World War Matchmaking - Design Spotlight 2019

[Thebigtfish]

It's not very sensical to fix match making and expect players to continue to funnel money to pay for a broken game. The imbalance created by the "AR Fix" the fact that players are showing up maxed space age over night, while cheating players out of paid for troops. How after 2 years of none stop reporting by hundreds of players. I alone have hundreds of screen shots to CS and in other forums calling for action against cheaters and nothing has been done. And we get a bracketed sorry, well that's one sorry response.

 

[sulbin]

This problem is very old. Even cheater alliance is now number one alliance. Money is used at every World War. Even if you make a very good system, it's useless if it doesn't turn out to be a fair game. If you are technically unable to catch that point, you can prevent them from doing so in a way that will ensure that you are punished for it. Punish not only the individual but also the alliance of the punishment. (ex> glory reset ) There are so many cheater alliance now.There are always questions in the leadership community. " enemy is clean? " Isn't this a funny situation? we first think about whether the other person is a cheater or not. I've been reporting on this point, but nothing has changed. I don't want to hear sorry in parentheses. Show me more movement.

 

[No Angel]

Human nature at its best!

 

[sulbin]

Then do we have to wait every time without a sandbag? Is adding sandbag shortening time?

So what's different from what we're doing now is that if we wait for a long time, it'll just take us?
I don't know how long it'll take, but I hope it won't take too long.

 

[S_How]

Method for Comparing the Offensive and Defensive Ratings of a Base

Did you know that the matchmaking system creates a Rating of your base’s offensive and defensive capabilities? It does. Everything on your base contributes to these Ratings. However, the method that the old system (the current matching system on live) used to compare the final Ratings with other bases wasn’t a great predictor of win rate. There was some directional value in its ability to predict win rate. But, we knew this was an area where we could improve match quality.

That old system compared the absolute value of your Alliance’s Offensive/Defensive (O/D) Ratings with other potential Alliances. We ran some tests internally and discovered that when we match based on a percentage delta between those same Alliance’s O/D Ratings, we actually get a much stronger predictor for winning. So, we’re updating the system to compare Ratings by the percentage delta rather than absolute values.

Fun fact: If your Alliance has a ~10% higher Defensive Rating in the new system, your Alliance’s chances of winning are increased to 60% (Yes, defense matters. Start upgrading your neglected Catapults!).
Additional fun fact: The new system would not consider a 10% delta a “good” match. So don’t worry.

Hi, can you provide a practical example of this. Maybe its just friday and a week of work has my mind melted already. You couldnt be looking only at the delta, right? So, an alliance with an average of Space Age offense, and Atomic age defense would have a 2ish age delta. An alliance with an average of atomic offense and industrial defense would also have a 2ish age delta. I know there are a lot of factors that go into the total weight of offense and defense, and it doesnt scale perfectly with age, but just pretend it does for this example? Those two alliances wouldnt match, would they? It doesnt seem like that would violate the StDev check you make in the next point either? I think a better example might help me understand

 

[Sirhara]

A big thanks for your thoughtful efforts, looking forward to the new system

 

[Chadwicke]

Screw this game
screw reset glory
Screw the broken AR
Screw the Defense I paid for not working because ar is over powered
Screw waiting months to be fixed
And really really screw that a clear cheating team like swift gets to hack it to #1
​​​​​​refund time

 

[Xabar]

Ready for another fun fact?: If your Alliance is sandbagging in the new system, it may result in increased queue times as the system waits to find another sandbagging Alliance for you.

BHG_Muet Could you deep on it?. From this I understand that the offense weighs more than the defensive, in the MM. Thus, players that only improve offensive, will be less competitive in WW.

 

[Xabar]

BHG_Muet . When are this changes implemented?

 

[BHG_Muet]

No mind melt! Great question.

It is a delta compare but it compares the percentage delta between the total Ratings of the two Alliances. The total sum of Offensive and Defensive Ratings available in the Space Age are higher than the Cold War Age, which is higher than Atomic and so on.

So, in your specific example, the SA Offense with an Atomic Defense would result in an O/D Rating that is much higher than Atomic Offense with Industrial Defense. When matching, the system may have an acceptable percentage difference between these Ratings (let's say 2% is an "ideal" match). If there is a greater than 2% difference (which would be the case in the example you provided), they would not match.

----

This change was made partly because the original matchmaking system had fewer Ages to span. As we expand our Ages, the gap between them grows and a system that tries to match "within 4000 Rating" doesn't interact with an Industrial Age Alliance in the same way as a Space Age Alliance. Meaning that 4000 Rating may be a large gap in Industrial but that isn't necessarily true for Space Age. Looking at the percentage delta allows us to account for these recent Age expansions and expand to Digital and beyond without having to readjust the values on a per Age basis.

 

[BHG_Muet]

The system is looking at the Variance (percentage difference in the O/D Ratings) within the group your Alliance is bringing to War. It then compares that to the Variance of potential opposing Alliances and attempts to find a close match.

So, if your Alliance has an extremely high Variance, it is likely that your queue time will be higher as it tries to find another Alliance with extremely high Variance.

As for the weight of Offense vs Defense, Defense is actually a slightly better predictor of win rate. Although they're very close. Both are important for improving your effectiveness in War.

