synergy icons/descriptions.

    This would allow alliances the ability to gain more points to jump up to the next tier. On the other hand, this would allow alliances to take it easier if they have a member that cannot join for real world reasons and not have to replace him/her.

    Maps would be not be dependent of opponent map selection (opposing alliances could chose different maps while facing each other).

    Honestly I don't see how this could work at all and still be called a competition. This is really Alliance Quest with dance partners. In a competition, both sides must be on the same map or there's no good way to compare their performances. And in a competition, you can't allow alliances to choose their opponents. Every time an alliance chooses to fight a war "under speed" (at less than their maximum fighting strength) you are automatically setting up another alliance to be forced to fight an alliance vastly stronger than you. On paper you can try to normalize this through differentials, like a golf handicap, but in practice this is essentially impossible for any reasonable system Kabam could implement in my lifetime to do.

    It is a variation of AQ in a sense. Key differences are AQ relying on map selection and prestige, while AW would rely on map selection, defenders and skill.

    Another idea is to tally how many items used for each war and grant a bonus based on not using more than “X” items. This would benefit kabam as players would spend on bigger items and not use smaller ones.

    I don't want to specifically discourage you from thinking about alternatives, because I think that's not a bad thing, but to be blunt this is always easy to say. But the only way to evaluate such a suggestion is in the specifics, not the generalities. We can say "magically make a scoring method that works, problem solved" but you don't know if such a thing is possible at all, unless you actually try to make one, and then see how many people think it makes sense and how many people think you just made it worse.

    I'm on this map and you're on that map and my map is harder than yours, but we're still going to compete against each other. Present an actual scoring system that I'll think is fair. It is hard enough getting people to agree that the *current* scoring system is fair, even when both alliances have the same war rating, both alliances are on the same map, and both alliances fight at the same time. People still think if you fight an alliance with a much higher alliance rating that's unfair. People still think if you get one more attack bonus but the other side places fifty more diverse defenders then that's unfair. The current scoring system isn't perfect, I wouldn't say it is even good, but at least for any one aspect of it most people think it is not broken. The people who think fighting an alliance with dissimilar alliance rating are in the minority. The people who think defender diversity points shouldn't decide a close war are in the minority. The people who think defender kills must be uncapped are in the minority. That's manageable. But letting two different alliances fight on completely different maps? Good luck.
    There are plenty of ways to impact scoring where top alliances could dodge each other but still lose out. Having everyone on a set time period (without increasing the energ limit or reducing the energy timer) is not the best move to address collusion and not a positive change overall.

    There are plenty of ways to *impact* scoring. That doesn't mean any of them actually work. I'm not a fan of the fixed schedule myself, but it *directly* solves the problem of all match making manipulations, because players no longer have any control over match making. It doesn't address rating manipulation but that's a problem that requires changes to how the match making algorithm finds matches, not simply removing control of matching from the players.

    How does it address/solve shell swapping?

    I don't see how removing the choice of when (and by extension who) to make against addresses the issue of players moving to a different alliance. But that isn't a match making manipulation per se, any more than rating manipulation is a match making manipulation in the same sense. Those are completely different problems demanding targeted solutions to address them, which I mentioned possible ways to address directly several times.
  • WorknprogressWorknprogress Posts: 7,233 ★★★★★
    MaatMan wrote: »
    1Jo wrote: »
    But what’s your war rating in comparison?

    Who cares? We got matched against a shell for the biggest spenders and pilots in the entire game bc prestige doesn't get factored in.

    I don't really care as it's offseason but it just shows that matchmaking is still broken no matter what they do

    not all allies with high ratings are shells.
    some are legit allies who were low rating and able to climb to the top in war rating cus they only ever fought other low rating allies.

    This one isn't.
  • MaatManMaatMan Posts: 958 ★★★
    DNA3000 wrote: »
    MaatMan wrote: »
    One thing that this matchmaking has done is this:
    it has shed light on the fact that kabam also used alliance rating when finding matches before.

    It was pretty well established that at least under certain circumstances (particularly marginal match situations) that alliance rating factored into match making as at least a secondary match criteria to war rating. But I don't think the current system sheds any light on the previous one, because the current one seems to be fundamentally different in at least some ways. Kabam all but stated that they changed they way matches are found in their general statements about how match making works under the new Enlistment system.

