Love this idea!

The idea makes sense, or some variation of it at least, for the other areas you mentioned.  But not for live arena seasons. We don't solutions for problems that don't exist.  Live is the only one of the 3 arenas not broken lol.  The bots give you a break even at worst scenario every 4 keys, how many training wheels do you want to put on that bike. 

On a scale of 1 (immediately address) to 10 (not a problem) I would say:

1. Siege matchmaking/tanking 

2. CVC matchmaking /tanking

5. Hydra (I just don't care about it much currently...)

10. Chimera Clash (these all seem really competitive and difficult to tank)

999. Live arena 

I think a lot of people would disagree with the assessment that LA Matchmaking doesn't have a matchmaking problem, especially in Gold. Especially Especially in Gold IV.

The reason I know that is looking at the Top 100 the overwhelming majority of players have a win rate of 75% or higher. Also with Seasonal, the matchmaking is really bad in the first week and right now that is unacceptable since its not the 1st season, which means the 1st season results did not factor in to the new season in any meaningful way. 

With bots, the minimum Win Rate you can have is 25%. This is math, there's no emotions here. So if the high end folk, and this even gets in to the top 200+ players, are all above 60% then that means a ton of people with win rates of below 40% are getting matched with them frequently. 

Now I get it, people who have been playing for 4+ years or who are spending a ton of money each month are going to have a significant advantage over others. In fact, for the spenders, it's a big part of why they spend. The satisfaction of beating other players. That doesn't change the fact that the matchmaking isn't balanced well. Anyone with a average win rate of below 50% shouldn't be getting matched against anyone with a average win rate above 70% but it DOES happen frequently. 

IF this was truly about competitive matchmaking that was a challenge for all players, it would be extremely EXTREMELY rare to get a win rate above 65% which is a 2 to 1 ratio essentially of wins to losses. Thats not whats going on, because A. if that was the case, big spenders wouldn't be getting as many easy wins and B. the wait times for matchup would be much longer for the better accounts, regardless of why they're better.

That's not even getting into the RNG of it, especially with rank 6 Polymorph and Relics. 

Here, I'll simplify because that's a lot I wrote: HYPOTHETICALLY, if all players in the Top 100 were ONLY matched against other players in the Top 100, would the majority of them still have a Win Rate above 70%? The answer is NO because that's mathmatically impossible.

Also just wanted to add, since there's that week or so of "downtime" between seasons, that should be the Playoffs where the people in the top 10-20 get matched with each other and the highest ratio wins 1st, 2nd and 3rd place or what have you. Unfortunately it can't be done like actual playoffs because of when certain players are online and whatnot... not to mention people in the top 10 are usually not "solo" accounts, they're managed by multiple throughout the day, so they'd be available more often to do matchmaking.

The matchmaking is based on the seasonal ranking, nothing else matters.   I think that is how it should be, prior season should not matter.  

You are essentially asking for their to be sub tiers within gold, i don't think it's viable as "live" requires N to be sufficiently high at all active arena windows to facilitate expedited matching.  The queue time would be unbearable. 

Secondly, if they split gold and had tiers like Siege then only the top tier would have the current reward structure.  The lower tiers would only get rare and epic materials... then people would bitch about that instead 🙄 😆 

The setup is "fair" imo, as everyone can get the best rewards.  The time/gem requirement scales based on your win %.

These aren't participation trophies (login rewards).  

And no, f2p shouldn't have separate brackets with equal rewards.... lmao 

Except we frequently see cases where someone with a seasonal score of 150 is matched against someone with a seasonal score of 1500, or someone with a seasonal score of 300 is matched against someone with a seasonal score of 3000.

The matchmaking *might* be fine if N participation were high enough, except is frequently isn't.

They introduced live arena after hyping it up for months. some liked it, most didn't. Despite the immense value of area upgrades, Quintus, and soon after Horsey, participation was still low.

So they made participation mandatory to complete daily quests, and an, imo, shocking number of players would rather forgo 180 energy every day than to participate in Live arena.

So then they added bots. And they STILL have problems finding sufficient matches fast enough at reasonably comparable levels, hence why we see wildly unbalanced pairings.

You may think it's fine, Trips, but the vast majority of the playerbase seems to disagree with you. There are about 120 members of my cluster active on discord. I realize that's not enough for a statistically significant sample size, yet I think it's pretty telling that the number out of those 120 who enjoy live arena is *ZERO*. Not one person *likes* it.

Idea I just had: Let's try an experiment where there's live arena as we have it now, and also a QB live arena where it just picks the champs for both players, and runs them on auto, and the whole thing takes 3 seconds and just tells you the results. Same tokens, same rewards, same scores, but you can do all 10 battles in under a minute.

I'd wager heavily it'd be a lot more popular with *most* players.

I've seen 0 evidence of "frequent" mismatch problems... frequent one off postings.... because they happen to everyone and are necessary to keep the queue times lower (high priority imo)

I've asked for over a year for anyone to post a screenshot of 10 live arena battles to demonstrate ANY FREQUENCY of mismatch problems in or out of seasons.  Guess how many takers on that?  ZERO  😆 

99% of casual gamers aren't going to like pvp, so I'm not surprised by the attitude towards live arena.  

i

Guess what my seasonal score is around....

Now if you actually want to dispute that 90%+ of matches are not "fair" based on seasonal score l would love to see it.

i

other account

no one said there'd be tiers for F2P and non-F2P. I think you're misunderstanding. Saying the previous Season shouldn't matter makes zero sense, if you don't agree then I can't help you.