 

[Spaceboy]

I am not convinced by all this. Maybe the added variation will change a bit, but it will still allow an atomic age to hit a medieval base. This should be forbidden, like in MP. Up to each team to have a good mix of players so that all bases can be attacked.

let's see..for once a change has been done after 3 years, and this should be appreciated. it cannot be worser than today ...

 

[Snarlylemming]

Curious does the offensive rating include things like Teutonic fury on boosting attack damage.

 

[jagadeeshgarapati]

muet and tin,
thank you for the new system. I know there ll be some hiccups initially. Everyone should be prepared for any small bugs.

One thing i want you guys to think is starting leader board from scratch. Why not start the new era with new leader board

 

[Cannibals]

“That old system compared the absolute value of your Alliance’s Offensive/Defensive (O/D) Ratings with other potential Alliances. We ran some tests internally and discovered that when we match based on a percentage delta between those same Alliance’s O/D Ratings, we actually get a much stronger predictor for winning. So, we’re updating the system to compare Ratings by the percentage delta rather than absolute values.”

“The longer you wait, the less restrictive the system will be.”

i think this means that under the new system, alliances with lower O/D ratings will be more closely matched (potentially waiting longer), while alliances with higher O/D ratings will be less closely matched (or waiting less).

 

[~Kratos~]

If cheater alliances aren't banned, they will just creep back in the leaderboards in no time, full reset or not. They are the problem, not the current rankings; that is just a symptom. (plus a full reset would be a big 'screw you' to the alliances with years of warring under their belt)

This relative reset they are making is a good decision, I think, it just has to come together with a solution soon to the bigger problem, hacking alliances.
Otherwise, like someone said, they can spend all their effort on a perfect matching system, but rankings will still be meaningless with obvious cheaters.

 

[GailWho]

I read this whole post top to bottom yesterday and needed time to process. I’d like to applaud BHG and more specifically BHG_Muet for finally, after over 3 years, addressing the sandbag issue. Before I get to the “but” I really want to show my extreme appreciation for the time and effort you put in to the well thought out changes you are about to make. I hope they work. “FairPlay” alliances such as mine who have NEVER added iron have been struggling for years with this issue and the band-aids added over the years have only made the matching worse. I’m hoping this overhaul of the entire system and adjustment of the leaderboard will give alliances like mine a fighting chance we never got to enjoy. Thank you from the bottom of my heart. Now for the “but”...

I put FairPlay in quotes above because I realize that because the matchmaking/queue time issues hadn’t been addressed properly, many alliances were forced to add sandbags. Just because we didn’t give in to this doesn’t make us any more fair than others under this circumstance. What does make us and other alliances (many who add irons) FairPlay is that we do not resort to taking advantage of your broken system known as “the matrix” to clearly cheat our way to the top. I have feelings of deja vu (thinking back 3 years ago) right now in that the majority of alliances do not resort to using this clear cheat to advance up the Leaderboard. Left unchecked, many others will succumb to the temptation of using it to keep their team on the leaderboard or worse, quit this wonderful game you have made. We cannot afford to lose any more of our friends in the community because of this. Please, please please do not let it take 3 years to come up with a solution to this!!! Put everyone in your office on it! The guy that is coming up with the next great tactical troop on the market, the gal who is preparing for the next age release, the designer of the next crazy building we need to figure out how to overcome, the testers who... well.... test, heck get the intern making the coffee... EVERYONE! We don’t want any new content until the matrix is closed and cheating has been nipped in the bud. You don’t know how agonizing it is to watch Tin and Ash show off the team’s latest toys knowing that it’s useless to get them because cheaters will walk all over us anyway. Actively look for cheaters and punish them! Don’t wait for us to point them out to you because then it’s too late, the deed has been done. Make cheating unattractive, better yet... impossible.

Thanks again for the thorough explanation of your matchmaking change. We really do appreciate it.

Hugs and kisses, Gail

 

[WarLord]

"Is this Match Fair to My Alliance?

Some of you that are Alliance leaders may have noticed that your Alliance would sometimes instantly get matched with what appeared to be a poor match. What gives? Why? To the forums! The matchmaking is awful! Well, not quite. This was because the old system didn’t have a concept of handshaking. It compared Ratings at the time your Alliance entered queue and if they were within an acceptable range of another Alliance, bam. Matched.

Moving forward, the new system will require the match to be acceptable from the perspective of both Alliances. This isn’t an in-game option or agreement that is made. Instead, you can think of it as the system viewing the potential match from both Alliance’s perspective to see if it thinks it is fair.

What is fair to my Alliance after being in queue for only 10 seconds may be different from what another Alliance is looking for after 5 minutes."


Can someone explain this further? Thanks

 

[Chadwicke]

You do realize that with the assult rally the way it is all war will be on time , that those who spent 1000s on developing Defense are out of luck and it takes zero skill to play , and by supporting this 1 it will make even more cheaters and 2 pay to win now more than ever compete short sight by many players I see

 

[Mixie]

You do realize that with the assult rally the way it is all war will be on time , that those who spent 1000s on developing Defense are out of luck and it takes zero skill to play , and by supporting this 1 it will make even more cheaters and 2 pay to win now more than ever compete short sight by many players I see

I don't understand sir. Aren't you the one who kept posting like every day in Known Game Issues section whining about Assault Rally to make it stronger (aka. fix it), now you are complaining that it is too strong and you want it to be weakened-that's how I see (aka. fix it, again?) Maybe BHG should stop listening to this kinda seasonal demand of minority people who will never be satisfied with whatever they do.