I'd like to see a new type of rank used for some or all of: -0- player comparisons -0- guild entry requirements -0- PvP matching -0- Rumble matching Total resources spent on building up your island. A simple sum of gold and grog (and maybe BP and EP, perhaps with a scaling factor) spent on Purchasing buildings at the market Upgrading buildings Training pirates Recruiting and training Legendaries Anything built with gems would count at the non-gem price. This would reduce the benefit of dropping rank and the penalty of upgrading PH too fast. The raw numbers would be unwieldy, so scale it logarithmically (so new players level up fast).
Unfortunately, walls cost a significantly disproportionate amount, and a base with weak defenses and maxed walls would be rated near max, but a base with max defenses and mid-level walls would be rated significantly lower. Rather than directly going off cost spent, each upgrade could be weighted differently (going more off the level, and quantity, in case someone didn't build their third Mystic Mortar, for example), so walls don't massively overshadow everything else. The upgrade from wall 12 to 13 might give you 13 extra points per wall, whereas the final upgrade of a Mortar might give 500 extra points or something. Or they could just give you experience, increasing an overall player level, like in other games (only without recruiting/donating troops artificially inflating that level - just as a pure representation of upgrade progress). Then players with similar levels could be matched. This is essentially the same thing as giving weighted points, only with scaled level tiers instead of just one giant score, to make it easier to determine matching ranges.
