Territory War Matchmaker

"Brindle;c-1660093" wrote:

"snarzenal;c-1660003" wrote:
If you’re going to use an ELO based matchmaking system (which I would be very supportive of), do NOT tie rewards to ELO rating. If you do, you may find guilds disbanding and reforming at a rate that would put rats breeding habits to shame.

“Oh well, we’ve lost three times in row now. Time to disband. Everyone on Discord/Line and ready to reset our ELO?”

Definitely need to tie rewards to ELO.

Reason for: ELO systems cause members to have about a 50% win rate once they reach an accurate ELO rating (excluding changes in their skill). If you DON'T tie rewards to ELO, then a guild with poor coordination, mods, teams, etc will get the same rewards as a highly functioning guild of the same GP. Guilds would have zero incentive to do well, because eventually their ELO would drop low enough to get 50% win rate.

Counter to quoted reason against: The quote assumes a win at default ELO is better than the rewards for a loss at accurate ELO. The reward system should not be designed that way; for example, if default ELO is 1600 and a guild's ELO is 2000, then a loss at 2000 needs to be better than a win at 1600. The only type of guild that would benefit from this is one that is very much below average, and that's hard to do with all the near-dead guilds out there that struggle just to get enough TW members. A guild performing that poorly would not be organized enough to disband and reform. The default ELO's prize bracket can be calculated exactly by EA using hard data (that only they have access to) if they research & understand the ELO system, but I'd guess it should be around the current 5-10M prize bracket.

Edit: To make it simple, could also just make the default bracket be the very bottom. No difference to established guilds, simplicity is almost always better, EA probably won't lose sleep over giving nearly empty guilds such a minor bump in rewards, and it erases any possibility of a guild thinking about disbanding for TW rewards.

Moving to an ELO system is probably the best (fairest) way to fix this system.... It would also create a persistent TW rank.

The downside that I see: ELO has a long memory. This is ok as long as the "teams" don't change much and no one tries to game the system. A weak guild that gets an influx of stronger players would have an advantage corresponding to the amount of power gained. A strong guild that loses a good group of members could be at a disadvantage for multiple TWs. Higher level guilds could game the system by rotating through an alt guild or 2. Tying rewards to ELO rating would help alleviate some of this problem.

Maybe the answer is to merge the current system with an ELO-based system. Mix the current match making system with an ELO system. This would provide stability from where we are but allow for a guild's record help define the next opponent (and possibly rewards)

(This assumes a guild-based ELO system. There are also member-based ELO systems that may be the best way to do this)