Revisiting New War Match Making

[pearl hill]

i like to thank my kingdom for volunteering

[sinful temple]

How dare you one shot the kingdom everyone is complaining about at AL0? That must be AI

[pearl hill]

disclosure: these videos are not be used as an argument for nerfing bloodray.

AL 0 player has to put in a lot of work to get the gearing. Idk where the lvl 999 AL players are hanging out but most of these people arent running status immunity

[sinful temple]

@late coral please retract your statement about a flat out bald faced lie. I may be bald, but I’m not a liar

[pearl hill]

local at an orna meetup showed me how they use their status build to take out my territory AI

if you arent choosing optimal builds to take on stronger opponents and want pvp to be balanced where power levels dont exist matchmaking alone cannot solve this. The AL equalization hex was and is a solution for this.

that said you will still have a hard time at AL0 if your builds arent up to par

[short sapphire]

Hello, yes, I would like to use these videos as an argument for nerfing bloodray

[pearl hill]

protect funray at all costs

its the only way I can beat geppu (TBD)

[sinful temple]

Looking at this statement and the one it’s replying to, it seems I’m not the one lying to try and further his point

[pearl hill]

I said this years ago but the average orna discussion thread is looking for agreement of existing opinions rather than an actual discussion

sometimes we get somewhere we want to go

[indigo glade]

GSH too

[quick lake]

sure, i'll nerf bloodray. good call

[pastel kayak]

An AL0 can oneshot even an AL360

HyPa can deal 700k++ at AL0

[lost grotto]

Definitely not T1, but yeah

T1 you’re looking at 200k more or less, while using a Nolan’s

A lot less than Bloodray, but still very solid for 0AL

[pastel kayak]

This is with Nekro but not fully optimized, doubt Nolan's is 500k less

[cosmic pasture]

That's with double cast. So 300k including pact bonus of nekro.

[pastel kayak]

Why would it matter it's double cast? You can still deal 700k turn 1

[cosmic pasture]

I don't understand what you mean. Your screenshot shows 300k x2. How can it be 700k without double cast and nekro pact bonus?

You cant rely on the 20% double cast chance.

[pastel kayak]

I never said it can deal 700k without doublecast o.o I said you can deal 700k turn 1

[cosmic pasture]

OK, but you really don't want to hope for 20% chance in pvp. And without nolan, you will probably miss, so 0 damage.

But the damage is of course still high. Usually high enough.

[lost grotto]

Yeah, what Richard is saying, with a Nekro you’re missing most of the time, and that’s a double cast

[pastel kayak]

350k without doublecast is still a lot more than what oro said and a 20% chance to oneshot an AL360 as AL0 seems good to me
Even if you use Nolan's and deal 500-600k instead that's still insanely high

[lost grotto]

Test with a Nolan’s

0AL Nolan’s vs Nekro

[pastel kayak]

Show gear

[lost grotto]

It’s not applying the 15% at full hp?

[cosmic pasture]

You can slightly increase damage with bonus for full hp amity, but that should be it.

[lost grotto]

Not working

[lost grotto]

.

Looks like it’s bugged

[pastel kayak]

You can still optimize it further and the Amity isn't procc'ing, anyway it's still 215k or 430k doublecast with Nolan's which is insane and way more than what you said

[cosmic pasture]

Didn't he say 200k? It's 215k 😂

[lost grotto]

Lmao

Sorry for the off-topic, but here’s proof that it’s not working as intended

The 15% amity

[pastel kayak]

It can be higher even on the single cast and I'm not sure why you're pretending the doublecast doesn't exist
The whole build's identity is to cheese an offense win in an otherwise unwinnable matchup, even 1% to win with a 300+ ALs disparity is insane
Bloodflask isn't able to kill the Mammoth titans, HyPa can

[lost grotto]

Wdym Bloodflask can’t lmao

It literally hits for more, and can’t miss or be blocked

And stop pretending as if all HyPa hits were double casts

[pastel kayak]

You need 600k+ to kill hairychinese, Brye etc.

Never said it double casts all the time, I actually said even 1% would be insane since it's 0% for 99% of the builds even at higher AL

[lost grotto]

You were saying 600k and 700k as if it happened all the time, when it’s a 20%. And trying to hit someone with those AL without a Nolan’s is just suicidal.

Don’t know why we’re using Nekro numbers when it’s unuseable in PvP most of the time

[pastel kayak]

Never said that, anyway it's probably better to stop derailing the thread

[pastel kayak]

Today we fought Pineapple Palace, ABS, Civil Disobedience and IBWIPVP in a row
I also never got matched
They were right all this time

[pastel kayak]

Can I freely ascend now or should I be worried we might go back to a bracket system?

[pulsar grail]

Can always HoC them back off if they decide to change it again

[pastel kayak]

True

[copper portal]

@quick lake I appreciate the Patch, heads up our benched members were just placed into war. Not sure if this is "reserved for emergency" enough but thought it should be brought up.

[south timber]

For reference

Milky, jaymorg, gnim the gnome

[sleek pelican]

We had 2 benched being matched as well

[pastel kayak]

We had 4 benched players being matched as well

[quick lake]

it's fixed now

[warm rover]

Got a 2 v 2, this one started 14 minutes ago.

[quick lake]

is it fair though

[warm rover]

True. But is it ment like this?

[quick lake]

no

(It’s fixed)

[sinful temple]

Now that’s a quick war!

[south timber]

The brackets got super dynamic

[warm rover]

It was 😂

[sinful temple]

Wars no longer seem to be prioritizing the highest performing members. Is this intentional?

[lost grotto]

We started queuing on the dot and still nothing after ~20 mins

[sinful temple]

We took 1h last hour as well. Still got a 6 man war but our higher ALs were no longer prioritized or even matched

[lost grotto]

We still haven't matched, so ~45 mins and counting

[sinful temple]

Matches usually always start in the first minutes (they’ll sometimes drag, at most, to 15min) of the hour, so you should only get matched, best case scenario, at the start of the next hour

[lost grotto]

No yeah, that's why I don't understand why we didn't match in those first minutes at the start of the hour, since we haven't had any issues these last weeks

Prob because of the update, but idk

[grim panther]

Started mm 6 hours and 6 minutes ago, still going on strong

[short sapphire]

@Brysia don't start a new war until Hlid matches

Whoops wrong chat

[grim panther]

https://tenor.com/view/come-play-with-us-the-shining-grady-twins-matchies-creepy-gif-12745398

[short sapphire]

We won't actually wait so once some people wake up and take our open fights we'll be in the queue shortly (hopefully on the hour). Unfortunately we probably will still match with you, given we have the same kingdom size

Yeah we will finish on the hour now, someone just fought. So we'll see if matchmaking likes the matchup or not. Should be good science.

We have 9 unbenched players but much lower ALs than you (but over 50). Not sure how new-new-new matchmaking treats that.

[lost grotto]

We’ve had a 1 hour and a 4 hour queue so far

[grim panther]

We haven’t had this long mm since the first generation of new mm

Sess and Folk were in mm at the same time with is and they matched each other, so it probably indeed puts way more weight on kingdom size

[short sapphire]

Is this the end of the small, dedicated kingdom being most efficient? (No, probably not)

[grim panther]

It’s probably just us being a bit of an outlier

[short sapphire]

Brysia is just a copy of Hlid with lower AL people

We haven't had matchmaking issues yet but we'll see if they come up

[grim panther]

We were in war when the patch came out. First mm after that was 3 hours (got it burns)

3 hour was already longer than it had been recently

[short sapphire]

With the changes to queue the largest available matchups I think the 6-10 kingdoms will likely have slower matchmaking

IBWIPVP will be eating the best from these changes I think since they're pretty large

[weary saffron]

I think increased matchmaking length is to be expected the more factors it prioritizes. But the more narrow your kingdom is the worse it'll be.

[short sapphire]

We'll see how bad it gets but I'm not super worried

[weary saffron]

From my point of view, I've only been included in one war since yesterday. Whereas I used to be in almost every war, so seems like high strength players not being as prioritized as before.

[short sapphire]

The vibe I got from the patch note and what Odie said before is that equal-ish strength matchups are more prioritized once two kingdoms have matched.

Not sure how accurate that is

[weary saffron]

Cher my only opponent from here on out

[short sapphire]

Just be a king, then all you need to do is kill Konq

[weary saffron]

Ok I'll ask gamblor

[short sapphire]

See if Gamblor wants to mix things up a bit

I beat him sometimes at least

[short sapphire]

Still MM?

We just entered the queue

[grim panther]

Yep

[short sapphire]

[sinful temple]

Doubt you guys will get matched together tbh. With yesterday’s changes largely favoring equal-ish matchups when it comes to ALs, Hlid might very well be restricted to just a handful of possible opponents

I don’t know what the solution is here, but it’s clear that every time we try to cover a base something else gets messed up. We had previously established that kingdoms wanted their strongest players to be prioritized but this recent patch leaves those players with very little chance of getting matched

[short sapphire]

Yeah we've been matchmaking for 47 minutes now, and we really should've matched with Hlid

Like, we'd lose, as always. But we should've matched 😆

[indigo glade]

Giving us more bench slots to use and going back to old matchmaking system is still the easiest and best temporary solution to this imo

[short sapphire]

I think this newest rework has a lot of potential, especially for fixing some of the war size complaints

[indigo glade]

I haven't been matched since it got changed again

[sinful temple]

We had a couple of bigger matchups but some with similar sizes as well. It’s more the fact that we’ve gone back to not prioritizing the players the kingdoms first said they wanted to see prioritized 😅

I think Geppu, our best performer in wars, has only been matched once since

[short sapphire]

Maybe it should be (almost) completely randomized who faces who in a per-matchup basis

There's always going to be that conflict between strong kingdoms wanting their best players matched, and weak kingdoms not wanting to face the strongest players from strong kingdoms.

[indigo glade]

Odies earlier solution of one bracket with players under 25 only matching each other and then everyone else being able to match was also a good idea

[sinful temple]

From what we’ve seen in the last wars, it seems to very tightly match players with the closest AL opponent. This will inevitably lead to very quickly repeating matchups

[grim panther]

Damn, I might just end up having permanent sword of shame on me. IBWIPVP comes off cd for us at 3 AM my time

[sinful temple]

Remind me not to start matchmaking at that time

[lost grotto]

Started queuing on the dot and nothing so far, hoping it finds a match at the start of this next hour

[pastel kayak]

I would still really really like to get a bigger bench, I don't understand what the counter argument for that is or why the team doesn't want to implement it

[cosmic pasture]

A larger separate bench for kwars (not benching more players for kraids).

[quick lake]

Larger bench leads to some of the kgauntlet cheesing we’ve seen in the past. Would rather a solution that does not revive reasons for currently restrictions

[grim panther]

11th hour in mm brough us war against Civil Disobedience

[short sapphire]

There's a solid chance you can now only match with Civil Disobedience and IBWIPVP unless another high AL kingdom is in the queue and no other kingdom is in the queue

From what we're currently seeing

[lost grotto]

We were queued for an hour until we matched against your kingdom

Don't know why it didn't pick us against them, since we're also ranked high

[pastel kayak]

Because it's based on ALs, not rank

[lost grotto]

We still have a few +100s, but I won't complain if that means we won't be seeing It Burns for some time

[neat cradle]

At this rate, we won't be seeing a lot of kingdoms for some time, it seems.

[pearl hill]

Should give kingdoms a MM option between two choices. Option 1) the salty spittoon: you match to everyone else with this selection all the time no restrictions, quick MM times, blood for the blood god. Option 2) Weenie hut jr: whatever we have now

[pastel kayak]

What's the kgauntlet cheesing? They are limited to 1 per hour anyway

[weary saffron]

Yeah but that would just produce the same system in practice imo

[pearl hill]

yeah but you have to choose to be in weenie hut jr

thats the difference

🧽

[short sapphire]

You could give slightly more orns for matching in salty spitoon mode, and slightly less for matching in weenie hut mode

[lost grotto]

If we stop seeing all these min 1 hour queues I'm all for it

[weary saffron]

I'm not sure if dividing the queue further is going to help matchmaking time.

[indigo glade]

It used to be alt kingdoms could bench all their alts and then just do the gauntlet with the main account. But that got changed a while ago so I don't really see why this is still a concern

[ruby tinsel]

This matchup happened while sokam was on a 0 AL class

Then he switched to his main AL class

[quick lake]

you're matched by max AL - the opponent has a higher AL class

[lost grotto]

We had this one, but I’m assuming this falls under the dynamic bracket thing

[pastel kayak]

Could this be addressed?

[quick lake]

not sure what change this is referring to. the cheese would still be possible

[sinful temple]

Another war where Geppu doesn’t get matched

[short sapphire]

#FreeGeppu

[warm rover]

No match after 8 hours here

[lost grotto]

Oof

[weary saffron]

Not to only advocate for myself, but I don't think the mm should discourage players from pushing AL. I've only been paired vs hil since changes, and I think once size selection is done a kingdom should still send their most powerful members.

Unless brackets have changed radically I should be eligible for fights in this war and other members were selected over me.

[pastel kayak]

It seems it's trying to match extremely close players AL-wise

[short sapphire]

This is an extremely fair fight.

But that means there is no incentive for a kingdom to get stronger

It's a double edged blade =/

[pastel kayak]

All the matches are in a 3 AL range, never saw that even within the previous system

[short sapphire]

Weak players don't want to fight strong players, strong players want to fight period

[weary saffron]

My sense is that the dynamic bracket could still exist without explicitly favoring more even matchups at the expense of kingdoms high power players.

[ruby tinsel]

Ahh you're right, opponent did switch to a 150 AL also

So far so good with this new matchmaking

Aside from the high AL outliers having issues still

[pastel kayak]

I mean, when you see a base Rs you should automatically assume lil bro is just on Rs/Seeker

People get sniped all the time which is why PvP defense should have a separate and static loadout (that includes class and pet)

[sinful temple]

Idk, if you know a war is going to start at :00 there’s no reason to be idling on a class you don’t play

[pastel kayak]

That really doesn't matter
Regardless of this situation in particular, you aren't guaranteed that your opponent will instantly make his attack
Maybe it's more frequent at high AL but even then timezones exist and you can match a very active player while he's sleeping so he attacks 8 hours later
Considering this and the fact it was mentioned in this very thread some people purposedly wait either out of spite or as a strategy, people should be free to switch to their VD/Memory Hunting loadout without worrying

[pearl hill]

So have entire kingdom swap to AL 0 class. Queue war

Wait for match

Swap back to mains

The cheese wars have begun

[pastel kayak]

You get matched based on your highest AL class just like it was in the previous system

[pearl hill]

Oh still?

