Pros
Seemingly endless strategy and execution of strategy ( I suppose it’s negative if you don’t like it )
More content to chat to guild mates about
Extra rewards , good rewards at that.
Extra activity , break from mundane tasks
Con
Flooded forums with complaints by people who’s opinions don’t matter nearly as much as they think they do.
Overall impression
It is %100 the same fun as previous grand arenas with tighter matches , and better rewards.
Opponents would message back and forth in both kitten talk and congratulatory ways. Both of which add to the fun of the game.
Hello everyone! Please remember to keep thing clean and on topic. There is no need to be rude or attack another player if you do not agree with their post.
I’m curious who this was directed at (not that anyone needs to answer). I didn’t read all of everyone’s post, but it seemed like a very civil and on topic discussion. If anything, it was odd forum arguments hadn’t started in relation to GAC matchmaking lol.
I saw the post that had to be removed or at least the initial post and rebutal. I imagine it might have had a few more back and forth to necessitate a removal that I didn't see. But it was the standard lean vs fluff debate and how it used to be a thing to build multiple squads needed for multiple events. Then switched over to a more streamlined hyperfocused approach and it's effect on the old ga mm compared to this newer gac mm. I happened to give the rebutal a thumbs up due to how well he/she countered the initial "spark" so to speak and agreed with that point of view, which happened to explain why many of us are in a "fluff" situation. It was straight and to the point with no ugliness I could read into. But what happened after that I don't know lol.
I'm kind of surprised, too, since it was my post and I don't recall being rude or attacking. That said, I haven't checked the board again until just now, so for all I know the person to whom I was replying was rude and attacky. *shrugs*
I wish they'd edited out my quote of the original post, if that's what caused the deletion--I think I made some good points about how the game has evolved over time and why there are legit reasons to be in favor of the new matchmaking. Oh well. Maybe I'll just post those a second time later on--can't do it now, got a territory war to do
Yeah I knew just didn't want to name names and have that removed lol. But very solid points you made. Good luck and game on!
It was pretty clear that it was based off of more than just top 80 GP and prior GA performance was used as a variable in matchmaking.
@cannonfodder_iv What do you mean by this? Why do you think its wrong? Do you have evidence for the claim?
I dont agree or disagree - just dont understand the statement or reasoning behind it. Thanks.
@VonZant First off, thank you for the thread. Best thing I've seen on the forum.
I play(ed) three accounts. 3.9M GP (main), 3.0M GP (jr) and 2.5M GP (iii). main and iii were what would be considered lean. Both had lost a single GA round each in the entirety of GA (I forgot to sign up for a few). Jr. usually finished a healthy mix of 3 wins (estimating 1/3 to 1/4) and 2 wins. Jr. didn't have JKR until the most recent event. Main was probably the "****end of the tip of the spear" (JKR, DR and Malak all first appearance), and iii was a very lean "2nd pass" account.
Here are the relevant character GPs for two of the accounts.
Jr was generally middle of the road in its GAC brackets. Never the highest GP. Never the lowest GP. the 2.5M GP account was always the lowest, usually giving up anywhere from 500k to 1.2M overall GP and at least 200k character GP. It routinely got matched against multiple DR/Malak teams with multiple G13s (it doesn't have a single one), and generally top 20 arena ranks (it had stopped climbing by the time GAC started so its own arena rank didn't seem to come into consideration in MM - it was clearly up against very diligent players). As you can see, top 60 is within 1000 points of each other. Top 80 within 10k, but Jr is higher and didn't see the level of competition that iii did.
Also, I checked out the bracket for the (3.9M) main account in the first round of the full exhibition, then searched through other guilds for players with equivalent top 80 GP. I found multiple (something like 12 accounts in looking at just three guilds) that had a closer top 80 to me than the 4.5M GP accounts that were in that first bracket, strongly indicating that other factors were in play in MM than just pure top 80 toon GP.
The common thread between the two "lean" accounts that were getting noticeably outsized competitors in just the first round when everyone was still in Carbonite was that they had more success in prior GAs. This is consistent with the new MM philosophy of providing "competitive" matches. Unfortunately for me, the lent itself to being matched against much deeper rosters against players of similar skill level and diligence.
