Guild matchmaking is destroying guilds

I know a lot of people have been complaining about the rivalry matchmaking, and how tough it is. But I want to talk about it from the perspective of a guild leader, trying to maintain a guild.

I’ve done my best to try to recruit people. My guild has grown, we chat, we have fun, we’re active, I spend my pearls on boosts, we’ve even managed to improve our record each week.

But after the first ~3 rivalries, we’ve just been steamrolled every time.

Maybe that’s just tough, and we need to try harder, right? Except, people don’t try harder, they just leave.

I can’t really blame anyone for not wanting to stay in a guild that can’t win, but it’s a vicious cycle, and it never really ends. No matter what guild you jump to, winning eventually becomes unsustainable, people start to leave, which compounds the problem, and the guild dies. Rinse and repeat.

This is not conducive to the kind of ‘guild loyalty’ that Rovio said they wanted to encourage. Players aren’t going to be loyal to a guild where their efforts aren’t rewarded, and guild leaders aren’t going to be loyal to members who can’t keep pace (which, eventually, is everyone).

 

Agreed. Guild rivalry matchmaking is not working as devs expected. Usually I would start a guild rivalry matchmaking count with this thread but I do see that we are competing with a lot of guild who usually run up to 40 or more quests easily in the first 3 days. Our last rivalry win after a long time was like 3 weeks ago maybe and since then it's been a disaster.

I'm not focused on guild quests too much but I try to contribute as much as possible with the time I spend playing. Still I see members leaving guilds to join other guilds with more active players.

50% win ratio doesn't apply everywhere when stronger guilds can kick back for a couple of weeks and wreak havoc in next rivalries. Why does this sound familiar? Oh wait. That's how matchmaking works.

 

My guild is having the same problem. But what I’m seeing is that guilds are just migrating to a new guild with all the same players. We have not done this, because we all agree it’s cheating, and don’t want any punishment that comes with it if the devs decide to crack down. But right now it’s just frustrating trying to keep a guild together. Several or our players have outright said that they are less active because they know we won’t win, so why play? What is the fix for this? And is guild migration actually cheating?

 

+1
It's hilarious how many times in my rivalries that guilds that completed 36 quests the previous week hit 36 quests the first day of the new rivalry. It's easy to game the system using the "off-off-on" system or to have a dormant guild ready to switch to every 3rd week. I/my guild doesn't do this, we are always between 40 and 44 quests(depending on board 4 weapons). And this consistency pretty much leads to finishing 4th, 5th, or 6th every week.
My guild basically stuck together for the first 20 weeks of rivalries and once the new matchmaking started, I've lost about 60 to 70 percent of the original guild because it just becomes impossible to win for a # 500 rank guild to compete against #50 to 200 ranked guild. But my instincts tell me nothing will be improved upon, since this new matchmaking has surely increased the pearl spending on boosts in the game economy.

 

For me its logic is stupid , i mean a matchmaking based on last rivalry quests ?

What iam trying to say is:
Now how fair is this ( putting a pro players in a noob team vs a noob in a pro team , so at the end the both get the same win ration , and everything be fair !, just stupid .

Matchmaking should be based only on infamy , so you will play against players at your infamy (infamy = gear score , effort , skills , luck , rank ...) ,

a guild completed 10 quests and another one completed 15 quests is it fair that both get 42k tokens !!! NO
A real matchmaking should count all players with no difference ( only separate them by their age (= infamy)) and reward them by their effort ,
if a guild isn't completing like 10 quests /rivalry then it means (the rivalry doesn't matter for them , if it matters then they are bad players , or not active )
and they will play against other guild at their infamy range , so if they are active , good players , care about rivalry , then they will win with their effort .
If not why i will play a lot and spend pearls on boosts , and i won't do that and i will get nearly the same reward with no effort


OR
a matchmaking based on gear score , then the ability that your team have to finnish a certain amount of quests is the same as others guild have ± their effort and skills , and that is the fairness itself .

 

Lol so true. It says 36 quests completed then they do 36 in an hour and complete 78

 

The solution here is simple to me:
Eliminate “rivalry” and increase rewards for board/quest completion. Which encourages guilds to stay together and push for higher totals.

 

I agree, and to add on to the previous posts from my fellow battlers, at the end of the day this is a game and it is supposed to be fun, this isn't supposed to be 'miserable' or 'work' for anyone, and that's me chiming in as a guild leader. With the constant struggle to keep a guild together week after week of loses, after capping at 68 quests, it is impossible. The game should not be more stress than our daily lives, it should be the escape.

