Kabam...AW match making frustrations boiling over

LeNoirFaineant · May 2019

CoatHang3r said:

LeNoirFaineant said:

Markjv81 said:

Speeds80 said:

My friends semi retirement alliance, they run 2 bgs except last week of season, to to see if they can hit gold 1. Last day of war season, insult to injury if they lose (which is highly likely) they lose 1 point in alliance rating. Making the next matchup just as likely to be this stupid
There’s always going to be anomalies in less than 3bg wars because the pool is significantly smaller. This is not a true representation of the system in my opinion.
That's a 3 BG war...
Time to visit the ophthalmologist, clearly says 2 battle groups.

So it does lol. My bad. I was going by what he wrote. "They run 2 bgs except last week of season to see if they can hit gold 1." Took him at his word and didn't check. Assumed the poster misread but I should've checked before posting. Apologies @Markjv81

Ultra8529 · May 2019

Ultra8529 said:

GroundedWisdom said:
Trust me, without something drastic to mediate, it's going to get worse before it gets better.
As for Prestige, that's not a random number. It's a measure of strength, their own actually. Always has been. Then people realized you could maximize it and maximize Rewards, thus the Prestige Race was born. People have been doing that for so long, they believe it's just for AQ. Every metric has a purpose.
Let me take you up on your theory that prestige is a good measure of strength.

Assume 2 players:

Player A: top 5 prestige are Thor Rag, Goldpool, Phoenix, Cap marvel (movie) and Thing - average prestige about 10.6k. Only has these 5 champs at r5.

Player B: top 5 prestige are Thor Rag, Phoenix, Cap Marvel (movie) and Thing - average prestige about 10.6k. BUT also has 10 other r5 5* champs, including corvus, domino, ghost, quake, blade, havok, Sinister, Korg and several others.

Now imagine an entire alliance - Alliance A - made up for 30 players like player A. And another alliance - Alliance B - made up of 30 players like player B. They each have an alliance prestige of 10.6k.

My question to you @GroundedWisdom is: Would you say that Alliance A and Alliance B are of the same strength in war? Do you think Alliance A has a 50% chance of winning a war against Alliance B?

Still waiting for your answer @GroundedWisdom - Yes or No? Simple question.

GroundedWisdom · May 2019

One would win and one would lose. That's the same as any War scenario. Is it fair? Yes. It happens in both systems. One Alliance can come up against another that has stronger Champs than they do.
Do they have an equal chance at winning the War? That entirely depends on how they perform. That's a great deal more fair than what's been going on. It's also one-sided. I'll be quite frank because this discussion has exhausted me. It seems to me that the same demographic which caused the problem to occur is now complaining because they're facing equal Prestige Matches and it's no longer advantageous to Tank. Tell me, how is it an injustice to face more R5s with equal Prestige (of which you can only bring 8 into War so your hypothetical doesn't hold that much significance), and yet it's okay to jump down wherever they want and overpower whoever they want? Seems a bit hypocritical to me.
The entire reason we are here is because people are playing the board like a Xylophone, and that's not only overpowering whoever they want, but it's stopping the entire chain of Seasons from reasonable and honest progress. One small advantage, huge compounding issues. But hey....as long as you break the next Bracket....
Not only is it happening at Plat/Master, it's trickled down because now a good chunk of the Board want to do what the big guys are doing. It's getting worse and worse.
Yes, they could win. That entirely depends on how they play and what they use. What this is stopping is Matches where people literally have no chance of winning because the gap is huge.

Mr_Platypus · May 2019

Well you heard it here first folks, making alliance [A] composed of players with 3-4 R5s fight alliances with 8+ R5s continuously is fair because prestige.

GroundedWisdom · May 2019

That wasn't the hypothetical given, it was 5 versus 8+, and it was a tad bit contrived because it was under the premise that all Members had the same Champs. It's fair because both sides still have a possibility of winning. That's the point that's not being taken here.

