Solving the 99% can't win Rumbles against the 1% issue

There is discussion elsewhere about how the current matchmaking for Rumbles is almost certain to result in each rumble containing at least one unbeatable Guild (the 1%).
Knowing that Midoki wants everyone to enjoy the game, and that being one of the 99% is becoming less and less enjoyable I wanted to start a discussion on the best ways to fix it.
Please constructive, implementable, realistic comments only. Also the solution would need to be consistent with current gameplay and general feel.

 

To start, I'll repost my suggestion from the other thread.

A simple idea is to have two or more rumble pool options with different potential rewards. You pick which you enter. Maybe different gem costs for each. Also maybe each has guild band restrictions so the lower pools are reserved for the lower "base strength" guilds to make them competitive.

• Multiple pools
• Higher rewards for the higher pools
• Lower pools only accessible to lower guilds (based on member base strength, not rank)
• Higher gem costs for higher pools

That all seems consistent with higher costs for training higher troops or upgrading higher buildings.
It also should be relatively easy to reuse most of the existing rumble code to do this and only the entrances need to be added along with the plumbing to connect it all up.

Would likely make matching harder and matching time longer. That's hard to fix as the suggestion to "pre book" a rumble slot which seems great at first has issues:

• Pre book at a dropped rank and then climb by the start time
• Pre book with guild members leaving first and then rejoining after the booking
• Pre book and then find members leave etc
• Several more ways to manipulate a future event that's based on current measures.

I haven't been able to find solutions to those. Maybe the booking is canceled if the guild changes "too much"?

Thoughts?

 

Nice input and I like your ideas.

 

What is your definiteion of an unbeatable guild? How many points?
This will obviously fluctuate depending on the PH level of your guild but from what I read here many people have very low thresholds of what they consider to be unbeatable. Some of the things i have seen tossed out before could be done by less than 5 members of our guild.

Matchmaking is very random. At Dead reckoning we rarely get a good opponent. Our sister guilds Dead Sails and Dead Pool routinely get much harder matchups. Try chainging your search times to change your matchups

 

Since you rarely get a good matchup having a different system makes sense, because on the flip side our little guild hates getting paired with your big guild. We have tried changing our start times to some degree but I don't to have to finish a rumble off at 3am because the system is broken.

 

What guild are you in 850?

 

Outlanders

 

I just looked at your guild, number of people is a problem for you as i understand how the matching works. You Dont have enough people to beat full guilds but too many to match small guilds. Get ten more members or split into 2 smaller guilds until each of them have over 20 members then merge back together.

 

@jake, the more parameters they add to the marching equation the time to match will increase exponentially. When they instituted the mini fix it was taking over 24 hours to match sometimes

What really needs to be done is a dramatic overhaul of rewards to encourage more guilds to rumble and more people to gem

 

Thanks for the tip, I'll run it past our captain. Though, the way I see it, that should be a temp fix and not how rumbles should work.

 

Its much easier to adapt to the situation than it is to try and force the situation to change

 

Agreed, except I ain't starting a rumble in the middle of the night in hopes to get a good matchup, I'd rather play a different game.

 

@Fil's suggestion to split is the best solution for you imo. You can match +/- 25 in numbers, so if you want to avoid matching full guilds in the 48-50 range, stay under 20. The matching system is not good for mid-sized guilds. This would only be temporary. When you come back together you will be more competitive, however there will always be guilds like Dead Reckoning that are in a whole other league to us regular players. We accept that and aim for second place in those match ups, thankfully they are few and far between.

 

I'd say about 5% of our rumbles end up with some unbeatable guild (and you can usually work out their rumble schedule and avoid it after a couple bad matchups). Like Awbo, we accept that and aim for second. If its close enough, we may try to bridge the gap during the last hour, but putting up tough a 24 hour fight really takes everyone being on board.

We set a minimum score of 2k points, and most of our players score much more than that. That wins any easy rumble we come across without much effort, and 2k points is only 4 wins (3 if you fight rivals!), which should be doable for any active guild. That's actually very low compared to many other active guilds, I see a lot with 3500 or 4k points minimum (which is still easily doable), but 2k can be done with no stress casual battling.

Size is going to be the biggest issue - 50 members that can consistently hit that very low minimum score is going to win the rumble. Some stop at the minimum, many keep going which helps win the rest of the matchups. We reject anyone that doesn't average 8 or so wins per day played, so even at 2* that's going to make the minimum easily. Smaller guilds may not have that luxury, but I do suggest splitting into multiple guilds and adapting to the system for the time being. A 10 person guild where all 10 players fight 5+ times during the rumble is going to easily beat a 35 person casual guild where half the members do no attacks.

I do agree the system should be more rewarding for weaker casual guilds, since without them times will go up and it hurts everyone. But this needs to be done in a way that doesn't seriously hurt the stronger guilds in the process.

We can put up 400k in a rumble when called for it, but if we had to do that every single day, we're going to burn out and stop trying as often - which hurts all of our members as well as the overall state of the game - if the most active players stop trying, it is also going to hurt the playerbase. I get this is the situation the casual players are in, but shifting the problem from casual players to hardcore players is not the right solution. We need those 150k rest days to recharge. For a more casual guild, that 150k day against us is going to be a stressful day.