Guess I misread up in the thread

Re read okay I see it now

[sinful temple]

It’s actually:

• HoC right before matchmaking
• quickly ascend after getting matched
• stomp AL0s

It’s finally time to Pay2Win!

[indigo glade]

It's been fixed, you need 6 unbenched players no matter what now. So I'm not sure how adding more bench slots breaks that 🤷‍♂️

[south timber]

I think we could keep the "limited" bench number for the gauntlets which I'm ok with , but then add a different option for war benching such as setting the players as pacifist

We could even go for 3 options to make it more appealing and pleasant for the highest ALs
Pacifists: no wars
Normal: can be matched with the mm rules to protect kids from eating crayons instead of cheese
Kamikaze: higher priority in the mm and happy to deal with anyone coming his way

It wouldn't change the mm and queue times in a worse way, since we'll have people open to a wider matchmaking range.

pacifists could still be a limited number to avoid rigging the current system, but unrelated from the current benching so we could help less competitive kingdoms to have new players focusing on the pve side while the strongest or more into PvP can get into wars without preventing anyone from killing raids and gauntlets

[south timber]

I don't know how doable it is from a coding point of view but maybe it could be done from this menu

[copper portal]

Enserric, you spoke my love language 🤣

[lost grotto]

Wasn’t it supposed to be by AL now?

[lost grotto]

Thought it wouldn’t make a match, as it happened here

[olive jacinth]

Enemy could've switched classes to one with lower al since it counts highest al class you got.

[lost grotto]

Nah, it happened in all the matchups, and the class you have equipped atm of mm doesn’t matter, it’s only your highest AL class that counts

[pastel kayak]

I agree there could be better options, I just keep suggesting the bench slots increase as I think it's the easiest and fastest change that can be made

[pastel kayak]

This menu should also allow to set people as able to open and close the Kingdom

[olive jacinth]

That's what i mean, opponent is al 50+ but switched to class with low als

[lost grotto]

But it doesn’t work like that, switching classes doesn’t do anything

It takes your highest AL class into account, doesn’t matter if you have it equipped atm

[cosmic pasture]

I guess he looked at drex (fighting against low AL) instead of your match (against high AL). For your fight, it's indeed quite a mismatch.

(and for most of your kingdom)

But given that large fights are preferred and you have many al50+ players, maybe there are no better options available?

[pastel kayak]

Just snipe Mingus Dew on Rs, have Momolord get 10 Avidity procs in a row to kill Cher and then I'm sure Konq won't use Bloodray and will let Elendinn win the defense for the tie

[lost grotto]

All the AL plus Numnier, since you can’t see theirs properly

[lost grotto]

No yeah, but the other day it didn’t match us while we were both queued

Which made sense, given the AL disparity, and how the new mm tackles that stuff

That’s why it surprised me today

[cosmic pasture]

I see. Maybe the allowed disparity increases over unmatched time? Which would make sense for me.

[pastel kayak]

It would definitely make sense, it's how it's supposed to be

[lost grotto]

I mean, that day they had already been queued for +9 hours at the time we also started queuing, and it still didn’t match us

Maybe it was just bad luck, or they changed something else, don’t know

[warm rover]

18 hours waiting for match

[pastel kayak]

I'm not getting matched in our Wars again, I didn't get matched for 2 in a row despite being eligible
Despite my low AL, I think I'm a top performer for my Kingdom: in the last 6 Wars I played, I won every attack and 5 defenses
Why are other players getting prioritised over me?

[warm rover]

Atleast your kingdom gets wars...

[late coral]

I can chime in on behalf of a 50 member kingdom that the new changes have benefitted us. The matches are much more fair and we are seeing larger numbers of our members getting matched. We won a 20-player matchup 20-19 last night and won yesterday's match 18-17. Because the matches are dishing out rewards based on their size, we got about 57,000 kingdom orns for our win today. It took all 24 hours, but that's the price you pay for having a large kingdom with a mix of hardcore and casual players.

[late coral]

If you are an AL52 (for example), and your kingdom has 2 players at AL51 and two players at AL53, I'm guessing that you would be 5th on the list of potential candidates. You would really only have a chance of being matched if they have a player with exactly 52 ALs.

[late coral]

Are you suggesting the system should abandon a fair match and make it more unfair so that a higher-level player could be matched? I don't think that would be fair to the weaker player. I'd also be curious if you were one of the many voices that were saying "Absolutely no AL reductions". I'll point out again that the only way to have both a fair match and to assign matches to the highest-AL players outside the same few players is AL reduction.

At any given time, you might have hundreds of possible matches between AL25 and AL 80... you probably have dozens available between AL80 and AL120. But once you start getting higher and higher, there simply won't be that many other players that strong. The highest-level players (sadly) are trapped by a problem of their own making. They have progressed to such a rarified height that they either have to play the same players over and over or sit out because they can't be matched.

It seems obvious to me, but it also seems really unpopular... if there's nobody at your high-level to fight, you need to drop down to where the available fighters are.

[warm rover]

Yay, got ourselfs a war.
After 29 hours of matchmaking...

[south timber]

I'm pretty sure that anyone with more than 100 Als can figure out how to take down a 300al and even how to win a defense against him with the good amount of passives/amities and whatsoever

I've had the pleasure of getting matched with geppu quite often and I think it's a fair matchup even if I've half of his ALs, sometimes I get brutally abused cause of SC/parapet sometimes he's the one suffering from it

[weary saffron]

Can confirm I've lost offense and defense to some of your builds. I had to develop a specific build for you

[short sapphire]

I'm AL 93 at the moment and there's nobody I can't sometimes beat. I'm a monarch so I see a ranch of opponents

[south timber]

I love having ad-hoc builds for me 🥰 makes me feel like an event raid lol

[quick lake]

i love that it is a ranch

[weary saffron]

You're among a very small group that I have a select build for so that says something.

[short sapphire]

I fixed the typo 😩

[quick lake]

nah, typo was good

[short sapphire]

Fine

You're the boss

[weary saffron]

But yeah, with present matchmaking I only fight vs Hild and only get matched vs Cher. I don't think the dynamic brackets should be to the exclusion of a kingdoms high-power members.

[south timber]

That's definitely unfair punishing the grind, specifically now that we have a proper anguish system that makes it valuable since there's a proper stat scaling coming with the difficulty, meanwhile the previous one could be maxed out and dealt with with less than 50 als

I get it that 51als Vs 200 is unbalanced and annoying, but let's remove all the restrictions from 75 or 100 so that it could ease the matchmaking for stronger kingdoms without abusing the more mixed/average ones

[lost grotto]

Ngl, I have 65 and it's definitely possible to beat 150-200AL opponents

I've also beat players with twice my AL on the def, while using GSA

So yeah, if someone complains about that, it's more of a build/strat issue than anything else

AL are an advantage, but they aren't a wall like that

[south timber]

Yes it's all about having a strategy, we're all so used to brute force ourselves in a oneshot race, which I get it when it comes to settlements, you're trying to take as many as you can and that's all

But in wars you've all the time you want to pop maluses, buff yourself and kill the other dude like if it's a proper fight with turns

[weary saffron]

And for kingdoms like Hild, my understanding is they're doing like two wars a day now. I think its okay if you are disadvantaged vs a strong kingdom. It was pretty monumental when Hild was taken down for the first time, and it requires IBWIPVP to coordinate heavily to have a chance at a win. Some of the more fun emergent gameplay IMO

[compact dagger]

Just now. This is why I dont even bother with Kingdoms at this point. PVP blows

[weary saffron]

What's the issue here the mismatch? Have you tried full crit realmstrikes build?

[south timber]

Strat issue, that dude is mostly (like 80% of Dorado) stuck into the pigeonhole called BoF. RS2/chakrams would nuke him even if you were 20als lol

I'd be worried if that was a deity with mammoth tho

[sinful temple]

Yea, this new system feels like it’s punishing players that grind. Geppu pretty much doesn’t get matched, and I’ve missed half our wars as well. It’s now sidelining the players that have invested the most into their war sets

[quick lake]

there's a bit of nuance to high AL right now - right now, anyone over 100 AL can be matched without restriction

however, AL closeness is still favoured. so, if there is someone of similar AL to an oppoenent, regardless of the AL restriction, that match will be favoured

i need to update the scoring to also give max score to high AL pairs

instead of solely close-AL pairs

[south timber]

Is there a way to remove that closeness from the 100al above but keep it for the lower dudes?

[quick lake]

additionally, the requirements are loosened for similarly ranked kingdoms, as seen here. similar ranks should reflect more than just AL

[south timber]

Even just to keep it mixed and funny otherwise we'll just fight the same people over and over

[quick lake]

yes, it would only affect those over 100AL. less than AL would still have closeness heavily scored

[south timber]

I already go to work to have this experience so I'd like to avoid it in the game

[compact dagger]

Beo main here

[sinful temple]

BeoH can use Chakram fairly well

[compact dagger]

Extremely unreliable for me. I find QC Ultima is less spikey but wayyy more consistent

[south timber]

Good luck with the dodge rate on Dorado

[weary saffron]

Its not going to be consistent against all targets, its specific for dealing with high dodge, low armor classes, like RS or other BoF users

[south timber]

Unless you play ranger with sureshot offhand or Nolan you're going to have a bad time

[quick lake]

interestingly, BeoH and Dorado only have a 3% difference in kingdom war loss rate

[lost grotto]

Att or def?

[quick lake]

def

[south timber]

Old school SS3 beoh are definitely suffering the matchup

But anyone that managed to update with the crit skills is just suffering either cause of pet block or parapet

[short sapphire]

BeoH has basically the strongest second chance in the game

[south timber]

They're both sitting in a nuke first spot

[short sapphire]

Nobody else hits harder on the backswing

[lost grotto]

Not the D.Ursa being redlined after the SC proc

[short sapphire]

That would require people playing DUrsa
Edit: this is a joke

[quick lake]

yeah, DUrsa currently has the best def rate

[south timber]

And with DB coming right after covering it with a lovely 700k wall

[short sapphire]

Neat

[sinful temple]

Guess it’s time to HoC

I blame Civil for that

[lost grotto]

Ngl, I wish we could see all the data regarding pvp def stats

[sinful temple]

Same, but I wish we had a way to filter it (AL influence, etc). Otherwise it’d just muddy any future balance discussions without adding much objective data

[lost grotto]

Yeah, same

[pastel kayak]

Regardless of AL, if there are more players in a certain range, shouldn't the system prioritise the one with the best record?

[neat peak]

Id love to see the war win rate stats Odie. I love stats.

[robust breach]

https://klipy.com/gifs/glen-powell-cowboy-hat-twisters-hat-tip

You guys are my favorite match, always a brawl.

[warm rover]

Lord Odie you an idea why matchmaking takes long ?

[quick lake]

no suitable opponents

[warm rover]

For 29 hours?

[lavish widget]

You could always war with us again when we aren't being stalled by others kingdoms 😅

[jade nexus]

I would trade just about anything to have a war be won if nobody attacks for hours or be able to shuffle people out of a war. Some of these kingdoms are killing us. We rarely get a war that lasts less than 24 hours. Why bother being aggressive if you arent? Lol

[pastel kayak]

I wish there were public API for those

[robust breach]

We've now entered our 4th hour of matchmaking, is this really how it's supposed to work?

[sinful temple]

Sorry, we’re currently matched with Hlid, so no one else for you guys to face

Our average matchmaking time has increased by 1h, but I think the increase wasn’t bigger because we have a good spread of ALs

[lost grotto]

We still have the issue of being queued for at least 1 hour before it matches us against someone

Every single time

[robust breach]

If you're matched with Hlid, we won't see you until this time tomorrow I'm guessing?

[lost grotto]

Or maybe not an issue, but it never happened before

[short sapphire]

We're locked in with 420 at the moment until their last member fights, but I think we're still valid for you as well

[robust breach]

Yes, every time there's at LEAST an hour in between.

[sinful temple]

Already mathematically won, so maybe we’ll see you guys in 35min

[lost grotto]

Yeah

[pastel kayak]

We are also always in matchmaking for 1 hour

I think the game is only checking exactly at xx:00

[short sapphire]

Tbh that's likely to facility Odie's queue preference logic

Get a small backlog of kingdoms queueing for wars, then match together the ones that best fit size-wise

[pastel kayak]

With Wars finishing at xx:00, if the check was made at e.g. xx:15, there would be the same amount of Kingdoms in queue

Unless a lot of people take up to 59 minutes to queue again

[short sapphire]

I mean, a lot of people aren't waiting for exactly on the hour for the war to be over so they can queue up again

Some people do have lives 😆

[robust breach]

Meanwhile, we're now in hour 5 of matchmaking...

[short sapphire]

I won't name and shame, but we need one person from our opposing war to take their fight before we can re-queue lol

And I'll make sure another person who I won't name and shame doesn't go DMing anyone if we do match...

[pastel kayak]

I guess I don't have a life for queuing up on the hour :(
15 or 30 minutes should be plenty of time considering more people in the Kingdom can queue up and it would already feel much better

[robust breach]

You're a legend, good sir!

[warm rover]

Our average matchmaking time has been increased by 1 day...

[indigo glade]

I've had one war match since the change 🙁

[pearl hill]

im guessing the kingdoms you could match with are already in a war fight, and the changes wont pair you up with other available kingdoms due to however the dynamic brackets behaves.

in order to enforce fairness on what is already a small number of potential kingdoms this seems to be the result

quicker matchtimes for all would mean that anyone can match with anyone and then we go back to having the other subset of kingdoms having matchups they dislike

I still think the best path forward given the population of potential matchups in orna being such a small number of players is to have zero restrictions on matchups between kingdoms and players

hopefully this would mean that the randomness of matching means a balance of fair and unfair matches but also an exposure to any and all kingdoms rather than just a handful that fit your preferences

my 2cents

might be a fun experiment for a week

I know this horse has been beaten well past death in this thread but I cant see the type of bracketing people want working out to everyones satisfaction unless the available population of potential war matchups grew by 10x (picking random number idk) the orna population

FWIW I am not speaking about my preferences, just my pov on where MM currently stands

[robust breach]

Not EVERY fight has to be perfectly fair and balanced, sometimes you just draw the short straw. Getting a bloody nose every now and then is the best incentive to make yourself better.

[neat cradle]

Came here to say the same thing. I really don't think there should be any obligation for every matchup to be exactingly fair. With frequent enough matchups, you'll win some, lose some, and hopefully learn a thing or two along the way.

[wispy basin]

Having wars with the same 3-4 kingdoms every time is just not fun.

