GAC Matchmaking: punished to be good in the own weightclass
Whenever CG brings in something new , they fail as much as possible. Whats wrong to matchmake only by GP ?! There are players with focused rosters. They invested a lot of time to find out how to farm and mod effective. they worked out an advantage with intelligent playing. And now they are punished for that !!!! CG takes away their hard-earned advantage ! That is like the WBF forces a good flyweight boxer to fight against middleweight, cause he trained hard to be good in his weightclass!! What a fool would do this?! Now I have to fight against players with much more GP, and my advantage of being a good player is blown away, cause I will be defeated only because I have much less teams to fight with!!! Dont the developers think one minute about the things they do ?!
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I don't have a particular strategy to play in Grand Arena, only I try to maximize the power of useful characters. But I think think this is a common strategy, useful in Territory Wars.
All my opponents have teams comparable to mine (Revan, Darth Revan, Rebels, First Order, Old Republic, Night Sisters...), so in this type of matchmaking EA done a good job.
But they have characters GP from 2.400.000 to 2.672.000 while mine is 2.238.000 (only characters, no ships).
Considering I have to deploy 8 teams (they was 6 the last week..).... I don't have possibilities to win any battle in this GA...
Think you dont understand what sandbagging ist.. When you have 3 M an remove all your mods to get 2,6M.. thats sandbagging... To farm effectiv and build a good roster is NOT sandbagging. What your re saying is like a boxer who says "Hey I trained wrong and have less talent, so let me fight only against boxers who are much smaller than me, otherwise I cannot win.."
Same here... I have to deploy too much teams, cause its adapted to the GP of the much stronger opponents. For them its no problem, cause they have about 5-6 more 100k teams than me.. But thats the reason I will lose.. I dont have enough teams.. my opponents have about 20-30 more g11/g12 toons than me.. so how should that work?! They will win by pure mass..
How are they punished? How are focused rosters at a disadvantage? How is a focused roster, with 20 great teams and nothing more at a disadvantage compared to a fluffy roster with 20 good-to-great teams and a lot of added fluff?
You have the ability to slowly turn your roster into a more focused roster.
Dont know exactly how this matching works..or if it works at all... Maybe it does not make the big difference in 5M+ range.. but when i have 8 great teams and 6 defense spots.. and he has 3 great teams and 15 good teams.. he will always win only by the mass.. 500k-1,5M means not, they have fluffy rosters.. I might have some better mods and my best toons are stronger, but they have much more g11/g12 than me..
FWIW, I always fell in the middle of my group of 8 under the old system. I’ve never gone 0-3 and I’ve never gone 3-0. Most of the time I’ve gone 2-1 and a few times 1-2. The problem under the old system is that there were so many times when either I or my opponent essentially had no chance. It’s boring no matter which side of that equation you land on.
Small sample size, I know, but my first round matchup in this GA was by a mile the most competetive and interesting matchup I’ve had in the mode. I won by about 15 banners, after clearing one last tough defensive squad with essentially leftovers. My hope is that everybody, no matter how they built their rosters is getting better and more interesting matchups.
@Waqui A focused roster shy of 4M GP does not have 20 great squads. It doesn't have 16 great squads. It probably has 12 great squads, since that's what it's been asked to do since December when GA started. The cancelled exhibition season asked us to place six teams. That was increased to eight with the latest iteration (despite any explanation being provided, as committed by CG SBCrumb in this post here
When matchmaking is extended to a broader rosters but only the top 80 toons are counted, there's a monumental impact if you fail. Take this matchup example:
Without looking at the impact of actual squad formation, player B has a slight conundrum - do I place 40 G11/12 characters on defense and risk having a single high quality squad left in the event of a failure or do I place a less robust defense in order to ensure I have enough firepower to clear the board if a lost battle occurs but then risk losing on banners?
Some would say "this is where strategy comes into play", but why does that strategy ONLY come into play for Player B? Player A has 4+ extra squads of wiggle room. This also implies that EVERY G11/12 character in that list is a usable component of some team, which we all know is not the case. There are raid specific toons that get geared and have utility for a time (e.g. the Visas Marr's of the world) or toons with middling utility that get bumped out of a squad for more useful toons (e.g. when Range Trooper came along - or any number of Bounty Hunters). I understand the same roster impacts occur for Player A, but with more "uncounted" toons, that player is more able to absorb the outliers.
So the feature producers have essentially gone from "penalizing" broad rosters with the initial use of GP as a determinant to "penalizing" lean rosters by ignoring meaningful swaths of GP from broader rosters while increasing the amount of GP you need to use to compete.
It's smart on their part, as it incentivizes GP growth, which correspondingly incentivizes spend. However, the current matchmaking algo flies in the face of the spirit of a progression-based feature based on the likelihood it's using some form of Elo-like rating behind the scenes. While I don't have hard evidence of this, the GP spread of the brackets I've been able to look at is much larger for accounts that have been previously successful in GA.
