A Suggestion To Fix Alliance Wars Matchmaking

Hello, everyone! I think I may have found a solution to ensure a fairer experience for Alliance Wars. As it stands now, the matchmaking process has been questioned and disliked greatly among many here in the Hero Hunters community. It randomizes war parties around similar power levels. In a way, this is the ideal intention, but many alliances have min-maxxed this to bring their power levels down to them mix it up against weaker alliances that can not proceed much due to very top heavy teams.

My suggestion then is to instead, matchmake wars based on a simple fix: match opponents by ranks of 6.

Scenario: Let’s say Team A gets 1st place, but they min-maxxed their way to the top. Make it so that Team A faces the next 5 that ranked similarly. What I mean is, make the rank 1 team face the other top 5. So if Team A minmaxed their way to the top, penalize them now by having them face the other top 5 teams. So, in the next war (or however it factors in points), have teams 1-6 on the leaderboards face each other!

Pros:

  • It destroys min-maxxing.
  • It applies a risk scenario as many teams will avoid certain placements of 6.
  • It allows for a deeper level of strategy due to not wanting to place high off the bat. Maybe?
  • It will cater to the strongest possible alliances downward in a tree-like formation.

This whole game is about GROWTH and becoming stronger. Strong alliances SHOULD face other strong and successful alliances.

It would add an extra level of strategy on the 1st and 4th wars. I literally don’t see any cons to this idea. Of course, feedback is welcome.

TLDR version: Have teams face each other on a ranking basis, I e. 1-6 face each other, rank 7-12 face each other, rank 13-18 face each other and so on.

Thank you for your time and KEEP ON HUNTING!

7 Likes

I see no problem with the current matchmaking. If alliances min max then they are penalized for other alliance events by having less players. It’s a give and take. Especially during bounty weeks. If anything it will just make AW even more unbalanced and keep the weaker ones from ever placing. It would be the same top 5 every war based on overall power. It would benefit me but I don’t see it equalizing anything.

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The weaker ones from ever placing? They place. But they get demolished by min-maxxing alliances who manipulate their power to face them. Weaker alliances are already placing , but what about those weaker alliances? They aren’t having any fun.

As for top 5 every war? Would it? I spoke about the gamble on war #1 (how far to place) and war #4 (best 3/4, very crucial war) as being an added strategy to the already growing alliances, betrayals, etc. It becomes a war! Craziness and anticipation and risk!

This is a great idea except for one single problem, what if people leave or move around? some clans of alliances move people around between wars and what happens if they start one war and get first place with full 25 players but the next war they only have 20 or 15 members as they have boosted a sister alliance? There are too many variables for this idea to work unfortunately

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Moving people around would be less beneficial. They could end up screwing themselves over in the season. It would more than likely drop them lower than they are scoring now when the season ends.

This could be a very fair system. I like it. Good suggestion.

The logic behind this suggestion actually came from a game called, Hustle Castle. In it, they have a tower-based system that allows for some strategy, risk, etc. to place high. Some lower guys would place high simply due to their best moves made throughout the entire duration, strategically. Some don’t place so high, because they go straight to the top, only to be dominated over more alpha-type alliances or ‘teams’. It is only but a metaphor, but I think this strategy could add so many incredible moments of surprise, strategy, luck, skill, that it can’t hurt to be looked at.

Now, to respond to Gale aka Peter: There would definitely have to be a decision made on moving parts, I.e., members. In other words, alliances that subtract or add peeps would have to be dealt with. The whole idea of Hustle Castle’s system is that once you enter into the tourney, the roster you brought in is fixed. You can not change it. Now, in a game like this where war lasts for about a month, that would be supremely difficult to say, ‘hey, you can’t change your alliance roster for an entire month!’. After all, Hustle Castle has this tourney, which lasts for about 15 minutes, at will. Not 4 weeks long AND WHICH is fixed.

BUT: If an alliance can’t allow/disallow members on a fly to manipulate the numbers, you won’t see much jumping anymore. Alliances would be more fixed. Top-down approach. IDEALLY.

You are forgetting a few things here.
Teams also change up due to members needing a break and going on holidays.
Real life happenings that’s not in their control so they need to leave the alliance.

Your idea will penalize players for having a life it seems.
So as you said yourself, Hustle Castle tournaments only last 15mins.
AW is so much more different and lasts alot longer.
The dynamics of how teams work and are composed in Hh is also alot different due to all the different events we have going on.

But good on ya for trying to think of something to help fix sandbagging in AW.

While I see your idea of how this might work.
This idea actually feeds the smaller teams to the lions with much higher team powers overall.

You see the lion teams with team powers of around 30mil or so.
Your suggestion would throw smaller/lower powered teams of 24mil etc to these lions that ranked similar to them.

A team that only has overall team power of 24mil trying to take on a lion team of about 30mil has zero chance of winning.
You can’t say that strategy and activity can win. As those teams have been thrown together due to their rank from a previous war. Therefore both teams are active and know how to strategize. The lion teams of this game will purely win on power.

I would suggest those that sandbag AW be penalized.
So teams that lower their team power by 4 - 5mil or more. They be penalized and add a few mil power to face higher powered teams.
Example.
A team deliberately lowers their team power from 23mil and down to 19mil to sandbag.
Penalize them by 2 or 3mil. So they face teams in the 21mil or 22mil range instead.
Teams with 23mil/24mil power will likely have a bunch of top teams around 110k - 114k.
So for every team in that war not able to defeat any of those top teams that sandbagging team gets penalized.

