My suggestion to Pixonic about new Matchmaking

Ok as I see it match making should provide matches with fairly even equipment on both sides. I have suggested my thoughts on doing that previously.

Skill level in my opinion should not be a factor. First there is not that big of a learning curve here, most players learn the few maps and weapon/bot strengths and weaknesses quickly. Secondly this is a game,a contest if you will. Skill whether borne from experience or not should be rewarded not penalized. If you are winning matches against opponents with equal gear you deserve the victory and rewards and should not be forced to then compete against opponents with superior gear. A lev 30 clan officer should be able to jump into a low level bot with low level weapons and lead his new members without opening any "gates from hell".

In my view match making should give both sides equal tools but not try to handicap people for their experience or past successes.

exactly this

Yes it is. In any sporting competition or game, even monopoly you often don't win your first games. You learn from your mistakes and what more experienced players do and improve. In this case you are one of 6 members on a squad so hopefully you will be assisted by others and at low level will often have inexperienced competition. As you gain experience you will be more successful and that is to be expected, what is not is to be handicapped when you become proficient.

Fair in my view is that all have equal tools. It does not mean giving the lesser skilled players any help. You learn and improve just like any other game you have played.

If a top player wants to putz around in his hangar to load out level 4 mediums or level 6 heavys with level 6/7 weapons just so he can meet me on the pitch, I would be flattered.  Then I would make him bleed oil...   No wait, then I might lose, or maybe not, but I would likely learn from and enjoy the experience.

I am not close to being a maxed out hangar, though i run the best stuff I have.  But I don't need protection from other pilots, assuming they use similar gear to my own.   I think we may agree to disagree on this issue.  Cheers!

Exactly.

If seal clubbing is the real problem then giver everyone lvl12 botz and weapons to start with....end of problem. Instead we are stuck with pay to win. Ironically more seal clubbing is going on more than ever it's just being done by all 12 hangers

IMHO

This game is fundamentally flawed in two primary ways that has cost large sections of its audience an undue amount of grief that it is unlikely to overcome. 

But before that, the overarching problem with War Robots is that the general logic of the game's structure is wrecked from the get go. Pixonic did an amazing job putting this game together, but it is evident that the business philosophy of the firm is missing some key components, and this is where we see major shortcomings in the realm of customer satisfaction. 

Simple things like changing the game's name from Walking War Robots to War Robots clearly demonstrate this lack of audience centered focus and organizational structure. They are very good on audience interaction, which is great. But their focus on audience appeal at the developmental phase is severely lacking. Recently we saw the renaming of the game's weapons cache--also an odd display of market activity, which discloses a lack of both research and foresight. Its great that Pixonic is making constant efforts to evolve and to optimize the gameplay, but any business will tell you that it is much better to get things right in the first place. Easier said than done in the programming world, but, mind you, lesser firms have done more. Some of the most crucial shortcomings, including the aforementioned name changes, and other things like not explaining tiers, constant nerfing and buffing, have little to do with the operational challenges of app development and more to do with impatience and lack of preparation. Now we are seeing the culmination of these fatal flaws in the new matchmaking system that threatens to alienate a majority of the game's audience with the promise that "it will get better in time". The 2.5 update was supposed to be the point in time when it got better, yet it seems only to have gotten drastically worse. But I digress.

I really enjoy this game (when it works), as do all of you, which is why we're all here in this community in the first place. I realize it is nearly impossible to satisfy everyone at the same time, and there will always, ALWAYS be complaints of some sort or another. But to the initial point, the reason I think that it will be difficult if not impossible for the game to ever achieve a consistent level of balance is ironically because of some of the features that make War Robots so appealing to begin with, Namely the variety. There are Heavy and Light robots that are slow and fast, with heavy and light weapons that are strong and weak, quick and slow to reload, long range and short range; you can have up to 5 hangar spots or you can stick with your initial one and duke it out. There are all variety of weapons that can be modularly exchanged from one robot to the next according to weapon size and robot loading configuration; you can choose any variety of weapons you desire to go on any variety of robots you can get your hands on, and you can power these up to be as strong as you can afford given the right amount of time and effort. This is all great for a campaign mode game where the upgrades and resources are earned at a pace consistent with the increased powers and difficulty of computer generated enemies and missions. But if you throw a matchmaker into this chaotic landscape of player driven choice and variety, and pit 2 million players with the free will to execute any set up they can imagine with varying power levels for each robot and every single weapon in each hanger with varying numbers of robots, you now have a recipe for disaster with gross dissatisfaction of the consumer, and constant complaints of exploitation (I'm talking to you seal clubbers), mismatching, and competitive imbalance. Oh, did I fail to mention that after one year they decide to have the clever addition of clans of 36+ players, allowing users to clique-up, communicate and develop strategies, only to be paired with and against random stand alone players. Way to go on BALANCE. It's like they never ever had a strategy meeting in their company history or when they did everyone with common sense was afraid to speak out against the leadership making these erratic [another name for donkey] decisions.