[pastel kayak]

The system is just poorly made, checks shouldn't only happen at xx:00 and the matchmaking range should get wider and wider whenever it "fails" on the check, that way fairness would be still granted for the most part and high AL Kingdoms might have a slightly longer queue than before but definitely not 25 hours long

[quick lake]

Restrictions are already looser for similarly ranked kingdoms and are further lifted as needed. Unfortunately, the queue will ultimately decide wait times for kingdoms that have few ideal opponents

Disagree on the time. global actions need a global clock

[short sapphire]

I don't understand the huff about the queue matching occurring only on the hour. That's what makes sense with the system trying to batch fair kingdoms together.

If anything, it tells you exactly when to take your war fight in your war gear, for the people that matters for

[robust breach]

Yeah, I'm fine with on the hour starts/stops too. Nice to know exactly how much time you have running content until you have to gear up for war.

[pastel kayak]

I don't think it makes much sense for the war_end and queued_kingdoms checks to both happen at the same time, it means that the kingdoms are forced to always wait at least one hour before a new check since when their last war ended
It can be at another fixed time, e.g. xx:30

[quick lake]

consistent infrastructure demand, no concurrency issues, the list goes on

[pastel kayak]

If anything, most of the Kingdoms that would quickly start their matchmaking after a war is over are the tryhard ones so if the check happens sooner, they are even more likely to match each other and the rest should be happy about it

[cosmic pasture]

I think there exist very different objectives regarding matchmaking, which I would describe as follows.

Priorities (preferred by):

• fast/no restrictions (top 10)
• fair/similar strength (>top 20)
• strong/match high AL (>100 ALs)
• large/match many (>20 players)
• diversity/low repetitions (most agree)

There might be more factors, but I think most people mainly argue for one or two of these conflicting priorities. But maybe we can find more proposals that try to take different perspectives into account.

Some examples which I think belong to this category:

1. lowering restrictions over time,
2. allowing a max AL advantage (like 50%: for AL50 the opponent is restricted to AL125 stats) w/o further restrictions.
   There are likely more which I just forgot?

[short sapphire]

I think we should ride out this current system for a bit (like how Odie locked the thread over the holidays) and come back with our thoughts/feelings after seeing how it's working

[sinful temple]

We’re still seeing our top players not get matched often. If we’re going to ride anything out, I’d rather it be after that gets addressed

[neat peak]

Maybe they should HOC and not go back to 300 als if they want a match

[weary saffron]

Actually I get one match a day, but that means I only need to fight one person

[neat peak]

This is hard to get perfect. Everyone but you is getting fair fights for the most part. The outlier because 300als. I've been pretty happy with war match ups in Alpine. Everyone is getting even match ups.

Maybe two of these are a little unfair but way better than a 51 al matching 150als we are getting matches within an hour.

[weary saffron]

At least its fun trying to develop a build for a particular person, but honestly I think Odies suggestion above about making the closeness factor not matter above 100AL seems like a fine solution.

[neat peak]

I didn't see that but that's a good suggestion also. Maybe still try to match the highest with highest still for fairness.

[weary saffron]

Yeah I think that would be fine generally, but I think a lot of people wouldnt like fighting the same opponent all the time, I'm agnostic about it though

[neat peak]

Yeah. There is prob a way to program some randomness into it like random match against the top 3 als on the other kingdom with your top 3 als so it's not always just highest vs highest

[lost grotto]

Current

[warm rover]

After 13 hours got a new war match with the same kingdom for the 3rd time in a row. Its really displeasing.
Is it possible to have 2 group types of matchmaking? One that doesnt care who you match and likes a challenge (a game is never fair and you always have power differences) and maybe the way it was. And the o t h e r group, that likes how things got now.

[neat peak]

What's your match look like? Screen shot the war

[warm rover]

Ye button was already pressed for matchmaking. It was 6 v 6, AL in total equal.

[neat peak]

How many in your kingdom? Send that when you get a match so we can figure out the reason and come up with a solution.

[warm rover]

6 atm

But it was never a problem before

Will do

[grim panther]

Our matchups have been mostly ibwipvp + civil disobedience, and then abs + 420 both once I think

Matchmaking times are rather long

Not quite as bad as yours, but already had twice over 10 hours

[robust breach]

Yeah, we're pretty much only seeing 420, Burns, Hlid, ABS, Sess. Pretty boring waiting sometimes hours in queue for the same handful of matches.

[sinful temple]

We’re still seeing Geppu, me and other high performers get benched from most wars as well. I pretty much only get to fight Civil, Hlid and 420

It really is frustrating to see the players in our kingdom that are most invested in wars get pushed away from wars. Feels like being punished for working hard to get stronger

[robust breach]

@weary saffron You’re finally in the mix, woohoo! #FreeGeppu

[weary saffron]

Thanks for the ping, I was not ready to be warring at all

[copper portal]

I had an idea that would be awesome! Why not allow kingdoms to code and match one another BoF Guild style? Kingdoms can coordinate with one another for repeat matches, contests, weaker kingdoms avoid strong kingdoms, strong kingdoms avoid 24 hr wars. Even let multiple kingdoms run the same codes. Maybe have a few predetermined codes to choose from that are for the larger queuing lots, but allow single codes as well!

[quick lake]

Alt kingdom win farming would be the concern. Rewards would need to be disabled

[sinful temple]

I really think what we’re doing now is creating “fake” close wars. Instead of actually seeing a kingdom’s power, we’re just manipulating matchups so that they’re so close that every war ends on a close score every time.

This means slower wars, less rewards, and that the players that have invested the most into the system are getting sidelined.

It no longer feels like 2 kingdoms at war, because kingdoms aren’t actually being represented by who they’d choose to send into war

[pastel kayak]

What if Kingdoms could choose e.g. 5 champions that should be matched no matter what and the system would prio matching champions between each other (respecting the original method as much as possible)?

[weary saffron]

Pretty cool idea, it would be like how kings always match but extended a bit

[quick lake]

Or top 5 + king are always matched

[short sapphire]

We didn't get a screenshot, but we did have a kingdom member who's only AL 68 matched with AceFarmerKevo, who's AL 200

(Just a coincidence that I'm saying this right after Odie said what he said)

I don't know if this is a bug or me just not understanding how the system now works.

It's not a big deal, and we won the war anyway, I just thought that wasn't supposed to happen

[short sapphire]

I like that idea

[pastel kayak]

Top 5 based on AL?

[short sapphire]

Most likely, as Orna doesn't contain or track an ELO metric

[pastel kayak]

Even without an ELO-based system, couldn't we just track wins and losses in the last 30 days and base the top 5 on those?

[warm rover]

Maybe add a box in kingdom roster with "champion/warlord", those who will fight the war.

[pastel kayak]

That was my idea

[warm rover]

Thats why I put to your post , me too.

[copper portal]

That's what they are already doing.

Btw, we haven't had any AL100+ members match in war since the latest update. Notbsure what others with mixed members are seeing.

[short sapphire]

I can confirm that other kingdoms are having their AL 100+ members matched against us lol

[quick lake]

No, they are not - that wouldn't be possible

code based matching means you can pick your opponent 100% of the time and then always have them lose

you cannot do that right now

[copper portal]

Oh, you mean like that. Fair fair.

It would still be really fun though! I wouldn't care if they use it for that purpose personally because at least then they stay in their corner and aren't mopping the floor with little kingdoms trying to get established.

[copper portal]

Oh, maybe a scaling k.orn incentive based on the speed of completing wars! That could make the slow ones a little more competitive if it's made to be worth it!

[neat peak]

I honestly love the new matching system. But I guess when you get 150+ als the system doesn't love matching you which kinda stinks. I'm sure everyone under 100 als is pretty happy with the fair fights. Really hard to keep everyone happy tho.

[indigo glade]

I get a match like every two days now 🤷‍♂️

[neat peak]

You know what would fix this? No als in wars lol. But for real. How is that any different than what we got now. Everyone gets fair fights. Why I think letting kingdoms pick two options for wars could be the key. You have al less wars and you have unlimited wars. Maybe the unlimited gets better resources to encourage people to battle 300 als

[warm rover]

Same, almost 48 hours now

[indigo glade]

Personally I don't think a system that excludes the most dedicated players is a good system

[quick lake]

It doesn’t intentionally exclude anyone, there are just better matchups in the queue

[indigo glade]

Intentionally or not that's what it's doing though

[sinful temple]

Yea, I don’t really see the point in continuing to grind if all that’s going to do is make me even less likely to be able to participate in the content i most enjoy

[robust breach]

BINGO, PvP/Kingdom War is the entire reason for my grind.

[sinful temple]

4th war of the day, 4th war where no one above AL130 (besides the king) gets to play

[late coral]

At this point, we are matching against other large kingdoms like us, and the fights are really fair.
It is the best I have seen it, even compared to the original system.

There are so few AL100+ players that it is no surprise that they aren't getting matched as often.
But unless they are willing to have their ALs de-rated to a maximum advantage (which they aren't) , I see no other solution.
If there are no fights in that rarified atmosphere, you need to go to where the opponents are.

[late coral]

Google "Move to where the food is" and "Sam Kinison"

[neat peak]

Some of these high als players could split them and run two classes at 150 als and be very strong as well. It comes down to what's better for the game for Odie. Is it better to keep the few high als happy or make sure 95% of the player base is happy.

[sinful temple]

Yes, no in between whatsoever, of course 🤷‍♂️ Even though multiple suggestions have been made here that would keep the benefits of the current system while letting the higher AL players get matched as well

[stuck fulcrum]

This is the pvp content of the game, if players don't want to be part of, just put the kingdom on pacifist mode.
Don't make any sense to be part of pvp, but not a full pvp system.

[quick lake]

high AL (>150) are currently already lumped together (ie: any matchup 150+ vs 150+ is max scored) - so there is still plenty of motivation to get better: you can have a massive advantage pushing AL

again, a lot of this is governed by what the matchmaking queue supports at any moment

[warm rover]

Waiting 51 hours for a match...

[neat peak]

Send a picture of your kingdom roster. Something has to be strange.

[stuck fulcrum]

I mean the last 4 wars and our high AL players not been matched not really a massive advantage. So.🤔

[quick lake]

yup, i'm not sure i need to be informed each time it doesn't happen

[neat peak]

That's quite the spread sir. Id make one of your higher AL's king for a better shot at finding a micro kingdom.

[warm rover]

It was never a problem before

[quick lake]

that's the entire roster?

[warm rover]

Yes

[quick lake]

yeah, sorry, there'll be pretty slim matches for that

[warm rover]

😞

[quick lake]

that's no wiggle room since there are only 6 (the minimum) matches. so you're only going to match against kingdoms of nearly the same setup

[warm rover]

Ran like this for 2-3 years

[quick lake]

i understand

[short sapphire]

Didn't you have a few more than that? You've matched with Brysia before

[robust breach]

I'm guessing a couple of those are alts?

[short sapphire]

Even under the old system that kindgom wouldn't have been able to match with a kingdom of all T11s

[robust breach]

If so, time to get them pumped up a bit.

[short sapphire]

Because I know we've fought King v King

[warm rover]

Yes i had like 1-2 more before.

I put one on bench yesterday and added an alt

Sadly

[neat peak]

Alpine welcomes good pvpers!

[warm rover]

Lol I know

[robust breach]

I was waiting for someone to pitch, didn't disappoint!

[neat peak]

its not the first time lol

[warm rover]

Indeed 😂

Also not the only one

[warm rover]

It actually did with 5 of t11 and one alt

[short sapphire]

Yeah, and if you had 5 T11s now you'd also find wars I think

[robust breach]

Tough to let go of an old kingdom, but sadly you either need to hit recruiting gold or merge.

[short sapphire]

Right now you can only match with 3 high AL T11s, 1 low AL T11, and either a T9 or T5

[warm rover]

Yea I've just activated the benched one and dropped alt

Any t11 player wanna join the mighty Mount Olympus? 🤪

[sinful temple]

Y’all are welcome at IBWIPVP anytime lol

[indigo glade]

Ok, making alts for pvp is the play I guess

Really disrespectful of the time and effort people have put into your game

[quick lake]

alts will only help if they are the same power as lowbies in potential matches but will only lessen the potential matches for high AL. they're discouraged

[sinful temple]

What about the proposed solution to always have the 5 highest ALs matched? Is that still in consideration?

[quick lake]

it was a quick idea - need to gauge whether it is ultimately a healthy one

[sinful temple]

What about changing the final cutoff here to 125 or 100? Would that be an alternative?

[quick lake]

that is a number that could be played with

[weary saffron]

I think this would be a nice thing, its more opt-in than typical wars and already exists in the form of king v king. Ive seen a few kingdoms recommend switching their strongest person to king as it is, and high AL doesn't necessarily mean the best monarch. Could also enable some neat internal kingdom prestige/competition.

[robust breach]

I forget who mentioned it previously, but I like the idea of being able to designate a handful of "Champions" in your Kingdom, players who will always get matched.

[weary saffron]

Yeah would prefer this implementation as opposed to top 5 AL, since AL != combat prowess necessarily

[jade nexus]

Id like to report that we've had success in matching lately. Im the highest AL player by at least 50ALs at 102. Bigger wars. Good feeling matchups. If ed could only make them do their wars Id be over the moon.

[robust breach]

For implementing something like designating Champions, it probably should also not be a static number but rather a number that scales with Kingdom size, like bench spots.

[pastel kayak]

I don't know, different numbers for each Kingdom would still result in not every champion from the larger ones getting matched, which I wouldn't like

[cosmic pasture]

For very small kingdoms with only king+6 players, almost every player would automatically be matched (if every kingdom has 5 champions with guaranteed matches), completely circumventing the "fair" AL matching aspect...

[pastel kayak]

Champions wouldn't get matched randomly, they would get matched following the normal matchmaking so as long as there are more Kingdoms in queue, they are still gonna have the fairer matchup

I also understand some people wanna play like that but it was proven time and time again that all these small Kingdoms are detrimental to the game

[cosmic pasture]

Building on the idea of champions, selected because they are good in pvp (not because of high AL):

Every kingdom selects 5 champions, which are always selected and fight against each other w/o ALs. The other players have their regular AL advantage, with a heavily reduced focus on "equal AL" matching.

So there is even a strategic component which players you select as champions because high AL keep an advantage in regular fights.

[pastel kayak]

That's completely against the reason why the change was suggested in the first place

[robust breach]

At that point, might as well just throw in an AL cap for war, an already despised idea.

[cosmic pasture]

At the moment, high AL players are unhappy for not getting matched. This way, they could choose to be always matched (champions) but giving up some advantage, or keeping the full advantage but fighting slightly less frequently (but still more often than currently because of reduced fairness restriction).