I don't have enough data to perform any sort of modeling (and really don't care about GAC as a feature anymore). But, the information above is the basis for the comment you asked about.
Thanks.
So I guess I dont understand the issue then? You dont like it because your accounts that won a lot had to fight tougher fights, or you dont like it because your lean accounts had tougher fights?
Both of those would seem valid reasons to have tougher fights to me...
Although I'm not sure if record is taken into account and I thought they claimed that it was not - its just gp and wins/losses sort us out. I may be misremembering though.
I enjoyed this GAC, was really fun and some battles/encounters where sooo close and thrilling, in a nutshell my observations and takeaways (i'm in Div. 2 and finished in aurodium, just short before Kyber):
- the first few GA's where masterable for me, had to work for it, but managed to finish always in top 4, just in the last GA things got harder where i finished 6th, but i guess that's how it's intended and ok for me, with a bit more strategy i could've done better in the last round.
- Overall fair and balanced matches, didn't face any unbeatable teams (Malak)
- feats are fun, BUT please, stop with that 24 hours time limit to accomplish
- last but not least, rewards, adding a gear box to the final reward would be awesome and only fair, for the work performed
Swiss Garde Officer, drop me a message if you're interested joining
Given the magnitude of what was being attempted with GAC, I think it went rather well. That said, there are clearly some areas for improvement...
Scale squad-based feats e.g. 'win x battles with under-sized squad' by Division:
• at lower Divisions the feats may be too difficult or even impossible because they only deploy a few squads
* at higher Divisions some of these may be under-rewarded in relative to their total points income
Shrink the matchmaking pools to yield better matches:
• rosters being matched by top x GP seems to work quite well in the middle Divisions but at the high end there can be large variances in the number of high-powered toons players have beyond x which gives one player more tactical options than their opponent
• further limiting the matchmaking pools by League did not seem to make much difference for the most part, probably because there were still thousands of players in each League and brackets could span at least 3 Divisions. The notable exception to this was Kyber league going into the final GA where the pools were much smaller but that was too little, too late.
Review how scoring is scaled across the Divisions:
• there was a very clear pattern later in the GAC where the top players in the middle Divisions reached Kyber sooner and in significantly larger numbers than their counterparts in the top and bottom Divisions. It seems unlikely that the middle Division's top players are magically that much better than their top Division counterparts so clearly there are other factors in play.
Improve auto-deploy:
• with many feats reliant on squad-based victories, the loophole where deploying a single squad prevents auto-deploy is now completely unacceptable. There is absolutely no strategic benefit to doing this vs deploying trash squads, the only purpose it serves is to deprive your opponent of the ability to work on their feats. That is a bad gameplay experience.
Rethink drawn matches:
• using highest total GP was always arbitrary and of questionnable value - a simple coin-flip would have sufficed - but using top x GP, it is now even more inscrutible and unfair, given that a player can use toons beyond that point. A simple coin-flip would be better. Lowest deployed GP (offense+defense) for the match would be better still but only if those values were clearly displayed.
On the tie thing, I might be biased because I won 2 ties in GAC but having it go to the highest GP roster does encourage people to grow their rosters AND mods.
The first tie I won I needed 61 points in the final battle to tie. That player had removed mods completely from 2 of his g11 FO toons in the squad I beat, and he was clearly trying to game the MM system. That kind of behaviour should not be encouraged. IMHO.
On the tie thing, I might be biased because I won 2 ties in GAC but having it go to the highest GP roster does encourage people to grow their rosters AND mods.
The first tie I won I needed 61 points in the final battle to tie. That player had removed mods completely from 2 of his g11 FO toons in the squad I beat, and he was clearly trying to game the MM system. That kind of behaviour should not be encouraged. IMHO.
I disagree about the ties issue. It match-makes based off your top X toons, you have no control over whether you're getting paired up against people with higher or lower top X GP.
You cannot control your own victory because you cant control your own GP against who the system decides you're fit to fight.
