As a pocket change player I tend to agree with ruffles. Sometimes you're the nail and sometimes the hammer. As a free to play player you'll be the nail more often. 

So, just making sure I understand you, you're alright with the game deciding you get to be the hammer or nail, rather than you own talent and ability, or how much you've spent?

Hello! Makes sense. Btw, this video by Ruffles is amazing and it was checked out by our team.

Talking about the Matchmaking system, it considers various aspects while paring. It can't be explained in a nutshell, as the process is comprehensive. We are doing our best to improve it and the work is in progress. The same comes about the AI - our team is working on improvements for the AI to make them more advanced in imitating real players in that we want to provide fair battle conditions. 

what you explain is one of the 3 reasons that make me abandon this game.. given that the promises of C.D. they don't come true, in fact the game gets worse. this is a game where you waste time.. and in these last 2 months there have been more games lost, .... which didn't happen before, so I'm leaving. I don't want to waste time with garbage made just to rob you of money.. for nothing.. and fight against an A.I. HACKER no thanks. my time deserves better.... 2 games and I'm already out, bay bay rubbish... you're getting worse and you don't understand it, actually you know it but now after the nerf of EM where the revolt broke out, you're getting worse every day after day. there is no more remedy.

explain to me the reason for the pairings and the wickedness of your A.I. if you want to call it that. it only exists here in mech arena... a game 70% managed by a stupid A.I. and from incomprehensible combinations it cannot be found in any other game. ONLY HERE. but you know well that it is wanted by you. and nothing will make you change. You know well that players spend money before they realize the uselessness of this game. and when they realize they have already spent hundreds if not thousands of euros... no, it's not a game to have fun... there's no return in what you spend and in the time wasted...

Being real with you CD, the game is three plus years old with over 70 million accounts made (that we can see in game). In this three plus years, NO real improvements have been made to either the matching or AI, and in fact, the AI has only gotten worse. To the degree that, we can't even tell if player matching works. Even if we do get matched well, despite power and skill differences, it's then completely negated when we get placed with an AI team that can't seem to make it out of the spwn zone and a player is having to one versus five the balanced opponent and their four terminator AI that auto-target only the player, hit us behind cover, appear on control points we're standing on, and are playing better than humans can. This is the system deciding the winner, even though RuFFles can't say that, that's what's happening here. There's no need for the AI at this point, and not in the extreme extent that it is used in the game (3-4 AI per team with 70 million+ actual accounts), unless the game just can't keep players at all. 

Might be because no one wants to PvP with 80% AI teams. Just a wild thought.

yes in these three years you have done a lot of work, but on the contrary, you have only made everything worse, even now I have played 2 games and I left vomiting. and if you go to the forum 99% only complaints, I think that mech arena has become the most unbalanced game, full of laemtele, and least fun on the whole web... fun is guaranteed only for the smart ones and the BTOs., and not tell me that you are working on it because they are just lies... I wasted 1 year of my precious time in this useless game..., to come to the conclusion that it is just a scam,, and don't say no. the worst kind of arena mech game.

Never in my time playing MA did I see improvement to AI. There would always be bouts of matches lost to team sabotaging AI that would not capture control points that were 2m away and get themselves killed. The winning team, whichever side you were on, would have competent bots with impeccable accuracy while the losing team's bots did squat but run around and shoot nothing. I have trouble believing it's coincidence. I don't know how much it's change. But in 3 months I don't expect any change has happened, it didn't in 3 years.

Thank you for your feedback. Just to clarify, it isn't that the work your team has done hasn't been noticed. Perhaps that's what is feeding the issue:

• In the last three years, we've seen you make some aesthetic changes (good and bad).
• In the last three years, we've seen you add a couple new modes, and a few new maps (good).
• In the last three years, we've seen minor tweaks to the AI and matching system (very bad).
• In the last three years, we've seen you introduce a bunch of equipment for the company to profit (bad for players, good for company).

When you break it down, you can clearly see that your team has been neglecting an area severely, and hyper focused on another. I understand Plarium is a business and is, by nature, going to focus on making money. However, adding new stuff to a broken system while ignoring the system is literally ruining your game. Now, it's easy to understand why there have been no actual fixes applied to the AI; for your team, it is working within perimeters to maximize profits.

Ultimately, there is literally no reason the AI should be deciding the match outcomes except to try to "strong arm" players into spending more. The only reason you should really have AI in a PvP environment is if there's not enough players for the matching system to work. If after three years and 70m accounts, you can't make matching work (as it is a crucial backbone component to any PvP game), it's because something is seriously wrong. In my opinion, your team is overthinking it - likely because your players aren't a consideration, just their money is.