There will always be a conflict between fair fights and high AL players typically being matched if there is no aspect which solves some of the "unfair" component.

[sinful temple]

High AL players are unhappy because they feel their effort isn’t being respected. If they’re forced to throw away ALs, that sentiment doesn’t change

[sinful temple]

This is still my biggest problem with the current system. We’re not actually comparing kingdoms’ strengths, and therefore we can no longer say leaderboards are accurate

[robust breach]

"There will always be a conflict between fair fights and high AL players typically being matched if there is no aspect which solves some of the "unfair" component."

The problem is, we're trying to level the playing field by invalidating the hard work so many have put in, we're trying to make it "fair" for players who won't put in the time. To me, the answer to underperforming is to get on the grind treadmill and improve your character. Adding a gimmick to make fights “fair” against players who play more is like giving infrequent FPS players access to aimbots so they don't get smoked by the vets.

[valid tangle]

"won't put in the time" can alternatively be "haven't yet put in the time"

[robust breach]

True, can't argue that.

[pastel kayak]

Yeah I've only been playing for 3 months, give me some more time (and more Monuments in my VD range please)

[cosmic pasture]

The main point of MM changes were that it is discouraging for newer players to have extremely unfair matches. So if "respect the grind" means: High AL should wipe the floor and don't care about the 95% playerbase with low AL (just "improve your character"), I don't think that this helps to solve the initial issue stated by Odie.

Instead, it would be good to have other alternative suggestions which consider that newer players shall have fun with the game, too. Mine was meant as a compromise between both positions. Personally, I have no strong preference (however, currently there are a lot of repeated matches, which I don't like so much), but it is just fact that in this thread there are much more high AL players from top kingdoms, so I try to to consider more of the large but "silent" low AL playerbase.

[sinful temple]

The previous system (from a couple weeks ago) already accounted for that, lower AL players were only facing other lower AL players, while the high AL players were still being matched every match because they were being prioritized.

The complaints from players in the AL 50-75 bracket were easily addressed by the suggestion made by Knight for example.

There’s no world where matchups all need to happen in as tight a matchup as they’re currently happening. It makes matchmaking worse and repetitive, as well as punishing the players that are heavily invested in the system

[quick lake]

Oh, there is no requirement for them to be tight at all. the queue is just able to support a lot of close matches, which is great

Close matches are favoured, not required. Match requirements themselves are pretty loose

[sinful temple]

Favoring such close matchups innately pushes the higher ALs out of most matchups though. I’m 0 for 5 today for example. Making it be completely random starting from AL100+ would counter that for example (as well as making matchups less predictable and repeated). Or the aforementioned champions suggestion for example

[quick lake]

just responding to the need about tight matchups point

[indigo glade]

Very well put. Even if Odie is going to continue to give high al players the middle finger I need him to understand this

[neat peak]

Leader board has never been accurate tho its all about Korn's spent right? Or did that change

[quick lake]

going to remove you from this thread, as this kind of hostility is neither needed in this server nor productive to solving the problem

[quick lake]

lb is # of recent wars won + recent raids killed

[sinful temple]

For context, we had 207 wars completed in the previous 30 days before the changes. In the 8 days since matchmaking was changed, we’ve already dropped to 176. If we keep seeing a similar drop, we’re bound to have our wars halved by the time the month ends, despite not changing how active we are. Please understand how frustrating this is for a kingdom that has always focused on clearing as many wars as possible.

We’ve also stopped seeing wars that start as soon as the previous one ends, despite always matchmaking on cooldown (no idea if this is because something changed on the system’s side or simply because there’s less available opponents).

[sullen epoch]

Can you restate your soultion? Was it widening the search and match criteria for High AL match ups?

Example - if your above 100 al you could get matched with 250 al?

[sinful temple]

Apparently that’s already happening starting at AL 150. One of my proposals was lowering that number to 100 or 125. The other proposed solution was either having the 5 highest AL players always be matched, or letting the kingdom select a number of Champions, that would always be matched every war.

I’m not even sure any of that is needed though. I’d probably favor going back to the system we had 8 days ago, and adding Knight’s proposal, which basically allowed people in the AL50s to also match with players in the bracket below that one, so they wouldn’t always be matched with players higher than them

[short sapphire]

The main benefit to this system is that larger kingdoms are seeing larger wars, and there is fuzzy matchmaking happening too

Brysia's war record and war speed has actually increased somewhat lol

[sullen epoch]

Hmm i see. I wish I had a silver bullet for you guys.

Its a tough balance to make sure that everyone is involved, but also that the match ups are fun and engaging, i.e., someone having a 150% advantage over you probably isnt fun for most people on the lower receiving end of it

[short sapphire]

It does kind of make me wish the can of worms with war matchmaking was never opened in the first place. The old system of all level 250s being in the same bucket together had some rough points but it worked

[sinful temple]

End of the day I think we have many possible options that could help keep more invested players engaged, while still keeping matches balanced.

This current system definitely hurts the higher invested kingdoms, and feels to me like it’s “pulling everyone towards the middle”, which just makes the whole system boring in my opinion.

[sullen epoch]

I mean, someone can be invested with under 10 Als

[sinful temple]

That depends though. A AL 0 vs a AL 150? Probably getting stomped. A AL 150 vs a AL 300? They should win most of the time provided they have a minimum of game knowledge (which I assume they do if they hit that level)

[short sapphire]

If they're really invested in the game though they don't stay at 10 ALs

That was why the old system had a simple functionality to it. Raise AL, you're stronger than a higher % of players, wars are more likely to be in your favor

[sullen epoch]

What AL is XPless?

[short sapphire]

I do appreciate all the hard work Odie put into this system though, it seems to work for the vast majority of kingdoms

[lost grotto]

Yeah, the guaranteed 1 hour delay

[short sapphire]

I see him typing and I want to make that clear

[short sapphire]

Challenge accounts aside 😐

That's a bit of a silly example lol

[sullen epoch]

Were talking about extremes are we not? 300 Al vs, XPless

[icy tiger]

I wonder how many 300 AL accounts even exist 🤔

[sinful temple]

XPLess wasn’t getting matched with those players in the first place lol

[sullen epoch]

Each make up small %s of the player base

[sinful temple]

So his specific account type isn’t really relevant to this topic

[sullen epoch]

Perhaps, but the point is, each situation makes up a fraction of the player base

[icy tiger]

A very very tiny fraction

Extreme outliers, if you will

[short sapphire]

Realistically, we're not talking about 300 AL. We're talking about AL 150, 175, 200

[icy tiger]

Id suggest the fraction of the playerbase thats 150+ is still incredibly small

[quick lake]

I can bring the threshold down to 100AL and we can go from there

Look, there is no version of this that may not frustrate a segment of the playerbase. Most players want (and have vocalized) fairer matchups, to feel like they do have a chance to catch up

OGs want to curb stomp and have their investment respected

Meeting somewhere in the middle is the best course if we dont want to single out a community. That could be this system with the right “youre a titan now” threshold where the tight matchmaking stops

Saying any of this is a studio finger to anyone is absurdly immature and should not be tolerated by anyone here if we want to get to a working solution

[sullen epoch]

Oh, I guess I dont understand the issue then. Im 156 and have enjoyed the recent wars...

Ill see myself out

[short sapphire]

Then you missed the part about Bordoadas's complaint being not matched in them

[sinful temple]

Let me just start by saying that I don’t think any of the changes were a personal attack/disrespect/whatever else to the higher ascended players. I’m positive the intention has always been to make the game better and, as always, we deeply appreciate you for it. I feel frustrated because I enjoy the game so much, not because I think you’re trying to screw us or anything of the sort.

I think lowering the threshold to 100 could definitely help with some of the bigger pain points we’ve been seeing. Would be happy to take that change and reevaluate how it works out

[short sapphire]

-# I have adjusted my goal from reaching AL 100 to reaching AL 99

[sinful temple]

You’re a king, that’s irrelevant

[short sapphire]

This is a joke because I'm a monarch it literally doesn't matter

And I'll beat up on AL 150s all day

[quick lake]

Because of the rolling bracket, the 99 to 100 jump actually doesn’t mean much

99 can match deep into the 100s

[short sapphire]

Gamblor has lost to me on his offence once I think 😆

I know most kings of Alpine have

[sullen epoch]

Bahahaha shots fired

[short sapphire]

It's all fun and games

[icy tiger]

Ill post the logs 5 turns in a row 😠

[sullen epoch]

Word, I love you kicking sokam out. Do it again

[sinful temple]

Don’t make us make Geppu monarch

[sullen epoch]

@sinful temple what AL you again? Are you as high as Gep?

Hes 300ish

[sinful temple]

198. He’s 283

[short sapphire]

I took a bunch of Geppu's settlements, I'll take him out in a war too

[sinful temple]

If only he hadn’t learned since then

[sullen epoch]

Man, I beat with all that, you could maybe two 2 classes to 125 ALs 🙂

Maybe even three lines to 100

[sinful temple]

2 classes at 125 I’d win as many attacks as I do now but lose a ton more defenses

[sullen epoch]

Lots more matchs?

[sinful temple]

I’d rather keep my one class with 15 different builds for wars 😅

I was already getting a ton of matches until 8 days ago though, and they were all pretty even

[sullen epoch]

Ya, you do you - play the way you love

[weary saffron]

I could actually probably get 6 to 100 but who wants that

Not playing pokemon you know

[sullen epoch]

Bahaha

I mean the clear solution here is for each of you to put some ALs into Grandsummoner :). You have options to be matched more often.

Tip of the hat for Odie being open for feedback and adjusting - but extremes break even the best designed systems.

When you progress into the top %'s of a game that only a handful of players are at - seems reasonable there would be longer Q times.

Want less Q times - drop down until Orna has a player count rivaling some top 10 steam games.

[sinful temple]

The system has enough AL100+ to account for that. Anyone at AL100+ should be able to beat pretty much any player here (Ensseric even posted a video of himself beating a 250+ AL player with a AL0 class consistently), so Odie’s solution of lowering the threshold to AL100 seems pretty adequate to me. Maybe we let that play out instead of telling players they should stop grinding

[short sapphire]

On the flipside, if really high AL players are so rare, maybe we don't really need to design the game to avoid them.

I think/hope the AL 100+ matchmaking being completely open will fix that

Edit: responding to Furdad

[sullen epoch]

Id love to see some data of players base ALs tbh.

Idk if he'd ever give us a look behind the curtain 🙂

[short sapphire]

I can give you the data of the player base ALs out of people that like to respond to Discord surveys

Sadly that's all I've got

Also it caps at 100+

Capturing this was not the point of the survey

[sullen epoch]

Very interesting

[short sapphire]

(If you care about the survey in general: https://discord.com/channels/448527960056791051/1467928719199830049 )

[sullen epoch]

I mean if this is an accurate sample size towards the actual players base - then yeah

[short sapphire]

It is almost definitely not. It's a sample of the playerbase that is active on Discord, which will skew to be more active than players not on Discord

[weary saffron]

For 200+ im only seeing 30 people on the top 100 leaderboard, granted theres probably a small amount that dont engage in content that pushes leaderbaord that hard.

For 300+ im pretty sure theres just 5

[short sapphire]

BRYE wasn't on the leaderboard for the longest time

[weary saffron]

Yeah, I mention it because I'm pretty sure #1 seer is not in top 100 but has like 250 al

[lost grotto]

And the highest ascended rn is #72

[weary saffron]

Brye is the highest ascended in my heart

[sullen epoch]

Wait, does spreading out ALs push you up in the leaderboard still - or did that get changed

[short sapphire]

Yes, it does

[weary saffron]

There needs to be an AL leaderboard IMO

[sullen epoch]

Like is Geppu did go 6 - 100 als - you be #1 WW.

[short sapphire]

Leaderboard still cares about sum of T10 ALs, not highest AL

[weary saffron]

Nah because bosses are still worth more I think

[short sapphire]

Someone could run the numbers

Someone. Not me.

[sullen epoch]

Got it. Okay, sorry to side track the conversation.

Keep up the good work!

Night all

[weary saffron]

someone buy me 7 hoc

[short sapphire]

It's a lot cheaper just to put the formula into a spreadsheet and compare your "total" with 600 AL vs Dracul

[lost grotto]

Same

[lost grotto]

Dang, just checked and they aren't 250, they're AL286, #232 global

[weary saffron]

Oh wtf the jumped a lot recently then

[south timber]

Get into the conqueror guild, I can buy 7 right now 😂

[weary saffron]

I keep spending all my conq bucks on summon scrolls

[south timber]

Fair enough, I'm too lazy to raid

Btw I was passing by to check if anyone else noticed that the old brackets 0-25 25-50 don't exist anymore

I've seen Al 40 matched with al 20, al 22vs al 30 and so on

[short sapphire]

Yes

That were fully removed in the new system

[south timber]

Oh ok I didn't see that mentioned so I was a bit surprised

[short sapphire]

Newest system* because these are all new systems lol

[south timber]

I thought those 2 brackets were fine and we could keep the latest logics for the 50-100 range

100+ free for all so the big guys will be involved and just few people that are still into grinding will get to cry about it

[short sapphire]

It's not a free for all - mostly

I don't have all the details but the game starts with figuring out the most even matchups then seems to get more fuzzy from there for any matchup that's still fairly reasonable

[south timber]

Makes sense, now I understand why I haven't been matched for 2 days

[copper portal]

Please 🥹

[copper kite]

https://tenor.com/view/its-been84years-titanic-rose-dawson-gif-5372593

Matchups are pretty fair al wise but there should be a toggle if possible that after 8+ hours of matchmaking, we can match any kingdom 😅

Or a matchmaking choice to the kingdoms 'random' or 'fair matchups' 🫡

[copper portal]

I'll fight everyone if we can just get and keep them moving.

[copper kite]

Exactly, efficient use of hex can also help to deal with occasional 'higher al' kingdoms matchups

[copper portal]

Or even make it fun, like mimics hex 🤣

[copper kite]

[pastel kayak]

What I'd like the most is something that either makes the Wars end faster or that encourages attacking as soon as possible
We are currently in the same War for 14 hours despite winning every attack because our opponents don't attack, it's very frustrating

[warm rover]

Got ourself a match after 68 hours

[grim panther]

Our spread isn’t quite that extreme, but still started mm over 15 hours ago and still waiting

[copper kite]

We're a 8 (7 active) member kingdom but have 1 player in every al bracket so that helps a little I guess but its still atleast 10-15 hours of matchmaking.