Also your matchmaking kinda proves the point on both accounts. You've got a 70 and 80% win rate on both. I didn't ask for sub-tiers, I asked for balanced matchmaking which would bring the win rates closer to 50-60%. I'm not sure what is going on here with your perspective, the only thing I can tell you is you're part of the minority in thinking the system is fair/balanced.  One thing is clear, separating emotion from it, is that the current system seems to benefit your accounts more than others so it makes sense you wouldn't want it to change. If someone comes along with a sub 50% win rate and says the matchmaking is fine, they'd have more validity.

lastly, your replies on this are getting a bit condescending, talking about participation trophies and laughing at what people have written (and eyerolling). Some of us prefer better/stronger competition at all levels which makes the victories more satisfying. 

PS: Just out of curiosity, what rate constitutes "Frequent" for you? Because right now I'd say it's 10% minimum and probably closer to 15% which is actually quite high. Do you think this mismatching is happening like less than 5% of the time?

1. I don't think previous seasons should be factored in at all. We all start at 0 for a reason. 

2. I'm barely north of 60% on the season.  I wasn't showing my winning (7 or 8 is my good day) but that 19 of 20 battles are clearly in tight proximity to the seasonal rating.   And yes, that is typical.  So I would say 95% qualifies as the mismatching be infrequent. 

I'm curious as to how anything other than seasonal ratings should be factored into the matchmaking? 

The bots are designed to prevent point degradation, not necessarily to artificially force a 50% win rate.  

The only mention of bots was that they set a minimum win rate at 25%. Previous season should influence your starting matchmaking, not full reset. This isn't like sports, no one is losing champions/souls in between seasons. Seasonal Rating isn't purely Win/Loss % which is why it's a bad idea to be a single indicator. Again, what we're saying and what you're responding with isn't lining up.

It's clear you won't agree with this and that's fine, but there's a reason this keeps being brought up and it's not as simple as "Person had one bad matchup and won't provide screenshots so they're invalid". If anyone else wants to chime in, it would be helpful, but the 3 of us have clearly drawn our lines in the sand and aren't understanding each other.

I think we are understanding each other perfectly tbh 😆 

Not crossing sandy lines though!

Don't make me apologize for my condescending attitude, as I've said before I appreciate different perspectives.

My main point (which i don't make very well), is that i believe it's 100% working as both designed and intended.  Actually a rare plarium accomplishment. 

So are you suggesting the top 100 start at 500 points, 100-999 at 400, 1000 - 10k at 300 pts to start the season? Just to "force" the natural spread to day 1 from day 10 or whenever? I would be on board with that, even if I started at 0.

5-5 on both (thanks to bot victories 😆)

19/20 non outlier ratings, though I won that by forfeit (lucky bad connection on his end my guess)

Well, it's at least 1, not zero, because *I've* done that before.

A year or so ago, when I pointed out I got matched against the same guy 4 times in 1 day.

I'll grant you that seasonal score will get more even matchups as the season progresses, but thats exactly why it shouldn't start at 0. I'm saying it shouldn't be the *only* criteria, there should be a hierarchy of factors.

The problem with that is that it would make matchmaking take too long, and the reason for that is there isn't enough participation. And the reason there isn't enough participation is that most players don't like live. And the reason for that is bad matchmaking.

You've always said it balances out towards 50%. And long term, it does. I'm not arguing that point.

My point is that A) Doing 5 fights where you're absurdly more powerful than your opponent and then 5 fights where you just have zero chance at all and get brutally stomped is not good matchmaking and most of us wouldn't consider it fun.

And B) Shouldn't that just reinforce my original suggestion? If it's intended to balance out towards 50/50 win-loss, then why not have a filter on the matchmaking where someone with a 60%+ win rate only matches other players with a 60%+ win rate, and someone with a sub-40% rate only matches others with the same. 

Alternative idea: What if there were a season VIP league with *really* good rewards, available only to the top 200. And they only fight each other.

Like for instance, first place gets a guaranteed mythic champ of their choice (excluding dupe karnage or embrys) and 2-10 get a guaranteed lego of their choice, and 11-100 get primal and sacred shards

Trips, lemme point out that you have Taras and Marichka. You have Odin

You have 6* blessings for Monkey, Horsey and Karnage.

I just got my 3rd 6* lego blessing ever this week, and the first 2 were both for Bambus, who I don't even have.

I've pulled 1 mythic (not counting Mikage or Karnage) since they were introduced. I asked around earlier, no one in my 5-clan cluster has ever pulled more than 2. I am routinely matched against players with four 6* blessed empowered mythics.

You have way better champs than I do, You have WAY WAY better gear, and I'm not ashamed to admit you're almost certainly a better player than I am.

If we get matched, and we have before, it's no contest: you'll stomp me.

I'm not saying you shouldn't be able to beat me, I'm saying that with that much disparity in accounts we shouldn't be getting matched at all in the first place; we shouldn't even be considered in the same league.

You said above that 99% of casual players aren't gonna enjoy pvp. Maybe that should be taken as a sign that the pvp matchmaking process is poorly designed. Maybe that should be taken as a sign that you shouldn't try to force participation by just ADDING it to the requirements to complete daily quests.

I've said it before in previous threads: If the vastly overwhelming majority of your player base don't like something you designed, then it was a bad design. The simplest, and WORST way to justify the time and budget spent designing something poorly received is to just force participation instead of making improvements.

Curious if 9 others were 400ish?

Good points in your longer message, will respond 1 at a time :)  I think we all (myself included) cross topics so to speak... diminishing any arguments we have about the actual issue at hand 😀