AP Gains’ solution to GAC matchmaking…

Being matched against falling mammoth rosters is the worst. Sometimes it's lack of participation. Some take entire weeks off. Sometimes you're the unfortunate victim where said mammoth has spare time and decides to play.

Tbh I like this new system better. No gaming of the MM system. I enjoy the challenge of facing larger rosters. I have 2 GLs and often face 4 or more. Just beat a 6 GL roster last match who had 2.5M GP over me. Yes, he played and not an auto deploy!

"dantheman123;c-2342922" wrote:
Being matched against falling mammoth rosters is the worst. Sometimes it's lack of participation. Some take entire weeks off. Sometimes you're the unfortunate victim where said mammoth has spare time and decides to play.

Tbh I like this new system better. No gaming of the MM system. I enjoy the challenge of facing larger rosters. I have 2 GLs and often face 4 or more. Just beat a 6 GL roster last match who had 2.5M GP over me. Yes, he played and not an auto deploy!

Congrats! Yeah I don’t know how to most effectively weed out the mis-ranked players. Hopefully it settles out naturally but it’s annoying as hell in the meantime.

"Kathark;c-2342853" wrote:


So glad you asked. It would probably take me a while with the data to come up with an acceptable rubric for comparing rosters. (I know ppl will always complain). Once you have a system, the key is that divisions are decided, not by “skill” rating (or any other metric that takes your performance into account) but by adjacent roster. Then within a division you have a skill rating over the course of the entire season and can rise or fall within your division. The next time you enter a GA season you are re-divisioned based entirely on your roster, not your “skill” from last season. So if I decide to spend $1000 between seasons I automatically get bumped up to compete with similarly equipped players. Or if I take months of f2p to get to that level of roster the it takes months to get re-divisioned.

As for forfeit penalties I suggest a limit of 2 forfeit losses per season. Clearly life might prevent you from playing once. If you lose by forfeit twice or more in a season you lose all the season rewards, get banned from the next season, and your account gets flagged. Maybe after 3 flags you get banned forever, just spitballing. But if the re-divisioning was by roster, and something like the original floor suggestion went into effect then I think it would go a long way to preventing sandbaggers in the first place. It’s not like they are automatically enrolled. You want to play great. If you just want to sit in the lowest level and collect the pity crystals then don’t sign up.

The problem with brackets based on GP (as has been stated before many times) is that this re-introduces the element of roster bloat being a bad thing. That's why CG probably won't ever do this. They WANT people to expand their rosters - that's the whole premise of the game and a key component of how they make this game profitable. Discouraging everyone at or near the top of their bracket from continuing to spend money and develop their roster is directly opposed to their primary goal, which is making a profit. It's a great thought exercise to try to come up with a different way to do this, but ignoring a fundamental guiding principle of the people that are actually making the game doesn't get you closer to a workable solution - it's just daydreaming, which is fine but not constructive or actionable by the responsible parties (CG devs).

For the same reason, forfeit penalties that lead to season long or lifetime (?!!!) bans will almost surely never, ever happen. All this does is give players a sense that they aren't wanted or are being punished for not engaging 'properly' in a single game mode. This further discourages spending and in the case of a lifetime ban, ensures that that player will NEVER feel any pressure or desire to spend money to improve that aspect of the game, should they ever decide to engage 'properly'.

I don't know what your life looks like, maybe you've got lots of time to play and that's great - but I know I don't always have time to devote to GAC. Work and family obligations are a thing (which is why I chose a mobile game to start with). Add conquest, LSGeo, or TW on top of that, and the chances that I'll have to skip out on an attack phase are even greater, because if I have to choose - I choose my guild over myself any day of the week. But as I said in another thread - I'm certainly not going to go without my daily crystals just to prevent a smaller roster from fasing my account. I'm giving them an easy win if I don't engage - I really don't see the problem there. It's a game, but it's not the olympics. Things like lifetime bans, or barring players from engaging in an entire game mode is not good for the players, or for CG.

I think some players just have too high expectations on winning rounds. On average you are expected to lose half the battles.

If you win more than 50% of the time, you're doing good and have no reason to complain.

If you lose more than 50% of the time, you should probably work on your roster instead of complaining about others having more GP

"24_Tuesdays;c-2343027" wrote:
What if you win exactly 50

You beat the game.

The problem isn't the league ranking/MM mechanisms they are using in GAC, it's that they have forced heavy participation in GAC and many players despise the mode. The only reason they are doing this is that they believe it will churn out more whales. It will also just spur some people to eventually quit.