These tough rumbles need to happen some of the time, there's no doubt about that, but forcing guilds to match other like guilds will make this happen every single time. All guilds need an easy win some of the time. And when they lose, they still need to be adequately rewarded for their effort so its not as big of a morale loss (I have another suggestion topic on improving rewards regardless of how you place).

I've made a suggestion before on how to allow those weaker guilds to win a larger portion of their rumbles, without forcing tough guilds to match every single time. Its not the most elegant solution, but it does help guilds that lose every time without significantly hurting guilds that win every time:

Match up guilds, not based on points or size - match them up based on how they placed in the previous rumble. Not how much they scored, but their final place. Winners face winners, second place faces second place, last place faces last place. Guilds that haven't rumbled recently can fit into any open rumble as a wildcard.

That guild that loses every time? Now after their loss, all their other guilds they match are also guilds that lost, which should be much easier. First place? Now you're facing first place guilds - which may be guilds that lost two matches ago, and then won the easy match against other losing guilds, giving you an easy rumble some of the time. But it also may be guilds that win most of the time.

Tough rumble? Now you face guilds that came in second or third next time, which should be an easier rumble.

This makes top end guilds face each other more often, without forcing it to happen every time, and gives them options to have easy days after a tough fight as well - it hurts top guilds a little bit, although it may help with matchup times to make up for that, but its not as bad as forcing dead sails to fight pu main to fight mmtx every single battle. This also makes more casual guilds have at least half of their rumbles be significantly easier. Half your fights being easy is a huge boost to them, with much less cost to harder guilds.

Yes there are still ways to exploit that system, but I think it helps out the bottom guilds quite a bit without punishing the top guilds too much. It would also be extremely easy to implement (remember that any option that happens has to be coded and tested extensively, which can take months and have bugs still). Its not perfect, but its a simple solution, it seems logical and clear, and it helps balance the wins/losses without permanently punishing guilds for scoring highly.

 

Don't get hung-up on my use of the word unbeatable. What I'm expressing is that there are lots of comments from people in guilds who won't rumble because they have no chance of a top three finish. They don't have high participation and they don't want to spend money to enjoy a rumble.
I'm interested in ways that every guild can have a better matched rumble.
I don't believe that having three rumble choices with three different sets of rewards where the middle and low choices were restricted to only middle and lower strength guilds entering them would create an exponential matching issue. In some ways it would reduce the matching parameters as one definition of strength would be applied before any algorithm was applied.
The solution to creating fair rumbles for guilds who do not wish to gem much if at all, is certainly not to increase rewards so they would gem as that violates their premise.
An assumption that people would be more willing to gem if the rewards were higher is mistaken. The whole issue for a high percentage of players is that they don't want to gem, but they do want to play.
Different level "rumble doors" with different rewards seems like it would allow more people to compete, for those who want higher rewards to enter the highest level and those who don't want to pour money into a rumble but want to enjoy the challenge with correspondingly lower rewards to enter the lowest level where they could be sure not to encounter the top rumble guilds.

 

As we all know rumbling quickly turns into 2 things... which guild has the higher level of commitment and which guild is willing to use as many gems as needed. I don't think Midoki is going to set up a bracket for people to rumble but basically not gem at all. If they did would you expect them to reward with any extra BP or gems? Or is just the idea of being in a competition? Would you pay the gem entry fee if the first place prize was 100,000 gold and grog?

 

And that's my point. 1% of the guilds have members with the attitude to put in that commitment and who are willing to spend, spend, spend. That leaves the rest with little to nothing to gain from entering a rumble, so they aren't anymore.

Do the rewards in the current rumbles actually compensate for the gems bought, or provide anything compared to the gold and grog earned during the rumble? In my experience it's a definitive no on both accounts.

Do I expect Modoki to be smart enough to keep the game interesting for the majority of players and not just the vocal minority, so they don't turn off that majority, have them quit the game, and have their player base significantly eroded? Absolutely. It's good business. You may provide them with a lot of their money, but they'll take those funds and use some to pay for things that keep the game interesting for everyone.

Let's be honest. As I said above, people don't rumble for the rewards because they aren't anywhere near high enough to match what happens in the rumble. The argument that they drive the desire to win simply doesn't hold water.

I'd asked that this thread be used to produce suggestions to make rumbles more interesting for all. So far I've mostly received criticism from members of the 1% guilds and no suggestions. You need to get out of the mindset of the 1%'ers, or not be one, to do that it seems.

 

Not sure what unbeatable means. My first rumble, my guild had 5 members with no active perks. We comped against guilds with 30 to 50 members. We won. I suppose it all comes down to effort.

 

I do believe that the rewards could be much bigger. I also believe every guild should receive some type of reward.

 

keeping your crew small does help. You have to have active players and new players that stay active. I have noticed that the past couple of months there has been a slight up tick in new players which is good. Word of advice @Keelhauler Jake you can't win against the gemmer guilds unless you are prepared to spend some cash.