If the match making system for humans is working, and it's matching us properly based on the considerations expressed to better adjust for skill, then you DO NOT need to rebalance the AI again. Give both teams balance AI, meaning dumb or smart bots both sides. If the players are balanced, then you don't need to skew that balance with adjusted bots. It's been three years, it should be obvious even to a greedy, unethical company, this stepup isn't working.

Also, I'd like to add I disagree with RuFFles that players can't tell when their AI is doing better than the opponents. When there's only one opponent mech left (the player) after a minute or so of game play, knowing that poor player is having to try to one versus five our full team of balanced player and Terminator AI bots, we know. Or worse, when it's two plus minutes of hunting out that last player because they went and hide because honestly, they have no other option in those odds.

It makes for a spectacularly lackluster gaming experience. On both sides of the snafu.

Hello! Sure, I understand why you came up with such thoughts. But sharing my own experience recently, I was shocked by bots performance on FFA. Really, I was sure that I was playing with a real player-controlling Cheetah until I saw its nickname. The tactics were so sophisticated, but still not overpowered (I mean the bot did all the moves that a real player could make). They made an ambush for me, several times actually. It's not that common for the fast-paced FFA mode tbh

Hello! Thanks for such a comprehensive response. You are right, but only partly. See, the game core base is complicated. It's way too complicated, as it can seem to be. Every aspect depends on another, but at the same time, it affects it as well. That's why the Matchmaking system and the AI can't be quickly fixed, and that's why the mentioned minor tweaks are actually harder to develop than any other thing.

But still, the work goes on. We develop, test, and experiment with various stuff, so after some time (maybe pretty long, though, but I don't think so), there will be more noticeable improvements regarding these issues. Our team has a lot of plans to make the game advanced, so it's only the beginning 😉

The bots are predetermined. 

Code is predetermined. It's almost impossible to add actual randomness to code. 

The bots won't have a bias. They act how they act based on input data, which is generally the position of beacons and the player. 

If the bots make you lose, well, actually, you allowed them to make you lose.

Me and my main account are both, f2p, so I'd have no reason to be carried by bots, but it still happens on occasion.

your words don't make sense for more than a month now I lose all the games, and even if I'm the best, the opposing team always wins, where the only gamer there has killed fewer than his bots... this game it does not make sense . your words don't make sense.. you changed the settings, making it worse,, I certainly don't pay for this game. extremely frustrating, and unplayable, not to mention matching with opponents 3 times stronger. if this is your vision of fun, well then dear guys, you need a visit.

See I don't get what their performance in FFA mode has to do with what seems to be a fixed match in team modes with no known direct evidence but plenty of circumstantial evidence

I think what you're overlooking is this "beginning" is coming after three years of this over complex system killing player interest. If the endless messages in this very forum, as well as, the discord and in-game of players voicing their discontent with this system should tell you anything, it's that your team isn't nailing it. Haha.

I'm not trying to be rude, CD, but it seems if Plarium actually cared about their players, this MAJOR game issue would have been addressed with more urgency. Couple this with diminishing rewards from events (some are downright pitiful, if I'm being honest - slaps to the faces of all players), we don't see the behavior of a game trying to keep players, like at all.

I mean, unless they're willing to spend, and a lot, you know. Haha. Perhaps p2w doesn't care if they're beating players or bots, as long as they're winning. 90% ai matches despite over 70m accounts made doesn't strike them as odd.

Guys, guys, guys....coversation with community manager is pointless...coz it is AI driven.

Only what you can get is an pointless answers.

I definitely agree with Ai issue and if you want to minimize your loss, get five real teammates in CPC/5v5 or two in 2v2.

Or don't play it at all. 

As if! Haha. But thanks for the vote of confidence.

Humanity test, no offense 😁

1. We already addressed, really. Something is seriously wrong if after 70m accounts made there is still never enough active accounts online for matching to work without AI. No matter what time I am on, there never seems to be enough players to match me with more than one opponent, two if I am lucky. This game is subject to the same conditions as every other games in terms of regions and timezones, but really, people game just about anytime anywhere. Those games have thrived without AI. Sure, there will be some slow times, but not to the extent we experience in Mech Arena - and that's a crying shame. 

2. "Makes sense, but..." But your team doesn't care, in short. After a long enough winstreak, my 2.8k hangar has been placed against 9k hangars...that seem enormous and happening in the current system. The logic here is simple: if you have to keep AI in the game because there isn't enough players, but you can't keep players because of the AI, it seems like the solution is easy. Yes, it'll be bumpy at first as there will be the few players that seem to play now only, but word will get out that AI was removed, gamers will return to see this, population booms. 

3. I am unsure how you can even remotely say it is "impossible" when it hasn't even been tried. Not once in my time here has this theory been tested in the actual game, the AI has always been here. What is your teams magical number of players to get at least minimal bot use, like one per a team on average?