Let's talk about GvG Territory War matchmaking
TLDR: TW matchmaking has all the problems of GW*, but magnified.
TLDR answer: quit whining and build 8 ultra-squads, noob.
Something does not add up.
I assume there is nothing more to matchmaking than pitting together two same-size guilds with similar GP. Perhaps a large assumption, but experience in this game would suggest otherwise. On the surface it sounds like a great metric. But in practice, it is not the magic yardstick we wish it to be.
Let's take a look at the map:
10 territories total: 8 for ground battles, 2 for fleet battles. In each territory, a guild is permitted to stack X defensive squads, where X is equal to half the number of members in the guild. Assuming you get 100% equal guild participation, this means that each guild member must place a defensive squad in 5 of the territories (4 ground, 1 fleet). On offense, for 100% equal distribution of labor, this also means each guild member must defeat 5 of the enemy's defenses (4 ground, 1 fleet).
To me, this task does not actually sound so bad. But does it actually work in practice?
Let's look at two examples. My guild in the main game did not band together for a run at the TW Beta. So I hopped into some random guild for the experience. One of my guildmates joined a different guild.
Here is what happened in the TW I got to play:
We got crushed. It wasn't even close. The opposition ran roughshod over our defenses. Our offense did not do much better.
Now, my guildmates experience:
They decimated the opposition. Their opponent was sorely outmatched.
Only two examples, but two very similar outcomes: the match was massively lopsided. How could this happen? If both teams had the same number of players and similar GP levels, why are the outcomes so one-sided?
One answer is probably participation. Two of these guilds (the losing sides) probably did not get 100% equal participation. I know mine did not. Well, I think mine did not, it is hard to know since TW does not report the number of failed attacks, only the number of banners you win from successful attacks. (That should change.)
Another answer has to be in character gear level (yeah probably mods too).
What follows here is based on theoretical matchmaking process. Tinfoil hats optional. Let's ignore fleet battles too.
Consider two full guilds, the Regulators and the Wolverines.
What can be done to improve matchmaking using GP? One possibility is average GP/hero/player. Let's go back to the Regulators and the Wolverines.
Now suppose both of these guilds start building new squads.
I suppose the answer will be: if the Regulators wish to do well in TW, then they need to focus a lot more on building 8 strong squads instead of more weak squads. Will this help them? Suppose they now go out and do this.
The bottom line is that the Regulators will always be behind the Wolverines until both reach the gear cap with their TW-capable squads.
I cannot say what methods are being used to match guilds. But it needs to be more sophisticated than it is.
* Just because I happen to like GW does not mean I don't think there is something off-kilter about the matchmaking system -- there is. But GW gradually builds up difficulty and gives the player a chance to TM-load their teams for the hard nodes to establish a winning strategy. TW does not provide this luxury.
TLDR answer: quit whining and build 8 ultra-squads, noob.
Something does not add up.
I assume there is nothing more to matchmaking than pitting together two same-size guilds with similar GP. Perhaps a large assumption, but experience in this game would suggest otherwise. On the surface it sounds like a great metric. But in practice, it is not the magic yardstick we wish it to be.
Let's take a look at the map:
10 territories total: 8 for ground battles, 2 for fleet battles. In each territory, a guild is permitted to stack X defensive squads, where X is equal to half the number of members in the guild. Assuming you get 100% equal guild participation, this means that each guild member must place a defensive squad in 5 of the territories (4 ground, 1 fleet). On offense, for 100% equal distribution of labor, this also means each guild member must defeat 5 of the enemy's defenses (4 ground, 1 fleet).
To me, this task does not actually sound so bad. But does it actually work in practice?
Let's look at two examples. My guild in the main game did not band together for a run at the TW Beta. So I hopped into some random guild for the experience. One of my guildmates joined a different guild.
Here is what happened in the TW I got to play:
We got crushed. It wasn't even close. The opposition ran roughshod over our defenses. Our offense did not do much better.
Now, my guildmates experience:
They decimated the opposition. Their opponent was sorely outmatched.
Only two examples, but two very similar outcomes: the match was massively lopsided. How could this happen? If both teams had the same number of players and similar GP levels, why are the outcomes so one-sided?
One answer is probably participation. Two of these guilds (the losing sides) probably did not get 100% equal participation. I know mine did not. Well, I think mine did not, it is hard to know since TW does not report the number of failed attacks, only the number of banners you win from successful attacks. (That should change.)