Perdonal Experience
I really enjoyed the game mode. Every match I had the results were pretty close. I got no sense of cheating and each match was enjoyable. I won 10/12 and both losses were people I could've beaten. I'm very lean so I was faced against people with substantially higher gp but things still felt even simply because of how heavily invested in mods I am.
Social experience
First, I feel the format really needs clarification of intent. Typically, higher scores are a result in uneven matchups. And very close matchups may result in lower scores. And this is where mm hits heads with scoring. The only possible solution to both that I can think of would be switching to an elo system.
Second, rewards felt very anti climatic. Currently this can be excused since it was an exhibition.
Third, cheating needs dealt with and the decisions regarding whistleblowers may need reevaluated.
Do you have any idea how to cheat or what to look for. If not , having no sense of cheating is a silly thing to say , you might have enjoyed the event, but have no clue as to the actual amount of cheating happening or not.
We're going to need more prize tiers (not divisions, though we could probably do with more of those, too, but that's not my concern right now) if we're going to add gear boxes. Right now you only get rewards up to 499, then everyone 500+ (which can be thousands of players) get whatever's left over.
I think a variable box with gear scaling on your rank (Aurodium, Chromium, whatever) and division and placement (1st, 10,000th, etc). But I don't know what that'd look like. Basically maybe just the rank promotion rewards a second time.
On the tie thing, I might be biased because I won 2 ties in GAC but having it go to the highest GP roster does encourage people to grow their rosters AND mods.
Does it? Aside from the fact that ties are.uncommon and impossible to predict, the matchups are arbitrary and you cannot predict them, nor influence them in your favor.
If the aim is to reward the more skilled player then in the event of a tie that would be the player who used less GP (offense + defense) than his opponent, not the one who happens to have more GP available to work with.
The first tie I won I needed 61 points in the final battle to tie. That player had removed mods completely from 2 of his g11 FO toons in the squad I beat, and he was clearly trying to game the MM system. That kind of behaviour should not be encouraged. IMHO.
That is one of the good points of matching by 'top {x} characters': if you try to sandbag by de-modding a top x character you are clearly hurting yourself and if you try to de-mod a character outside of the top x, it makes no difference to matchmaking and may still hurt your chances if you find that you need that character in a match. And that is exactly what your opponent did, he hurt his own chances of victory.
I enjoyed my experience with GAC. I found the MM spot on for fairness (aside from one match where I clearly had the advantage in GP and teams to use) - although I understand not everyone had the same experience as I did - and I had some really interesting conversations with my opponents. I am interested to see how my experience differs being the small fish in div 2 rather than the big one in div 3.
Rewards seemed... fair, although I’d risk asking for a little more like a full gear piece for placing first within the group of 8 for the round. Scrap that just give us more omegas please 🤞
I would love to have more statistics at my disposal. Such as total battles won, average banners earned, # of territories cleared, # of defensive holds, most used character/team. Icing on the cake would be # of debuffs landed, # of failed attacks, w/l ratio or percentage, total banners earned. Plus many more!!
I want it to feel like a championship where I can track my progress and compare with my friends. I understand that it may not be possible to code but for me this would help turn it up to another level.
I have more requests for analysing performances of myself and my opponents but I also understand that GAC is still in its infancy with creases to iron out and more content to be added so for now I’m happy with baby-steps as long as it keeps the ravenous wolves of impatience at bay.
GAC is a great way to utilise a large chunk of our developed rosters and I’d really to see this game mode given the love and care it deserves. It’s not perfect but, lots of us love this game, love using the toons we have spent time and effort (and of course $ - for some) and would appreciate the devs taking the time to listen to us and consider our suggestions.
I'm from Division 4 (2.8 million GP now), reached Kyber just before the last match
Lost twice (only encountered one Malak in the entire thing and this one was G13 and the first time I fought a bug squad (made me laugh as they chewed my team up)
Only fought one person from my division, every other one was from Div 3 and had between 250k and 1 mil GP more than me
I just loved the fact that I got to use so much of my roster on a regular basis. Not just the one arena squad or the ones required for TB but pretty much all the fun and good bits
Only had two blowout matches and I did feel a bit sorry for them, not even having JKR does mean a big disadvantage
Overall I really enjoyed it and had many close match ups which were fun to participate in
Two things I would like to see added to this game mode which I enjoyed:
First: Increase the GP weighting of G12 and G13 toons. There should be a significant increase in GP ranks for these gear levels and make Gear 13 significantly higher than G12 (G11 << G12 << G13).
