Speaking for myself …currently managed to make it to Bronzium 2. And in the final round I’m matched up with a player that has 5 gl at relic 8, 4 or 5 qonquest characters……how in the hell did this guy get matched up in bronzium? The majority of my roster is on purple gear and G12…..this is a real motivator to ‘enjoy’ this game…….great job with the matching cg
There is no matchmaking. You and everyone else has a GAC skill rating. You get matched with 7 players directly adjacent to you in the skill rating ladder.
That’s all there is to it.
Well I think that is just stupid and very unfair…us free to play can hardly find joy anywhere in this game nor have the feeling we can actually accomplish anything….the setup of this game is just wonderful
You can call it stupid if you like, many agree with you but most agree it’s far better than the previous system.
But I’m not sure how you can call it unfair. Everyone is treated exactly the same.
nottenstI’m not sure how the tied SRs are ranked. If I had to guess, I’d say by our player ID (the long one, not the allycode). I remember proving it wasn’t allycode or by historical GAC points a while back by checking with a few guild members on the same rating.
And when there are than 7 others with the same skill level it is a complete mystery to me how they group you. Does anyone have any clue how they come up with that order in the same skill #?
Does it matter?
GAC MM is 100% based on Skill Rating. Yours has been going up, which is why you climbed to Bronzium. Your opponent's has been going down, and that's why he fell to Bronzium.
What astonishes me with this tired debate. Is over and over we reach the conclusion that it is not fair to punish inactivity. But it is to keep a system which punishes new players with low GP ruining the initial experience. I was initially seeded into Bronzium with the current system there was not lopsided matches back then because these larger rosters were initially seeded based on GP in Kyber or Aurodium. They moved down over time so the experience is not the same and perhaps is not as it was intended. I am in Kyber, my matches often suck and are lopsided but I punch up, this makes it bearable as I get higher rewards than a GP match up would give me and so I am happy to hit my head against the wall of superior rosters as this is competitive. But it makes no sense to say 8-9M players in Bronzium is okay. This is not the 1-2M players punching up it is the sandbaggers exploiting easy, lazy match ups and bullying new rosters to ruin their enjoyment. It does not matter if it’s intentional or unintentional CG can figure a way to fix this many suggestions have been made over the last few years. Such as leagues for new players and slowing down sandbagging (which does not punish inactivity too much). It’s ridiculous to question whether a 1-2M account should be able to develop and evolve in a more enjoyable arena. “Suck it up until the broken match making lets you stand a chance” is an elitist mentality, newer players deserve the chance to gain genuine experience from their matches rather than wait for some sandbagger not to attack.
Yeah, it has nothing to do with anyone's roster - it's 100% about wins and losses - there are no other considerations and no 'matchmaking' in any conventional sense of the term.
Same here.. The skill rating idea is flawed. If they lost due to not participating in a round, they didn't lose based on skill. An easy way to clean this up is to penalize those who miss a round (or all rounds) by not allowing them in the next GA. That would force those with high GP to play the match or just sit out. You score a zero ( no attempts) , you sit out the next one. The result of this would remove high GP players in lower tiers. They would be forced to move up to a tier that they belong. Those with lower GP would compete against lower GP that are closer in skill. That would increase the skill and reduce lopsided matches. Those of you who say "its better than it was, please stop covering for CG". This is not a good match making experience.
This wouldn't do anything. Players who just do one battle for rewards would still fall, and be met by players climbing. Your system would just reinforce doing the one battle, perhaps making it even worse for the lower player in the lopsided match. Right now a player that is faced with a defence they cannot score more than 10 against has the chance that the other player does nothing at all. If the big player would be punished in any way, they will definitely run a battle, probably a win on auto.
Also, what about when life gets in the way and you don't get to attack? You get punished for that? Broken phone, sick family, injury, work emergency, there are any number of reasons a player may not attack. No punishment needs to be meted out for that.
Thanks for responding.
The fact is that this is a horrible matchmaking experience. The "skill rating" needs tweaked to make sense so that "skills" can be used to win somewhat balanced matches. 8M GP vs a 1.5M GP simply is not really a match. Either the 8M autos the match, or they don't participate at all. So, there isn't really skill being used by either party.
If life gets in the way, don't join the arena because you won't be able to do your matches which are manually performed. If you don't play (or even auto), you should be setback from playing the next time. Or even better, move non-participating players out of the standard levels and create their own. After 3 arenas of playing in the non-competitive, they can move back into the competitive play. I am just brainstorming here, but this would solve this issue quickly and improve the playability of grand arena. I would estimate that over half of the players in the lower tiers would be gone. People that have high GPs being forced to play would move up in the arena and play against more equitable opponents. People with lower GPs would battle against similar lower GPs and there would be far fewer lopsided matches.
I'd be curious to see stats on GP difference between opponents by tier. The last 3 GAs that I have participated in, I was at the at or near the bottom GP of all participates. I won 1 GA. That was due to no one participating. The other two, I was steamrolled in all 3 matches by opponents with at least 3x my GP, close to 4-5 in some cases. Either way, none of those arenas were fun to play nor skill based.
It's okay to critique what I wrote and propose better ideas, but don't sit there and claim that matchmaking isn't broken or that it is fun to "play" lopsided matches, or that it's okay that players sign up but don't participate, etc. I am trying to propose realistic solutions to a significant problem with arena.
The high GP players in lower tiers are there because they haven't been playing. I don't see how forcing them to skip even more playing would solve the problem.
I think penalty for zero participation across matches should be loss of daily crystals related to your placement, whilst no deduction on SR to prevent sandbagging. To get the win / loss reward you should still get banners still too so those who participate and lose, losing SR in the process, are not worst off than inactive players. End of season PO should have a minimum activity of at least 1 match from each sign up. Once they are active and participating then daily crystal payout continues and they continue from the same division they were at before the period of inactivity. Preventing a drop to lower tiers full of newer lower GP players but preventing rewarding inactivity. This way if you’re busy in RL it just impacts rewards for a short while and not placement. Most importantly the toxic players I know who purposefully drop to Bronzium through long periods of inactivity, with 4/5 GLs and 9-10M roster for an easy win-streak later (they have seriously bragged to me about winning 30+ when all they need to do is block with GLs and attack once) can not exploit the SR MM. This does not payoff for Crystal income in my calculation but feeds some sense of “skill” for them at the expense of experience of newer and players. I am aware some players fall through not having time or interest but what bothers me most is the intentional inactivity.
I can see why a lot dont have trust in the ratings because CG does nothing to help persuade why the system works the way it does.
I for one, dropped leagues because quite simply i was bored with GAC, setting defences, attacking....eat sleep rave repeat actions. So i leave every so often just to get away from it. Very sorry if some upcoming players who have done well improving skill scores then meets me when im interested. This happens at just about every level
Can you give an allycode so we can see an account that runs into this constantly (1-2M v 8-9M match-ups)?
Just had another one. 2 matches of the 3 were lopsided. 494559411. Last arena was worse. I won the 2nd match due to inactivity. Lost the other 2 by landslide. My GP is 1.8M.
Here's what I see on .gg atm:
7/23: 1 at 8M+: inactive win
7/16: 1 at 5M+: loss
7/2: 0
6/25: 1 at 5M+: loss
6/18: 1 at 7M+: inactive win
6/4: 1 at 8M+: loss
5/28: 0
5/21: 0
Out of 24 opponents, 5 were against high GP, 3 were losses and 2 were wins.
1 out of 8 matches were losses due to high GP. Not great, but I think you can still climb through that. In fact, you're 14/24 on these.