Now add in the fact that rather than running ads, Pix chooses to make the game free to play but pay to win by drastically overpowering premium weapons and robots. The game is essentially designed to be run, aim, and shoot. Some weapons shoot further than others but there are tradeoffs...shorter range weapons are more powerful. Not a good idea, but fine. Same thing with the robots. Some robots are faster than others, but the faster the robot, the lower the health, and available weaponry. Also not a good idea for establishing balance with modular robot builds, but fine. Now where the serious problems come in on top of these bad ideas is that there are weapons and robots, and then there are weapons, and robots. Enter the errors of logic. For example, Pixonic decides to make a powerful, light, close range weapon with no reload time. FAIL!!!!! Why would you do that? That makes no sense. There goes your balance out the window. And its all downhill from here. They have the Gepard set as a premium robot available for gold purchase, but the robot has no significant health deficit, and is disproportionately faster than most other robots in comparison. In an effort to increase sales potential Pix is inputting overpowered weapons into the game. Gepards become indestructible with magnums, so they attempt to add balance with more gold bots and eventually workshop bots, this time with shields. Clearly everyone was afraid to speak up in this meeting...because the Balance factor has been shot straight to hell at this point! Shields! Really? Shields?!!! But there's a catch, because the shields don't protect against "splash damage" which allows players to shoot and miss, while still injuring their opponent in exchange for longer reload times, except when there aren't longer reload times, as with the instant reloading Orkan, another gold purchase weapon.

Am I missing something here? 

Why not just add a robot that can straight up fly while you're at it. And throw in some unstoppable grenades or possibly some nukes...yeah that's the ticket, nukes for gold! Everyone will pay!

All of that sounds really cool, and it would be really cool if you could fly and use nukes. But the problem with competitive games is that most things that are really cool as introductions or variations to the game are problematic because the very thing that makes them cool is the fact that they allow the user to achieve imbalanced advantages. Clearly I need not revisit my discussion of Aphids.

This game would do much better to have uniform weapons that have even tradeoffs, bots with even tradeoffs, and flat strength for robots and weapons.

Think about it. Having stronger weapons and bots doesn't do anything for one's gaming experience unless competitors have weaker weapons and bots. Why would anyone want to knowingly enter into a game of skill where the opposing player has such an advantage for no other reason than they've been playing longer and/or had more time to upgrade, or they've spent the money. That defeats the entire logic of playing a game. The point is for me to pilot my little robots, run around, aim and shoot other little robots in a way that is more attentive to details and more strategically sound than my opponent, not to shoot each other out until the person with the better upgrade remains. That is an exercise in futility. But in order to try to make money this is what Pixonic has done to their beautifully laid out gaming platform. A lot of people say "use new strategies to defeat difficult bots". Clearly that isn't the point nor is it practical when you don't get to see your opponents lineup when selecting your bots. The unbalanced, and problematic bots and weapons usually only have a handful of countermeasures that can be taken to defeat them. Some robots can never defeat others one on one notwithstanding pilot incompetence. For instance a 2 x Thunder Carnage will rarely loose to a Thunder/Taran Boa of equal strength in a head on assault. Plus the Carnage has special ability to dash. Its called imbalance. It undermines the point of the game. Ergo the fundamental flaw in the logic of the game. It's like saying, "Lets play chess, but I start with 3 queens and you have none." The point is to compete based on skill, develop skill and become more competitive. Not win on advantages out of anyones knowing control. Why should any of us ever lose a round because we are teamed with players that have less bots or because we have less bots ourselves. Everyone should have 5 bots. Weapons and bots should be balanced. End of story.

