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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: Even with these 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. 

i


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633
Comments
79
May 5, 2026, 13:232 days
May 5, 2026, 13:462 days
04/11/26
1

good thank you a lot

May 5, 2026, 13:522 days
09/17/25
1

Thanks for doing some tweaks. I hate when I get desatroyed from people way out of my league.

May 5, 2026, 14:012 days
11/14/25
1

I'm already having a headache playing this game, unfair match making, been forced to play with dump players, etc. And a lot of bugs. And now you decided to make this game way wrost. If I'm not having any A-coins because of your dump stupid rules, i will crash out. You gaslight on most of the things and act like "everything we do is f2p and perfect". Do what actually people want and not what you want, because we are the ones playing.

May 5, 2026, 14:022 days
07/06/24
1

Making the already hard bots even harder doesn't make sense.

Secondly, decreasing the rewards is one thing but not giving the loser any A-coins doesn't make any sense to me.

Finally, if we are talking about match making here then you should fix it for the cpc first, cuz it SUCKS.

May 5, 2026, 14:042 days
08/25/25
1

plarium 101:

sell revokers for $$, make sure users set their entire hangar based on revokers, nerf them twice because they are "too strong", introduce new weapons, much stronger than the old nerfed revokers, so Plarium makes even more money.

introduce new way to get a coins, reduce the amount a week after so they can make more money.

you guys need to remember the only reason you are making any money is your spending user base, if you keep doing those sheningans we will just leave. 

May 5, 2026, 14:072 days
06/04/24
1

Tbh, awful 

Especially considering that winning rewards are often locked behind your team playing worse than bots and I don't get why you need to reduce rewards when you are claiming that you fixed the mmr to meet equal players.

So, that is not fair at all and especially to casual players who are forced into losing most matches or looking for a team instead of having joyful game or maybe as alternative, you could reward top 4 players of the match (even if your team lost but you are top #1 ranked)

And one more thing, no need to compare every time to the old system because it was awful and the fact that reduced reward system is better than that isn't really an achievement, better look towards something simply better without reminding of how badly you messed up the original stuff.


May 5, 2026, 14:102 days
May 5, 2026, 19:12(edited)
11/19/25
1

What a load of GARBAGE! Bots are already OP and carrying players who have no right to win matches. 0 ACoins for losses, FIX MATCHMAKING BEFORE YOU RIP US OFF.


Edited

May 5, 2026, 14:102 days
May 5, 2026, 14:10(edited)
03/21/22
1

Acoins awarded only for wins is a mistake. Once players reach the highest rank allowed by their hangars, they will lose most of the times, especially with "smarter" (😂) bots, basically stopping their progression. That will quickly make them lose interest in the activity. Back to square 1.

May 5, 2026, 14:112 days
04/14/26
1

esperando muito por que ganhar creditos e moedas A, está muito complicado...

May 5, 2026, 14:122 days
12/24/23
13

1. You didn't make the one change everyone wanted, Increase the game limit to at least 10 (maybe 12).

2. Not giving at least some A-Coins to losers sucks. They should get some, because it will suck to lose A-Coins because you are put on bad team. Same complaint people gave about other team matches.

3. So the harder bots will make lower users hit wal sooner and limit how many A-Coins they can get even more.


May 5, 2026, 14:222 days
03/19/26
1

PLEASE BRING BACK THE SAME TOURNAMENT!! MAKE IT PERMANENT BROCHACHOS!!! 🙏😭🥀💔

May 5, 2026, 14:272 days
08/26/23
3

I really think that the overall strength of the bots is not the problem but rather the difference in strength of particular bots. Some of them are incredibly weak and some of them are extremely strong and it has a huge impact on the outcome of the match. I'd really like to see it be more of a uniform difficulty across the board.

In addition, I think making the A-coins only go to the winner is not fair. Control Point and 5 v 5 are very dependent on your teammates. Even if you dominate the match it's basically a coin flip if you win or lose. I think a better fix is to award a-coins to the top 3 finishers on both the winning and losing side to represent how valuable to your team you were and reward you accordingly.

