Why was GP Matchmaking so bad?
I've been playing for a while, and have seen that GP matchmaking was worse than the current system, but have never understood why. Just curious.
0
- 61.6K General Discussion
- -35 Developer Q&A Archive
- 2.6K New Players
- 30.7K Arena and Character Strategy
- 3.2K Individual Events
- 5.5K Guild Events
- 4.7K PVP and Rivalry
- 51K Guild Recruitment
- 751 Art and Media
- 4.2K Off Topic
Howdy, Stranger!
Replies
Also, there is no way to remove gear nor de-level characters, so the bros who leveled and geared up CUP and co for the sake of helping their guilds were eternally punished for doing so in GAC just by having the GP in their account of units which could never swing a single battle/match in GAC.
It really was pretty awful.
Additionally, the GP brackets for GAC could be worked around. Players who were close to the upper barrier would hoard gear for a few weeks and then release those updates after the GAC was division locked. It wouldn't affect the first week but players could easily come up against someone with 1-2M GP more than the bracket upper end in the second, third or fourth week. If you looked at the players at the tope end of Kyber at the end of a season you'd find the vast majority were well above the upper end of the bracket, usually by a million or more, which is way more than natural progression of a few weeks.
Old MM: see 3-5 GLs a month, most when it was approaching kyber. Matches were all over the place but none were "eye up that razor" tier of garbage cuz, while not perfect, we wouldn't fight people from a different galaxy of weight class.
New MM: I see GLs nonstop and my record?
9 GLs (REY, SLKR, JML, JMK, SEE, LV, Jabba, Exe and Pro) in arodium 3. After a year nobody came close to my record, not even halfway there and they at least have a GL to fight some of that.
Gotta say i also saw a dramatic rise in amounts of "No Shows", even in arodium after the improved grand arena.
Win? Feel hollow cuz enemy didn't show, attacked for 10 points or most victorys are boring one sided beatdowns...wooo
Lose? Geee weez Batman, who would have thought that a guy with 4 land gls and gl fleets would get a full clear on me? Who would? Oh yeah, me who also betted againts myself a ice cream.
Fun? I had it 2 months ago, very close match and akshualy, a guy in my weight class instead of 4-5m gp more with all GAC crons.
Neither system is/was perfect. But i prefer the old one to this clown car experience.
My personal experience in GAC since new matchmaking has been way less no shows, in actual fact I have had one no show in the last 4 months. Never have seen 4 GL fleets.
As an officer of the guild, if we are at the old system, no one will ever gearing those "platoon fillers" in TBs.
And most of the time (at least at rounds 2-3) I was "winning" or "loosing" based on my GP (means we both have 0 on attack). Mostly loosing, because I usually had one of the lowest GP in matched groups, but once I even "won" the 1 place without even opening GAC screen.
So don't know about what increase in "no shows" people are talking, I only experience a dramatic increase of "shows"...
Currently you can have an equal skill rating as someone else but they can have 9.5m GP to your 8m or less.
So people here actually think it’s fair to have an equal skill rating but someone have 1.5m GP advantage which equates to roughly a 25 relic toon advantage.
Using both skill rating and GP would make for a vastly more fair GAC.
It's a lot harder, more than you think, to define "similar" in a two dimension space, compared to along one single axis. However many parameters you take into account, in the end you need to drive one single value from all of them, because you need to sort players by one single value. So any formula you define to arrive at the single value is bound to lose some information encoded in some of the parameters. That's where you introduce "unfairness" into the matchmaking.
An effect of this would be to end up stratifying player by GP eventually, and would in fact end up limiting player progression. At some point, a player might reach a point where they have no players with the same SR in their GP range. It’s not a sustainable long term system, and would result in the same sort of problems as seen previously.
It would also reintroduce the issue of players not applying upgrades to avoid bloat, which is unhelpful to other game modes.
To summarize a response based on the last 2 comments:
1.) Not sustainable- at some point for the players who do really well this would be the case. However at that point the system can begin to expand the thresholds. To matchmake the closest GP’s AND skill. Let’s face it, this would affect only the 1% while the vast majority would have a lot more fair matches to play.
2.) Roster bloat- I’m not tracking with you on this. IF it was matching based strictly on GP yes, however with the skill number introduced into it that shouldn’t happen. If someone doesn’t apply upgrades they will still be facing opponents with skill levels similar to theirs. So if they start winning due to having a lean roster their skill level goes up which in turn will match them against stronger opponents which in tune will force them to have to upgrade in order to keep winning.