Another answer has to be in character gear level (yeah probably mods too).
What follows here is based on theoretical matchmaking process. Tinfoil hats optional. Let's ignore fleet battles too.
Consider two full guilds, the Regulators and the Wolverines.
- Each member of the Regulators has exactly 100 characters, but all of their characters are 6000 galactic power, the minimum for TW participation. Total guild strength is 50*100*6000 = 30M GP.
- Each member of the Wolverines has exactly 50 characters, but all of their characters are 12000 galactic power. Total guild strength is 50*50*12000 = 30M GP.
What can be done to improve matchmaking using GP? One possibility is average GP/hero/player. Let's go back to the Regulators and the Wolverines.
- The Regulators have 6000 GP/hp.
- The Wolverines have 12000 GP/hp.
Now suppose both of these guilds start building new squads.
- The Regulators go out and unlock 10 more characters each, and improve them to 6000 GP each. This of course does not improve their average at all, they are still at 6000 GP/hp.
- The Wolverines go out and unlock 60 more characters each, but only improve them to 1000 GP. Total guild GP is now 33M GP. New average power rating is 33M/50 players/110 heroes = 6000 GP/hp.
I suppose the answer will be: if the Regulators wish to do well in TW, then they need to focus a lot more on building 8 strong squads instead of more weak squads. Will this help them? Suppose they now go out and do this.
- Each Regulator improves 40 of their 6k characters to 14k. Each member now has 40 heroes at 14k and 70 at 6k, for 980k total GP each. Total guild GP is now 49M, with an average rating of 8909 GP/hp.
- But each Wolverine has improved 40 of their 12k characters to 20k. Each member now has 40*20k + 10*12k + 60*1k = 980k GP each. Total guild GP is now 49M, with an average rating of 8909 GP/hp.
The bottom line is that the Regulators will always be behind the Wolverines until both reach the gear cap with their TW-capable squads.
I also found it interesting to note that, in this theoretical matchmaking scenario using average hero power, even though the Wolverines have many more useless 1k GP characters on their rosters, they easily outmatch the Regulators. This means that the mid-level characters are actually hurting the Regulators way more than the entry-level characters of the Wolverines. So the moral would be: do not improve your characters until you are ready to max-gear them if you wish to do well at TW. This is nearly a direct contradiction to GW wisdom, which maintains that a player should build a wide but evenly-geared roster to do well. But since this whole thing is a tinfoil hat theory, all attempts at meaningful conclusions are pure rubbish.
I cannot say what methods are being used to match guilds. But it needs to be more sophisticated than it is.
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In my case, I now have 38 characters lingering around g7 L60. It appears that these characters, whose only purpose is to inflate guild GP to contribute to TB Deployment points, are going to cause my guild to get matched against other guilds that could conceivably have fewer geared squads, but at much higher levels. What I did to my roster, I did to benefit my guild for TB. Now it looks as though I will be a liability for TW guild matching.
These ~40 characters have an average GP somewhere around 5000 each. 40*5000 = 200k extra GP of filler, filler that can't win a TW fight. Another guild with no filler characters could make up that extra 200k with 10 more characters at 20k each, arranged into two extremely effective fighting squads. Squads filled with characters where any one of them could single-handedly eliminate all 40 of 5k weenies. See the problem?
And there's nothing I can do about it. Those g7 characters will continue to be a TW liability until they get to g11. Boo-hoo.
However, this was just Beta Stage 1. If the next stage somehow allows these GP-inflating characters to provide a benefit to my guild, then perhaps the disadvantage is not so bad.
Thanks YOU for the very detailed feedback and suggestions. We'll definitely dig through it.
First, please know that TW, just like TB will evolve and improve as we all try it out.
The Beta matchmaking system already has multiple improvements to what will be going live.
Second, TW will have 10's of thousands of guilds which will provide a much more granular selection.
NOT to say match making is done, but we will definitely be continuing to review and update TW aspects going forward.
Can't wait to see you in the main game!
RT
Regarding gw and tb meta, I do not agree they necessarily hurt tw, because minimum power is 6k. All of the toons I farmed specifically for tb are well under 6k power, at level 1 and 6 stars. For gw, toons just above 6k aren't going to help you there either. The lesson is, if you are going to level a toon, then commit to it so it is not useless.