    But as to your statement that previously we didn't see matches between alliances of equal rating but wildly different alliance rating, that's false. There were reports of such matches occurring infrequently on the forums including relatively recently.

    yeah there were still a lot who never believed it.

    i do think it sheds light as it enables people to see differences.
    yes we dont know wat was before, and wat is now. but wat we do know is matchmaking seems worse and more varied than it is now.
    and it also shows that it is hard to get it right.
    people complain that they fight only other top allies,
    people complain they get unfair WR matchups,
    people complain they get unfair AR matchups,
    people complain low AR allies get matched against only other low AR rating allies and can climb to higher tiers than some high AR rating allies even though the low would never beat the strong if they matched.

    i dont know how to make it right but everything that happens people pick its flaws and complain.

    and yes it did happen infrequently before you are correct. but only in the higher tiers where pools were thinner.
    as you know as was discussed in a thread before using the bubble analogy.
    so yes, saying it "never" happened before was too much. but it happened rarely. and for the most part alliances were matched very closely to their alliance rating.
  • Siliyo wrote: »
    Hi Kabam, player since year one. Listing times in PST is unhelpful. I suggest you acknowledge the world outside America and use UTC or GMT so we can work it out at a glance.

    As if Google isn’t helpful with stuff like that... on the flip side people who prefer PST would not want UTC/GMT, so we have to deal with this as it is 😊

    Ha! yeah good point Siliyo, what I meant was say “7pm PST (UTC-8)”
  • SiliyoSiliyo Posts: 1,374 ★★★★★
    Siliyo wrote: »
    Hi Kabam, player since year one. Listing times in PST is unhelpful. I suggest you acknowledge the world outside America and use UTC or GMT so we can work it out at a glance.

    As if Google isn’t helpful with stuff like that... on the flip side people who prefer PST would not want UTC/GMT, so we have to deal with this as it is 😊

    Ha! yeah good point Siliyo, what I meant was say “7pm PST (UTC-8)”

    Oh ok! Yes, I can see that being very helpful for people outside of the US. I misunderstood you. I am sorry.
  • As it currently stands, you can finish the map inside 14 hours. We just did it last war. War kicked off at 10:18 AM EST and by 11:50 PM, we had the Map cleared to the Boss. We waited til the AM to drop the Boss. Really depends on your personal situation. All of that time played was during work, time with kids, AQ, etc... It is feasible to work with, just requires some adjustment. We could've dealt with it as it was, but this is definitely closer to what it was prior to the 1st iteration of this matchmaking. The original system. The problem with allowing Alliances to choose their time is the collusion aspect. Which as we've discussed only really seems to occur at the top. I know I'll likely get skew
    DNA3000 wrote: »
    With Alliances constantly in a state of change the likelihood you'll face the same Alliance twice is minimal from what I can tell. For example, your Alliance wins the war, gains X amount of war rating and spikes you up 1 tier. No way you'd face the last Alliance (theoretically anyway) again as your war ratings are now further apart and would be in different tiers.

    In practice the odds of facing the same alliance twice is low, but maybe not as low as someone might guess. In season six we faced the same alliance twice in tier 7, and then in season seven we faced the same alliance twice in tier 6. Both times it happened in exactly the same way. We faced the alliance and lost to them. Then in the next war we faced a different alliance and won against them. And then in the next war we faced that same previous alliance again - because we lost then won, while they won then lost. So both of us were basically back to the same rating (within six ratings points the first time, and two ratings points the second time).

    Not only were we both at about the same rating, but of course we were both looking for match at virtually the same time both times - a few minutes later than when we first faced them (they probably were in the same position timing-wise due to how wars work). Both tier 6 and tier 7 contain about 2% of all rated alliances. It is difficult to say how many alliances are counted for tiering, and it is difficult to know how Kabam really computes these percentages in general (it might not actually be mathematically 2% for various reasons) but a reasonable guess is that this 2% number represents something on the order of 600 to 1000 alliances. And let's say that most matches used to happen on a time scale of five to ten minutes, and most alliances used to match within the six hours between 11am and 5pm Pacific. That means there are 72 slices of five minute windows in that period, and actually on average there could be as few as ten to fifteen alliances within your entire war tier searching at that moment in time.

    That's actually rather interestingly in rough agreement with the one out of twelve repeat opponents we've seen in the last two seasons. It will be interesting to see whether this changes under the new matching system.

    With the previous iteration of Matchmaking, it happened to us quite frequently too. But that was timing mixed with rating/size being put into play. New system 'seems' less likely to do such. Only time will officially tell that tale. SO yeah, for sure COULD still happen. Just seems like it should be less frequent. Hence why I said theoretically as I cannot say that for sure. Not to mention twice in a row is HIGHLY unlikely in general. Twice in a cycle, maybe. Again, with the old system, that did happen. Just seems like this should be a thing of the past. Hopefully anyway, lol.
  • MaatManMaatMan Posts: 958 ★★★
    As it currently stands, you can finish the map inside 14 hours. We just did it last war. War kicked off at 10:18 AM EST and by 11:50 PM, we had the Map cleared to the Boss. We waited til the AM to drop the Boss. Really depends on your personal situation. All of that time played was during work, time with kids, AQ, etc... It is feasible to work with, just requires some adjustment. We could've dealt with it as it was, but this is definitely closer to what it was prior to the 1st iteration of this matchmaking. The original system. The problem with allowing Alliances to choose their time is the collusion aspect. Which as we've discussed only really seems to occur at the top. I know I'll likely get skew
    DNA3000 wrote: »
    With Alliances constantly in a state of change the likelihood you'll face the same Alliance twice is minimal from what I can tell. For example, your Alliance wins the war, gains X amount of war rating and spikes you up 1 tier. No way you'd face the last Alliance (theoretically anyway) again as your war ratings are now further apart and would be in different tiers.

