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