Unfair Matchmaking

We had 4 malaks in my last group. The guy that got 1st didn't have drevan or malak. I can't speak for his other matches, but in the finals against me he won by 4 points - I needed 2 tries against 2 of his teams he needed 2 tries against one of mine but i screwed up and didn't leave myself a good counter to one of his so both of us ended up with a front territory holding on defense since he couldn't clear my malak, I couldn't clear one of theirs.

Strategy works, go figure.

I guess to be fair I faced 2 of the other 3 malaks, and I don't know if he faced the 3rd in round one, or only faced my malak.

The match making is designed to simply look at GP (up to a set number of toons per division), which means pay to play will likely have an advantage - more likely they will have highly geared meta teams. But I've had more close matches under the new matching scheme than the previous total GP failure, though still get the odd one I have no chance of winning (I have no DR or Malak, so when my opponent does I find I'm screwed).
But at the end of the day, you have to give the pay to win players an advantage. Why else would they spend money on the game? It keeps the game going so the rest of us get to play for free/cheap. If you can learn to accept that, it is a lot less stressful.

Say you drive stock Honda Civic in a car race. As you win more races, you will face tougher racers.

Whether I pit you against some Toyota Prius in the beginning or against some hypercars like a Veyron / Zonda, at the end of the championship race, you will rank right where you belong, probably in the middle.

This is how GAC works. The more you win, the higher you'll rank, the tougher the opponents are at the top. Even if you're facing against "equal" opponents at the beginning, you will eventually meet strong teams at the end and you will start losing, just in a reverse streak.

Unless your terms of "equally matched" means you having the advantage over your opponent, which most players do believe is "fair", then you can forget about everything I mentioned above.

In general the matches are far more even in GAC than they were in GA. Some consider it fair - others consider it unfair.
As players advance through leagues at different paces the matches will be more even (in general) by the end of the GAC.

Except that if you were really good in GA, your first round of opponents will be about as hard as the last round of opponents you face in week five, so pretty much like what everyone else above that said - except the opposite and not really related to a tournament at all. At least they stopped the cross-division nonsense so there's a limit to the GP mismatch that can happen.

Essentially "matchmaking" is now "adjusted" to make sure every match is "fair" or "even". I find both of those terms to be completely subjective and vary widely based on the experiences of the individual making the comment, myself included. CG could remove all mystery by openly stating their algorithm, which would then at least provide some objectivity to it. They would get a lot of feedback and, you never know, might actually end up with something solid in the end.

I am the beneficiary of having several different accounts and can speak to the different impact matchmaking has had on each of those accounts. Spoiler alert, it varies widely - a fact many of the people that post absolute truths about matchmaking are either unable or unwilling to accept. For some, the impact has been negligible, for others it has turned GA from a relaxing walk in the park to a PTSD inducing laugh-fest.

Regardless, the "discussion" has largely devolved into something akin to a religious debate. There is only subjective experience and faith (which is, of course, belief in the absence of proof). There are any number of prior threads on the topic if you want to waste hours of your time and lose a few IQ points during that journey.

They like to pretend their matchmaking is complex. I think it's fairly obvious that it isn't complex at all. It is a simple GP matching scheme. Seems the only level of refinement they have ever added is restricting the matchmaking GP to the top 80 of your roster ... if indeed that was actually implemented. Neither mods, zetas, nor legendary characters seem to be a consideration in the algorithm. Which actually makes sense. Matchmaking like that would be a nightmare to code.
At any rate, no sense worrying about it too much. You can either g13 your most effective squads A$AP or just keep developing at your own pace.

I've been a pretty outspoken opponent of the new Matchmaking, and GAC in general since the beginning. Matchmaking is completely arbitrary and the results have no bearing on who would win an actual head-to-head match up based on the "rankings". I could easily beat accounts that are ranked ahead of me and who have gotten there by virtue of matchmaking, just as there are players below me that could curb stomp my roster.

That said, matches are much closer than they were in GA. This isn't good for me personally, as I'm on the low side of the GP range for D4 and am always at least one squad undermanned against players that already have enough GP to be in D3. This extra squad is invariably Geos, Shaak Ti / Clones, or Padme and I actually lost twice in a single week, both to players that have maxed out GP for the division and had a team I haven't had a chance to build a counter for yet. Compare that to the single match I lost in the entirety of GA and you can see why some of us have big questions around WHY matchmaking is this way.

Limiting matchmaking to within the Division was a positive step forward and has stopped the worst of the mismatches (getting matched up with accounts with almost 700k more total GP and more squad selection / available counters). As much as I wish GAC were a different thing, I think a few more tweaks, most noticeably around the outsized GP of Zeta abilities and lack of G13 GP contribution, and matchmaking is in as good a state as it can be in.

I still disagree with the "everyone gets an equal chance at a trophy" mentality that is this GAC format and driven by this matchmaking, but if that's the design intent, matchmaking is getting close to making that happen.

To be completely honest, I have found the matchmaking this GAC seems much more fair than the exhibition round, so perhaps I was mistaken and they tweaked things and got them right. Of course, this is limited experience, but, as I said, this time around things seem more balanced.

I find it very fair. I'm teetering at 2000-3000 rank though at 2.43 million GP. I imagine that fairness is easier once rank competition gets tighter. The most unfairness probably comes into play with poor ranked people that are not competitive.

Okay, my current match was extremely unfair for my opponent. I looked at his roster and told him they shouldn't have put him against me. There was no way possible for him to win