GAC matchmaking system

"MaruMaru;c-2266146" wrote:

"Kyno;c-2266068" wrote:

"MaruMaru;c-2265901" wrote:

"Starslayer;c-2265892" wrote:

"furyousgeorge74;c-2265833" wrote:
There are two ways to look at GAC. One is to assume that top 80 GP match is a good way to match and it is up to individuals to construct their rosters to gain the greatest advantage. Another way is to try to match players based on the "evenness" of their rosters and let the strategy within each matchup determine the winner, so that it is more difficult to "game" your roster to a significant advantage. I think most would agree that GP is not a great measure of how effective characters are, so the first method allows for roster manipulation to provide significant advantage.
There are many parts of this game where OP toons like GLs allow for greater rewards: raids, TB, TW, and Conquest. However, GAC seems like one of the few areas in the game where a more sophisticated matching algorithm would allow for strategy and tactics of the battles themselves to take on greater importance.
Just to show I am not being whiny because I lose; I do well in GAC, I have several undefeated seasons, have ranked in the top 100 overall, and before the start of the June 2021 season had a 745k overall score.

I am coming at this from a game design perspective - thinking of the overall player base and how the game could provide different types of interactions, instead of more the same. GAC is still one of the best parts of the game now, I just think some tweaking could make it even better.
Two possible solutions:
1. Improve the GP calculation method by calculating GP based on effectiveness of the toon rather than the how many upgrades on their abilities have been done - not all abilities are equal. CG should have tons of data on how well toons perform in the game, and have some very smart data scientists that could create a better calculation method. I realize this would be a massive change to the game, and simply because it is change, people would likely freak out.
2. Use a more sophisticated matching calculator for GAC - the hotutils comparisons include everything from speed, mods, key toons, etc. - it could provide some ideas for more sophisticated matchmaking. Again the data scientists at CG would love this kind of challenge. (note, I run statistical analyses on user interactions for my company, so I can sympathize)

Another tweak that I think would make GAC more enjoyable, is to open the back territory after every squad is defeated OR has had at least 2 attempts on it. This would reduce the incentive for players to place 1 or 2 super meta teams in front row when they know their opponents has no good counters for them. Then they place garbage in the back, freeing them up for a stronger offense. This doesn't feel like it is the intent of GAC. I know some will argue that this would allow people to peek at the back by throwing garbage at the first two attempts, but they would be giving up huge points for the failed attempts. It seems a fair trade off. Then it at least allows players to play the whole field rather get stuck behind a team that you have no good counter to. And yes, I am well aware of many non-GL counters to GL teams but below ~5.5 million GP, it is hard to keep up with every counter.

EDIT: I just looked back at eleven different comparisons between me and my opponents from hotutils. And every single one of my opponents had higher top 80 and top 65 GP. Also, 9 of the 11 they had at least one more meta toon than me, two had the same. I did have more 6 dots mods and better speed than most, so I am wondering if that is part of the current matchmaking? The number of zetas was usually very close, so I don't think that played much of a role in my matchups. I also had better GAC scores than most, so is that part of the calculation?

I totally respect that the resource management aspect of strategy isn’t something that you (and other people) seem to enjoy and tbh, it’s a matter of taste so not debatable. Then I won’t (even if that’s my favorite part of strategy and the main reason why I do fairly well in gac ^^).

I agree that the way GP is calculated could be improved. However, using ‘usefulness’ to do so has 2 major issues imo. First, it’s subjective. There isn’t an objective top 50 best characters out there, but several subjectives ones. So the numbers will be flawed, and the resource management will be close to value strategy in stock market: invest in characters that cost less than their true value. Second, it evolves with time. New characters appear, meta shifts, new combos... the today value of a character isn’t it’s tomorrow value.
I think there is room for some tweaking in relic value in gp. As relic levels don’t impact speed, a 10% bump in overall stat is not a 10% bump in overall power level if speed doesn’t improve (in most cases, there are exceptions, no argument there). I found the gp cost of relic level very high compared to his ‘real’ value in game. For about the same amount of gp, you can field 3 r1 teams where your opponent field 1 r7 and 2 g11. As you can totally beat a r7 with a r1 team if it’s a hard counter, you start with a tremendous advantage.

Not being able to ungear a character means you have to live with your game choices for ever, and that’s harsh. However, allowing ungearing of characters will give a huge advantage to paying customers who would be able to tweak things around for maximum effectiveness.

About the ‘jump area’ idea: I don’t see how it will improve the ‘non resource’ strategical aspect of the game. On the contrary, it will diminish it imo. Fog of war is fun.

Now, word of caution: if mm allow only similar rosters to play against each other, mods will be even more decisive than it is right now. Not sure it will be more interesting.
And if you face only similar rosters, then your games will be very similar gac after gac, and that doesn’t sound fun.

To enjoy the battle-only strategic aspect of the game, a different game mode would be more suited imo, like some sort of sealed or draft tournament for instance, where people select their army from the same pool of units.

The problem with gp paradigm is not to shift it to usefulness imo. The tables themselves are -wrong-. The amount of gp gain from i.e. gear does not match...anything. Certainly not the amount of materials that goes into it. It's off by 4 folds that I calculated roughly a while ago. If it really matched investment, that would work much much better.

But it matches itself no matter where its put. If you out it on a toon you applied X number of points where you thought it was useful, rather than on CUP, or some other toon that required that gear. Yes gear tables shift, but overall toons with the same amount of abilities and upgrades to those abilities have the same value when maxed. There is an equality there, and a elegant simplicity to the system that allows players to make choices and have them weighed without a subjective value.

Don't you really get the false math behind this? i.e. a 2 g7 toons pushes as much as a g12 one. So the party who did 2 g7s gets seriously disadvantaged against the one that did a g12 one. Ofc this doesn't hold in the new top x scene similarly but the correlation still exists as such.

You mean the person who chose to upgrade 2 toons to g7 is at a disadvantage to a player who focused on one to go to g12. That seems right to me.

Also to go one layer further, a player who takes GAS and JKL to g7 wins when matched against someone who took CUP to G12, is a bad thing?

I see that as simple and elegant. Players choices coming through without any subjective values applied.

Players need to see the value of where they place the points they have access to, that is what allows a player to come out ahead, without needing "everything" at their disposal.

I'm not saying it perfect or couldnt be better, but you cant argue with the simplistic effectiveness built into that system.