Looking at MM through new lenses:

War Robots is in line on total price of acquisition, and time to grind with other games. The issue they have is that the cost per item is far out of line with other games... 

zer00eyz, could you elaborate more on that, please?

The old system meant that you could build a hanger for a tier and have a high win rate. Win rate = satisfaction, but not so good for the bank account. 

Now the only way to have a high win rate is to get to champion league... but the costs for War Robots don't match the costs of other mobile games per item (it is closer to WOT per item)... 

MM keeps you at 50% as an artifact of trying to keep you in relatively the same pool of players... If your going past 50 your advancing and face harder competition only to get beat down, not very satisfying when your skill puts you into a place where you just can't compete... 

Lets take me for example. After 10 days of playing like almost utter garbage (mostly my fault) and being dealt some fairly bad hands (not my fault) I almost fell out of silver I. I stopped playing like garbage on easter and shot up almost to gold II --- Thats a hefty change in points. However, Im pretty much locked out of top damage right now, and the upgrade plan doesn't leave me a lot to cap beacons with at this level of play. 

Is it frustrating? Yea it sure is, but at least the matches are "tighter" rank wise than some of the stuff I have seen from MM before (as silver II I got thrown in with diamond players on android). 

I would like to earn some Au however, and I have little other recourse than to "just wait" for tasks and upgrades to catch up to my current tier or I can figure out how to drop myself back down (oh and re-collect the rewards for promoting at the end of the month)...

The interesting thing is Im going to choose the latter option, I want to model 4 slots of griffins in silver and see where that lands me... Not because it is going to earn me gold, or be satisfying, but because I think the data from it will be interesting. 

MM is ELO like, and this is how it will always work out (math is a 「female dog」). To borrow a saying from business, you will end up promoted to the level of your incompetence. That isn't a stressor but it isn't exactly satisfying is it? 

The question is why can't MM find better matches? Well, it makes it hard to move points through the system if it does, or you get players in bands inflating and deflating. 

If the game environment goes from a less stressful hanger matchmaking to a more stressful one that speaks volumes on the leadership decisions.  So the question goes was the move to ELO purely for the sake of matchmaking or intentional because it could create a high stress environment to drive sale?  That is what I was trying to get at.

In an odd twist the full move to Leagues has improved matchmakimg for me in one regard.  In the past I was matched against 12 hangers regularly.  Earlier this month it dropped to ocassional 11s and often 10s.  That is a major improvement to what is now a mostly 9/9 loadout.

Well, everyone around here has been pretty salty about MM, tanking and all the other issues, so I would say in that regard the change wasn't taken well. It isn't a system that can be consistently satisfying till you reach top tier. It, in theory, should generate more revenue for pix but I don't think it is working out that way for them. 

Why the reviews are good is because of a cheap trick, they ask for a review right at the beginning of the game (like lvl 3-4) and most people put that 5-star because they are impressed for the moment and later on when the frustration kicks in because of match making and other stuff they quit the game but never change the 5-star they chose in the beginning, so all the flaws get kinda "ignored" by that rating and others won't see the "true" review/rating (if you know what where I'm getting at), I mean you think people would complain and leave in droves if the game was a solid 5? No, they wouldn't... But then again we have the 「bum-bum」lickers that praise pixonic for everything they do, mostly new players/noobs, while we who have been playing for a time just see how worse and worse it gets for every update, sure 2 things are great but they break 10 other things to achieve it...

In the end, for each hangar and each playing style there is a "fair value" of league cups. I went to a light hangar and dropped 200 points, but then my points stabilized. I went back to my usual hangar, and went up 200 points, but I've been stuck in the middle of gold 3 for some time now.

The point is, you can still have a high win rate, if you go for beacons and not for damage. Run light beacon cappers, and you'll end up in the lower half damage wise on both wins and losses. If you average 13-14 points per win and -16 points per loss, you'll end up with a win rate north of 50% (but you get less silver). If you run heavy hitters and go for damage, you'll maybe average 16 points in a win and -13 points per loss, and a sub-50% win rate. But it doesn't have to do anything with skill or the hangar. As for gold there might be not much of a difference, either you get gold for beacons (light hangar) or for damage (heavy hangar).

If you have a light hangar and replace light robots with say an Ancilot and a Fury, then you may rise a few hundred points, but in the end you'll suddenly end up with a sub-50% win rate, because you're going for damage and not for beacons. If you have a heavy hangar and buy a Gary and a Stalker, you'll drop like a stone at first but then end up with an over-50% win rate.

That makes for the paradox situation that buying the strongest robots will actually drop your win rate long term, unless you're closing in on a 12/12 hangar. And you'll earn less silver if you have a high win rate. Ist this the way it's supposed to be? Of course not, but most players have not yet understood the connection.

Unless you buy a TT hangar, you can't "buy" great matches. 90% of my matches are determined by the number of tankers, that is, has my team more tankers than the other team. Many matches are 6vs3 after 2-3 minutes. So why play the game? Grinding for money is not enough incentive in the long run. Unless you find a way to magically manufacture yourself a 12/12 hangar, that's what you're heading for once you leave bronze league, as it dominates silver and gold leagues (on Android).

I found the heart to play a bit yesterday, as my premium runs out in 48hours. There were less crappy games, but the "good" games (6vs6) made up at most 50% of the games. Even on the moon map players bailed out quickly, instead of exploring a map that got introduced just a few hours ago. This morning, 2 games, 2 tanker squads that left after 2 minutes, one game was over after 3 minutes because only two red players cared to move from the spawn point.