Please fix the grand arena matchmaking

"7AnimalMother;c-1856647" wrote:

"Waqui;c-1856635" wrote:

"Nikoms565;c-1856608" wrote:




Not too many newer players have a highly leveled or geared Jawas (for an event that no longer exists) - or IG86 for a droid team that is no longer viable, or strong Lumi, or g9 Eeth Koth (had to get GMY back in the day) or a zQGJ, or 7* Lobot or Lando, etc., etc.

All those characters probably helped you win a lot of gear, mods etc. which helped you build your roster to what it is now. I know my jawa helped me gain crit dmg. mods, my IG-86 helped me in the early days (months) of the AAT raid, Lumi helped me in GW, Eeth Koth helped me unlock GMY, QGJ and Lando helped me gain a lot of crystals in arena. I don't regret having those in my roster now. I still enjoy the gear and what not they helped me win.

What is your point?

"Waqui;c-1856635" wrote:
I still enjoy the gear and what not they helped me win.

Those characters helped you build your roster, just as they helped me build mine. You still benefit from the rewards they helped you win.

The fact that those toons helped you at one time and that you enjoyed them is irrelevant to this topic.

The fact that the reason you chose to fluff up your roster was to earn more rewards in TB is equally irrelevant. You made a choice. Choices have consequences.

They now exist as bloat in your roster that ends up falsely stating your overall roster power and result in getting you matched against newer people who never had to level them.

GP was never a measure of the strength of a character or roster.

If newer players caught up with me and my total roster GP then congratulations to them. They probably spent some money, and I don't see a problem with spenders having an advantage.

I think people are conflating the terms "fair" and "competitive" when they are not equivalent terms.

There are some mild elements on "unfairness" (the aforementioned roster bloat from the period between TB introduction and TW introduction, general power creep that more heavily hits older players, lack of capital ships), but there isn't really a more "fair" method than matching GPs. We all know the GP calculation, and we can all make decisions that will give us an advantage or disadvantage in Grand Arena.

There are some ways to make the matches more competitive though:
1) Readjusting the GP calculation to give more points to G11/12 gear and 6E mods and less points to * level would help, as the current formula is pretty arbitrary and not terribly reflective of utility. This would probably be very unpopular with P2P players though, as they'd all end up facing each other after the adjustment.

2) Having more tiers with diversified rewards would also help significantly, as there would be less motivation to artificially suppress GP. It sounds like this is part of the long term plan for Grand Arena, as mentioned in the last Road Ahead post.

3) Reworking more characters would help, as it would mitigate the penalty for having fluff toons. The reworks to OG Ahsoka and Anakin are a step in the right direction, and additional reworks to Geonosians, Nute, Mace, Dooku, Clones, etc. would go a long way to making deep rosters more viable.

4) The ships portion of GA needs to go away until there are more capital ships. While you can at least use every character on your roster (in theory), you can only use 28 ships because of the dearth of capital ships. Having two more capital ship options and placing two fleets on D would help a bunch (people with lots of goods ships would actually, y'know, have an advantage). Currently it's just Han's Falcon mirror matches and not very interesting, and the GAs with ships are actually *more* unfair to people with good ships than the one's without. Ships are 40% of my GP, but account for 20% (or less?) of the available points; if I get matched with someone who has same GP, but better characters/worse ships, I'm suddenly at a massive disadvantage.

For people complaining about CG not doing anything - items 2 & 3 are happening, and 4 is highly likely to occur eventually. Matches should become more competitive over time. You can also take steps to become more competitive by only gearing and zetaing useful characters. However it's going to be a gradual process.

I do think it's important to strike a balance between competitive and fair though, as there's not much interest or fun in non-competitive matchups (even if they are fair). That said, there are a lot of whiners in the forums; I have a massively bloated roster and I can usually win 1-2 rounds in GA anyway through thoughtful strategy.