Moving some crystal income to GAC wasn't a terrible idea. Punishing players as much as they do for a loss is. If they were truly concerned about the ability for more players to get more crystals, they would spread out crystal income across all the game modes. Heck make a new game mode that is PvE based and allow players to farm daily crystals through that. Right now players are being forced into a PvP mode and many just don't like PvP. They may be more interested in guild or PvE play.

It's the age old split of players who enjoy PvP more vs those who enjoy PvE/collaboration more. God this game could be so great and appeal to all sorts of players. It just doesn't.

"Rius;c-2343220" wrote:

Ah “your experience won’t improve”. You mean I won’t get to spend the next season(s) steamrolling everyone until I reach my new peer level. I want my experience to be consistent, and my level to improve. You see? I want consistently close matches against like opponents at every level. Matches that I have to win with clever deployment on D and good play against the AI on O. Some might call it… skill. Given the number of players this should be possible, particularly at low to mid tiers.

“I want…” is not the voice of the community. Others like to at-least feel reward for progress of there roster. Regardless of F2P or purchased progress. It is fair to have a good season for unlocking a GL or good units like GAS and JKL. These take up to a year to farm F2P so it’s nice to have a few wins before you fairly hit another ceiling again where people have counters. Otherwise you will always feel the grind and get bored of never reaching a good spot to enjoy your progress. Let people enjoy completing these milestones. Everyone will naturally take turns in unlocking or levelling up characters or ships.

And stop being entitled to want a system amenable to how you ‘want’ to win. Why is there so much toxicity to better rosters. Is it jealousy because these players have been playing longer or may have dipped into crystals? Let them play their way and you play yours. Focus on your matches. See why you lost and work towards that squad or unit so you may win next time.

Can you not face losing without claiming the system is unfair. This system is the fairest I have seen because of the lack of adjustments to make people happy. Very simply you win you progress. You lose, work on your roster to win more ?.



Sigh. I can’t believe I am still having to clarify my issue/position but sure, here goes.
1. I expect to lose some matches, and lose progressively more matches as I reach the limit of my roster and skill.
2. The issue that really needs fixing is the non-players. If everyone played the system would actually work.
3. I am not learning anything about my roster or play style by either: a. Getting a win over someone who would have stomped me if they played. Or b. Getting stomped by someone who didn’t have to try very hard.
4. I concede your point about enjoying the fruits of your labor when you improve by crushing it for a bit. But the high occurrence of mismatches means even that might be very short lived.
5. This issue is felt most keenly in the lowest rungs, where a single zeta or toon or ship has the power to make a battle un-winnable. I am sure an entirely different set of rules apply to higher tiers.

I hope this clarifies. I actually enjoy this mode overall, just wish (as I’ve said before) that the swings in opponent power weren’t so large.

The new system is WAI. You win or you don’t, there’s no roster sandbagging or other manipulation you can do to rise. Your roster, skill, and willingness to consistently engage will determine where you land when you settle in at a 50% win rate. As others have written, we’re probably still a couple seasons from finding the initial equilibrium.

I’ve been playing since Jan ‘16 and generally don’t spend, so started in K1, but really didn’t belong there. I was averaging 1 win, 2 losses and dropped out of K1 in the 4th season. The drop in crystal income hurt, but I didn’t earn the right to continue based on my performance.

I seem to be settling in at K2 with my 8m, 3 GL roster. I’m starting to see opponents with 6M rosters and 4-5 GL’s who probably started in K3 or 4 - sometimes my depth and mods beat them, sometimes their Gl advantage or 7* exec v. my 4* gets me. They are also getting to the right level, but likely don’t realize it yet because they weren’t in K1 to start. The reality is if you want to be K1 and stay, you need 5-6 GL, good mods, and roster depth plus the commitment to spent resources to stay there. Hyper focused, flash in the pan rosters that worked in the old system won’t cut it anymore.

One small tweak I just thought of that might actually help - make the system remember a player's last active SR, and always use that for matchmaking. OTOH, always use the player's current SR to determine their rewards. So for people who play on and off, they will still be penalized by less rewards when they miss rounds, and they will keep falling but only falling down the reward tiers. When they do decide to play, they will be matched with others at similar level when the last time they played. After all, if the matchmaking is supposed to be based on performance, then a player's true performance known to the system has to be from the last time when they actually played, rather than an SR that has been docked only due to their inactivity.