War Matchmaking all over the place

[Prodigal Clint]

So I've noticed that the war matchmaking algorithm seems to have broadened greatly in the last few weeks. The result for our team has been incredibly lopsided matches of two types:

1. We are incredibly over powered compared w our opponent (in our current war we have 15 atomics, about 5 fully developed offenses on our side, compared to the other teams 5)
2. We stand no chance as the opponent has 25+ fully developed atomic bases with iron-medieval on the bottom

My hunch is that Nexon widened the acceptable "match" parameters somewhat recently, and its resulting in war matchups that are all over the place. Sure we get a match more quickly than we have in the past, but i certainly would prefer to wait longer (up to 12 hours lets say), for a good clean fair match. Our team used to run exclusively in 40v from May- August of last year (before sandbagging), and our usual search time would be 4-12 hours. The longest one was 22. Thats long sure, but the resulting fair match, where both sides were challenged, yet not overpowered, was more than worth the wait IMO. The resulting war was always a great experience.

With the upcoming update, that in my opinion will only further the problem of stacking and some teams having an incredible advantage due to the stronghold and spending abilities, matchmaking needs to be addressed as well. If it isn't, the experience for 95% of teams could get very tiresome quickly.

I looked through our war history, and would deem one matchup in the last 10 as fair, and that was against Korea United. 6 months ago I would say this was comepletely reversed, where one matchup in 10 would not be fair. Something is up. Please understand that the majority of the community I keep in touch with, seems to be having the same exeperience, and frankly it sucks.

 

[Bowmore]

I've noticed this too. Seen a couple matches where one side was considerably stronger across the board, in every single position (no sandbags), and involving more than just the same one alliance. Thought it was an anomaly but now I'm inclined to agree with you - something has changed in the matchup logic. I wonder if they had to widen the parameters because of player/alliance attrition?

Personally, I think they are placing too much importance on the idea of widely mixed Age alliances and wars. Newer players don't need to be paired up with Globals or Atomics to grow and enjoy this game, and quite frankly most (not all) Globals and Atomics aren't interested in supporting them. If War Alliances maintained a tighter range of Ages/Levels, we'd have a lot more opportunities for competitive matchups. And the sandbagging problem would go away too!

 

[GailWho]

Instead of widening the range of matches I think Nexon should consider shortening the window of opportunity to match... instead of making war searches available 24/7 There should be a schedule of searching days. Say... Monday Wednesday Friday... or continuous every other day. So everyone is on the same search schedule. And there is more likelihood of matching with an alliance that is more like you're own level of play. We have found through our H2h on DPrime that the more alliances you have searching at a similar level at the same time will be more likely to match. So if searches are concentrated on a certain day over the whole server then the same should happen on a bigger scale.

 

[Prodigal Clint]

Hard to pull off in a worlwide matchingmaking environment imo, and its not that matches are taking forever, its the lopsided nature of the matches themselves.

 

[Equal]

Prodigal Clint you forgot to mention, that on 50-70% of those fair matchups you can expect a stalemate. I am starting to go to a farming mode lol. Ww should be fun, it is a game, and now 70% of the wars is just struggle or easy wins.

 

[JNation]

I think it would probably make things easy but hard to pull off, getting everyone on the same schedule like that. It would be cool if the developer came up with mock alliances, kind of like the mock bases you attack and single player, or whatever you call them. The goal would be to get a certain amount of stars to claim a victory. i guess if you create enough of them you wouldnt run into search issues. Plus you can create extra challenges, like bonus loot for doing an attack under a certain length of time.

 

[Prodigal Clint]

Our stalemate ratio has gone down dramatically in the last two months (a result of atomic defences developing imo). From August to the release of atomic we stalemated 60-75% of all wars. Now its dramatically less. Probably depends on your team composition and likely matchups. It's still there for sure, but not nearly as omnipresent as it used to be for us. I do think that the wider matchup possibilities (my orignial point) has contributed to this as well.

 

[GailWho]

How hard could it be? All they would have to do is turn off ability to search wars on certain days. Once everyone is on the same schedule then everyone is searching on the same day. Since they did that 23 hr planing day thing we wouldn't even have to worry about times moving and having to reset.