I find this highly unlikely. I am not saying they need to be matched with someone with exactly their same skill number and gp. But there can be a range. Currently we are being matched with just skill levels. Add in a rule that sorts based on a 500k range. So you would end up with a group of 8 players with similar skill number (as is the case right now) but then all those in that group wouldn’t see anyone higher than 250k gp than them or 250k lower than them.
This range is just an example, testing would need to be done to see what the actual range would need to be. But I think this gets my point across.
The only players having a tough time are the lower GP newer players who get stuck paired up with inactives who may suddenly decide to become active.. A simple way to fix that problem would be to create a new division and shove the inactives in there and make them fight eachother to win their way out...
Here’s a hypothetical analogy:
Imagine you are being paired with another person. The rule for the pairing is that the other person must be male.
Now add that they must be male and over 6’ tall.
Now let’s add they have to wear glasses.
The more factors you add, the smaller and smaller the available pool gets. You’d create situations where there was no valid match up, or you were playing the same two or three people over and over again.
And GP limiting upgrading has to do with whether or not the upgrade was GAC useful or not. So units that may be needed for a TB platoon for example would get skipped because they bloated your roster GP for GAC.
I respectfully disagree. I’ve been playing since the game first released. My current GAC has players in the 9.7 and 10.4m gp range while I am in 8.4m gp range. Last GAC round had multiple players in the 9.4-9.8 range. I am consistently matched against players with 6+ GL’s. I have 4. This gives them a huge advantage in matches being matched against people with 2 less GL’s. Yes there is the GL counters I could try and go for or invest in trying to get more GL’s to make up. But that is a whole different argument all together. The point is GAC could be made much more fair using a 2 factor system using skill AND gp.
With static variables as you have described here yes. With ranges that doesn’t happen. It’s not just male over 6’. It’s male that is between 5’5 and 6’5 I am suggesting.
Right now the matches have such wide variations you get male that is 3’5 vs male that is 10’. All I am asking for them to do is narrow down a little lol
Most of rhe time i end up winning because of ships.... And ships are getting boring same old same old (No mod variation)
Considering the absolute range of heights versus the absolute range of GP, I consider the static heights analagous to your GP ranges. If it makes you feel better though, let’s say 6’0 to 6’2. It still limits the available pool of pairings.
May I ask what division you are in?
Yes, but you’re missing the inherent issue in this proposed system, which is confirmed by your current experiences.
Consider this…
What if you actually have a higher skill rating than everyone below 9m GP? Should you then be limited to your current division by this? Or would you have matches against people with a similar GP, but lower SR such that you can no longer gain SR, because you’re beating people with a lower SR. This isn’t even considering the fact that you might just end up playing the same people over and over and over and over again, as the very top end of your GP range.
Is the current system perfect? No. But is including GP as a factor any better? Quite possibly not, and it would require a lot of back end work I’m sure which could cause further issues. I’d rather they spent time working on more new content than trying to possibly improve something which is currently not that bad of a system. Keeping it as is also benefits other game modes, as already stated.
FYI - I’m usually the smallest GP player in my brackets and am outmatched almost every time on GLs, usually by several. I just take it as evidence that I’m good enough to beat most players who actually have a similar roster than mine.
There is plenty of people that play this game where I don’t believe this would be an issue at all. Just look at how many arena shards there are.
I’m not sure this is how it would work. Your skill rating would increase if you win therefore putting you against others with a similar skill rating and increasing your division. I’m of the belief that if you win regardless of who you beat, your skill rating should increase.
As I stated in an earlier comment you wouldnt gave the same people over and over since your skill rating would increase and for the fact that there is a lot of people that play this game. Additionally how is that any different than what occurs in the arena? You play against those same people don’t you?
I am currently bouncing between kyber 3 and 2 depending on who CG matches me with. At this moment I am kyber 2. If I lose this match I drop to 3.
You are describing a situation where you are the odd one out but your opponents match well with eachother. Then you being the odd one out should show you, you are at the limit of where you can climb and your competitors have a better chance at winning. This is perfectly normal to me. After all, matchmaking isn't simply about making each single match as even as possible. It keeps working as an accumulation of match after match.
Again I will have to disagree. GAC was to be a replacement of shard arenas. Which is why they removed crystal payouts from arenas. In the old days I could at least compete for my payouts and achieve number 1. Now I am forcibly matched against people that are out of my league preventing me from actually competing for top payouts.
But what if there are no other players at your GL with your SR? What if you are the pinnacle of 8.4m GP accounts? How could you climb further?
Should you gain SR for beating someone with a lower SR, maybe, but to what level? Eventually your gain in SR surely would be capped at 1 and at that point you are effectively prevented from climbing further. In this system, no matter how hard it may be to climb, every account has the potential to do so.