My suggestion to Pixonic about the new Matchmaking is to eliminate robot and weapon strength levels, cut all the pay to play weapons or nerf and buff all weapons and robots until they have a completely even tradeoff. And find some sponsors to put their names on the bots and maps, hang some banners and do some product placements and kill the pay to win arrangement. 

Its so funny how people who pay for the game defend that position under the claim that they are glad to be helping the company, and because that's how the game is designed, therefore that makes it just in their eyes. Pay to play is never just. That is the opposite of justice. I kid you not I have read comments stating that, "if I spend money on this bot and these weapons, I deserve to wipe you out in one shot that's how Pixonic makes its money." That is the opposite of winning. Imagine going to the gym and saying if I pay the ref $5 I get a lower basketball hoop than you in our one on one game. Name a sport where the more you spend the better you perform. Oh Duh! Yeah because that's not how its supposed to work, and that's why competitive gamers will always begrudge companies that set up pay to win systems. 

I don't actually expect any of these changes ever to take effect, nor would I prefer some of them to merely a more even matchmaker. But clearly the matchmaking can never be fair as long as there are so many disproportionately varying options for bots, weapons, and levels.

Just my thoughts.


 -R.I.P.

I read the whole thing and I'm glad I did.  I agree with your points about what makes War Robots enjoyable, and that it could be even more fun if it were a purely competitive game rather than using pay to win (P2W) as its business model.  

However P2W is Pixonic's business model, and they are fully committed to that model - there is no going back.  Once you've accept money in exchange for giving one person's imaginary robots an advantage over other people's imaginary robots, you risk not only future revenue but also everything you have ever earned if you were to take that advantage away.  No realistic amount of in-game advertising is going to offset that deficit.  

They have essentially no choice but to keep it pay to win.  And that means constant introductions of new abilities to justify new spending by the small subset of players who would rather pay for an advantage than compete on a level playing field.  The opportunity to grind is just an illusion offered to encourage lower-paying (or completely free) players to stay on the servers providing light entertainment for the paying elite, who will always be one step ahead.  This isn't just true for Pixonic; it's true for every P2W game.  

As long as you're OK with that (e.g., I prefer uphill challenges so I'm more than happy duking it out at a known, slight handicap) then you can still enjoy the game despite its flaws (or limitations) - especially with the concept of an Elo-style matchmaker.  It's like giving up a few strokes to a friend who may not be as good at golf as you are, but invites you to play at his fancy country club where you enjoy the surroundings he pays for - as well as the uncertainty of never knowing whether your additional skill will overcome his handicap score on any given day.  As long as you're both having fun, why question the arrangement that makes it possible?  

But I don't agree that War Robots is pay to win. There is no item that can only be purchased with money. Yes, the various currencies can be bought with money but they also accrue as you play. Really, that is pay to improve progression. A player starting today has 2 choices, pay to progress rapidly or be patient. In 2 years,the hangars of both options will be about the same. One just gets there faster than the other.

Pay to win... That would be like buying gold ammo that can only be purchased using cash which adds 100% damage. That is true pay to win. You are giving money to gain an advantage that can never be had by those who don't play.

As for how this ties into a business model, the pay to win camp usually employs a consumable item, creating a constant flow of cash. The pay to progress faster... Well... They honestly need to create a system that subtly encourages people to pay, but does not alienate the majority of the game's population. That is far. I think PIX is trying though. The new MM is a step forward. Yes it is hard in some regards and there maybe incentives to level up more. Yet PIX is still trying to keep the game run and accessible so as to not to drive off the general population either. They need us to play so that there is competition in the game.

This is also why you may see more improvements that increase the quality of the game but also encourage increased progression.

sometimes I feel like a dead raccoon on the expressway that just been run over 50 times in row by 18 wheelers, with some of this discussion.

Boy, I am I going to regret posting this.

Chalk it up to another senior moment and I'm havin' one of those days.