 

[QuébecGlory]

Same for us, stalemates have slowed down. The result of less extra troops available imo. It was crazy for a while.

 

[Max_imus]

Yes, the balance of defense offense is pretty good now, Maybe it needs a bit of touvh ont the defensive side , .I really dont like the new war academy upgrade

 

[Wendy]

Prodigal Clint Thank you for bringing the matter on the forum!
We have been living the same situation for the last 2 weeks.
Moving from 35 to 20 and 25 two weeks ago, due to fort and tattics sales, we found 2 very very easy wars. Opponents had Global or Industrial players where we have Atomic or Globals. we also had a better bottom zone: a total mismatch.
Now then, is the third war that we are suffering the same thing, on the other side: we have 1 or 2 Atomic age players (level 189 and 185) and we have to face 10-14 of them, and we are talking of 200 lvl + players. And enemy wasn't sandbagging too!
It looks just a total disaster. Totally random!
Next match we could get an IA-EA alliance or 25 atomic, who knows.
Whatever change has been made to matchmaking is cleary not working and making things worst.
I hope it's temporary and will be fixed in 5.3

 

[jmemira]

I don't mind waiting for a war match at all, especially because facing several sandbagging teams in a row can be super demoralizing for the team, a depletion on trade goods (NTGs and otherwise) and requires a level of planning and presence that not all members can maintain while keeping a game/real life balance. Alternatively, when we are incredibly overpowered against our opponent, and they have no chance of a stalemate, the war is just as un-fun. It seems like a waste of two days and I'm sure they aren't enjoying it, seeing as we have often been on the other side (albeit against sandbaggers). I would rather wait 12 hours, or a day, to get a fair and fun matchup than be matched immediately against a team way out of our league (either above or below). We war back to back, nobody in my alli cares if we have to wait a bit longer for a match that turns out to be fair.

 

[Horsepower]

Forget waiting for a solution from Nexon. It will only become worse going forward after Stronghold arrives. A troop card Circus will amplify the pressure as more alliances give in to stacking. As much as I don't agree with stacking it is now permanently implanted in this game. The greedy Mickey Mouse approach by Nexon to bring in more troop cards via Stronghold will become a turning point for Dominations. Stacking and stalemate will become the norm. Alliances who think they're being honest by not stacking will be left in the dust of frustration over and over again.

 

[Radzeer]

Sandbaggers are crying, that they could not get a match with full force war squad. I feel for them. In the last 3 wars we faced 3 sandbaggers alliances where the average XP shortage on our side was 18.5, 19.5 and 19.9 without the sandbag accounts. We have still beaten the first sandbagger (+107 glory), and lost the other two, with a loss of 600 and 870 glory points. This is what I call outrageous.

 

[Veldan]

I really don't understand why they don't simply base matchmaking 100% on glory. Do away with all strength calculation etc and let the system stabilize itself. After a while, this would create far better matchups than the absolute garbage we have now.

 

[snes1]

I really don't understand why they don't simply base matchmaking 100% on glory. Do away with all strength calculation etc and let the system stabilize itself. After a while, this would create far better matchups than the absolute garbage we have now.

you're right they should. My alliance is currently on a serial war back-to-back with Encore!, a top 4, whereas we are just outside 100. Naturally we cannot anything out of them, we are getting toasted.

 

[Vixen]

Nb4powerup BFisher

can we have an update if there has been a recent change... seems to be a common thread amongst all the domi prime alliances and we are not happy!!!!

 

[Tenacious D]

Things are working well. Too much complaining.

 

[snes1]

Things are working well. Too much complaining.

Glad to hear its works well for you, Are you from Encore!? if yes, its not working well for me then, we have been matched twice against you guys.

 

[snes1]

I really don't understand why they don't simply base matchmaking 100% on glory. Do away with all strength calculation etc and let the system stabilize itself. After a while, this would create far better matchups than the absolute garbage we have now.

you're right they should. My alliance is currently on a serial war back-to-back with Encore!, a top 4, whereas we are just outside 100. Naturally we cannot anything out of them, we are getting toasted.