Said another way, an account that's 2.3M GP in toon GP that has gone 12-12 in GA rounds to date is one of the higher GPs in its bracket while an account that's 2.3M GP in toon GP that has gone 24-0 is giving away between 200k and 600k of character GP. This is all well and good if there weren't leagues to progress in, but far worse 2.3M toon GP accounts are going to progress into a higher league because they get easier match ups. There's a fundamental fairness there that did not exist in the original GA format (since there was no progression).
I'm not sure that the matchmaking is as much of a problem, though, as the increase in the number of required squads without notification. I would have meaningful matches at 6 squads in my current group, since that's what I've been spending the last six months building for (while also taking into consideration TB and legendary requirements - merging the two wherever possible). Stretching my roster to 8 while matching me up against competition that has a bigger bench that might not be included in the match but not on the stat sheet seems like an unfair penalty to pay as it limits my ability to progress relative to my peers.
@uno Anyone that sets clones or ewoks against a slow Nest modded for tenacity isn't the subject of the discussion. My last opponent had a 350k toon GP advantage. I had Malak, he had zzPadme and zGrievous squads. None of the other toons on his GG squad would have registered in the top 80, but because of their unique synergies represent a really great low GP option.
@uno I agree with you about banners and cross divisional matches. In the single GA format I would have been more likely to agree with you about blowout wins and losses, if there were prize tiers. What they did instead, was make it easier for less competitive rosters at the same GP to progress within the same division. In a true "ranked championship" I would expect to lose to those ranked better than me. Based on some of the rosters sitting in the top 1000 right now, I'm confident that's not the case. But it doesn't really matter all that match. The group of players that are effected by this change is small compared to the group of players that can finally win a GA match. Maybe that's a better thing for the game overall even if it's questionably unfair to those facing significantly stiffer competition for the same rewards.
A non-focused player will not even have 12 great squads. A focused player will get those last great squads long before a non-focused player. I don't see how players with focused rosters are punished.
Yes, the strategy aspect of GAC is great. I love it.
Player A still has less great squads, remember. Those extra squads of wiggle will be mediocre/weak squads. Player B will easily catch up to this. He might even have caught up in the few days before this second exhibition ran.
I don't see it the same way as you. I don't see how they are penalized. Those rosters that require more teams, will soon catch up and move ahead again.
Really? I have 2 accounts...
Account A: #38 arena, #1 fleet arena, sith smiter title, 33% GA wins
Account B: #230 arena, #51 fleet arena, 100% GA wins (this account has never lost)
So I guess I am just a bad player with account A?
Guess what, I happen to be the same player. The difference is that I was hardcore sandbagging on account B, to the point that I didn't even activate toons I wasnt going to use. That's not being good; that's gaming the system.
You must have missed the sandbagging part.
I am focused. My roster in this game? Less focused, but not among the fluffiest ones. What difference does all this make in our discussion?
@Waqui I don't consider your roster non-focused. I consider you having more than 12 great squads (BH, Ewoks, FO, GR, Seps, IT, JKR, ****, NS, OR, JTR, R1, Qira / Nest, DR, CLS, Traya, EP) - at least 17 by my count, deployed differently depending on the strengths of your opponent's roster. Enough for 8 solid defensive placements, eight counters and at least one coherent squad leftover. And outside of R1 or Ewoks aren't really giving up much in the way of an easy clear.
And the difference it all makes is that you are the exact roster construction I'm up against in this GA. I'm giving up 500k GP and 300k Char GP. I have 6 more G12, you have 14 more G11 and 7 more zetas - most of them placed on your Ewoks ;-). I have Malak and an odd separatist team. You have usable Ewoks (at least on offense), FO, GR and the basis for both a GG droid team and solid Geos under Dooku. In a six squad placement, I'm pretty confident i win (and not because I place DR/Malak on defense, which I mostly don't). In an eight squad placement, your depth, conferred by your larger toon GP falling outside of the top 80 character match, puts me in a much more difficult position.
That's my whole point. It's easy for you to provide single line responses with no backing information, but when we actually drill down into some detail to understand the issue, it's perhaps a little more nuanced and complex, no?
Neither do I. However, it's still less focused than I am. Furthermore, I have been matched against players with far more focused rosters several times.
I don't consider my DR, ewok and seperatists great, but I'm working on it. I don't consider R1 to be great.
But again:
What's my personal roster got to do with our discussion?
It looks like you have the advantage then, if you apply a sound strategy.
I disagree. Your Malak team can probably block two zones. If you don't turn this to your advantage, if you battle me, you really should work on your strategy. A weak strategy has got nothing to do with matchmaking.
It appears to be easy for you to blame your bad strategy on match-making.
And you didn't provide a single line to support your claims in this long post. Your roster and mine are irrelevant. Your weak strategy undermines your whole argument. I'm sure, I could win, if using your roster against mine.