The only way rumbles will ever be fair is to limit the number of battles per player. Top level players who beat top level bases get more points than lower level players that beat their bases or lower level. All of the other changes to points are kind of arbitrary as long as everyone is playing by the same system. The newest changes just keep players from farming low levels, but I am not sure why since we already have a PH match system in place. PR has always been meaningless at the bottom of the scale. Will we ever have a system where a guild can just come together and motivate each other and succeed or will we always have a system designed for people who are willing to gem a huge number of battles to win? Without gemming and staying up for the entire rumble one can get in maybe 18 or so battles at high levels. So when I see 30-100 battles, I am guessing they gem their recruitment time. Duh. The ten first battles of each guild mate recorded to the total rumble points would work out nicely. A note for Midoki: If I have 10 battles available for a rumble and so does everyone else, I would be more likely to gem those battles in a row at least partially to suit my style of wanting to play. As it is now when I see the gems flying on other guilds' boards I choose to not gem at all. One can call that spite for designing it so gemmers win. Spending 100 gems each (optionally) per rumble seems like a fair amount to me so I don't have to live on my iPad all day long. A note to big gemmers: Just go to the trophy shop down the street and have trophies made for auto racing, skydiving, Red Bull, crochet, cooking, #1 dad, mountain climbing, checkers, chess, best motion picture, academics of any kind, bull fighting, cricket, soccer, tennis ... Ask them to put your name on these trophies and display them proudly on your fireplace mantle or in the back window of your minivan. That should do the trick. - Super-Nor (reached highest level of freemium enlightenment in 2015)
Perhaps your top 10 scores during the rumble would count, not necessarily your first 10 attacks? Seems like a good solution. After 10 attacks, the lowest score would be replaced by a victory with a higher score.
Before this change, there was no reason to go for a high rank - the change was brought about to deal with players dropping rank for easy battles, and for players complaining that competing to get a high rank had no point. Its a step in the right direction to deal with that. If you don't go for 3* wins (2* is more efficient!) you can get more than double the wins per rumble. Not everyone with dozens of wins is just 3* every time. 2 2* wins is 20% more points than a 3* win, and that 2* army could theoretically cost half of what a 3* army cost. For free, going for 3*, I've gotten 20 wins in a rumble. Going for 2*, I could probably get around 50, and going for 1* (which isn't efficient anymore at all! but players sniping PH for chests definitely do) you could easily get hundreds of free wins - when streaking first started I put up 300 1* wins in a single rumble doing 3 streaks to 100, without spending a single gem. Those extra battles are likely gemmed, but it doesn't mean they're spending thousands of gems, it may just be a couple gems per battle. Free players can definitely earn 50 free gems a day, plus all the ones from quests, so thats likely a dozen free attacks someone can speed up - at that level, it has nothing to do with spending, but rather who has more time to fight. And the players that do spend a lot on fights would likely have done so anyways, as they're streaking to get chests - winning the rumble is just a product of what they're already doing anyways. Since speeding up armies is their main source of revenue, I doubt this is ever going to change - however, guild wars have been on the plan for a while, and when they come, I believe they're aiming for something that takes skill instead of money. You'll still likely need a maxed base and a maxed army to be competitive, but spending thousands of gems to fight will hopefully not be a factor in them.
The core problem with the rumble mechanism is not the points, or even the rank it is in the matching process. That model is still broken. I am in a guild with a mix of PH7,8,9 and 10. We are not hard core gemmers who play 12 hours a day. Today however we are in a rumble that includes PU. Sufficed to say we are being hammered. However, the worst thing is that the guild are sick of these stupid match ups. Why can't we be matched with similar guilds? It has gotten worse since the new system as most of the guild does not want to rank up that much. They are happy at lower levels, farming and rumbling at same time. The number of fights is dropping. Guild chat is falling. There was a time not that long ago where we would win a couple of rumbles per week. Now we have no chance. The fact is, players who don't gem the upgrades need to farm. It takes them longer. Pushing them up to get better rumble points exposes them to higher risk of attack. So they dont rank up, they hide low to protect resources, but then get negligible rumble points. They feel they do not contribute to the rumble. It is lose/lose. I get all the strategies about 2* v 3*, but we aren't all junkies who play to the nth degree. We play to have fun, be sociable, and ideally play against like minded people. When I play weekend football, I don't want to be matched against Man United each week. I would give up. That, my friends, is what is happening at the grass roots level. My guild is but one example. We are well into a rumble, and out points total is meaningless against PU. It is our lowest total in a long, long time.
Just to be clear. 10 hours into the rumble PU have 120k, we are 4th with 10k. We would average about 90k per rumble in old scheme. If you can see fairness in current rumble matching system, please point it out to me. I sadly cannot find it. And I have looked very hard.
Don't want to be disrespectful but you r not facing the Main PU, not everybody in Y gems, a few of us do but if you can only score 10k, you r not gonna win many rumbles, why you don't say anything about the other 2 guilds that r kicking you to the curve too, it's just laughable to post on a thread, simply cause you r getting beat not only by PU, but by everybody in that rumble. Let's get serious now.
This is the most important point...why does PR matter when there is already a PH matching system? If I am of low PR, I still only face PHs within three levels of my own. As I said before, this change in the system is only punitive; if MIDOKI wants to encourage players to go for higher PR, they need to offer a reward for each win at that higher rank. Try a system of reward rather than punishment. The chests offered at the end of each month don't even come close to mitigating the loss of grog at the top ranks.