Ultra8529 · May 2019

GroundedWisdom said:
One would win and one would lose. That's the same as any War scenario. Is it fair? Yes. It happens in both systems. One Alliance can come up against another that has stronger Champs than they do.
Do they have an equal chance at winning the War? That entirely depends on how they perform. That's a great deal more fair than what's been going on. It's also one-sided. I'll be quite frank because this discussion has exhausted me. It seems to me that the same demographic which caused the problem to occur is now complaining because they're facing equal Prestige Matches and it's no longer advantageous to Tank. Tell me, how is it an injustice to face more R5s with equal Prestige (of which you can only bring 8 into War so your hypothetical doesn't hold that much significance), and yet it's okay to jump down wherever they want and overpower whoever they want? Seems a bit hypocritical to me.
The entire reason we are here is because people are playing the board like a Xylophone, and that's not only overpowering whoever they want, but it's stopping the entire chain of Seasons from reasonable and honest progress. One small advantage, huge compounding issues. But hey....as long as you break the next Bracket....
Not only is it happening at Plat/Master, it's trickled down because now a good chunk of the Board want to do what the big guys are doing. It's getting worse and worse.
Yes, they could win. That entirely depends on how they play and what they use. What this is stopping is Matches where people literally have no chance of winning because the gap is huge.

Your statement is singularly unhelpful and says nothing. Obviously "one would win and one would lose", except in the rare outcome of a tie. I am also not asking if it is "more fair" than the current system. Don't bring in tanking. We are discussing the merits of the current system on its own.

My question, my only question, is whether you think Alliance A has a 50% chance of beating Alliance B. Is your answer yes?

Greywarden · May 2019

We keep talking about fair and unfair and this seems to be the most unfair affecting the most people. Tanking really just affected the top as they were ok with losing out on a few war win rewards here and there, the further down you went the less rampant that was. This new system has gone all the way down to gold 1.....

I’ve been a victim of some terrible mismatches playing this game. I had a +114/-2 a few seasons back (can give the link if you’d like) to end the season however that was just one war with everything else being normal for the most part. Now I’m having just 1-2 wars that are fair, the complete opposite!

This prestige based system where master rewards are being given out for beating up on gold level alliances isn’t perfect obviously. If we want to talk about fair then let’s discuss the gold level alliances that some of the people in masters and platinum 1 are man handling with ease every war...they might as well be facing ‘real’ master alliances because their chance is 0% in those wars too and they just happened to match the best of the middle.

We can also discuss the top, people are getting matched with the same opponent BACK to BACK which is supposed to never happen yet here we are. Fair is actually standing a chance but I’m telling you from experience there are some groups out there that are unbeatable whether you want to hear it or not. Sub 10 deaths is something not many groups can compete with and to think otherwise when you’re a sub 20 death group is ludicrous.

People were gaming the rating system but that was only during the off-season which for the most part has been 1-2 weeks. This is gaming the match making system DURING the season....

I’m not advocating bringing back rating based wars, merely stating facts as I just want ONE SEASON of match making that makes sense. 9 seasons in and we’re farther away from something that works.

If prestige remains the only thing we’re matching on then we need brackets or some sort of prestige point multiplier exactly how we do in aq for the exact same reason.....higher prestige groups are completing the same map at tier 1 but at a higher difficulty in this case due to opponents strength and the points should reflect that.

battleone · May 2019

I personally dont think matchmaking is incredibly off. In, what is being referenced as the old system, the main reason for mismatches was staggering searches of top alliances. Intentionally. Sure tanking and shell alliances impact everything.

Here is the problem

What is off is the multiplier. The multiplier for season points is being based on something (war rating) that has little to do with the actual matchup.

The amount of points scored needs to directly correlate to how matchmaking is being calculated. I believe what is happening is there are alliance prestige "brackets" for example.... 9800+, 8500 to 9799, 7500 to 8499 etc.... kabam has gated events/rewards/dungeons in this manner before. Then matches are found by war rating based on these subsets.

In the brackets youve, essentially got divisions... but the multiplier is based on the secondary search criteria which is causing the crazy leaderboard of different class alliances intermingled.

going undefeated in the different divisions is resulting in the same amount of points scored.....

RagamugginGunner · May 2019

Mr_Platypus said:
Well you heard it here first folks, making alliance [A] composed of players with 3-4 R5s fight alliances with 8+ R5s continuously is fair because prestige.

Also, remember that facts aren't real and only the opinion of a recently Uncollected player matters.

Ultra8529 · May 2019

Matchmaking on prestige is terribly off for the top alliances. It is encouraging players to get as low prestige as possible. It is matching alliances with average of 5 r5s against alliances with average of 15 r5s. Totally one-sided matches that force players to give up and move into 2BG wars, which in turn leads to more lopsided matches there, with cascading effects therefrom too.

