Tournament Progression Update | Navigating the New Curve
We’ve been closely analyzing system performance and player progression after the changes made to Tournaments. Your feedback has highlighted matchmaking as a key issue and a significant source of frustration for many of you.
In our upcoming update, we'll introduce foundational adjustments to the Tournament system, specifically to how you progress through the lower Ranks. We’ll also be balancing the rewards available. To explain what is changing, why it’s happening, and how we’re hoping to address your feedback, we have prepared a deep dive.
Check out the breakdown below, and please continue sharing your thoughts with us.
The Pacing Experiment Explained
Before we talk about the future, we want to take a step back and look at where we started. When we launched the reworked Tournament system, our goal was to address some major systemic issues with the old format.
In the past, veteran players could leverage the matchmaking system by adjusting their Squad Power (SP) to get easy, unfair wins against beginners. Additionally, the old 20-player brackets heavily rewarded extended playtime, meaning someone could easily pull ahead in the standings simply by being able to play more often or being in a favorable time zone.
By introducing the 8-Battle limit and the new Tournament Ranking Points (TRP) system, we addressed those core pain points. However, as with any system overhaul, new challenges emerged. While Season 1 succeeded in shifting the focus to match quality, it also revealed that our current progression pacing and reward balance were off.
While we saw a lot of appreciation for the inaugural season of the new system, your feedback has helped us see that the new matchmaking algorithm needs more work. Here is what we found, and how we are fixing it.
The Matchmaking Dilemma
Currently, early-Rank Battles are too forgiving. While winning easily feels great initially, it creates a massive "slingshot" effect. Players are earning immense amounts of TRP and rocketing straight into the Master or Grandmaster Ranks before their Hangars are truly ready.
The result is exactly what many of you have reported: you arrive in the higher Ranks with an underdeveloped Hangar (e.g., 6k SP) and suddenly hit a wall. You are matched against 20k SP veterans who have the same TRP as you, resulting in Battles that feel impossible.
The Fix Part 1: Harder Bots
To fix the "slingshot" effect, we are making a direct gameplay adjustment:
Bot Difficulty Increase: The AI logic and overall difficulty of bots encountered in Tournament Battles will be enhanced across all levels.
Smarter bots will act as a genuine test, requiring you to think critically, manage cooldowns, and improve your tactical approach. This will stop the inflated win rates, ensuring you progress at a natural pace based on your skills and aren't boosted into Ranks before you’re ready for the challenge.
The Fix Part 2: Rebalancing Rewards for the Long Term
Alongside the matchmaking adjustments, we also need to address Tournament rewards.
Let’s be completely blunt: when we launched the new Tournament system, we made a miscalculation regarding the reward payouts. Season 1 saw a massive increase in A-Coin income compared to the old tournaments.
While we love rewarding our players, keeping rewards at our inaugural peak isn't sustainable for the long-term health and balance of Mech Arena. To correct this, we’re making an adjustment:
A-Coin Rebalancing: A-Coin reward payouts are being reduced across all Ranks. Rewards will continue to scale up significantly once you reach Grandmaster.
Victory-Based Rewards: A-Coins are now only being awarded for Battle victories. However, all players will continue to earn Credits and Fortune Keys regardless of the outcome, ensuring every Battle contributes to your progress.
❗Please note: to ensure fairness across all modes, A-Coin rewards in Free-For-All will be awarded to the Top 5 players. While only the Top 3 are traditionally considered winners, this adjustment ensures reward consistency with team-based modes.
We know that seeing reductions isn't fun, but we want to highlight a crucial point: Evenwiththese changes, you will still earn several times more A-Coins than the old Tournament system. So the new system remains more rewarding than the old one; we are simply bringing it down from an inaugural spike to a healthy baseline.
What this Means
We want to be completely upfront about what these two changes mean for you. Early progression will slow down, and your early rank A-Coin earnings will be lower than they were in Season 1 (though, again, still much higher than the old system).
These are two distinct but necessary changes: the smarter bots will improve the matchmaking experience and stop the frustrating Grandmaster "wall," while the A-Coin rebalance corrects a miscalculation to ensure the game economy remains balanced.
Growing Pains & Next Steps
This was the very first season of the Tournament update, and a brand-new system does not become perfect overnight; it needs a few more seasons to gather data, let the Ranks settle, and sort everyone into their ideal SP ranges.
We are treating these adjustments as the next step in tuning the system, not the final destination. We are committed to continuous improvements. We will actively monitor player progression, the algorithm's performance, and the economy in the coming seasons to ensure they function properly.
