I’ve seen it expressed by Dev VKC that the current matchmaking system isn’t quite what they desire. People can manipulate their battle points by simply retreating from battles so they get matched against weaker players. Also, people get points for their wins depending on the current battle points of their opponents. I.e. When your battle points are much higher than your opponents a win will give you +1 (or otherwise a tiny number) but a loss will make you lose loads. When your battle points are much lower than your opponents a loss will give you -1 and a win will give you loads. You can understand why they originally set it up like this but in practice this is super frustrating for those high up on the leaderboards trying to push and is ultimately undermined by the fact people can manipulate their battle points.
A few people have come up with different suggestions for how people could be matched in PvP instead. I can’t remember all these ideas so am just going to include 3 in this post. But if people can remember previous ones which had some good plus points then add them below. Two of these ideas are my own and I just want to be clear first that I’m not simply trying to promote my own ideas as the best… I just don’t know what else people have suggested recently.
1) Changing battle points to 1-20, with wins/losses giving +1/-1 (my idea)
Beating someone 5 or more points below you could not give you a +1 and vice versa no -1 for the weaker player. Matchmaking would try to match ±5 points first of all, or maybe less.
The difference of this would mean there is an upper limit for the battle points (20) and each number of battle points 1 through to 20 will have a constant relation to the strength of the people relative to everyone else. This “constant relation” means the system could easily be used to combat people who plan on retreating for “easy wins”. For example, each time it is looking for an opponent it could be a 50:50 chance for using your current battle points or the maximum battle points you’ve reached. Or it could have a 50:50 chance to match you against someone close to the highest scoring opponent you’ve beaten (using the achievements below), e.g. you’ve beaten someone with 14 battle points but you currently have 7 so it may match you with someone 3-11 or 11-15.
Rewards:
a - Number of wins (as normal)
b - Beating opponents who have battle points: 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 14, 16 and 18.
c - Reaching battle points: 5, 10, 15 and 20(?).
The focus of the rewards could still be in the number of wins (which practically everyone can go for simply with a time investment), while the other rewards just give some nice extra rewards.
One of the big negatives here is the upper limit on the battle points which means leaderboards cannot be implemented very easily. However, you could see the other rewards for reaching certain points or beating certain opponents as the leaderboard rewards. The crowns which are normally rewarded in top 50 could instead be given for reaching 20 battle points.
2) Scoring a player’s team based on monster stats and matchmaking with regards to that (RAF NiteKrawler0’s idea)
Every monster is given a power rating. This could be a combination of their HP+ATK+DEF / 3 + (Rarity Value). Players can then be matched based on the total power rating of their team.
So for example Motor’s power level would be 4075+5710+3380/3 + 1000 = 5388
Rarity Values could be:
Legend = 1000
Super Epic = 500
Epic = 250
This will ensure players with full Legend teams don’t get matched against lower level players with 2-3 Legends. Every match-up should result in teams which are close in power which will make the battles intense. It will come down to careful team building and clever play to emerge victorious. You can’t get much closer than this to making balanced match-ups.
Rewards:
a - Number of wins (as normal)
b - Leaderboards
One quite severe problem with this is that strong players (with many legends) could specifically make teams which are low power rating but with a very good selection of monsters in order to easily beat weaker players. So it’s likely that some other factors would have to be involved in the matchmaking.
An excellent result of giving monsters a power rating (and displaying it) is it opens up the opportunity for making some extra types of PvP. For example, in PvP events they could open up three types at once which each have different power rating restrictions and their own rewards:
- Beginner’s Cup (0-XXXXX power, hero rank 0-99)
- Intermediate Cup (30000+ power, hero rank 100+)
- Master’s Cup (45000-48000 power)
Just a random example there but separating out hero rank 0-99 players could stop them being specifically targeted for easy wins. The 45000-48000 power bracket for the special “Master’s Cup” is a very tight power window that would mean every match done there would be incredibly close (hopefully) and balanced. The “Master’s Cup” could have no rewards except for leaderboard rewards so fighting in there would be all about winning and you could even go as far as offering legendaries in the leaderboards (limited in top 10, non-limited in top 50/100) if you want to let the veteran players fight it out to get a limited legendary they’d love to have.
3) Matching people based on their hero rank, with wins/losses giving +1/-1 (my idea)
At the beginning of each PvP event everyone’s “hero rating” would get reset back to their hero rank. People get matched based on ONLY their hero rating. Any win a person gets gives +1 to their hero rating, regardless of the hero rating the opponent has. Same for losses… they always give -1. Also there would be a lower cap for people’s hero rating which is [hero rank -30] and no upper cap.
Hero rank is a brilliant indication of how strong a player is since our cost limit increases proportionately to it and it takes ages to level up high so no one can rush up without having good monsters too. As a free player myself I always found I could make a team pushing the upper limit of my cost limit and I was using my tickets efficiently to level up as quickly as possible. Additionally, having that lower cap for hero rating should eliminate the possibility of stronger players lowering their rating to easily beat weaker players.
Rewards:
a - Number of wins (as normal)
b - Leaderboards
c - Reaching hero rating: +10, +20 (from hero rank)
Leaderboards -b- would obviously only be for the top ranked players which may seem bad but to be honest it’s already the case that only the top ranked players position high on leaderboards. In order to keep the top leaderboard spots fully competitive (rather than just who puts the most time into PvP) there could be some kind of thing where hero rating 175-180 you don’t get -1 from a loss and from 180+ you only get +1 from wins against someone else who is [your hero rating -10]. That would mean anyone who makes it to 175 will easily jump up to 180 and never drop below 180 again, then in order to go beyond 180 you’ll need to beat the other top people. In general I think the leaderboards being just for top ranked players would encourage all those not bothering to push to level 150 right now… which is a good thing!
Rewards -c- may sound overly complicated but here’s how it would work. There would be an achievement which you could claim after, say, 5 wins which rewards 1 gem. This achievement would be related to your current hero rank: 1-10, 11-20, 21-30, 31-40, … , 121-130, 131-140, 141-150. I.e. there’s an achievement for each hero rank bracket and you only complete one after the 5 wins. Once you collect this reward then in unlocks two of hero rating achievements which are positioned at: 20, 30, 40, 50, … , 140, 150, 160, 170. Each of these give the same reward of 1 rare gem. E.g. Let’s say you are hero rank 48 then after your first 5 wins you’ll collect the hero rank 41-50 achievement giving you 1 gem and this will unlock two achievements for reaching hero rating 60 and 70, which if you manage to get there you can get 1 rare gem from each. This may seem like a lot of effort to make but the main idea is to encourage players to push for wins to get above their hero rank rather than sitting around their current hero rank or losing 30 times and trying to face easier players for their wins.
One additional positive of this system is it’s simple to grasp, like with the current battle points system. Everyone knows their hero rank and could understand why they are matched with respect to this.
While in general people’s hero rating would get reset back to their hero rank at the start of each PvP it could be different during some special PvP events. For example, when we are heavily restricted like “limit of 2 legendaries” then we could all start at hero rating 50 or if it’s a “cost limit 173” then we could all start at hero rating 100.
I can’t think of a negative at my time of writing this but maybe one problem could be matching against the same opponent over and over because the hero rating does not change by much. So maybe it would be good to add a catch where you can’t match the same player more than 3 times in a row.
I hope people like the ideas written here. If you have any ideas of your own write them below!
This will ensure players with full Legend teams don’t get matched against lower level players with 2-3 Legends.