Second: Allow users to review which teams including mods were used against our defenses.
Overall I enjoyed the event and I felt it was competitive in my Division (3). I had matches against Malak, but not many (I do not have Malak). This didn't really anger me, if you were able to get Malak then you deserved to have an advantage.
On the last Round of matches with Kyber at stake I did get disappointed my defenses failed to perform as well as they did in previous rounds, so the thought of my opponents potentially being cheaters did creep into my head, but it is likely the matches were just very even. (However, I would also point out the higher your league ranking the more likely you are to encounter a cheater. After all no competitive player would cheat in the hopes of losing)
I hate having the cheating thought even be a possibility so please let us review the Matches for our defenses...
Two things I would like to see added to this game mode which I enjoyed:
First: Increase the GP weighting of G12 and G13 toons. There should be a significant increase in GP ranks for these gear levels and make Gear 13 significantly higher than G12 (G11 << G12 << G13).
Yes, that seems strange to me too. Granted GP is a measure of resource investment rather than combat power but the g13 finishers represent a considerable amount of both and the fact that they require a lot of new resources opens up the possibility to give them a higher GP value without disrupting existing equipment values. So I don't understand why the dev team chose to give them such a low GP value.
Two things I would like to see added to this game mode which I enjoyed:
First: Increase the GP weighting of G12 and G13 toons. There should be a significant increase in GP ranks for these gear levels and make Gear 13 significantly higher than G12 (G11 << G12 << G13).
Yes, that seems strange to me too. Granted GP is a measure of resource investment rather than combat power but the g13 finishers represent a considerable amount of both and the fact that they require a lot of new resources opens up the possibility to give them a higher GP value without disrupting existing equipment values. So I don't understand why the dev team chose to give them such a low GP value.
I'm getting a "little" conflicted from my previous opinion on G13 toons.... I only have 3 and one of them is sitting in like 30th place in GP which I thought was ridiculous... but when I think about it the toon has no lead, no crazy this or that... it's just a one trick pony that hits real hard.
So maybe giving him more weight at a G13 is not really the right way to go... well "just on the G13" thing...
Maybe something out of the box like multiplying the GP of a G13 toon by 2500 to 5000 for each zeta equipped on the toon or something that way the God tier toons at 13 get more weight than that G13 toon with no zetas or something just for an extra speed on a ship...
I have definitely come around to the point of view that the issue is a tad bit more complex than "hey just throw 30k GP on a G13 toon"
maybe 2500 X the zetas on toon per 13
then 500 GP X the amount of skills on toon (basic, special, special, leader, unique, unique) = 3000
Then those really powerfull toons get a lot more weight than your G13 Poggle or spy...
IF you did "something" like that over 80 toons for top god tier players still only looking at 80-100k GP difference
which maybe could effect the matchup..
For lower mid tier players I guess only looking at a 30-40k difference not sure if that would effect anything unless adding more weight (points to Xzetas and specials)
like I said its become more than Add 30k per each G13 toon in complexity... but I'm sure they are working on something.... still scary to see G12 bistans and Scarrifs weighted more than a G13 toon.....
Will be interesting in anything they decide to change either way
Replies
Pros
Seemingly endless strategy and execution of strategy ( I suppose it’s negative if you don’t like it )
More content to chat to guild mates about
Extra rewards , good rewards at that.
Extra activity , break from mundane tasks
Con
Flooded forums with complaints by people who’s opinions don’t matter nearly as much as they think they do.
Overall impression
It is %100 the same fun as previous grand arenas with tighter matches , and better rewards.
Opponents would message back and forth in both kitten talk and congratulatory ways. Both of which add to the fun of the game.
Yeah I knew just didn't want to name names and have that removed lol. But very solid points you made. Good luck and game on!