Mostly it matches overnight

[pastel kayak]

You guys should merge with Thornius' Kingdom

[neat peak]

It looks like mm is prioritizing more players getting matched than these micro kingdoms have. Prob has something to do with the average kingdom size. Sure before these micro kingdoms got matches but at the cost of most players sitting in the kingdom they played. Maybe this is punishing alt kingdoms which is prob a good thing

[short sapphire]

The "problem" is that small kingdoms are optimal for high gauntlet turnover, which is required for high raid turnover

That's why very small kingdoms have become meta

We know Odie is cooking up something to replace/go alongside kingdom gauntlets though.

[copper kite]

Not all smaller kingdoms are alt kingdoms thou

[short sapphire]

How many unbenched players are in Hlid right now?

[weary saffron]

A big issue I'm seeing IMO is that the matchmaking system in its various iterations is asking people to 'metagame' their kingdom to get around them:

1. Make your kingdom high density strong players
2. Make your kingdom smaller
3. Make your king your highest AL player.
4. Make your kingdom bigger
5. Have a better AL Spread.
6. Sit at 49 AL
7. Lower/Diversify your AL

I know theres always going to be some level of metagame, but I think an ideal system is one that would not ask kingdoms to heavily modify to serve the matchmaking. I'll note that the original system didn't really do this much beyond 'get stronger players.'

[neat peak]

2 and 6 isn't the case at all.

[weary saffron]

It was the case in the first/second iterations, not the current

[neat peak]

Yeah we are past that

[pastel kayak]

I doubt having 10-12 players instead of 5-8 would affect Gauntlets too much as long as the activity level is the same and the common benching strats are applied
I don't know how many players ABS have but they definitely have more than 6 and they average 16 Gauntlets per day from what I've been told

[weary saffron]

Yes, I'm critquing the matchmaking as a whole, every iteration came with a few 'metagame issues.' That is the point that I was making

[copper kite]

In the earlier updates I was in the 50-75 al bracket and I didnt get matched for like 100 wars straight 😂

[short sapphire]

This is the data I can provide:

Right now Caer Brysia has 9 unbenched members. All of them are Tier 11, but below AL 100.

We have no issues matching quickly

I suspect 9 is right on the low end of where you can expect to match fairly quickly

[pastel kayak]

So it's clear 10-12 T11 members are enough and that's still a very small Kingdom compared to the 50 members cap
5-7 members are way too little and it's healthy in my opinion to "nerf" these Kingdoms because alt Kingdoms shouldn't be op at all (they definitely were for at least one or two of these iterations)

[copper kite]

We should be able to choose how many members we take no? Its not worth it taking in new members just for the sake of it

[pastel kayak]

You said you have 7 active members, you're telling me it's impossible for you to find 3-5 members that suit your Kingdom or nurture 3 new players into good Kingdom mates for you?
That's not very Strawhat of you sir

[short sapphire]

The tradeoff for that, in this current system, is slower wars because fewer kingdoms are a good match for you

[copper kite]

Thats why I said, a toggle would help a kingdoms who just wants to throw hands, and a kingdom who wants fair matchups. But I see most kingdoms want fair al matchups so its pointless anyway. Also smaller kingdoms should still be able to match larger sized kingdoms unless they are heavily skewed towards one or two particular bracket

[copper kite]

We're mostly irl friends and other friends refuse to start playing 😂

Or leave midway because the initial questlines are a pain 😅

[pastel kayak]

I think it's rightful for the matchmaking to prio similar size Kingdoms, if even just a 20 members Kingdom would consistently match all these 5-7 members small ones, it would mean that more of the 50% of the roster doesn't play the game for most of the time

[copper kite]

You say that but last 6 of our wars we've matched burns 3 times 😂

They are significantly larger in size than us 😅

[pastel kayak]

Well you said matchmaking is taking you 15 hours, if they are one of the very few Kingdoms that are eligible for you as of the current system it's normal for you to match them most of the time

[warm rover]

👆

[weary saffron]

That's exactly what I'm highlighting above, he made a kingdom with his IRL friends and doesn't want to edit it to please a matchmaking algorithm. Because of this he gets very few wars a day, and primarily matches with the strongest best coolest kingdom in the game. Which is likely a difficult matchup even with the 'balanced' matchups

[copper kite]

We haven't faced cd yet thou

[warm rover]

🤝

[weary saffron]

Probably just luck since I'd imagine theyd have similar eligiblity to us.

[short sapphire]

I'm surprised you haven't faced Brysia either

Unless I just missed it. What's your kingdom name?

[copper kite]

The fingerblasters

[short sapphire]

Yeah, we haven't fought

[copper kite]

We did match before this update iirc

[short sapphire]

Yeah, definitely. Just not for a while

I now have a bot recording everyone we match with so it's easy for me to check

[weary saffron]

Do you have a single lower guy? We have one guy sub50 AL which could be making us match

[short sapphire]

Our lowest AL is 34

[pastel kayak]

Wouldn't putting Wintermelon as King make the situation better for you?

[copper kite]

16, 31,34,44,76 and one overachiever @fair epoch with 113

Our king's been running it for 5 years now so we kinda let it stay that way 🫡

[short sapphire]

Ours are: 34, 37, 53, 55, 68, 71, 93, 96

I'm 94 but being king that doesn't matter

[fair epoch]

[warm rover]

We also faced both caer Kingdoms before.

[copper kite]

We faced on 20 Feb, almost a month ago

[weary saffron]

Yeah feel the same way, our kings been running the kingdom well since before I started playing, thats why I don't like the suggestion that I should be put into the king slot jsut to please the matchmaking.

[short sapphire]

You had Aniel benched that's why your matchmaking was so long

[fair epoch]

I also have no desire to be king

[slow talon]

Hi, is something changed again? Is it now possible to face higher AL players? Not a problem, just to know

[warm rover]

Still took long before that

[copper kite]

Atleast you matched

[robust breach]

Come, we promise to never make you King

[short sapphire]

Yes, it will only happen rarely and after almost all the rest of the matchups are balanced though

[copper kite]

Hmmmmmmmmmm

[fair epoch]

This is purely anecdotal but we had fewer issues finding matches when we were just a few spots lower in ranking. Did Odie ever confirm whether rank factors into matchmaking?

[slow talon]

it could been smarter to switch my fight with this one... 😅
Very strange how it acts

[pastel kayak]

I doubt it does since we match both top 1 and top 100, I think it only has to do with size and ALs

[copper kite]

You were matched according to strength 💪

[weary saffron]

I just think the more 'walls' we put up in matchmaking creates more and more edge cases like mine, Stormshaw, Thornius etc., and generally slower matchmaking, less wars and smaller wars across the board. My sense is that the best system would have the fewer guardrails, as we're now sacrificing a lot of efficiency, edge cases in favor of the occassional low-odds war, that would likely end in an hour anyway. IMO assessing 'loser rewards' is probably a better way to move forward than tweaking matchmaking.

[copper kite]

It wouldn't hurt to have a toggle to disable als and match pound for pound like in arena, bof guild

[pastel kayak]

That would fragment the matchmaking even further, of course it would hurt

[copper kite]

I agree 🫡

It could be a separate thing, unranked for orns 😅

[weary saffron]

My sense is that a lot of the matchmaking complaints were due to lack of enthusiasm, not because you had low chance of winning, but because even if you did win, you got nothing unless your whole kingdom pulled it off as well.

[pastel kayak]

Just give rewards to losers and encourage attacking asap by scaling rewards with how quickly the war ends, that way weaker Kingdoms are happy about losing as long as they are getting several Wars per day done since it means they are getting a lot of kOrns anyway, which appeared to be one of the main concerns from most of the fair matchmaking advocates

[weary saffron]

My sense is that the average 10 person war win is worth ~25k korns.
So it could be like Winners get 1500 per won offense and defense.
Ties everyone gets 1000 per won offense and defense.
Losses give 500 per won loss and defense.

If you want to add a speed factor, that could be explored, but I think winning/more wars would be incentive enough.

[grim panther]

7

[pastel kayak]

Yeah it sounds about right and I like the idea, numbers could be even a bit higher if no speed bonus or just start from +50% and deduct 10% for each passing hour (based on when the last attack has been made, not when the war ends)

[weary saffron]

Yeah I was trying to estimate a bit without breaking economy, a clean sweep winner would be worth 30k, but that is rare, but for someone consistently winning they would get more wars than in the current system so think it would even out.

But this allows, strong players to provide value for their kingdom, indvidual players to level up the serve their kingdom/not feel held down by playing with less progressed friends, more and larger matchups. Small dense kingdoms will have higher WR allowing an adequate income, giant kingdoms will have more 'stabs' at wins giving them some more income.

I really think that the complaints about matchmaking in 95% of cases are about the ability to generate korns rather than the difficulty of an individual fight.

[pastel kayak]

Yep I mentioned that before, it definitely seemed to be the case from these threads

[warm rover]

So the system is messed up because of Korns... wow.

[stuck fulcrum]

I would say everything started because some players were complaining about been beaten for high AL players.

[warm rover]

Maybe Lord Odie can clarify what the big problem is.

I summon thy, Lord Odie the Creator

[weary saffron]

Per Odie, there was a lot of complaints coming through about unwinnable matchups, but I don't know if we can get the underlying reason of whether they just didn't like the matchup itself or were more upset about economy.

[copper kite]

Unwinnable matchups -> loss -> no korns might really be the issue.

Unwinnable matchups -> loss -> some korns, it is what is everyone happy 🫡

And I doubt that severe al disparity would occur very often, so one can just save the hex of equalization

[weary saffron]

Yeah, what I would like about this approach is it incentivizes getting strong for your kingdom rather than tinkering with the roster, jumping ship etc, it builds more community that way.

And regarding HoE, a big complaint ive seen is that they still don't win the war. With this situation they would at least be getting more wins = more orns.

[copper kite]

Back then we would face hlid every once a while and save our hex solely for them

That was once a month probably

Maybe reduce the hex timing to 3 days 🤔

[grim panther]

Quite a few did, I don’t think our blessing of peace was ever off cd

[copper kite]

Hexes are interesting but they are under utilized because of the 4 days research time, if a kingdom is going through multiple wars a day they'll run out and have to wait for a couple of days. I believe it can be 3 days without any additional floren costs and 2 days with a higher floren cost

[weary saffron]

I dunno I like them as is, we're basically always cycling through our good hexes so it forces us to be judicious with them.

[copper kite]

This would help that have worked for their als to offset the hex being heavily used against them

[copper kite]

Yeah normally its just debuffs for us

[robust breach]

Perhaps leveraging Hexes could be a way to appease some. Instead of putting up all of the matchmaking walls to try to find "fair" matches, maybe the game can determine that if there's a certain percentage of AL deficit between the Kingdoms, the one at a disadvantage has access to multiple free hexes.

Of course, I still like the idea of boosting the K-Orn aspect as Geppu mentioned, pretty sure it always boils down to following the money.

[copper kite]

https://tenor.com/view/capitalism-thats-a-capitalism-means-tv-gif-14048549

[short sapphire]

I'm not particularly for or against any of the KOrn balance changes mentioned.

But for the small kingdoms full of active players, most KOrn income already comes from gauntlets

[late coral]

As long as the current changes stay in place, I think that has alleviated the problem with Kingdom orns.

Wars now match larger kingdoms with other large kingdoms.
Since rewards are tied to number of victories for the winning side, you get much more for a 30-xx win than an 8-x win.

The larger rewards now adequately fund the higher number of raids needed for a 50-member kingdom, as compared to (for example) an 8-member kingdom. We can realistically only get all 25, 30, or 40 players to fight once per day, but for us (being a mix of hardcore and casuals), that comes with the territory.

Matches have been even and we are actually having more trouble winning, but I can honestly say that this reflects on our casuals who need to get better at PvP, rather than an unfair system where they were being matched far above their level. This is where our more experienced players need to take them under our wings and show them builds, gear, and strategies that will make them stronger, make us (as a team) better, and make the game more fun for all of us.

[weary saffron]

Yeah, the orn changes I was suggesting was more so to help losing kingdoms in the event some of the matchmaking was relaxed, since I think a lot of kingdoms are still having matchmaking issues.

[wispy basin]

I would have more fun having more wars with more varied opponents even if that means artificially capping my/opponents ALs.

As an example, I am AL131

Match me with an AL20, cap my ALs at 25 (or whatever)

Match me with an AL 288, cap their ALs as 150 (or whatever).

If that led to getting wars, I'd be happy.

[neat peak]

I like it but don't think it would happen some players don't want fair fights even if it means more wars. They want to push low al's around so they can feel superior and show them what they have grinded hours and hours for.

[neat cradle]

I very much doubt that is the impetus behind the majority of issues being raised by high-AL players.

[pearl hill]

I'm going to frame this one

[neat peak]

This comes up every time we talk about taking AL's out of wars does it not? Artificially capping is pretty much doing the same thing. Evening the playing field.

[pearl hill]

I will restate my own opinion with a slight alteration to include feedback in this thread: 1) remove all restrictions (other than balancing for player count on rosters) or in other words go back to the original system. 2) Add korn rewards for ties and losses.

I would like to think that increasing variety of matches as well as focusing on speed of MM will provide more korns and matchups for everyone

[robust breach]

For the love of God, the key for me here is variety and speed! It's so boring fighting you guys, Burns, 420, and ABS on repeat. A very SLOW repeat, at that.

[pearl hill]

yes, again the core problem with MM is player population

we are matching on a small part of the bell curve instead of flattening it all out

[robust breach]

bingo

[weary saffron]

I do disagree that the playing field should be level for wars, but the reason isnt so I can bully low AL people. Its so that there are meaningful advantages gained for grinding in an RPG which is at the absolute core of the genre and why I play this game.

If there was say a mode where you went to an arena and arranged one-on-one fights and agreed to set rules then I think leveling the field would be appropriate.

But if we're talking about going to war I think its reasonable for everyone to want to go in with all the advatanges that they earned.

[grim panther]

We matched in the 22nd mm window 🎉

[copper kite]

There can also be a separate pound for pound mode for kingdom wars, since not everyone can/wants to put in same effort or are just new to the game etc so they can generate their funds 🫡

[weary saffron]

Yeah, I'd worry that the matchmaking would get too diluted that way. Which is why I was discussing losing/tie orns above.

[copper kite]

Thats true

Unless they can go simultaneously 🫡

[warm rover]

Can we pin this?

[copper kite]

I want to add on to this reduce the research timing of hex and blessings to 3 days, not a big change but it can be significant 🫡

[cosmic pasture]

I was even downvoted for capping the advantage at 50% stats advantage, which would mean to cap ALs to 50 vs AL 0 players, to 125 against AL50, or 200 vs AL 100. Most players active in this thread, mostly high AL, don't want any cap (or any other restriction). Even if this leads to faster matchmaking and more war variety 🤷

[wispy basin]

That seems odd to me, because they are capped now in a different way.