Could also base match ups with not the overall team power, but the top 20 or 30 heroes of each member and base matchmaking on that.
Let’s face it, while we might use every hero to defend, our top 30 or so are only really useful for defence.

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Hey I have an idea! Make alliances require ALL 25 MEMBERS to participate in alliance wars!

3 Likes

Since min-max and player movements seem to be the key issues with matchups for war; would it be possible for Alliances to somehow be matched up based on the individual power levels of their members? If the PVP power brackets were used (as an example) and you had X amount of members in each bracket, you get matched up with an Alliance with a similar number of members in those brackets.

Does that make sense?

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Something really needs to be done about alliances who sandbag by reducing the number of players so they face easier teams. I am on vacation so am currently n a lower level team than usual and this war we are facing 2 top teams who have reduced player numbers. Yes they get less attacks since they have less players it that means nothing when their defence teams are so strong no one can beat them from the lower team.

This reducing numbers, min maxing scam is completely ruining war for lower powered teams. Makes the event no fun at all for the little guys.

I usually play in a top 10 team and had no idea just how boring war is for the guys who face this crap every round until now.

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Total agree Raz, With this matchmaking the ranking will never be real

It was discussed along time ago and hasn’t been brought up sense. Actually fighting instead of having a simulation. I would love to see both options. I know there are teams that I could definitely beat if I was able to run it. Give us the option to do one or the other. Treat it like Gauntlet. It would definitely give people a fighting chance against some of these really high defenses.

3 Likes

Why have the devs punish sandbaggers? And besides they don’t do anything for pvp, so probably won’t here. Seems the most effective solution to end the practice would be to team up with other alliances to beat them back to their HQ. If they finish at the bottom each week, they’d be forced to stop doing it.

Punish sandbaggers.
Definitely.

It also isn’t as easy for the weaker teams to just “gang up/ally up” together to beat the sandbaggers.
You missed what Matt said above. NONE of the weaker teams have a chance at beating the very high defences the sandbagging teams have for defence.
Sure they could use an improvement. But it only gives the weaker teams 25% chance of removing a hero from the defence line up.
So after using so many attacks to just remove 1 hero from their defence they then have to keep attacking to remove another.
That’s just for ONE ZONE in a sector.
All the baby teams just waste their attacks to take one sector. Maybe if they’re lucky they might capture 2 sectors.
The sandbagging team them just has to use 3 attacks to take back a normal sector.
Very easy to take any sector back that a baby team worked hard to try capture.

I hope this puts a much bigger Scope of what is happening with the baby teams being sandbagged out the wazoo.

They basically have no chance against a sandbagging team with very high defences.
It is no fun for them.
They all end up giving up.
That sort of feeling left with players they will all end up not playing this game anymore.
The stakes for rewards for AW is high so of course they want to participate. But while they are growing and allowing a bunch of bullies to keep on bullying them, they will all end up leaving and stop playing this game.
It’s extremely discouraging for them.

I am from a top 10 team for AW in the top league atm. My team is one of the few who play with a full team of 25 every war. I admit it’s not easy.
I get alot of messages from players I talk to who are still growing and the discouragement for them is very real. A number have left already and stopped playing.
If this keeps up more players will stop playing and Hh gets less and less funding to keep making this game great.

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While only making it this way of having a team of 25 mandatory to participate in war, unfortunately there will be ways to sandbag as well.
Hence my suggestion above about penalizing teams with much stronger top teams that other teams can’t beat in that war.

Example.
A team that’s normally 25mil team power deliberately lowers their team to 20mil keeping all their top players (as this is what seems to happen) all the other 20mil teams in that war basically have no chance of beating their high defences. Alot of them won’t have 114k defences like a sandbagging team does.
So the sandbagging team gets penalized 2-4mil.
Add that 2mil-4mil to their team power and so they then face teams of around 22mil/24mil…all of a sudden it’s not such a good idea to sandbag as those teams in that bracket will have teams able to beat their high defences too. PLUS the sandbagging team has less attacks.
This again will make it less appealing and less favourable for them to even sandbag as 5hey likely will lose that war.

Another thing to note, not every team will have a team of 25 due to life circumstances and event change ups etc.
This means less teams will war. This also means since less teams will participate it is less income for Hh.
Pretty sure the OverLords of Hh will not like less income. :wink:

you can beat stronger teams either by luck with low chance or by removing heroes from defense.

we play 25 and currently are fighting 2 alliances that have 21 and 22. they have much stronger lines, but we lead in points by a big margin.
the extra bp’s a 25 players team has balances the difference in strength.

regarding the suggestion to group teams based on season rankings this would make things even worse.

current system allows allainces which are much better in war than their similar power alliances to rank high. for example a solid alliance of 15-16 mln power might be much better than other in that range and thus get quite high in rankings. With your idea they would end up fighting maybe 25 mln guilds, and they will not stand a chance.

Or make it so you have to have 22/25 members to be eligible for war. Having it at 23 or 24 people one or 2 could leave last minute. But at 22 It will help stop the sandbagging, half or above teams in top 10 are sandbagged 21 or less. Putting it at 22 will help but not completely fix it just a step in the right direction because theres not much hope for some of these teams that go against them

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You see the problem with this is they would just pull a nobody power player onto the war and give them free rewards, Y’all have some good suggestions but there is no be all and end all solution.

Sandbagging is an issue in PVP and war and I think you will find from the prior that there is no solution as there will always be a way and someone will always manipulate the system. It is unfortunate but time will tell the solution.

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