Grand Arena HUGE Matchmaking mistake
When you match players based on combined ship and character GP but only let them use characters, you get big mismatches with players heavily invested in fleet. This is such a massive and obvious result, how in the entire world did you all just miss it, or better yet, WHY did you ignore it? Simple fix. Take the variable for the GP and make it just character GP in whatever formula the matchmaking AI uses.
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Best fix would be to see the person that signs off "ready for gameplay" works fulltime in forum damage control for 6 months to get the feel of the community.
But i think, what i still prefer, to use charakter gp only is also poor. Because gp dont reflect the real worth of a toon and need a lot rework. Some strong leaders like traya or revan.. are worth 4 times their gp, cause they can easily beat strong teams without such leader. On other hands there are old weak toons nearly worthless because of the overpowered toons. They are overrated in gp actually.
Alot of problems, no solution planned/in sight :-(
My guess is the real reason most are complaining is because you got matched with someone who outclasses you and who you doubt you can win against. That is likely to happen sometimes unless you're a regular spender who typically stays at the top of your arena rankings. But that's just part of the game. By looking at the teams you face and examining what works and does not work in your attacks and defenses, you'll know what to focus on to improve. And when you get matched with someone you can't beat, you can just shrug and admit that happens from time to time as well.
There has been always a few mismatches ever since GA started and even if you have player A with 2m gp in toons where he focused heavily on synergy and teams will most likely outclass player B with 2m gp in toons but more widely spreader and less high geared most of the time.
Although that is more fair than starting with a straight forward disadvantage which players have right now whom GP from ships is counted as well albeit having no chance of using them
Wrong, character value is an already determined value in the game itself. The AI does the math an populated that value. Matchmaking is supposed to put you with others of the same caliber, not gaps because your roster is handicapped by design.
It’s a rather obvious issue and fix but tons of folks helped by the GP fake matchup will say it’s working fine.
I have never won an overall GA, that is always given to people in my grouping that have Revan. However, I have finished in the 2 to 4 bracket all but one time.
You cannot seriously expect all people with similar squads to battle each other. People who win against similar GP opponents usually do because they have focused their squad development. In no way should people who strategize have a tougher opponent than those who didn't.
If they only include character GP, then the extra rewards that larger ship GP will have given, would then give you an advantage over someone else who didn't have the larger ship GP
What some users seem to want is a matchmaking system where there is effectively 7 clones of their own roster in their GA group, so that no decision they've ever made will ever come back to haunt them.
The current matchmaking system, however, provides easy excuses for anyone who loses:
- I lost because I have more ship GP and less character GP than my opponents
- I lost because my opponent has got Revan / Traya / HMF
- I lost because my opponent has got more g12
- I lost because my opponent has got more zetas
- I lost because my opponent has got more +20 speed mods
Unless the matchmaking pitted them against 7 direct clones of their own roster, many of the people making the above complaints will always find some reason, other than their own failings, as to why they lost.
I don't own Revan (I will in <48 hours) and have faced 7 Revan owners in GA. I've lost 3 of those battles (outstripped for efficiency twice, abject tactical failure once) and won the other 4. I wonder what the 4 people I beat blamed for them losing?
I won my bracket 3-0 this time despite having over 50% of my GP tied up in unusable ships and seeing opponents with 11-45% more usable GP than me. (Thankfully I did not face the latter opponent)
That does not make it fair or balanced. It simply means that I out-modded and out-played my opponents on this occasion.
On occasions where I do encounter similarly well modded opponents, I usually lose because I am at a significant GP disadvantage which allows them to overwhelm my defense either by having more high-power toons or by zerging it with a larger roster of sufficiently powerful toons. Neither of which requires much skill.
Yes, some people want a better matchmaking system, cause the actuell is working not good for them. They stated in detail why to maybe to get a better one.
Its good for you that you never made bad decissions which came back haunting you. No complaining necessary for you, fine.
I think maybe you are the best strategic player in this game, i am praising your skill.