And many of our members used to buy boosts here and there, and it does help boost morale. However-- when the daily offer went from being $20 to $50, people quit buying them. It's easier to justify to yourself spending $20 now and then, but for your average working man, $50 is too much. That is someone's water bill or phone bill. Rovio is only hurting themselves here...

 

Really good idea! I don't think the rivalry matchmaking is bad, but your idea is better

 

My ideas are always geared towards what would make the best game, unfortunately that doesn’t always correlate with what will provide the best revenue for Rovio.

Clearly there is an incentive to put “pressure” on guilds which in turn results in the buying of boosts/pearls/transactions.

Unfortunately it creates a unsustainable target for guilds after a while and I don’t blame people in the slightest for taking a week off to drop back down.

Is this competing as intended, it’s certainly not. Is it cheating? I would argue no, it’s effectively managing team morale to avoid burnout.

 

Rivilary win . should be based on (number of battle played) x (total damage) (in a week )

 

Agreed that guildquests could still benefit from some adjustments. People do spend to much time stressing over rivalries though. The majority of tokens comes from the actual quests, focus on steadily clearing 36/48 or w/e board is realistic for you.
Beyond that you should (and no, its not cheating) be clever about when you boost & coordinate as a team.

I love the comment @_devill that their last win was a dreadful three weeks ago. How often do you expect to win a 6way tie?
---
Easy improvements:
- Disencourage the guildhopping. Easiest solution would be to reward guild loyalty, which would also help the OPs issue.
- Either give us breaks between rivalries or, better yet, rebalance rewards and make infamy matter more than questing with trash weapons.
- Use a much longer timespan than past two weeks to determine matchmaking.

 

I totally agree with every point here. The guild hopping is ridiculous. It’s funny how players are loyal until you don’t win anymore. Lol. Then they go to a ‘winning ‘ guild. Rinse. Repeat

 

Yep, rivalry matchmaking is very bad. I do agree with @Kitterini though, people stress too much over it. Just chill and clear your boards and you'll have the majority of raffle tokens. Actually having a chance at the rivalry is a bonus, but should never be the deciding factor in staying or leaving a guild.

 

Let's assume that no one in this thread stresses too much.. However the highly active members and spenders our guild do! We lost 3 most active members of our guild in a single day.Clearly they weren't interested to pay or play for a guild Which completed board 5 for 5th position in rivalry.

However as much as it is bad! I m an old player like you and do have knowledge of how hard it was to get an Epic perk before rivalry was introduced.So clearly 96K token is a solid bonus

 

Quests responsible for Foul play in formal battles.

1) Specific weapon quest:--Even with best weapons,Players seem to add duplicates to add up damage.Not caring about efficiency in battle

Leave aside the Commons and uncommons used

2)Boat specific quests--Mostly when i play enforcer or defender.I compromise my team's game play even though i use the best items,Since i m in experienced with the boat.But quests make you play those boats

3) Continuous rivalry season:-- Relentless grinding is the Prime requirement here.You stop the grind,Players begin to leave guild,leaving a huge negative impact.Need to keep up the grind,to hold together the guild

My suggestion

Rivalry time---3 days(Weekend days)

No. Of Quest/board--Reduced from 12/board to 6/board

Awarded token bonus from each quest and board completion bonus--Reduced to 50℅

Quest to be included

1)All fire
2)All canon
3)All mortar
4) Star hoarder
5)General win quest
6) All torpedo quests
(Any 5 out of this Quests)
+
A mandatory fixer Green item specific/Protector quest (Since heal doesn't count as Damage)

Pros

1) Reduction in Relentless grinding.4 Days Break from rivalry would be great

2) Complete omitting of boat Specific Quests/Weapon Specific Quests decreasing the no. Inexperienced and bad weapon user respectively

3) Non-quests days give player an opportunity to play fair game with Best weapons

 

If you are trying to find something like "Avg damage per battle" across the whole guild... then you should change your formula to:
= (total damage in a week) / (# battles played in a week)

I'm not saying we should use that.. just wanted to correct the math.

 

Yes, the “majority” of your tokens come from actual quests…

But the fewer # boards that you complete, the more critical it is for you to find a way to get 1st place!

Even at 5 boards complete, dropping just one spot from 1st to 2nd place is still a significant (14%) loss in tokens for the week! (And realistically, most guilds aren’t even completing 4 boards, so the % loss is even greater…)

So, is it any surprise people (at any level) are impatient, disloyal, and hopping from guild to guild to try to maximize their earnings?

As often as he out-efforts his equally matched opponents!

But the problem is opponents are not equally matched based on guild strength, they’re matched against output.

