Trips can certainly be intolerant and arrogant, but he is also (sometimes) right.

Plarium has been loading up on the useful Fusions and Login Toons lately and I use three "Free reward" Toons in  my best Hydra Team: Visix, Mithrala & Lydia are all S-Tier Hydra Toons; however, if your peeps are not done w/Arbiter, they may not have any of these three yet either.

All that said, you are not wrong about the dismal state of the matchmaking, which I will post about shortly.    

The matchmaking is problematic, but at least it's far better and slightly harder to manipulate than CVC

I agree 100% with OP that the minimum threshhold for a reward should be lower, but i think I've already said that in this thread.

@harleQuinn I will post about my experience of Hydra Clash Matchmaking in a minute, but first, could you (or other Mods) please confirm how matchmaking is suppossed to work?  If I remember what was announced by Plarium back with the rollout of Clash, the matchmaking was suppossed to be based off of the past 4 weeks of Clash Scores.  So:

• Am I remembering correctly?
• If yes, is that how it is still being done?
• If no, then how is matchmaking determined?

Thanks!  

I believe that Clash is suppossed to be based off of 4 weeks worth of performance, but I just asked for clarification from a Mod on that.  If that is correct, then it should be better than CVC by a fair bit, but that has not always been my experience.  

And yet we're seeing clans intentionally tank certain weeks specifically to get easier matchups for the weeks they get competitive.

Remember when Saph raged about no longer being able to clan-hop every week? I lost a lot of respect for him over that.

@harleQuinn By the time I read this comment last week, it was too late to take a pic of our Hydra Clash, but I snapped one today, and it's a good example of the disparity I have been seeing regularly.

• The clan I run is called "The Raidmare" and we took 2nd place last week.  
• Unless we take the week off, we regularly do about 25B in total Clash Pts and the 27B we did last week is our highest week so far.    
• This is the third consecutive week (and 4th time in 6 weeks) that we have been beaten by an opponent team that did more than 10B more than us.  That is a 40% differential and is impossible to overcome.  Once is an anomaly.  Twice stretches believability. 67% of matches over 6 weeks tells me that there is definitely a problem in the matchmaking process and we are somehow grouped in the wrong cluster.
• Even more troubling for the accuracy of the matchmaking, this is 2nd time in 4 weeks that an almost inacitve clan has been grouped with us.  This week, the clan in last place had only two members and used zero keys.  Two weeks ago, we had an opponent that was alone in his clan.  
• It is bad enough to match a clan like mine with opponents that we cannot hope to compete with, but imagine what a low level clan would feel like if matched against a clan like mine.  @Ratted would be righteously & rightfully pi$$ed off to see The Raidmare pop up in his next Hydra Clash...      

i

A while back, we were so poorly matched for a long stretch that we got shutout of Clash Chests for four weeks straight, so we decided to tank a couple of weeks to change the math.  We tanked a total of 2-3 times over 5-6 weeks, and then went back to doing full damage.  We have done full damage the last 5-6 weeks straight, but are still being matched way over our average as my previous post shows.    

I don't think you can intentionally tank to get put in a worse group - as I originally said 450M is our weekly total, sometimes nearer 4 sometimes nearer 5 - never below 4 never above 5.  Surely if the matchmaking was fair and accurate we would by now be in a group with clans that do on average 450M which would make a good clash but no - always three clans, sometimes four that do at least 550M usually more

Consider the possibility that those clans are being matched against you specificaly *because* they tanked the previous several weeks in order to get an easier match-up.

Though I don't *think* that happens very much at the lower end; I just think there are problems with the matchmaking and it needs improvement.

As my previous post shows, I think there is a problem with how the matchmaking is currently working; however, if it were correctly avergaing 4 weeks of performance, then you can absolutely lower your average by tanking a week here and there.  My clan has at least one opponent doing exactly that almost every week.  

However, even if the matchmaking is calculating correclty, we do not know the rest of the parameters.  For example:  It could be done exactly by how each clan ranks by total score and clans are matched in descending order:  these 5, then these 5 , then these 5....Alternatively, matchmaking could be that the top 10% are all thrown into the same group and then randomly assigned opponents, then the next 10%....I am sure it is not the first example, but would not be surprised if it is something like the second example.  

All that said, it would not be a surprise to me if at the lower end of the matchmaking, Plarium has the bottom 10% of Clans all lumped into the same big bucket and then randomly assigned opponents, meaning that your clan could regularly face clans doing the total points that you see, and Plarium would say "Yep, matchmaking is working exactly as intended."  As we like to say (sarcastically) in my clan chat:  "Plarium: That's not a bug, it's a feature!"  

No way to know for sure until a Mod shines some light on the matchmaking process.

Ciao!

1. Tanking works

2. I don't think the mods will have any details to share (will just make tanking easier)

3. At the low end (Ratted clan), its likely the winning clans just push whats needed to win.  My clan doesnt do CvC (no reqs), but we have big hitters that if an easy matchup arises in PR it just takes a few of us to push.

4. At the medium end (me) We got hit with a Torgon (sp?) broken key on NM for like 8B to drop to 2nd

5. Trunda bombs exist everywhere lol

@ratted no apologies in my direction very necessary, and my offer to help is sincere and stands if you ever rquest

My easy solution to tanking is to match clans by "potential", the maximum of 

1. sum(max individual scores of current members)

2. sum(max individual scores of last clash members)

You could tier into percentiles and randomly group 5 within each 

This inherently includes a lifetime penalty for abusing the torgon or any other glitch/bug

Once again my clan finished fourth, I have now given up trying to get members to participate, this week - without playing any battles we will finish fourth - I know this why?

Clan one - 186M Clan Power, Ranking Points 2,153,889

Clan two - 160M Clan Power, Ranking Points 1,905,710

Clan three - 130M Clan Power, Ranking Points 1,556,028

Clan Four 'My Clan' 60M Clan Power, Ranking Points 852,469

Clan Five - Clan Power 31M, Ranking Points 451,950

It's every week, fourth place, we're stable 450M - 500M, never mind clans dropping etc, if every week we are the same why are we never matched with clans who also average the same as we do?

Maybe clans 1,2 and 3 are always in the top three hence they never complain, someone must be it's never us!

My clan comes fourth or fifth maybe 60% of the time despite several clan members consistently scoring over a billion points individually.

I think people use methods to manipulate matchmaking similar to that seen in cvc.

I don't know if they do or don't but at our level it seems a bit of a stretch, but the main gripe is that we get roughly the same score every week, surely if the matchmaking worked we should eventually get in a group we can compete in, we come fourth weekly, are there clans who at our level qlways come in the top three?  You only hear about the clans who don't get anything, if they bother to say anything at all

Getting the same score every week is why you are struggling.  Variance wins.  Need to tank 2 of 4 (or 5) weeks and only push the other 2.  Clans that are coordinated will win more often, that is just working the system.  No different than cvc.

@MooredRat 

That would be a rough lifetime penalty. I could see using highest score for the previous 3-4 months, a rolling high score.

Basically long enough to keep people honest, 13-17 clashes to play 1 clash is a long time to throw.

And do a reset of someone's high score if a champ they used was nerfed

imagine having the Sisyphean task of forever being locked to your highest score but be drawing dead to ever hit it again :)