Thanks for the praise, but it’s misplaced. I’m not the best strategic player, far from it. When I’ve lost a GA battle (3/12 so far) it’s down to either bad tactics from me or poor efficiency so I lose on banners.
From other threads / posts in this section of the forum, there are players who only ever seem to lose because the matchmaking algorithm sucks. Yet someone like @Rath_Tarr above seems to have managed to overcome this occasionally.
Some people are born to complain, others just get on with it and do their best.
Matchmaking by total GP for all squad or all fleet events is the most obvious issue and should be the easiest to resolve. They already calculate the breakdown for other uses and it's a single input parameter to the matchmaking process which has the same type and scale whether you use fleet, squad or combined.
Ultimately though, there will need to be some measure of player skill factored into matchmaking. The most obvious one being win-loss ratio. Players with better ratio get matched with tougher opponents. Ones with poorer ratios get matched with weaker opponents.
Otherwise, no matter what you do there are going to be players who get curb-stomped and others who have easy wins.
Kudos to you though for actually trying to win when matched against someone who has a statistical advantage, though. It is clear from the forum that not everyone does that. And it’s great to hear that people can overcome a disadvantage.
The game has such an enormous amount of variables that it seems daft not to use performance in GA as some kind of factor in matchmaking. But, even then, I can foresee people deliberately performing poorly for a period only to raise their game when matched against inferior opponents to ensure they get top prize.
Or to be sure they can win when the prize is stun guns (or whatever gear they care about). Pretty much no matter what the system is, people will try to game it.
That’s the only thing that’s certain in all of this!
Why? Don't more skillfull players deserve to win more often?
The only way i would prefer to play vs better opponents systematically because i keep winning is if that also comes with better rewards.
Equality of outcome in a competative game mode is not desirable imo. "rigging" the system so that everyone has roughly the same win-loss ratio seems silly to me. What's the point in wanting to win if that inevitably leads to eventually losing more often?
I'd call that fixing one problem by creating a different problem. A less desirable problem imo.
My typical opponents in my bracket have similar zeta counts but 20-30 more characters in the gear 11 and 12 range. I still pull off some wins, but I am clearly playing from a disadvantage in every match up that doesn't use fleets. On the other hand, when we do get to use fleets, I hold on defense 3 times and am able to take my opponents' fleet out in 1 try. So there is clearly a reason to have strong fleets for some GAs, they should just make the matchmaking systems account for if fleets are in use or not, so there isn't such a disadvantage for investing
I would have no issue with scaling rewards to skill level.
Pitting players against comparable opponents gives them a chance to win or to learn from a loss. Getting stomped every time just discourages them from playing.
He does state that they tried many variations of matchmaking algorithms, weighting this team or toon more, adding this, etc but it only ended up making more unbalanced match ups. It's still something they are working on but most of the 'suggestions' that appear on here or reddit, etc have already been tried, to some degree.
Just some food for thought
I'm not sure what's preferable though, the current system or being matched based on both roster strenght and player skill resulting in 50/50 winloss ratio across the board with better rewards for higher "skill tiers". It kinda depends on how much better the rewards will get and if they will be scaled correctly so that players can't "game the system".
Personally i prefer to be matched on roster strenght alone and let "skill" determine who wins. An argument could be made that developing a roster that's suitable for GA can be considered a "skill" aswell. I for one mostly win due to my roster, not because i'm such a great GA player. Please note that i'm not only referring to the optimal usefull toons/GP ratio, but also the choice of which toons you geared, which zetas you applied, how good your mods are and how you choose to equip them. Having alot of g12 toons, but relatively low GP due to having very little fluff doesn't necessarily make your roster suitable for GA. It does obviously help and ideally you want both; the right toons/mods and a great g12/GP ratio.
End of the day if you want to reward players for being better it will inevitably lead to other players being discouraged because they're not that great at swgoh, there's no way around that. All the game needs to do in my opinion is provide equal oppertunity. Matchmaking based on GP kinda does that, it's far from ideal though.