We'll have a dedicated feedback channel in our Official Discord once the update goes live. Let us know how the pacing feels, how the bots are behaving, and where the challenges are.
Thank you for your passion, your honesty, and for helping us shape the future of the Arena.
It's literally suks. Playrium literally suks on mech arena. I played 8 matches in tournament and I won only 2 match. Like I am in expert 1 at 4900 TRP and my opponent team has 8000-9000 SP players (mine is 7000) they are literally over power. Plarium if you don't want 7000 SP players in expert 1 and master 3 then show a pop-up that your SP is low for the bracket. This is the worst update literally worst than mods update. And i don't want to talk about the mods update. It's just suks for free to play players.
So the matchmaking algorithym decided it was best to put the top 4 hangars on one team and the bottom 4 on the other. Seems a little unfair. Just Tuer's hangar was about equal to the total power of our team. We lost 100-4 btw in about 45 seconds. Wasn't a very fun experience. Perhaps something could be done about it?
So the matchmaking algorithym decided it was best to put the top 4 hangars on one team and the bottom 4 on the other. Seems a little unfair. Just Tuer's hangar was about equal to the total power of our team. We lost 100-4 btw in about 45 seconds. Wasn't a very fun experience. Perhaps something could be done about it?
i
The opposite team was probably playing a team match together, while your team were all random players 👍
idk how difficult life must be with such thinking.. i was here 3+ months and I dont have issues with my hangar.. there is always tons of stuff available, every 3 days a new chest to win something.. if I was to spend real money it would be for fun.. to try new mech or skin or who knows what.. but not because i am "pushed to improve" something.. any stupid 5 mechs can do the job, shotguns and longarms can do the job... I don't know why you need legendary mechs and weapons to feel like this is gamechanger.. try to complete missions on your mechs idk.. or if things are so terrible just play farm simulators..
i
i
i
i
i
Idk maybe people never seen these missions and a-coins rewards? Maybe never used promo codes? Well at least you figured out how to come here and complain!
On saying that, I need you all who moan here, otherwise I will be killing bots and not real people. And game will not be fun.
And terminator probably is the only one who does not sp drop, so he is the only one with 20k hangar, the others sp drop so he kills them all easily and gets 1000 acoins :) Well idk, good if so, i could never get such rewards even theoretically, by doing math in my head.. you start with novice and maximum reward is low, you get +1 it increases, only on grandmaster it was 1000 something and you would need to SP drop to get it, otherwise you would never be able to kill so many people that are equal to you, unless it's calculated by damage, im not sure.. but clearly Im not worst player, I would probably get 5000 points max by playing more than 10 games which is at least 1 hour... and then I see people with 70k points in old tournament in just few hours. There is no way, other than sp drop or magic to get those numbers to win those 1000 acoins. Point.
In the old Tournament ffs was based on damage, so sp droppers could only score about 1000 points with 40 kills, were as higher hanger matches you can score about 3000 points off just 20 kills, I'm a good player so ffa was easy for me to get 20 to 25 kills and score 3k or over and always get top and it was mostly bots depending on what time I played, 5 vs 5 was a little harder though, I would have to just play more on the last 2 days so I'd save all my daily golden crates with 3 tickets in them and I'd always have about 50 saved in my inbox to use some in the 5 vs 5 tournament weeks, but ffa was easy to get top, plus now and then I'd buy 20 tickets for 100 acoins,
And the rewards were day one 50 acoins, day two 100, day three 200, day four 400 and day five and six were grandmaster so 1400 both days but sometimes I would come second and earn a little less, so anyway yeah, the old Tournament you could earn over 3k acoins a week if you played a lot
What is this plarium? is it a fair match? I know you would think that like 3000 SP up is not so hard and I agree with that but there is a catch. As always my teammates are like completing the tutorial and opponent is like 20 years old pro playes. and also everyone in my team has 6000-6500 SP and opponent as you in the pic 9000-10000. So, I tell you everything. So what do you think was it match or not?
And 1 tip for you if the players intentionally stay at lower rank to win because for matchmaking. then show a pop-up to the players. (e.g., your SP is low for the bracket). it will help us to how much we have to push. i have some skills that's why i am in expert 1 bracket. but tournament is now garbage. so quitting the game is better untill its become decent againg. i don't have any hopes the game become good but this game caan't be good at all.
i
i
i
i
i
i
i
i
i
i
i
i
i
i
