Some thoughts on the new GW maps

Boilermaker

First of all I wanted to thank the development team for always looking for ways to improve the game and add new elements! I was initially thrilled to see that the GW maps got a major upgrade in the most recent game update, but I/we have gradually seen problems that come with it. For our guild (US top 50 in Challenge), the main problems are mismatching and lack of playable maps. I will elaborate below.

In terms of mismatching, that has been bothering us for a very long time. It used to be a major problem at the beginning of each season where we are occasionally matched to a global top 25 guild (everyone starts at Bronze I). As time goes on, the situation tends to get better as top guilds progress to higher tiers at a faster pace and we usually reach the Master tier during or after the last war (meaning we will never have to face them again during the season). Now, things have changed. Everyone starts at Silver 2 regardless of whether they were at 120k or 300k at the end of the previous season. Mismatching kicks in immediately as it used to be, but what makes things worse is that the total VPs increased in the new map and everyone progresses to the Master tier at a faster pace. In the last season, we reached the Master tier during War 3 for the first time. However the joy was very short living as we started to realize that we had to fight other Master guilds during the entire War 4, where we saw multiple mismatching that led to unwinnable battles. The overall experience? Not so positive as folks were frustrated for the most part and morals were quite low. There has to be a way to bring in more adjustments. For example, propensity score matching could be used to reduce the bias, which can account for multiple factors (e.g. current tier, previous season total VP, players levels, etc.) 

In terms of the playable maps, this may not be an issue for those elite guilds as I can tell they did a good job lobbying the developer. For us, it did not work well. Previously, there were only 4 sections (i.e 6F, 6G, 5H, 6H) that we were never able to close. Now, the entire last column is out of reach, which accounts for 1/5 of the total maps. In contrast, there is a lack of maps targeting the 35-38 difficulty levels where the vast majority of our folks play. In fact, that might just be the case for most of the folks who have reached the maximum player level but have not invested enough (time and money) to play higher walker maps. They sometimes are forced to either play the much easier clusters (34-) or clean humans. The game has to balance the need of those at the very top and the rest, including those who just get started.

Thanks again for all the great features this game offers @Fluxxx

Gothgul

I do agree the rolling start at 30K, (if you hit master tier) is a big disadvantage for guilds who just made it to master, vs, top guilds, since they are all now in the same pool for matching. And they will only EVER be in the same pool now - hurts lower guilds. I think that needs more "stages" to reset back to, to spread things out a bit more, which should be a fairly easy thing to implement. Or something along the lines you indicated.

Also agree that the old maps you needed to do (that everyone had to do in an average guild, e.g. 4d to open 5d6d or 1d to open 2e/3f or 4f...) to get to the harder maps, are no longer "needed". To be competitive, you need to skip them, but to give all your people things to attack that they can clear.....it's a big issue. Again, hurting guilds on the lower end of the spectrum. 

My main new complaint (old ones being  stupid bottleneck maps, and GW being too frequent: every other week would be good, back to back weeks are too much strain on planning and tools of course) - is that it's SO easy to get back to master tier. (Even if you lose every battle, as long as you are playing solid, it's very easy to unlock all the rewards). But it's also hard to spend your hard earned RP on what you really want, due to the imposed limits on say, components, tokens, tools, phones. I mean other than some of the "must have" items (which are great and much appreciated), would it really unbalance the game to remove or increase those limits?

At a certain point, there is just not much incentive for the average guild to spend the gold and tools to keep trying to "win" at all cost (unless of course you are in a top guild competing for leader board). This seems counterintuitive to me, as it's not really what GW was like before, where most guilds had to stay on their game to try to get back to 120k, which meant really trying to win.  
It's a much different vibe, just seems to have lost something with these changes IMO. 

WellyLuga

Personally I think there should be several tiers after Gold III before you reach master tier. 100 radios being the top reward is a joke. I suggest Diamond I, II & III at 140k/160k/180k before reaching a new master tier at 200k. All of the top 40 guilds managed to get there and that's with only 2 weeks with the new map.

The top few guilds got upwards of 80k per week under the new system and with the headstart will reach master tier after the first battle in week 2. It needs to be better IMO.

ATLAS-Z

@Boilermaker I'm not sure I agree with every nuance of your post, but very insightful and well thought out post.

You have given me things to think about. Cheers. 

ATLAS-Z

I will add that even tho starting at silver sucks for many, it helps the newest players... And for the games longevity, this is a good thing. 

Previously new players starting new guilds and trying war for the first time were utterly killed by almost every opponent. Not great for inspiring them to keep playing this new game they just started. 

zombieornottobe

@Boilermaker Well thought out post and mirrors some points in my own with others I had hoped to work into the conversation. Our guild's late week teams have been punished for the success early week teams have had as we tend to advance in tier by wed or Thurs. Our better players tend to have more availability early week so the weekenders get their asses handed to them. Personally I would have stopped playing gw long ago if I was in that group. There needs to be a way in the matchmaking system to match similar scoring teams within a tier.

Burmeliinis

Here's a simple idea. Calculate the average VP per player (before victory multipliers) during the previous 2 weeks.

So here's the result of one guild. They scored 92,956 points using 80 players so 1162 pts/player/battle. That would be their matchmaking score, and their opponent would be a guild with a similar matchmaking score. 

Using a rolling 2 week average (and continuing over seasons), guilds would always face opponents of similar difficulty. The current constraints of always matching team size AND not being able to face the same guild more than once per week would remain. This way the Tier would not have any impact on matchmaking.

Many guilds have a A-team and a B-team so an even better way would be to go even deeper and calculate the average score for each player, and calculate the guild matchmaking score based on the players that have signed up for that particular day, but that would probably be too complicated to implement.

Paste

I think matchmaking should at least slightly favor guilds who can score high, like the current matchmaking does (probably too much). By matching evenly with other guilds scoring high, there'll be no reward for progressing.

zombieornottobe

Paste said:

I think matchmaking should at least slightly favor guilds who can score high, like the current matchmaking does (probably too much). By matching evenly with other guilds scoring high, there'll be no reward for progressing.

Our reward for winning and progressing th first 3 days has been an ass kicking the next 3 to the same players over and over. There's not going to be a perfect match making system, but it sounds like you're proposing that its good to give high scoring guilds mismatched opponents. Being familiar with your other posts I'm fairly certain thats not what you mean. I think there has to be some kind of dice roll within the groupings, sometimes you get the tougher team and sometimes you are the tougher team. The way your statement comes across, half of the participants would have an uphill battle every war unless they beats the odds and pulled off a win.

Burmeliinis

If the matchmaking is based on your average VP before victory bonus, getting a win will not make you meet harder opponents, which is how it works now. Also that would eliminate the stupid "play later in the week and get easier opponents" mechanic of the current system.

The only downside to my system (as I see it) is that all teams most of the time would face a hard opponent. So being in a top guild would not be a huge advantage in terms of maximizing victories. But with the new map setup, where the VP has increased a lot, that might not be too bad. A guild that closes sector 20 but loses will still get lots of points, compared to a guild that plays the lower lvl islands but wins. 

xbamfx

New system is good just need to eliminate bugs. NG spending so much time changing shit to appeal to whine babies they can never get rid of bugs and issues. Hence why top player don’t want to compete or/are leaving the game.

3vilrine

They can't put enough effort into GW and Challenge (especially, bugs, new maps, ideas .. etc), because they always have to do these boring ass season missions which takes all their "small team" ressources. God im looking for the day this show finally ends and they can concentrate on interesting things in the game more. The last episodes were boring anyway.