That said, it may (or may not) help to add a simple secondary factor like total number of eligible toons, or to tighten up the matching gp range. But my guild had a fair fight this time, we did not clear until a couple hours before closing, and we had only 10 squads alive on defense, and we had come up from behind so that was exciting.
On offense, Wolverines will have 300 squads, more than enough to demolish the Regulators 200 defending squads; the Wolverines will actually have 100 spares because they will win easily. I did not forget they can only be used once; once is all they need.
The Regulators will have 800 squads on offense, but they will be so weak that they probably won't win a single banner. They will be pitted against OP squads that can indeed defend more than once, time and time again, as many as it takes. It will look just like that GW N12 that can destroy a whole roster, but in this case it will destroy a whole guild.
Ok, I was not talking about META, or characters that help with GW. But you don't have to agree with how to help boost guild GP for TB, you can just continue to be wrong.
Congratulations on your fair fight.
And I did not consider boosting raw gp to help with troop dumps, since that is not a focus of my guild and we usually struggle more with platoons.
Thanks for putting the thought into your posts!
I know we recommended getting all your toons to level 50 and putting mods on them etc.
Having all your resources into just 40 toons is an advantage, but I am not worried about it. Seems like just a short term issue.
Think about the guilds/players that haven't invested in inflating their GP. They likely are less hard core or as organised. If they weren't min maxing for TB then they probably aren't going to for Territory Wars.
Now that we know we should be focussing on just 40 toons we will quickly erode that disadvantage.
Participation and effort is still really important and probably going to be a much bigger factor.
I know in our TWar we filled a lot more defensive squads (shoukd always fill) while on offense I was first into an opponents territory and they had only filled 12 of 25. That's a HUGE difference.
We lost both TW's and i will absolutely without a shadow of a doubt attribute that to the enemy having more uber teams than us... even though we far outnumbered them in mid range power teams...
Both TW's we were almost immediately steamrolled.
100 mil GP guilds.
Nice post. Personally my guild had no issue wiith the matchmaking, first we lost by 1 territory and second was a close win.
I also feel there should be some sligth regulations on matchmaking.
This is what I am talking about.
In bTW2, I joined a new guild. It had a few members with ultra-maxed-out squads. We had 38 members join the TW, participating GP level near 90M. Our defenses were crazy good, and offense was just as good. My regular guild is near 120M, and I feel fairly confident that if we were paired against them, we would be badly outmatched.
I don't know how they plan to make TW fair in the final release. I hope they do something more sophisticated than simple GP matching and TW win-loss rankings. If not ... pitchforks, torches, rioting ...
I think we know how this will go.
I.E.; collection score, how many 7* toons, 6* toons, etc
then add everyone participating scores up to get a total that then finds a much closer matched group
Power rating is already supposed to do this. So maybe more tweaks to that formula? We run the risk of going down into a rabbit hole like asking a bar/pub "who's the best football team?"
There is no such thing as perfectly matched teams, otherwise every game would be a tie. So hopefully some sort of improvement can be made to make it good enough, not to mention the possibility of upsets. Nearly every loss feels like a gyp because you have always tried your hardest. So maybe we are closer than we think, although I now agree we are not quite there yet.
TB continues to force us to bloat our gp with 7* trash for platoons. TW counts trash as combat ready for matchmaking purposes even if the trash has no realistic defense or offense use. As the OP as shows (and live gameplay seems to indicate post beta), a guild that is already behind has no functional way to improve their TW performance by improving combat ready toons as that gets offset by the farming/gearing activities of a guild with comparable total gp that was already stronger than them. TB at least has clear functional ways a guild can improve how many stars they earn. Farm trash to 7* for platoons, get more squads combat ready for missions so they are never 1 squad short of being able to at least attempt a sector's combat mission.
TB got it right by offering a clear path to guild improvement for better rewards. TW got everything wrong with a matchmaker that means no matter what a guild does, both farming in between TW and strategy during a TW match, they will always loose to a guild that started out of the gate stronger than them even if they're in the same GP bracket. Fun for the few guilds that were already powerhouses in their weight class where a win vs a loss comes down to strategy, unfun as can be for the weaker guilds that lost before deploying a single squad even if a real live Thrawn is orchestrating their TW strategy.