    In practice the odds of facing the same alliance twice is low, but maybe not as low as someone might guess. In season six we faced the same alliance twice in tier 7, and then in season seven we faced the same alliance twice in tier 6. Both times it happened in exactly the same way. We faced the alliance and lost to them. Then in the next war we faced a different alliance and won against them. And then in the next war we faced that same previous alliance again - because we lost then won, while they won then lost. So both of us were basically back to the same rating (within six ratings points the first time, and two ratings points the second time).

    Not only were we both at about the same rating, but of course we were both looking for match at virtually the same time both times - a few minutes later than when we first faced them (they probably were in the same position timing-wise due to how wars work). Both tier 6 and tier 7 contain about 2% of all rated alliances. It is difficult to say how many alliances are counted for tiering, and it is difficult to know how Kabam really computes these percentages in general (it might not actually be mathematically 2% for various reasons) but a reasonable guess is that this 2% number represents something on the order of 600 to 1000 alliances. And let's say that most matches used to happen on a time scale of five to ten minutes, and most alliances used to match within the six hours between 11am and 5pm Pacific. That means there are 72 slices of five minute windows in that period, and actually on average there could be as few as ten to fifteen alliances within your entire war tier searching at that moment in time.

    That's actually rather interestingly in rough agreement with the one out of twelve repeat opponents we've seen in the last two seasons. It will be interesting to see whether this changes under the new matching system.

    With the previous iteration of Matchmaking, it happened to us quite frequently too. But that was timing mixed with rating/size being put into play. New system 'seems' less likely to do such. Only time will officially tell that tale. SO yeah, for sure COULD still happen. Just seems like it should be less frequent. Hence why I said theoretically as I cannot say that for sure. Not to mention twice in a row is HIGHLY unlikely in general. Twice in a cycle, maybe. Again, with the old system, that did happen. Just seems like this should be a thing of the past. Hopefully anyway, lol.

    i too prefer the time now.

    but also being said, there are alliances who would have cleared the earlier time in 14 hours also and some alliances that will struggle as it stands now.
    so point is fixed times will work better for some and worse for some.
    top allies will of course adjust schedules to make it work.
    top allies will take dunny breaks at work to play in AW,
    but most people will play when they can and if the game doesnt fit the schedule they wont adjust their schedule to fit the game.

    so yeah some will be happy, some not.
  • xNigxNig Posts: 7,221 ★★★★★
    At least having matches start at the old timings (3am for me) are a lot more comfortable for most alliances since their timings are tuned to making sure they find a match, hence matching as early as possible. As usual we cleared 100% by 10pm amidst work, kids, etc.
  • Fabi1989Fabi1989 Posts: 112
    Matchmaking still do Not work...we got a Alliance with over 400 warrating more
  • @MaatMan Oh for sure. Never said it was perfect. Just a step in the right direction considering it brought it MUCH closer to the old time for many. For some, not so much. The original release seemed to be far LESS manageable for the majority judging by the original outcry. Many are STILL saying they want the old system back. Which I doubt will ever happen. It was too easy to manipulate by allowing Alliances the freedom to choose their start time for matchmaking. People asked for them to stop this, they did. Now they want the old system back that would allow things to be easily twisted in favor of some. Truth is, they'll never please everyone. Ever. From what I can see, many are more content with the recent timing change of matchmaking. That's about the best they could've hoped for.
  • rfootballrfootball Posts: 25
    My alliance has been matched against double sometimes triple our rating. Either we are that skilled and punching way above our level or that isn't fixed yet. If we are always over matched doesn't matter when start time is we still aren't competitive enough so why waste time on a losing battle
  • xNigxNig Posts: 7,221 ★★★★★
    rfootball wrote: »
    My alliance has been matched against double sometimes triple our rating. Either we are that skilled and punching way above our level or that isn't fixed yet. If we are always over matched doesn't matter when start time is we still aren't competitive enough so why waste time on a losing battle

    War ratings and number of BGs ran?
  • I know I'm late to this party but I'm unclear as to how this enlistment mechanic works. Does this mean all wars across all alliances start at the same time? Because right now our wars start and end right in the middle of work for most of my alliance. I don't see how this is fair because we're not able to actually get in game to clear our paths.
  • Fabi1989Fabi1989 Posts: 112
    My Alliance have 2650 warrating and we Matched against an Alliance with 2950...