May 5, 2026, 14:372 days
04/18/26
1

Thanks for the update, but I guess you're not aware of hanger showdown bugs on Iphone sometimes it won't load even if I repeat it many times. I've deleted the app and installed it again it onl load 2 times and stopped just like before 

May 5, 2026, 14:382 days
04/26/26
1

I think the community should do equality of players it's unfair that some codes are only for new player and some for old the should active all codes for all players

May 5, 2026, 14:402 days
03/25/26
2

@Velocity 

I have my criticisms of tournaments.

The Grandmaster rank should have meaning. As a veteran player, I find the proposed logic for rank progression fundamentally flawed.

Rank should reflect power and rating. I believe matchmaking against players should be based primarily on rank. It's fair that a player with 5,000 SP should face players with 20,000 SP if they share the same rank. How did you get to the maximum rank with 4,000 SP? How did you end up at Grandmaster 1? If you're Grandmaster 1, it's fair to be matched with other Grandmaster 1s or other players within a +/- 2 rank margin, regardless of the hangar's power. Otherwise, what's the point of the "Grandmaster" title if it includes both 2,000 SP and 20,000 SP players who never meet? It seems like a mockery of the progress veterans have made. Higher ranks should be reserved for those with the hangars and experience to conquer them, not a separate "skill-based" lane for players of different levels.

Your solution is to increase bot intelligence to test skill, but you don't address the problem of Hangar inadequacy. If a player with 2,000 SP learns the AI ​​patterns and plays efficiently, they'll still reach Grandmaster rank and expect to face bots optimized for their Hangar—spoiler: it's weak.

By prioritizing intelligence over raw power requirements, you're essentially allowing low-SP players to occupy the same elite ranks as veterans without ever facing the same difficulty level. This doesn't eliminate the "wall"; it just creates a glass ceiling that shields low-power players from the reality of late-game.

This solution of yours takes me back to the "SP drop" era.

By focusing on "rating" and "skill" rather than rigid Hangar-based rank brackets (as in Hangar Showdown) for the highest ranks, you're inadvertently returning to the problems of the old system. We're seeing a return to a meta where players manipulate their SP or exploit matchmaking logic to find easier paths to the top.

Grandmaster rank should be reserved for elite hangars. If a player's hangar is "underdeveloped," they shouldn't simply be facing weaker, "smarter" bots; they should reach a point where they can no longer compete until they upgrade their hangar. Let's stop trying to balance the top ranks for everyone; let's keep high-level rewards for high-level players only.

May 5, 2026, 14:432 days
May 5, 2026, 14:49(edited)
12/24/23
1

New tournament was perfectly balanced since launch. Match making balanced so is A coin payout 

1) From players point of view who always play tournament, my A coin income is about 6K to 8K a month. New tournament DIDN'T increase A coin payout at all. Players can only enjoy more time now which makes the game more enjoyable.

2) From Plarium point of view, you might see more free A coin payout NOT because each players are winning A coin than old tournament, simply BECAUSE more and more players come out and play now, even the old once retired ones. More players, more traffic can indeed means more sales & mor business. What you need is a plan how to funnel that traffic into more sales not focusing only on less free A coin payout.

3) Main focus in this time suppose to be keep players happy by make them win enough battle and NOT MAKE TOURNAMENT UNWINNABLE. You'll see lesser and lesser players if you do that.

One suggestion is that once a player win enough battle and rank up into the new tier and he couldn't win at least 4 out of 8 battle, points deduction should be big enough so that players get back into previous Rank quickly so that he or she can earn some A coin back.

Anyway I stand corrected that from a player vintage point, players experience the new tournament is perfectly balanced with NO EXCESSIVE NOR MORE A coin Payout than the old tournament. Hope this helps.

May 5, 2026, 14:492 days
09/16/22
3

Benim anlamadığım 8 el sınırı koymak tamam botlar kuvvetlensın ama 8 oyun gercekten az. para yatıramayan ve oynayarak kasanların önünü engellemiş oluyorsunuz.

May 5, 2026, 14:532 days
04/18/26
2

열심이 

May 5, 2026, 14:532 days
04/18/26
2

열심

May 5, 2026, 15:032 days
04/21/26
1

Hi mech arena pls do update to trade with players