Effects of prestige matchmaking are perhaps less felt in the lower tiers due to prestige clustering much more closely and varying consistently with the distribution of war rating.

battleone · May 2019

Ultra8529 said:
Matchmaking on prestige is terribly off for the top alliances. It is encouraging players to get as low prestige as possible. It is matching alliances with average of 5 r5s against alliances with average of 15 r5s. Totally one-sided matches that force players to give up and move into 2BG wars, which in turn leads to more lopsided matches there, with cascading effects therefrom too.

Effects of prestige matchmaking are perhaps less felt in the lower tiers due to prestige clustering much more closely and varying consistently with the distribution of war rating.

so create a measurement of the average of the top 11 characters on teams (3 attackers aq/aw 5 defenders war). Regardless, multiplier/points scored needs to be based on the same primary criteria of the matchup.

If kenob, ny, mng, iso8a are playing each other all day, better believe they deserve more points.

Ultra8529 · May 2019

battleone said:

Ultra8529 said:
Matchmaking on prestige is terribly off for the top alliances. It is encouraging players to get as low prestige as possible. It is matching alliances with average of 5 r5s against alliances with average of 15 r5s. Totally one-sided matches that force players to give up and move into 2BG wars, which in turn leads to more lopsided matches there, with cascading effects therefrom too.

Effects of prestige matchmaking are perhaps less felt in the lower tiers due to prestige clustering much more closely and varying consistently with the distribution of war rating.
so create a measurement of the average of the top 11 characters on teams (3 attackers aq/aw 5 defenders war). Regardless, multiplier/points scored needs to be based on the same primary criteria of the matchup.

If kenob, ny, mng, iso8a are playing each other all day, better believe they deserve more points.

I don't disagree with your solution as another way of getting around the problem.

I just think it makes matchmaking more complicated than it has to. War rating is by far the best system as a true indicator of war ability. Yes tanking has been a way to manipulate that. But take away the incentive to tank and nobody will manipulate it anymore. Keeps the matchmaking system pure

battleone · May 2019

Ultra8529 said:

battleone said:

Ultra8529 said:
Matchmaking on prestige is terribly off for the top alliances. It is encouraging players to get as low prestige as possible. It is matching alliances with average of 5 r5s against alliances with average of 15 r5s. Totally one-sided matches that force players to give up and move into 2BG wars, which in turn leads to more lopsided matches there, with cascading effects therefrom too.

Effects of prestige matchmaking are perhaps less felt in the lower tiers due to prestige clustering much more closely and varying consistently with the distribution of war rating.
so create a measurement of the average of the top 11 characters on teams (3 attackers aq/aw 5 defenders war). Regardless, multiplier/points scored needs to be based on the same primary criteria of the matchup.

If kenob, ny, mng, iso8a are playing each other all day, better believe they deserve more points.
I don't disagree with your solution as another way of getting around the problem.

I just think it makes matchmaking more complicated than it has to. War rating is by far the best system as a true indicator of war ability. Yes tanking has been a way to manipulate that. But take away the incentive to tank and nobody will manipulate it anymore. Keeps the matchmaking system pure

Yeah everyone has a different perspective based on where they are on the todem pole. I try to think from a lot of angles. Like lets start at the very bottom. Kabam doesnt want guys they are trying to rope into this addict-athon of a video game getting their faces used as mops. So it has to be based on prestige down there. In general, its a good concept, they are trying to make for fair wars based on some criteria theyve come up with. It works at a lot of the levels in the game. However as you pointed out very cleanly prestige only works on the way up. Once you reach the top you are comparing guys with 5 r5s to 15. It is a simplistic statement, but an extremely good analysis/point. I think after 11 or so r5s, the advantage is minimal at best. The other problem I see with the existing setup is the leaderboard is muddied with significantly out classed alliances all over the place. These are the 2 main things that still need to be resolved.

Kabam Miike · May 2019

Alright, this thread has gone way off the rails. Closing it down.

As for the Matchmaking questions at hand, we are continuously making improvements to our Matchmaking system, and plan to implement deterrents to artificially manipulating metrics that factor into matchmaking very soon. You'll hear more about those in the near future.

Kabam...AW match making frustrations boiling over

Comments