"Waqui;c-1856923" wrote:

"7AnimalMother;c-1856647" wrote:

"Waqui;c-1856635" wrote:

"Nikoms565;c-1856608" wrote:




Not too many newer players have a highly leveled or geared Jawas (for an event that no longer exists) - or IG86 for a droid team that is no longer viable, or strong Lumi, or g9 Eeth Koth (had to get GMY back in the day) or a zQGJ, or 7* Lobot or Lando, etc., etc.

All those characters probably helped you win a lot of gear, mods etc. which helped you build your roster to what it is now. I know my jawa helped me gain crit dmg. mods, my IG-86 helped me in the early days (months) of the AAT raid, Lumi helped me in GW, Eeth Koth helped me unlock GMY, QGJ and Lando helped me gain a lot of crystals in arena. I don't regret having those in my roster now. I still enjoy the gear and what not they helped me win.

What is your point?

"Waqui;c-1856635" wrote:
I still enjoy the gear and what not they helped me win.

Those characters helped you build your roster, just as they helped me build mine. You still benefit from the rewards they helped you win.

The fact that those toons helped you at one time and that you enjoyed them is irrelevant to this topic.

The fact that the reason you chose to fluff up your roster was to earn more rewards in TB is equally irrelevant. You made a choice. Choices have consequences.

They now exist as bloat in your roster that ends up falsely stating your overall roster power and result in getting you matched against newer people who never had to level them.

GP was never a measure of the strength of a character or roster.

If newer players caught up with me and my total roster GP then congratulations to them. They probably spent some money, and I don't see a problem with spenders having an advantage.

I'm out. No reason to play pigeon chess.

It’s not easy to compare rosters without setting checkmarks on who has what. The only legitimate way to do it is to set a “checking requirement” to see who has what legendary event completed. It could also just be that the person with the better roster has only a few squads that are geared high and thats it. But the only way to be “Truely fair in the eyes of the f2p mass builder” is to set the said code to put in groups based on both GP and what ship/char legendaries and heroes journeys are completed to be fair.

Same in my actual GA lineup @1.5m squad-GP - one with everything that matters (jkr, dr, malak etc.), me at least with jkr, and 6 players to fill the board :(

I have yet to check mine but it will probably end up being the same one good match to decide first place

Preparing for the actual GA by building a strong roster in between GAs is part of the competition. This match-up IS competitive.


Right, and the argument that people who have JKR or DR should only go against other people who have them is just lazy. That's the whole point of taking the time to go through the awful grind to get them.

This first pic is the roster of one of the participants and is typical of the other 5 out 8 members of this GrA grouping.

This 2nd picture is the roster that will more than likely win 1st place in this grouping and having the best roster this person deserves to win. My problem is that it's not very competitive matchmaking when 1 out of 8 has a roster similar to pic#2 and 6 participants have rosters more like pic#1! I have cls, rjt, jkr and other good toons but nothing like the killer elite squad so for me I'll probably face 2 opponents that dont attack and just let the AI set their defense and the final match against the killer elite roster will be pointless as I'm incredibly outmatched so what's the point when I know I'm only getting 2nd place.

"imageryking;c-1856135" wrote:

This first pic is the roster of one of the participants and is typical of the other 5 out 8 members of this GrA grouping.

This 2nd picture is the roster that will more than likely win 1st place in this grouping and having the best roster this person deserves to win. My problem is that it's not very competitive matchmaking when 1 out of 8 has a roster similar to pic#2 and 6 participants have rosters more like pic#1! I have cls, rjt, jkr and other good toons but nothing like the killer elite squad so for me I'll probably face 2 opponents that dont attack and just let the AI set their defense and the final match against the killer elite roster will be pointless as I'm incredibly outmatched so what's the point when I know I'm only getting 2nd place.

if that's typical of the other 5 then you are in a very weak GA minus the whale

I'm saying the matchmaking doesn't make for interesting or competitive GrA matches when I know who's gonna take 1st place before we even start!