They only get matched, sometimes .. and when they do it's against someone with similar ALs.

I think when you compare to the current system, more variety is going to be favorable to nearly everyone.

You will always have some people that want to go back to the original system.

[stuck fulcrum]

Bof exist for that.

[stuck fulcrum]

And that's why we are complaining now.

[late coral]

I have suggested this over and over again, but the highest ALs are absolutely against it.
They complain about not getting matched and being forced to play the same players over and over again

But if there are really only 35-40 players in the world who are over AL200, then that is the ONLY alternative to getting more variety.
Give them a match but drop their massive AL to some large advantage.

What it comes down to is that this method comes with the risk of losing, and some of them just cannot stomach that.
Instead, this vocal minority insists upon being given unfair matches with lower AL opponents where they can curb-stomp them.

Free wins to pay homage to their efforts and to respect their grind.
I for one am not willing to be sacrificed to these players.
If they want more variety, I'd be happy to fight them if I only have to give up 50-75 ALs.
But I am not giving anyone 200ALs worth of an advantage.

[wispy basin]

I am sure those people exist, I probably just don't know them or pay attention to them. The people I know generally want challenges, variety and to learn new strategies.

[neat cradle]

I really wish we could stop reiterating the same disingenuous assumptions that high-AL players are only looking to bully the opposition.

[stuck fulcrum]

So instead of learning, nerf my opponent?

[robust breach]

If caps were to be put in place, it doesn't even have to a be a like for like, you can still give the high AL player their advantage that they rightfully earned, just not let it be astronomical. Perhaps something like a 25% cap, so as an example if the system pairs an AL 100 vs an AL 300 player, it's going to be handicapped to an AL 100 vs AL 125 essentially. I'm not saying caps are the end all be all answer, but if it would get us speed, variety and engagement back to full power, it might be worth exploring. I feel like it could at least be implemented in a way to still give the edge to the grinding machines out there but not make the challenge impossible for others.

[late coral]

What does anyone learn about being one-shot?
Do you think the log teaches them what kind of build to use? the gear? The spell setups? the amities?
Exactly what do they learn, other than someone with double or triple their stats just wasted them on turn 1?

[valid tangle]

genuinely, learn what?
I've seen this thrown around before and I still have no idea what y'all (anyone) think a single Kingdom War is going to teach a player that they cannot learn in the Arena or a Coliseum.

[weary saffron]

I mean in the current game state vs AI its very possible to beat almost anyone with a kitted 0 AL mage. Stacking AL is really the only way to achieve consistent defense victories. Everyone always says just learn new strategies but I almost always find its the lower end players not strategizing or having appropriate game knowledge. I play a lot of blade of finesse, and thats the place for it imo.

[late coral]

If the "kitted 0AL mage" example were truly a valid build, it would be the meta because every single player would be running it.
Is isn't...

[neat cradle]

Pretty sure Enserric literally demonstrated it here: #1458462120902394091 message

[sinful temple]

He literally one shot everyone in Hlid, the prime example of high AL only kingdom, using a AL0 class

[cosmic pasture]

Always the same strange argument: "ALs don't help. But I don't want to sacrifice a single AL for fairer matches."

[sinful temple]

Im sorry but the discrepancy complaints can only be attributed to lack of game knowledge after seeing that

[stuck fulcrum]

How to beat players with huge advantages on AL, how? By brute force is not going to make the cut.

You know how many tries took me to start taking territories from you, and wasn't just by luck/ or praying

Your low character is really a pita to beat, and yet not complaining about, or you asking to nerf your character just because you want to spend time on that tier.

[weary saffron]

I literally just said its one of the only ways to ensure consistent def wins. My point was people are always asking the high al players to learn strategy rather than develop builds like the above.

[late coral]

Right! Was the AL300 wearing gear? How many failed attempts were there?
It is a strawman.
COULD an AL0 take down an AL300? Sure... I suppose.
What are the odds of it happening?

If I thought I could create a build where I could easily kill players with a 200AL advantage all the time, I'd never use anything else.
It isn't realistic.

[sinful temple]

Failed attempts? The only way the high AL survives that is via parapet or second chance, same as they do against someone with similar ALs to them. Go test the build out yourself if you don’t think it’s realistic

[neat cradle]

You obviously can't be argued with, despite clear evidence to the contrary. This is no longer constructive.

[weary saffron]

Yeah the stats are pretty clear, the win rate is 100% unless second chance or parapet, you don't need 100 trials to test that

[late coral]

It is your video.
Be upfront.
How many attempts did it take to create that video?
What are the odds of that mage build actually killing the AL300? 1 in 10? 1 in 100?

[neat cradle]

wat

It's not my video. Read my post again.

[cosmic pasture]

There are a lot of players who don't know the meta. Or don't want to play it. Like switching between stasis, GS endless, duo raids, heretic pvp etc. But still they want to have fun with the game and contribute in kwars.

[sinful temple]

Are you purposefully ignoring everything that’s been said? Look at the damage numbers. It’s a consistent one shot

[neat cradle]

And can we stop using 300 ALs as some weird arbitrary standard of high-AL players?

[weary saffron]

This is precisely the issue in one of the most competitive aspects of orna players want a chance against all opponents regardless of meta and strategy.

[sinful temple]

We always end up at the same discussion. Should a player that’s just doing it for fun and ignoring the strongest builds in the meta win as much as a player who plays with the purpose of optimizing their build for it?

[wispy basin]

In kwars, winning is both offense and defense....

[cosmic pasture]

They will almost always loose their defense, but have some chance in offense. I really can't see the issue.

[sinful temple]

It’s been demonstrated already that everyone has a good chance at winning attack against anyone. So why should we be segregating players if anyone can beat anyone in at least the half of the war they have more control over?

[late coral]

It is an example. Use whatever AL you like.
The point is that there is a differential in AL that eventually cannot be overcome, regardless of player skill.
Cherry picking a single build with a 1 in 20 or 1 in 50 chance of killing your opponent is not a valid defense of allowing unfair matchups.

[pearl hill]

lol the bias. where does 1 in 20 or 1 in 50 come from?

[valid tangle]

But that same lesson is given in Arena. IMO, Kingdom Wars aren't the place to be learning that lesson, its the place to execute on your learning.
You "practice" your build in Arena, then execute upon it in Wars.

which sorta still applies to your second points? Though, you can't practice a build for Othersouls outside of just attempting it. (maybe one day we can 🙏)
I'm not advocating for/against anything here. I'm looking to get to the bottom of things.

[wispy basin]

I'm really confused at where this conversation has gone.

Obviously Bordoadas isn't going to swap to al0 mage for our future kwars because he understands the state of the game and has built his class to have optimal chances for winning on offense and defense.

[pearl hill]

I will swap to AL 0 mage for all future burns matchups cause its funny

[sinful temple]

The win rate is literally 50/50 if the opponent has second chance, 100% if they don’t

[late coral]

You shot the video.
How many attempts did it take where the AL0 mage wasn't one-shot?
If this is really a valid build, then why isn't every player in the game running it?
Exotic gear?
Would a player die in PvP 90%+ of the time in that build?

If that single build is so all-powerful, then we'd all be running it, right?

[sinful temple]

Honestly? Anyone that is low AL and isn’t running that build is shooting themselves in the foot. Thats what I’d be doing for sure if I were low AL

[weary saffron]

I somewhat disagree because a) arena selection is heavily diluted by inactive players and B) you never need to learn defense and c) you never really need to prep specific matchups

[late coral]

Congratulations! The new meta build has been found.
50% victories in PvP guaranteed for everyone.

[neat cradle]

ALs, alone, are not solely indicative of a player's pvp competence or ability. There are plenty of viable builds that can punch up against large AL disparities—some more effective than others. Ultimately, it comes down to whether or not a player is willing to invest the time and effort into understanding and executing those builds.

[sinful temple]

Ironically, that’s kind of what the current system is already doing

[pearl hill]

to be frank you approach everyone in this thread in such a disengenious way and have no readily apparent desire to reconcile any form of discourse that I have no reason to answer you because it will not change your mind or opinion

with that said we should really tax california billionaires more

[late coral]

I agree with you. I've killed players who had more than 75ALs on me. It doesn't happen often, but if I sneak past their def and res, I can one-shot a high percentage of opponents. But in that case, it certainly isn't a 50/50 shot against everyone.

[late coral]

At last! (we agree on something) 😆

[wispy basin]

Wait, so we should just tax everyone in kwars with more than 100 ALs some arbitrary % of their ALs?

[sinful temple]

Yes, please tax Ensseric so I can catch up to him

[copper kite]

Can y'all agree with reducing the research times for hexes and blessings atleast

[quick lake]

-suggest remove kingdom wars

[sinful temple]

No, I see enough equalization hexes daily already

[pearl hill]

its wasnt a metaphor. All high AL players here had to work for their AL whereas billionaires steal profits from their workers and obtain tax based susbsidies from the american government which is another form of theft

[sinful temple]

Based

[pearl hill]

now if you are AL 300 and used refinery spam with an automation script to fill it everyday by breaking the TOS then the analogy would align

[copper kite]

You'll have the same ratio of blessings of peace 😅

Or a little less but thats another discussion 😂

[sinful temple]

I mean, when you’re seeing 3 hexes a day, one blessing of peace every x days isn’t doing much for you 😅

[copper kite]

I'm surprised you're matching 3 wars in this day and age

[cosmic pasture]

While orna clickers unfortunately have thousands of downloads. So I guess there are more of these as one might think...

[pearl hill]

fresh video

[late coral]

Look... I'm not trying to be the enemy of the highest ALs in the game.
Not my circus... not my monkeys.

I heard a number of you complaining that you can't get matched.
I offered a solution that would get you matched in EVERY war and get you a wider variety of opponents all at the same time.
But your only allowable solution to this situation is that you all want unfair matches and free kills.

None of you are willing to prove that it is your skill that got you to where you are by dropping off some of your own AL in order to get matched.
That tells me that it really isn't about you not getting matched or always fighting the same players. It's all about the easy kills.

Do you REALLY think you'd start to lose a significant number of matches if you only had a 50AL or 75AL advantage instead of a 150AL or 200AL advantage?
I doubt it.

[pearl hill]

I promise this isnt intended to be inflammatory or leading question. just genuine curiosity. Can you define what skill looks like in a war fight in orna?

[wispy basin]

How exactly do you imagine the billionaires see themselves? I suspect it is as you describe your own efforts.

[pearl hill]

bro this is a mobile game\

where are we going with this

[sinful temple]

Heading straight to “I’m locking this thread again” station

[wispy basin]

Well I'm not invested in the debate over caps, I just want more fun, I am fine being caped or reverting to the old system or whatever.

I think there is a lesson for some in this tax vs cap debate.

[neat cradle]

Maybe enabling Pacifist mode could boost korns gained through gauntlets, but have a lengthy cooldown before it can be disabled again. Return matchmaking to its previous, less prohibitive iteration and let kingdoms choose whether or not they want to participate in a more competitive (well, maybe more random) pvp environment.

[pearl hill]

fwiw the tax comment was a jab at an older comment in this thread. it wasnt meant to integrate into this discussion in any real way

[sinful temple]

I believe the issue with this is alt kingdoms

[pearl hill]

Idk what Odie has in the works for kingdoms as its all a secret but I could see kingdoms aligning toward PvP or PvE categories for progression. Pacifist just keeps you out of wars but is not benefical in any way currently

[copper kite]

No need to be stressed about this as odie sensei is not going to read all of this and get constructive feedback thats fair to everyone anyway, some people touch wood, some people touch grass, but I prefer to touch hearts

[pearl hill]

are you a surgeon ?

[copper kite]

https://tenor.com/view/you-can-do-anything-you-want-in-this-world-kelly-babstock-canada's-ultimate-challenge-the-sky's-the-limit-307-gif-17260625941660195056

Except get timely matched

[neat cradle]

sturgeon in the ocean, surgeon with my emotion

[pearl hill]

I want to make everyone in this thread happy with their kingdom warfight experience

[pearl hill]

sturgeons are big fish

[sinful temple]

Fine, here’s your surgeon’s diploma, easier to get

[copper kite]

Reducing the hex/blessings to 2 days 🫡

[late coral]

There's no doubt that RNG plays such a large role in Orna that it eclipses skill.
Does my massive DEF and RES fail? Does Parapet hit or not? Does a status effect hit me and how long does it stick?
etc...

Skill in Orna is the choice of class, specialization, gear, and choice of spells.
Skill in Orna is studying your opponent to see if you can determine what class and build would best counter their most likely setup.
But beyond skill, you have effort... and that is even more important than skill.

Effort is grinding out ALs, gear, getting your gear Godforged and grinding amities to find the best S-Class ones.
Effort is grinding out your adornments to best support your chosen builds.
Effort is testing your builds in Arena and BoF to discover weaknesses and strengths.

A combination of skill and effort is what has separated most of you high AL players from everyone else.
The same skill and effort may be found in a low AL player... but they'll (probably) be joining your ranks once they have the time to get there.

Again... I'm sorry if I have offended all you high-ALs with my critique.
You have two valid issues. I offered a solution and you refuse it. I guess that surprises me.

[pearl hill]

done

[copper kite]

I appreciate it 🫡

I see zero HR folks in the discussion, since nobody mentioned incorporating DEI in the kingdoms to improve matchmaking

[late coral]

https://tenor.com/view/tablestory-quura-bradwoto-dungeons-and-dragons-d%26d-gif-14358134765895714937

[pearl hill]

thank you for your thoughtful response. Certainly anyone that wants to be effective in pvp needs to have both effort and skill (desire to care about pvp outcomes) to be successful.

hopefully Odie can find a satisfactory solution for us

[copper kite]

More power to odie, but I am a stout believer of nothing can be fair to everyone, except the fanning sisters they're incredibly fair its astounding 🫡

[late coral]

https://tenor.com/view/veronica-mars-veronica-mars-season1-amanda-noret-kristen-bell-madison-sinclair-gif-17219375

[copper kite]

https://tenor.com/view/mr-bean-rowan-atkinson-bean-bean-movie-working-title-films-gif-15034595

[warm rover]

Motivation for crying about AL difference

[pastel kayak]

That's a ggez angle

[quick lake]

KvK is always matched

[sleek pelican]

2nd chance for the win 🥲

[warm rover]

Greetings lord Planch, how many members you have?