Remember the tortoise and the hare? The tortoise won! But we all recognize that as a fluke. Do you think the hare lost in the rematch? Or the rematch after that? No! the hare won the rest of the matchups! But do you know what Rovio told the tortoise? “Look, you beat the hare once before, so clearly it’s a fair match. I don’t care that you keep losing.”

This is what it’s like to push really hard one week to get an amazing score and win a rivalry. You have just doomed your guild to be ranked at that level of output until you “trick” the system into a reset.

But do people have patience for that? No… they just leave… and it stinks for guilds…

Now, it’s only fair to also explain that these rivalry matchups were changed to be this way because previously, individuals were tanking their infamy so their guild would get easy matchups which they could then dominate every week… In theory, these new rivalry matchups changes were supposed to solve that… it would be nice to hear if Rovio feels that it worked…

My reason for explaining that is to say – although matching guilds up by infamy seems fair (that’s why it was the originally implemented method after all), we can’t just go back to that without also figuring out a way to address the tanking problem.

Now that we clearly understand the issue(s), here’s where I go into solution mode...

I’m okay with having rivalry placement rewards be a significant % of the tokens earned per week (this actually is a huge benefit to newer players, and serves to help them catch up to the big fish).

But the problem is the absolutely MASSIVE drop from 1st to… any other placement.

Every week, 5 out of 6 guilds (83% of all guilds) feel really bad about their results...

I want the feeling to be: “Hey guys, let’s push for first, it’s worth some time, energy, money investment. But ending up at 2nd or 3rd shouldn’t feel like a colossal failure.”

So, I like big placement rewards, but I’m also saying: we need the reward curve between 1st-6th place smoothed out.

I propose we change the placement rewards as follows:
- 1st place = 21,000 tokens
- 2nd place = 18,000 tokens
- 3rd place = 15,000 tokens
- 4th place = 12,000 tokens
- 5th place = 9,000 tokens
- 6th place = 6,000 tokens

It’s the same # tokens, just spread out more evenly.

Competition stays alive! It’s still worthwhile to be higher rather than lower, but now guilds that happened to finish 1st vs. 6th are only 15,000 tokens apart instead of 41,000 tokens apart (remember the reason they were paired against each other to begin with was because they were deemed "equally capable").

People will stop guild-hopping, and start being loyal again!
Guilds will stop doing 2-week “resets” to try to game the system for easier matchups (it stops being worth it)!

I do not like suggestions that attack a symptom, not the root cause. The root cause is that every place stinks except 1st place, so people are desperately flailing around trying to find themselves in a guild that gets 1st every time. People are mostly impatient and ignorant of how it works, so they don’t even realize it’s not possible…

But the solution isn’t to “force/encourage” people to stay where they are. The fix is to remove the horrible unpleasantness from staying in a guild for more than 2 weeks.

I'm not convinced breaks would be good… but it’s a really tough question to decide when/how to do it that would be fair to everyone… I’d rather hold off on this in favor of my suggestion above to see how that goes…

But I absolutely LOVE rebalancing rewards to make maximizing infamy more worthwhile (Season rewards below nightmare are trash, unless you're at the very top of your league, which is weird because if I'm in Ace 1, I should get better rewards than the top guy in Ace 3...).

So, basically have a “guild quest ranking” (i.e. infamy system for your guild).
Nothing wrong with this idea, except it doesn’t solve the real problem. Again, it’s a bandaid to try to alleviate the symptom, not attack the root cause.

 

#1 and #2 used to be much bigger problems before the recent change to allow any weapon/ship to count towards any quest (at reduced rate). I just don’t see these as huge problems anymore…

#3 the grind is tough, but I think it’s the mental stress from how awful 2nd-6th place is compared to 1st… and not really the fact that you’re doing quests day after day all the time.

I honestly love that I’m always contributing to quests. It’s not that I get tired of. What I get tired of is people leaving guilds and being impatient, and stressing over 1st place vs. all other places.

Please see the post above (#18) for why I think the real fix is to bring the rivalry rewards for each of the 6 places closer together.

Again, I just don’t think we need a break… we just need less awful feelings for 83% (5 out of every 6) guilds each week.

# Quests… Again, the current weapon-specific quest variety isn’t as painful anymore because of the recent changes…

Lower rewards? Huh?!?

If you’re really going to trim it down, I’d just do 1 quest. # wins. Have a rivalry based on that. The variety currently there is good for Rovio as a business – which means it’s good for us as players. I’m okay with it as it is at 12 quests.

Again, I don’t need the break from rivalries, I need a break from the extreme pushing for 1st all the time, and feeling terrible every time we get worse than 1st.

It would be good for players to have a chance to focus on infamy, but honestly, now that any loadout can contribute to any quest – that’s just really a personal choice now.