Thanks.
So I guess I dont understand the issue then? You dont like it because your accounts that won a lot had to fight tougher fights, or you dont like it because your lean accounts had tougher fights?
Both of those would seem valid reasons to have tougher fights to me...
Although I'm not sure if record is taken into account and I thought they claimed that it was not - its just gp and wins/losses sort us out. I may be misremembering though.
- the first few GA's where masterable for me, had to work for it, but managed to finish always in top 4, just in the last GA things got harder where i finished 6th, but i guess that's how it's intended and ok for me, with a bit more strategy i could've done better in the last round.
- Overall fair and balanced matches, didn't face any unbeatable teams (Malak)
- feats are fun, BUT please, stop with that 24 hours time limit to accomplish
- last but not least, rewards, adding a gear box to the final reward would be awesome and only fair, for the work performed
Scale squad-based feats e.g. 'win x battles with under-sized squad' by Division:
• at lower Divisions the feats may be too difficult or even impossible because they only deploy a few squads
* at higher Divisions some of these may be under-rewarded in relative to their total points income
Shrink the matchmaking pools to yield better matches:
• rosters being matched by top x GP seems to work quite well in the middle Divisions but at the high end there can be large variances in the number of high-powered toons players have beyond x which gives one player more tactical options than their opponent
• further limiting the matchmaking pools by League did not seem to make much difference for the most part, probably because there were still thousands of players in each League and brackets could span at least 3 Divisions. The notable exception to this was Kyber league going into the final GA where the pools were much smaller but that was too little, too late.
Review how scoring is scaled across the Divisions:
• there was a very clear pattern later in the GAC where the top players in the middle Divisions reached Kyber sooner and in significantly larger numbers than their counterparts in the top and bottom Divisions. It seems unlikely that the middle Division's top players are magically that much better than their top Division counterparts so clearly there are other factors in play.
Improve auto-deploy:
• with many feats reliant on squad-based victories, the loophole where deploying a single squad prevents auto-deploy is now completely unacceptable. There is absolutely no strategic benefit to doing this vs deploying trash squads, the only purpose it serves is to deprive your opponent of the ability to work on their feats. That is a bad gameplay experience.
Rethink drawn matches:
• using highest total GP was always arbitrary and of questionnable value - a simple coin-flip would have sufficed - but using top x GP, it is now even more inscrutible and unfair, given that a player can use toons beyond that point. A simple coin-flip would be better. Lowest deployed GP (offense+defense) for the match would be better still but only if those values were clearly displayed.
On the tie thing, I might be biased because I won 2 ties in GAC but having it go to the highest GP roster does encourage people to grow their rosters AND mods.
The first tie I won I needed 61 points in the final battle to tie. That player had removed mods completely from 2 of his g11 FO toons in the squad I beat, and he was clearly trying to game the MM system. That kind of behaviour should not be encouraged. IMHO.
I disagree about the ties issue. It match-makes based off your top X toons, you have no control over whether you're getting paired up against people with higher or lower top X GP.
You cannot control your own victory because you cant control your own GP against who the system decides you're fit to fight.
I can handle and even learn do deal with or even enjoy IF the rewards are worth it
For every 8 players 4 get trash.... if you get trash FOUR times You get trash and then at the end you get trash
1 day 3 resets your gac coin is gone and you have a shop you get to use ince every 2 months (depending on delay
Do you have any idea how to cheat or what to look for. If not , having no sense of cheating is a silly thing to say , you might have enjoyed the event, but have no clue as to the actual amount of cheating happening or not.
I think a variable box with gear scaling on your rank (Aurodium, Chromium, whatever) and division and placement (1st, 10,000th, etc). But I don't know what that'd look like. Basically maybe just the rank promotion rewards a second time.
If the aim is to reward the more skilled player then in the event of a tie that would be the player who used less GP (offense + defense) than his opponent, not the one who happens to have more GP available to work with.
That is one of the good points of matching by 'top {x} characters': if you try to sandbag by de-modding a top x character you are clearly hurting yourself and if you try to de-mod a character outside of the top x, it makes no difference to matchmaking and may still hurt your chances if you find that you need that character in a match. And that is exactly what your opponent did, he hurt his own chances of victory.