[livid token]

This is way too frequent.. same kingdom over and over and over, and in the last 10 or so wars we have had 2 WHOLE different kingdoms

[lost grotto]

Ah, that shouldn't

Xd

[livid token]

Yeah mr jumping the gun while im typing 😂

[lost grotto]

No clue what you're talking about, smh

[livid token]

Thornius is the other kingdom 😂

[lost grotto]

The swamp emojis are so cool

[sleek pelican]

18, but cover a wide range of tiers

[cursive haven]

@heady grail

[south timber]

I thought Kem was the Expert

[neat peak]

Go home mm you're drunk. But at least I got in the war 🙃

[pastel kayak]

More low AL motivation (give me greater challenges)

[late coral]

I have 43 players sitting out this war. Why would the matchmaking system think that it was a good idea to match a 50 member kingdom against a kingdom that could only supply seven matches.

I’m not concerned about unfair fights, as this is a relatively good set of matches.

But if we win, the rewards won’t even be worth the time for us. 15,000 kingdom orns don’t go very far when you have 50 people running raids

[neat peak]

It burns has way more than 7 players. All their 100+ als are sitting out. You wouldn't win if they were in. You have a decent shot now.

[late coral]

Again, I have no complaint about the fairness of the match.
I'm positive we wouldn't win against their AL150+ players. That goes without saying. They are #1 on the leaderboard for a reason.

But I'm sure that they don't want to have only 7 players matched any more than we do.
..and to be fair, not all of their AL100+ players are sitting out.
Gamblor had a 102AL advantage over our King with AL142.
Our weakest matched player had a 55AL disadvantage against his opponent.
But all the rest were reasonable matches.

If we take 3 or 4 wins off of "It Burns", I'd be satisfied with that. 😆

[weary saffron]

Perhaps if there was a system where you would be rewarded for the wins you did get in a loss.

[neat peak]

Yeah its still interesting how the MM is doing matches tho. I got matched with someone over 100 als below me yesterday. This match only has 7 players in it and its not a micro kingdom.

[neat cradle]

Also: why are ties worth nothing? Losing earns ya more korns 😅 margins of victory have felt a lot narrower with the new matchmaking algorithm and I feel like the likelihood of ties has increased a bit.

[robust breach]

I mean, it's not like you get much for a loss, but absolutely nothing for a tie is absurd when a loss at least gets you SOMETHING.

[pastel kayak]

Yeah it doesn't make sense

[late coral]

I’ll take it. 🤣

[weary saffron]

Thats at least an orn a member

[late coral]

Nine orns per match.🤑

[warm rover]

@livid token 👋

[lavish widget]

Would you believe i jumped in that fight on my territory def build ☠️
Been getting ripped apart this week

[south timber]

Are we getting changes in the mm? Cause I'm seeing something different lately

[neat peak]

He made the cap for high al's 100+ when it was 150+ before I think.

[south timber]

Oh ok cause I'm seeing also Al 51 vs100+ and others similar gaps below Al 100

[south timber]

I'm not complaining, just trying to understand if anything was changed and stated somewhere

[jade nexus]

I kinda love this idea. Its similar to my idea to encourage live PVP by rewarding the winner with gold/orns/materials making it an alternative to holding settlements.

[sinful temple]

I think this is related to the dynamic brackets and the changes to push wars to be larger

[south timber]

Which is kind of contrasting what someone has been complaining about few messages ago with a 7 members war

[sinful temple]

End of day, we can’t have large wars and hyper balanced wars. Kingdoms aren’t homogeneous, every roster will always have some degree of difference with others

[south timber]

So we can just jump back to the good old system

[sinful temple]

Was just about to type that. We’re still seeing our strongest members get sidelined for most wars, starting to think this system just introduced a ton of chaos without a discernible positive side for anyone

[south timber]

Ye right? We almost did a full circle back in 3 months of chaos

[sinful temple]

Are more balanced wars really worth it if you’re getting smaller wars (which means less KOrns)? And with a slower matchmaking system you’re also getting much less wars (we’ve stopped seeing wars restart as soon as another ends since the last changes)

[copper portal]

I vote we let every unbenched player fight every war and just allow more benching slots. I would fight 20 players if it meant clearing a war faster. Wars aren't meant to be fair, neither in power or numbers. If we are fighting and their side has more warriors, would the smaller side not be expected to kill another to push for victory? Or, I'm still in support of ending wars 3 hours after the last fight occurs. If someone else fights within that timeframe, great, restart the timer. 24 hr wars and this play it fair in a fight bit is what's ruining it for those that want to be competitive or push higher turnover without kicking low ALs or going Alt kingdom.

[south timber]

Ok new idea and call me crazy if you've have to. Make wars like gauntlets

So a player can be drafted more than once to kill someone

We'll have bigger wars and bigger fun

[copper portal]

Oh, I like that! With 10 minute shuffle time!

[jade nexus]

And blackjack

[south timber]

Maybe shuffle if needed why not

[copper portal]

Lol, do the War Shuffle!

[jade nexus]

https://tenor.com/view/richard-simmons-shuffle-shuffling-gif-26461275

[south timber]

But you know smaller kingdoms could compete against biggers and vice versa so naro could feed the babies

[copper portal]

If someone is sleeping or taking forever, definitely shuffle.

Yep! The babies don't have to attack. They can just be shuffled.

[south timber]

Shuffle can be done only if both haven't been fighting yet

[jade nexus]

Then we'd all shuffle everyone out who didn't jump on the war within 15 seconds. I know all of us.

[spring cloak]

I would say yes as long as more sources of korns will come with kingdom rework

[jade nexus]

Its too tempting. Flying too close to the sun

[spring cloak]

Less frequent, more balanced wars is fine as long as there are more ways to contribute to your kingdom to make up for the lower war volume

[copper portal]

I hope that doesn't mean another jab against pvp though.

[copper portal]

Sounds like that type of kingdom needs to go passive. Aggressive should be more aggression based 🤷

I would definitely be stoked to get shuffled into fights against more war opponents though!

[south timber]

One man army

[copper portal]

Probably would be for some. Imagine an army of that one guy 300+ ALs that has been bumping them up 20+ per month.

[jade nexus]

Totally nothing suspicious there ... like at all. 👀

[copper portal]

What's his name again?

[jade nexus]

Hairy Chinese.

[copper portal]

Yeah, that one. 🤣

[south timber]

It's ok to grab the short straw every now and then

[copper portal]

I agree wholeheartedly.

@late coral would lose his mind on that one.

[south timber]

I think that the multiple matchmaking would make him happy

[copper portal]

True, and the weaker members wouldn't be as disgruntled since someone stronger could fight for them with some rng shuffling.

[south timber]

No no we keep the actual babyboy protection system for the kids so they're not into a steep gradient of matchmaking

But a person can be drafted more than once to allow for a bigger war

[copper portal]

Ah, and increased k.orn income so we aren't in a downward spiral on these 24 hr wars followed by tiny matchups.

?

[south timber]

So let's say we're a kingdom of 30, for some reason the game wants us to go against thornius, you know small Kingdom with some lazy guys in there 👀, first we match all the potential members against eachother based on the actual system. Then their players get drafted as many times as possible to fill all our available slots so we could have a 20 players war

I wouldn't consider the shuffle as an option cause it's messy and in the gauntlets it shuffle both player and mob, here it would be a weird interaction that I'm not too happy with

[late coral]

As long as you can ONLY shuffle to a lower strength player than the opponent.
Otherwise, you'll have AL150+ players swapping to take on everyone on the other side and cheese the whole war.

[south timber]

No no I don't like the shuffle, it creates weird dynamics and confusion

There must be way too many "if" conditions to make it work

[late coral]

I don't think they could possibly be serious...
I'm thinking they're bored on a Thursday night and seeing if I'll take the ragebait.

https://tenor.com/view/fast-times-at-ridegemont-high-jeff-spicoli-sean-penn-refused-denied-no-dice-gif-2158682071543148189

[south timber]

I wouldn't underestimate him

[late coral]

https://tenor.com/view/nods-yes-not-wrong-its-true-story-valid-point-gif-14782869

[weary saffron]

IMO shuffle in a war gets a bit messy. Think current style is fine just enable as many matches as possible

[spring cloak]

I'm more surprised to see people still do kingdom raids outside of Arisen Morrigan to have orn income problems in the first place. Feels like all the chase gear has been moved to super raids/other content sources (perhaps to attempt to mitigate this problem)? I hope we get a reason to raid again outside of raid mats in rework.

[copper portal]

It's more useful for no-to-low AL players, nearly useless for high AL unless it's just for those harder to gain mats. For a mixed AL kingdom like mine, we have a two part k.orn useage to assist low AL members in getting gear and start-up mats, while trying to accommodate to the higher mat needs for higher AL players. The k.orn problem for us isn't from lack of member participation on our part, but rather the immediate repetition of 24hr wars nearly every day. Like, we just finished sitting again Rustic Temple. Monarch never fought. Half of their roster never fought. These kingdoms should be auto-populated to passive status and set for a 48hr cooldown for them to figure out how to manage themselves before having the opportunity to participate in wars again.

[sinful temple]

And enable the strongest players to actually be consistently matched. Otherwise we’re still frequently sidelining the people more invested into the system and misrepresenting a kingdom’s actual strength in a war

[copper kite]

^I believe the current matchup does incentivise these 'strong players (high al) carrying wars' kingdoms to invest time in developing the newer or lower al players. Because they might be weaker according to the perception of 'only High als = strong' but they should be strong enough for their opponents with similar als no? Doesn't misrepresent the kingdoms strength it actually shows where the kingdom's strength lie.

The matchmaking time is still a huge pain thou

[sinful temple]

The perception isn’t necessarily that high ALs = strong, but the players higher on the AL spectrum are usually also more invested into their specific gear loadouts, etc. Watching a kingdom that has several of those players not be able to have them compete for several wars in a row, while having to send out players with half of that strength level 95% of the time, is obviously misrepresenting their strength

That’s why I like the proposed change of letting us select kingdom champions, players that would always be matched. Wouldn’t necessarily be the higher AL players, but that kingdom’s top performers

[copper kite]

I don't mind the idea but I don't see its viability if the fair al matchup continues

Unless there's actual requirements of selecting these champions like in fifa pro tourneys 2 players above 90 rated 3 players 87-90 rest below something like that but in al terms 🫡

[copper kite]

And I think they're only sitting out most wars cuz theres not enough invested players in most kingdoms and they wait until the stars align to match with a 'similar higher no. Of invested players kingdom'.

[sinful temple]

Well, the previous system from a few weeks ago was prioritizing kingdom’s top performers and I wasn’t getting any lopsided mismatches, so clearly there are enough highly invested players to match. The current system is simply prioritizing the lower AL matchups from what I’m seeing

[copper kite]

However it ignored als 50-75 and I had to sit out atleast 50 wars

[sinful temple]

There were proposed changes to alleviate that without sitting out the higher ALs though. The dynamic brackets should already do that

So there was no reason to remove the system first trying to match the strongest players, since it could then apply the new matchmaking to everyone else

[copper kite]

Why do you think the high als are sitting out currently?

[sinful temple]

Because I’m seeing it happen first hand 😅

[copper kite]

Oh I know its going on but I wanted to see why do you think that's happening?

[sinful temple]

Ah, I see what you mean. My best guess is the system is first prioritizing the lower AL brackets, since our lower AL players have been matched in 90+ % of the wars

[copper kite]

I don't think its prioritizing however its finding it easier to match the lower als first since they're in huge numbers in most kingdoms compared to the higher al folks.

If that can be fixed you'll have your solution

Until that happens how about trusting the lower al players with the carry job for once (circling back to the argument anyone can beat anyone despite al disparity surely they should be able contest other similar al folks) 😉

[sinful temple]

It’s not that I don’t trust them to do the job. It’s that war PvP has been my main focus for years and I’ve gone from being able to participate in 6/day to maybe 1, and that 1 is almost always against the same people

[copper kite]

We've also matched against 3-5 kingdoms in last 15 wars. Personally I dont see a problem with that since you can beat them enough times for bragging rights 🤷

However in your case it does suck going from 6 matchups to 1, if you're only interested in wars primarily

Hypothetically, if you be brave and bench/remove all those lower al players i dont think it will solve the problem you'll still be doing the same wars and waiting for matchups otherwise 😅

[lost grotto]

Ngl, I was in the AL50-75 spectrum and I’m sitting more wars now

[copper kite]

The al disparity in the player base is whats making the fair matchups being the problem

[lost grotto]

Only played 1 of the last 7 wars

[sinful temple]

Don’t really think that’s the case, if I was getting enough opponents in my bracket before, I’d get them again now, the population didn’t change significantly in a couple weeks

[copper kite]

F

[copper kite]

Were the lower al players being matched or as fairly matched back then 🤔

[lost grotto]

Only con before, if something, was that I almost always matched against players with more AL than me, but I personally didn’t mind it, and I definitely preferred it over not being matched at all

[sinful temple]

The lowest ones were still getting matched a bunch. The middle ones weren’t getting matched as much, but there were no dynamic brackets back then

[copper kite]

We were getting quicker matchups but some of the lower al kingdom mates were getting as high as 200 al players consistently hence it was changed after several complaints to a more rigorously fair matchups

And now there are complaints from the other side

[copper kite]

Same, As long as I get to throw hands its fine by me 🫡

[late coral]

It is simple math.
The raids needed for a 50-member kingdom is 5 times higher than the raids needed for a 10-member kingdom.
So, our budget needs are 5 times higher in order to have the same number of raids per member.
But it is difficult to earn 5 times more as a 50-member kingdom when you are only fighting in a 7v7 or an 8v8 each time.

Gauntlets can also supply kingdom orns, but getting 10 people to do their gauntlet fights is much easier than getting 35-50 people to all get them done. There is invariably going to be a few people who have to be nagged to do it, or we swap them out and have to wait again.

You are correct that high-level players don't need kingdom raids often anymore... except for farming materials for AL advancement.
But a 50-member kingdom typically has a higher percentage of lower-level players, and they are all very hungry for those kingdom raids.
They need them for the XP and the gear.

Right now, there are 8 event raids running. All of our lower levels excited about these and are very active in them.
Over the month of February when demand was lower, we had fought to get our kingdom orns to our normal budgeted target.
A couple of days ago, we were down around 250,000 orns from that level because of all the event raids.

[late coral]

This is a problem of your own creation.
You'd rather sit on the sideline than be matched every time by letting your stat advantage be lowered for that match.
The only solution you have offered so far is "Gimme some weak players to curb-stomp."