    Why you cant fix that BS matchmaking System?
  • MaatManMaatMan Posts: 958 ★★★



    Why is this war t7
    We are t6 and the other ally war rating shows they are too.
    This must be related to mussing the win bonus last war
  • Fabi1989Fabi1989 Posts: 112
    Fabi1989 said:

    My Alliance have 2650 warrating and we Matched against an Alliance with 2950...

    Why you cant fix that BS matchmaking System?

    Can we get a Info?
  • Fabi1989Fabi1989 Posts: 112


    ???????????
  • MrTicTac19992008MrTicTac19992008 Posts: 566 ★★
    edited March 2019
    Last war we faced an alliance with 2200+ war rating. We have 1700 rating. Also we are in tier 7 but had to fight in the challenger map. I know one difficulty of map has to be chosen but why didnt we get a higher multiplier? This is something Kabam need to look at.
  • iRetr0iRetr0 Posts: 1,252 ★★★★
    My friend and I who are both officers in our alliance miss out on the first few hours and the last few hours of war (the most important hours) because of this system, please change the timings...
  • DNA3000DNA3000 Posts: 18,558 Guardian
    MaatMan said:




    Why is this war t7
    We are t6 and the other ally war rating shows they are too.
    This must be related to mussing the win bonus last war

    This seemed to happen to us as well. 1839 fighting 1831, but the war happened at tier 7. Both of us should have been in tier 6 I believe with those ratings. I'm not sure if has anything to do with the first war's scoring being screwed up, or some other match making algorithm error. Since it now seems clear the game is matching alliances within "buckets" of different rating, it is possible the game is also independently setting the map tier separately from picking the alliances to fight on it and screwing up that calculation as well.
  • VoluntarisVoluntaris Posts: 1,198 ★★★
    We matched same ally we just fought Sunday/Monday.

    Interesting side effect, the War Room chat still had our War Chat from 2 days ago, at the start of this new war.
  • DNA3000DNA3000 Posts: 18,558 Guardian

    We matched same ally we just fought Sunday/Monday.

    Interesting side effect, the War Room chat still had our War Chat from 2 days ago, at the start of this new war.

    That's ... interesting. The fact the war room still contained chat from the previous war seems especially odd to me, because I can only think of one obvious reason that could happen, and it suggests the way war rooms work is incredibly inefficient.

    Or match making itself is just completely broken at the moment.
  • SparkAlotSparkAlot Posts: 957 ★★★★
    edited March 2019
    If AW went to 30 min timers, that would pretty much nullify the start and end time complaints, since you would now have double the amount of moves available than before, and most wars could finish much earlier or even started much later, since you know you will have time to finish.

    It is a win-win in any case, and there is no downside for 30 min timers
  • SparkAlotSparkAlot Posts: 957 ★★★★
    edited March 2019
    Whoops, double post, n/m.
  • DNA3000DNA3000 Posts: 18,558 Guardian
    SparkAlot said:

    If AW went to 30 min timers, that would pretty much nullify the start and end time complaints, since you would now have double the amount of moves available than before, and most wars could finish much earlier or even started much later, since you know you will have time to finish.

    It is a win-win in any case, and there is no downside for 30 min timers

    You know how many lottery winners end up broke not long after winning, because they don't know how to handle money and do stupid ultimately self-destructive things?

    Apparently, shortened energy timers are like that. They are nothing but good [i]for rational actors[/i]. However, irrational actors are a protected subclass of player.
  • MaatManMaatMan Posts: 958 ★★★
    DNA3000 said:

    MaatMan said:




    Why is this war t7
    We are t6 and the other ally war rating shows they are too.
    This must be related to mussing the win bonus last war

    This seemed to happen to us as well. 1839 fighting 1831, but the war happened at tier 7. Both of us should have been in tier 6 I believe with those ratings. I'm not sure if has anything to do with the first war's scoring being screwed up, or some other match making algorithm error. Since it now seems clear the game is matching alliances within "buckets" of different rating, it is possible the game is also independently setting the map tier separately from picking the alliances to fight on it and screwing up that calculation as well.
    Well i our opponent at 1832 told us they were in t6 so it should have been t6 rewards.
    It seems like a lot have been affected by this.
    My biggest issue is the multiplier and difference in season points.
  • Igrot808Igrot808 Posts: 1
    Is it just me, or has anyone else noticed “kabam mike” dodging the very constantly expressed concern about time zones and start times and how this doesn’t work for so many of us?
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