Also managed to hit kyber at Division 7.
Rewards seemed... fair, although I’d risk asking for a little more like a full gear piece for placing first within the group of 8 for the round. Scrap that just give us more omegas please 🤞
I would love to have more statistics at my disposal. Such as total battles won, average banners earned, # of territories cleared, # of defensive holds, most used character/team. Icing on the cake would be # of debuffs landed, # of failed attacks, w/l ratio or percentage, total banners earned. Plus many more!!
I want it to feel like a championship where I can track my progress and compare with my friends. I understand that it may not be possible to code but for me this would help turn it up to another level.
I have more requests for analysing performances of myself and my opponents but I also understand that GAC is still in its infancy with creases to iron out and more content to be added so for now I’m happy with baby-steps as long as it keeps the ravenous wolves of impatience at bay.
GAC is a great way to utilise a large chunk of our developed rosters and I’d really to see this game mode given the love and care it deserves. It’s not perfect but, lots of us love this game, love using the toons we have spent time and effort (and of course $ - for some) and would appreciate the devs taking the time to listen to us and consider our suggestions.
I'm from Division 4 (2.8 million GP now), reached Kyber just before the last match
Lost twice (only encountered one Malak in the entire thing and this one was G13 and the first time I fought a bug squad (made me laugh as they chewed my team up)
Only fought one person from my division, every other one was from Div 3 and had between 250k and 1 mil GP more than me
I just loved the fact that I got to use so much of my roster on a regular basis. Not just the one arena squad or the ones required for TB but pretty much all the fun and good bits
Only had two blowout matches and I did feel a bit sorry for them, not even having JKR does mean a big disadvantage
Overall I really enjoyed it and had many close match ups which were fun to participate in
First: Increase the GP weighting of G12 and G13 toons. There should be a significant increase in GP ranks for these gear levels and make Gear 13 significantly higher than G12 (G11 << G12 << G13).
Second: Allow users to review which teams including mods were used against our defenses.
Overall I enjoyed the event and I felt it was competitive in my Division (3). I had matches against Malak, but not many (I do not have Malak). This didn't really anger me, if you were able to get Malak then you deserved to have an advantage.
On the last Round of matches with Kyber at stake I did get disappointed my defenses failed to perform as well as they did in previous rounds, so the thought of my opponents potentially being cheaters did creep into my head, but it is likely the matches were just very even. (However, I would also point out the higher your league ranking the more likely you are to encounter a cheater. After all no competitive player would cheat in the hopes of losing)
I hate having the cheating thought even be a possibility so please let us review the Matches for our defenses...
I'm getting a "little" conflicted from my previous opinion on G13 toons.... I only have 3 and one of them is sitting in like 30th place in GP which I thought was ridiculous... but when I think about it the toon has no lead, no crazy this or that... it's just a one trick pony that hits real hard.
So maybe giving him more weight at a G13 is not really the right way to go... well "just on the G13" thing...
Maybe something out of the box like multiplying the GP of a G13 toon by 2500 to 5000 for each zeta equipped on the toon or something that way the God tier toons at 13 get more weight than that G13 toon with no zetas or something just for an extra speed on a ship...
I have definitely come around to the point of view that the issue is a tad bit more complex than "hey just throw 30k GP on a G13 toon"
maybe 2500 X the zetas on toon per 13
then 500 GP X the amount of skills on toon (basic, special, special, leader, unique, unique) = 3000
Then those really powerfull toons get a lot more weight than your G13 Poggle or spy...
IF you did "something" like that over 80 toons for top god tier players still only looking at 80-100k GP difference
which maybe could effect the matchup..
For lower mid tier players I guess only looking at a 30-40k difference not sure if that would effect anything unless adding more weight (points to Xzetas and specials)
like I said its become more than Add 30k per each G13 toon in complexity... but I'm sure they are working on something.... still scary to see G12 bistans and Scarrifs weighted more than a G13 toon.....
Will be interesting in anything they decide to change either way