[weary saffron]

Imo the game shouldn't disincentivize growth in the matter but also some of the solutions that were suggested:

1. More orns for losers and ties
2. More relaxed matchmaking above a certain threshold
3. Queue up everyone but balanced fights are worth more points
4. Small subser of players can be set as champions to always queue.

So plenty of suggestions have been offered.

[late coral]

"More relaxed matchmaking" = Ignore a fair match and allow a more lopsided and unfair match to replace it.

Our kingdom was matched against "It Burns" yesterday in a 7v7.
Why wasn't anyone other than King Gamblor matched?
It is because our highest AL is me at AL85.
My opponent was a very capable AL84.

So... I shouldn't have been assigned this fair match, but I should have been given to one of their AL200+ players?
That makes no sense.
Not only would I have to take part in an unfair match, but their AL84 would have had to sit out as well.

If you all hate the idea of having your ALs lowered to get a fair match, then what about having your opponents boosted to 50 AL below you?
Would that be acceptable if you were guaranteed to be matched in every single war?

[sinful temple]

Do you think that war accurately showed the strength differential between those 2 kingdoms? Or was it just a war that ended with a close result because the system created a “fair” match? And I say “fair” because, to us, that’s not a fair match. Because it completely disregards a ton of the effort the kingdom and its players have put into being the #1 PvP kingdom

[sinful temple]

I truly don’t care what AL my opponents have as long as we get to have our strongest players matched. Do I like the idea of giving opponents “free” ALs? No, that seems like giving them power they haven’t earned. Would I take that so I can actually play the content I enjoy? Sure

[late coral]

You may be surprised that I agree with you completely on that point.
That is a totally valid point.
But do you really think you would drop in the rankings because of it?
I think that you would still be #1... and a 50AL advantage with your skill and gear would still be nearly impossible to overcome.

[late coral]

I also don't like giving away free ALs... it feels like "stolen honor" in the military.
But it would create more challenge for you, a guaranteed match for you, and your opponents would at least have some sort of chance to win their attacking half of the match.

Think of it like handicap golf.
Weaker players get a few strokes as an advantage in order to let all players have challenging matchups.
It would be pointless for me to play against Tiger Woods without him giving me some strokes.

[weary saffron]

I see the notion of 'fairness' being thrown around like its something that only matters for the individual matchup. You know what feels really unfair "throw away your last 100-1000 of hours of progress or don't play." Especially when a large reason people level AL is specifically to have this advantage.

Strategy matters, but ultimately if I wanted a strategic game with an equal playing field I would be playing league (master peak btw). But if I want a game that rewards consistent steady effort, orna is it.

[late coral]

You would still have an advantage. 50AL? 75AL? whatever is deemed to be the max before a match is not worth being played.
In the case of the AL200+ players, you'd just have that max advantage over more players... so it isn't useless.
There would still be a reason to get stronger.

[weary saffron]

At the point I'm at id be scaling down/scaling up enemies for every player not in hild. Imo I haven't really seen a compelling argument beyond it feeling bad to lose in a mode that is mostly pride with some economic benefits, and economic solutions were suggested.

[sinful temple]

Are those ALs really needed though? These are just a couple of examples from our latest war. Strategy trumps ALs and, the way PvP is setup in Orna, attack is always winnable if you know what you’re doing imo.

Again, I’d take that solution if that meant I could get matched 100% of the time, but I don’t think it’d leave a good taste in anyone’s mouth

[late coral]

If it really is about skill, gear, and ability, and ALs aren't important, then this "handicapping" of matches shouldn't bother you at all.
If we give you a less experienced player and give him some ALs, you should still be able to beat him every time.

[weary saffron]

Is it worth it to not really incentivize progression at all? I'm pretty confident I could beat most players with a 50 AL dissdsvtange, so why grind, just sit on the 50 AL disadvantage and stop playing.

We already have multiple pvp modes where AL advantage can be eliminated or is eliminated by default (including kwars), I don't see why there needs to be further equalizing factors.

[late coral]

Remember... it wouldn't only be your kingdom that would be doing this.
All the kingdoms would also have weaker opponents boosted, us included.
It would result in the maximum number of matches being generated every war.
And as the rules would be applied evenly, it shouldn't affect the standings at all.

[weary saffron]

Well it would certainly be worse for higher kingdoms than lower, but if there's really going to be no change why bother restricting at all?

Ultimately, why would we want to limit the benefits of grinding when grinding is the primary progression in orna?

[sinful temple]

We also need to think about the game’s longevity. If we disincentivize AL grinding, what else is there to keep these players going?

[late coral]

Because others around your level would keep on grinding, pass you, and eventually they would have a 50AL advantage over you.

Look... I'm not championing this "handicapping" idea.
If you are ok with sitting out or playing the same 35 people over and over, I can't help you.
I'm just brainstorming on how to get you back in the game.
I've been playing for six years, and I hate to see the game leave you behind.
I think it would be exciting to play against stronger players.
Maybe, by giving me a taste of what I could do with 200ALs, it encourages me to grind more.

But I am simply trying to get everyone fighting in relatively fair matches, so the number of players being matched is higher, and rewards are better.
Either we lower you to the level of your competition or we inflate them to somewhere around your level.

[sinful temple]

Technically, if we want bigger matchups, the original system was the best for that.

I still think loosening matching requirements and changing how KOrn rewards work would make the most sense. Geppu’s proposal for KOrn gains makes a ton of sense to me, doesn’t penalize kingdoms that get mismatched because they can still make a good amount if they lose/tie

[late coral]

#1458462120902394091 message

[urban timber]

I know it's an unpopular opinion in this crowd but I still think leaving Ascensions fully enabled in PVP style content was a horrible idea. Especially as PVP style content is not the primary way to gain Ascensions. And given that there is ALREADY a gear advantage that long time players have.

People say "Well if you remove AL's from PVP, why would I keep playing?" Because you love to play the game? I can't help but think that we lose more players than we retain because they get to end game and get stomped and then find out what they have to do ad it looks like climbing Mount Everest in crutches.

Of course all that is entirely anecdotal and just my opinion.

[late coral]

That's kind of why I like this "handicapping" idea.
It doesn't fully remove ALs, so the grind is still at least semi-respected, but it helps widen the match pool for the highest AL players.

[sinful temple]

#1458462120902394091 message

Would a system like this not boost your gains though? Even one win on offense would already be worth more than that whole war with us was.

[late coral]

They could play games with the orns, but it isn't all about the orns.

I don't imagine you guys liked that 7v7 any more than we did.
It was exciting for me to be matched against an AL84... and it felt good taking 4 wins off the number 1 kingdom.
But if we are really honest here, the outcome was pretty much guaranteed. You guys were never at risk of losing.

But what did it get you guys?
15,000 kingdom orns and most of you sitting out for an hour?
I had 43 members sitting out. That wasn't fair to them either.

[sinful temple]

So wouldn’t it have been better to match 21 of your guys with our 21, regardless of it generating some unfair matches, and then paying you guys for everyone win you were able to take from us?

Match some balanced ones and pay x amount per win, and then pay extra for every win in a mismatched fight. AL50 beat a 200? You get double korns for that fight

[late coral]

It would be hard to convince the lower levels that they had to fight a battle where they were an underdog by 150ALs.
Every AL is 1% to all stats, right?

Some players would protest what they'd see as unfair matches by not fighting, and they would drag out wars to far more than 1 hour.
I wouldn't... but I know players that would do it as a form of protest.
Giving them an AL handicap would make them look forward to the fight, I think.
"Let's see how strong I am with those ALs."

It would at least let them feel like they had a chance, instead of feeling like "Why bother?"

When it was unlimited advantage above AL49, I know at least two kingdoms that intentionally dragged out matches to 24 hours.
I don't think we want to encourage that again.

[weary saffron]

Would they protest it if they got Korn's even if the kingdom lost? I dunno. If you have a 30 person match with a lower win rate youd get more than a loss currently

[sinful temple]

If they knew rewards were increased wouldn’t they feel motivated to try? We’ve already had people in this thread demonstrating that it’s possible to punch up a big deficit (just posted a 128 AL deficit win above few messages above for example).

There’s never been much of an incentive because losses and ties are basically wasted time right now, changing that would recontextualize everything

[late coral]

I need to get to work... I'll jump back on later.

[livid token]

Is it just inevitable at the moment to keep getting the same 3 kingdoms 🥴

[weary saffron]

Imo getting your members to war is a kingdom management issue but if there were rewards for winning even in a lost war the incentivize structure would be:

Win: orns, maybe some pride
Loss: war ends quicker, maybe hurt feelings

[sinful temple]

You mean for winning individual matches, right?

[copper kite]

Hmmmm interesting kinda backtracking to what you mentioned earlier as a suggestion 🤔

its possible to beat 128 al difference players as proven with one meta. (I agree and there's way more)
Lower al brackets aren't doing well against their own tiers (assumption if they were why bring it up) and hence it's misrepresenting our kingdoms strength. (Have you tried showing them that meta (if it can slay titans it should work on the same level as well) so they can accurately represent the kingdom's strength)

[sinful temple]

It’s not that lower brackets aren’t doing well, but if a kingdom has a bunch of stronger players, they aren’t correctly represented by their weaker ones. I don’t think it’s that farfetched to say that Geppu outperforms a AL 50 player, regardless of scenario

[weary saffron]

But I would wager that our lower AL players do regularly punch above their weight class, but I like to think I do too and my weight class is a bit higher

[copper kite]

Yeah I've heard geppu is strong even without his als 😅

All I really want is quick mm and reduce/halve hex/blessings research duration 🥲

[weary saffron]

Imo as part of the kingdom rework there should be other desirable kingdom rewards for florens. Then hexes could effectively have lesser or no cool down and there would still be a ''cost" to using them. In an infinite floren world, CD are the only gating mechanism

[copper kite]

I agree 🫡

[south timber]

Imagine using some of the same logics discussed here and apply them to settlements

It wouldn't make any sense in the terms of PvP, investment in the gear and levels, displaying the effort and capabilities of hold on defense and also being capable of taking over the others. You take your fights and deal with them in the best way you can. If the others are too strong just get better or figure out a proper strategy. It's PvP and it's not supposed to be fair but rewarding.

[jade nexus]

I gotta be honest. I was a big complainer in the begining about what was fair and what wasnt but after playing repeatedly against Sir Oinksworth, Gamblor, Geppu, Wintermelon ,Sokam, Ensseric and even Hairy Chinese I have learned that you can overcome any fight with enough game knowledge. By AL 50 I was pretty confident going into a fight with someone AL 200. By AL 90 that number was raised to 300+. Does it sting to lose? Sure , but I can 100% say with confidence that I became a better player for it. Any one of those folks watched me start at nothing and move forward and im confident that they'd agree. I think the thing we should focus on the most is getting the matches as quickly as possible and being able to get through the war in less than 24 hours, even if your opponent refuses to play. This way you have a larger pool of fights which lead to more wins. More Kingdom orns and more competition which is what the goal is in PVP.

I was just beat in my last war by an AL 30 and im 102. A little research goes a long way in this game.

[pastel kayak]

I'm proud of you and your growth
I agree with you, I'm AL33 and I consistently beat AL200s on offense and win defenses against players with double my AL, I just wanna be matched as much as possible and play as many Wars per day as possible

[weary saffron]

This is a good mindset, because honestly, this is the mindset that not only lets you beat the big opponents, but is going to make you become one of the big opponents long term. You're one of the opponents that is consistently getting stronger and consistently gaining AL simultaneously.

The fights and the long term catchup is only really impossible if you yourself have decided it is

[robust breach]

Slowing things to a crawl doesn't help anyone, the answer is almost always volume, this is a grind game after all. Volume is King for income, learning, getting stronger... you name it.

[south timber]

And as we're talking about, reduce the war time to 18hrs, considering 6-8hrs of sleep it's still enough to let everyone play across the globe

[pastel kayak]

Agreed, suggested that a long time ago

[robust breach]

Speaking of volume, or lack thereof, we've just entered our 6th hour of matchmaking... yay.

[copper kite]

https://tenor.com/view/thomas-ian-nicholas-henry-hey-gif-26146505

[south timber]

That sounds like your fault for playing the game and having ALs 😂

Why don't you go get a digital vasectomy for your Class and snap some ALs ?

[robust breach]

These new iterations of the algorithm are hitting us particularly hard. Small Kingdom, 8 members ranging from 129 to 178 AL.

[south timber]

https://tenor.com/view/it-feels-a-little-unfair-sungwon-cho-prozd-it-seems-a-bit-biased-its-not-quite-even-gif-8053213714913214909

[late coral]

Open your doors and let some newbs in... it's very rewarding.

[robust breach]

No, that would defeat the purpose of our Kingdom. It's a very tight knit group of players that have a long history with each other.

[jade nexus]

Shamless plug here. Ravenwood is recruiting newbs. I left very competitive kingdoms to teach others. Ravenwood sits roughly in the middle of the pack in the leaderboard and we are pretty new at wars. We have a great discord community and we arent hardcore in the least. We just expect you to cover your wars and gauntlets as a bare minimum. A little play every day.

[south timber]

Kick some of your newbs so you can have better matchmaking and more resources available for the kingdom

They'll go with nuclear so it will compensate for both

[late coral]

Sounds just like Naro. We've had open borders for 6 years.
Because we've all grown up together, we don't have many that leave to go elsewhere after they hit 250.

[jade nexus]

We love when folks decide to stay but we expect that many will grow up and move on and we are happy for them when they do. Truthfully tho, it doesnt take as much as one would think to catch up and be competitive. I reached AL 53 in 1 year. July 30 will be 2 years and im about to be 103. I dont feel like I play half as much as a lot of others. Im a dad of 3 , a husband, a son a full time blue collar job , I own a side business and we run a small homestead at home. Busy is my nature and I noticed that I gained ALs much faster than the folks I used to be amazed by not long ago because in my opinion the AL cost scales beautifullly. The system works and while we cant make every bit of the game equitable, you do get results when you put in the work. The losses were a far better teacher than any extra time I found to play and I can really only play "on the run" . I hope we can all get to a point in this discussion that we can all walk away feeling it was the best possible outcome.

[neat cradle]

Almost 15 hours into our most recent war and we're still waiting on up to 3 opposing players to make a move before an outcome can be determined. Like, obviously I know stuff happens IRL, but, man, it'd be great if there were some way to de-prioritize matching against players who routinely take an egregious amount of time to engage with the wars they're in 😅

[jade nexus]

Im convinced some of them do it for laughs. Everybody poops. If you arent slaying your enemies while on the throne then do you even play Orna ? 🤣

[south timber]

They don't poop cause they're already the biggest turd in the building