@Juggernaut - There was no complaint against either high rankers or gemmers, my guildmate was simply asking for Midoki to match guilds based on PR/GR - now that this has so much effect on the scoring. We are a predominantly friendly/farming guild (with some members who enjoy rumbling) and therefore would appreciate matching similar less-competitive guilds. As soon as we see we've matched a very highly ranked & competitive guild (in our eyes all PU guilds are equal on this front ) - most of our guild don't participate to anywhere near the extent that they do when they have at least a chance of winning.
At risk of beating the proverbial dead horse. The format of rumbles will never change from a gemmers advantage. That is why Midoki chose this type of format as their first guild vs guild option, to generate revenue. It is a reality of a successful business model, which benefits all players long term. There are other planned future guild vs guild competitions, more along the lines of what many are asking for. As Midoki stated a while back, they have several planned guild vs guild competitions, so even the next chapter in the guild vs guild Midoki playbook might not be the guild wars everyone is clamoring for. The rumble format must be succeeding in the revenue department, as they seem to be sticking with it and constantly making changes to improve it while working on the other future competitions behind the scenes.
@Spongee - I totally understand what you are saying and (before the recent points change) there would have been no benefit to Midoki to base matches on GR since this had no effect on a guild's competitiveness. Now that GR does have such a significant effect it will mean that low GR guilds are virtually never going to gem since it will be pointless. However to have a 2-tier system of matching high GR together and low GR together will actually encourage the low GR guilds to gem since they will have a much greater chance of winning.
@ Peg-brain I agree. Matching does need improvement. But can't use guild rank, look at our guild. We always hold low rank for farming purposes, would not be fair match up if based on guild rank. I'm not sure what solution is, but whole-heartily agree matching needs to be altered to benefit the guilds that don't gem like crazy. It would be nice if they have two classes of guilds based on gem usage over the past 20 rumbles, and match those guilds against each other. Might be the only fair solution that does not affect rumble matching too significantly.
@juggernaught. I don't see you as disrespectful, just biased. Firstly, we have only scored 10k, because the guild has given up as soon as we saw another walkover. We are not alone in this. my comment really was that this change destroys the motivation of any mixed PH guild. Where we could farm and rumble at once was great for these types of guilds. Now this impossible. We are stuck with an either/or situation. Guild matching is clearly wrong.
@Darth Yoda the problem is twofold, the matching system is problematic for guilds like us that are not all PH9/10. That has been the case for a long time. But an additional problem has emerged with the new plunder points being attached to PR, because yes, the only way to streak on the cheap is at low PR, the only way to get mats for your LPs is to streak, and this style of gameplay is now incompatible with a high rumble score. I was embarrassed with our rumbles scores this week because I don't set minimums during the week, and needless to say, we had a heap of people who stayed down low and earnt no points. So, what to do? Clearly Midoki aren't changing either system anytime soon. I have recommended to our guild to stay at PR201+ for rumbles. That is only a 20% reduction on the points they have earnt before. Personally, I'm going to keep my PR somewhere between 100-300, letting it go down between rumbles and building back up just before rumble. I have told my guild that we are a RUMBLE guIld and we have to adapt to the new system whether we like it or not. Luckily we have other guilds in our alliance that do not rumble, so people can transfer there if they wish. But if they stay in our guild that means they must score points and that means PR management is essential. I can only suggest to you if you want to be competitive, you may need to rumble less often, and maybe pick one per week where it's 'all hands on deck' so people can make a big effort once, then drop down to farm/streak in-between.
Thats what I have found out as well about the pirate rank level to keep. Went to between 400-500 the other day to get back the normal points level but most of the islands are maxed with crazy designs that take an expensive group of troops to beat. 300-400 has good bases to attack with a decent amount of loot as well. Hopefully in a few more weeks the varity of bases will inprove so there will be a diversity of base designs at the higher ranks with more grog. Got to have the grog because i am always thirsty .
Yes, Spongee, it is a dead dead horse. I care not at all about the new scoring as long as everyone has the same handicaps. I am just so tired of "competing" when all the other team does is gem a bunch of battles to win. The only winner is Midoki and the morale goes down for the not-insane-gemming guild. We just had a rumble in Wild Piggies where the "winning" guild beat us again by gemming a bunch of battles. We had 30 people playing from 8500 points to a low of around 1000. So pretty good efforts. I would tell you the scores of the gemmers, but they left the other guild immediately after the rumble, of the 10 that showed on the roster at the end to have ANY points the high score was 720, and the low 35. So a guild with only the efforts of a few gemmers paid Midoki for the win. I keep trying to find some fun in the game again, but these rumbles is not it. I enjoy battling and looting and upgrading and all that, but it is to a point of "is that all there is?".
Yep, our guild is fed up with the crap match ups as well. We basically shut down and give up when see a big gun in our match up. If the match ups were more even our guild would certainly step up and try to win (like we do now on the rare times we get a good match). And guess what, when go in trying to win we do spend more gems battling and having fun. Right now though the matching is as stupid as it can be, here little fish have fun playing against one of the super guilds...Pfffft. I don't mind the scoring that much as we are all using the same system its the rumbling matching that's dumb.
no. rumbles are fair. it is about who has more active driven members and who has more money to spend on gems its fair...but not if you are an entire guild trying to play for free. this is a p2w game. it is what it is.
I would agree with @Sommat it is what it is and it is a LOT easier when you have a whole guild of like minded members.
