Changes to Leagues and Matchmaking for June 2017

For those unable to access at work.

Next War Robots ranked season starts on June 1st. We've prepared some changes for it, including some things that many of you asked for.
Next War Robots ranked season starts on June 1st. We’ve prepared some changes for it, including some things that many of you asked for.

Please note that this is still not our final stop. Leagues and matchmaking keep being subject to further improvements, so as usual, let us know what you think!



New rating point distribution
Short version: you can go up in rating even if you lose!
Long version: the best way to describe our reasoning for this change is just to paraphrase what we said in our community meeting round-up:

We’re coming back to the previous post-match league point distribution, where top 2 players from losing team get points instead of losing them. Why? With new distribution we tried to enforce “be a good team player to go higher” idea before introducing proper communication tools to foster teamwork — and it didn’t quite work out. Most people basically stopped moving between divisions, being stuck in one place. Previous distribution did much better job in splitting differently tiered pilots between their respective leagues.



Amount of ranking points depends on battle results and your position in post-battle rankings. Pilots from winning team will always be on the plus side. However not just them, but also two players with highest performance in a losing team will go up in rating.

Starting from June 1st post-combat distribution of rating points will look like this (exact numbers might change):

Win Lose

+13 +7

+10 +3

+7 -5

+4 -11

+3 -17

+2 -22



More points for beacon control


Short version: capture beacons to get slightly more rating points!
Long version: there will be extra rating points for 3 happy pilots (+3, +2 and +1, respectively) who captured most beacons among all the 12 players from both teams.

Pilots with equal amount of beacons will be sorted by amount of damage they dealt. Say, you and your teammate captured three beacons each, but you inflicted more pain to the enemy than your companion did. That means, you’ll get your 3 bonus points and he’ll get 2.

If you play in a squad, rating points will still be distributed evenly among all teammates, and that includes beacon bonuses. Points are always rounded upwards: average 5.5 will always turn into 6 for everyone.



Tanking protection improvements
Short version: no more newbies in tanker queue, actual tankers receive less good stuff!
Long version: yes. People in leaver queue will start receiving less XP, silver and gold. Much less — up until there will be no benefit in intentional match tanking. People marked as tankers will also stop receiving and losing league points up until they properly finish certain amount of matches and get out of their special territory.

We’re also excluding people who have not yet reached level 15 out of the tanker queue. Such players usually turned into easy prey for seasoned leavers, so it makes a lot of sense to give newbies some penalty-free time to adapt.





Improved matchmaking algorithm for Champions
Short version: faster matchmaking for people in Champion league. That’s it
Long version: that’s really it. But here’s how it’ll work in case if you’re wondering.

The key problem of Champion league is a huge rating disparity between players. In the same league different players could have 5000, 8000 or even 13000 rating points. And matchmaking works the same way there as in other leagues: taking, say, our 13000 point player and slowly increasing the range in which it finds his teammates and opponents. First, 12990 to 13010. Then, second later, 12980 to 13020. And so on.

It is obvious that with such approach matchmaking can take forever sometimes. To address this we change how matchmaking system perceives all the points above 5000. Basically, we’re shrinking them tenfold. Say, 13000 turns into 5000 + (13000 – 5000)/10 = 5800 in the eyes of the algorithm, and 8000 makes 5000 + (8000-5000)/10 = 5300.

Numbers are not necessarily precise, but that’ll do to illustrate the principle. This way players in the Champion league will find each other much faster, without changes to the actual rating system. We also expect to see more Champions appearing after the change to rating points distribution, so there will naturally be more people to play with.

This will be the dumbest update ever.

Sorta still wish there was some sort of notification when someone gets put in the LQ. I feel that newbies still will wonder 「whiskey tango foxtrot」 happened when they end up there.

Looks good. Though I don't really think beacon cappers want extra league points, they want Gold!

Either the people at pix are stupid or they are simply lazy. It didn't work the first time and they are thinking it will work now? They should at least make changes to the points awarded.

Pixonic is shooting in the right direction, but totaly blindfold.

People reclaimed more prominence to beacon capturing.... and instead of silver or gold, they give them league points!! Jajajajajajajajajajajaja

What really worries me is the new league point distribution.
I mean, now I'm winning a bunch of games --> my rank gets up --> lose a bunch of games (thanks MM) --> my rank gets down.

With this new system I'm afraid I'm going to go higher that I should, because they are giving league points away for everything!

Level 15 or lower LQ exemption is too poor.
When you start to play this game, try some robots, try some weapons and, bum, you're at level 25, you reach this level and you just begin to have an idea of what's it about, so level 15 seems pretty low IMO.

I loved when Developers at the round table said "most of our players are silver league, the average of robots/weapons is level 8" .... So we tweak MM in Champions.....

The only good out of this update is the LQ rewards. This will have a small impact on tanking however the major are now spending more time fading and with the new League Points, guess what? It's going to get them to lower leagues even faster.

The are missing the point to give incentive to staying in higher leagues.

Also since there are very few people in TT leagues, why not give people more Au/Ag to the day to day grind so that more people end up in TT?

I'm stalled in G2-G1 right now because it takes a life time to upgrade anything past level 9 (both time and Ag) plus the only gold weapons/bots I have with 1000 victories is a Galahad, 2 Orkans and 5th hanger (I never blew my Gold on anything else), at this rate TT will take me 2 more years. Progress needs to come quicker

QFT.

I don't know what will happen when the league point changes go through, but at least here's what WONT happen when the changes hit:

1.Because damage will become more important than wins or beacons, then light and medium bots and beacon runners WONT disappear, leaving us without more variety in the game and now with only a few classes of heavy bots as everyone goes for big damage instead.

2. Because placing top two in damage, win or lose, is the only safe bet for league points, players WONT get selfish and not help their team win, and WONT refuse to play with their clan mates or platoon with Facebook friends so they can go solo and have a better chance of winning, because now all league points will be averaged together for platooning groups so any platooning group that loses a battle automatically loses league points no matter what, and if you go solo, you have a much better chance of placing top two and getting positive points.

3. Because beacon running now will give a huge +1-2-3 league point bonus, players WILL gladly use their light and medium bots to forgo getting damage so they can try to help cap beacons and help their team win, because it's quite natural to risk losing up to -15 to -22 league points for a 5-6th damage place loss while going for the +1-2-3 beacon bonus... that they also have to share with their platooning team or clan mates if they get it.

4. Because damage is now king, not wins or beacons, players WONT decide to just play it safe and sit back in their mid to long range fury-Natasha-griffin-Leo-carnage-Butch snipers and go for mid to long range damage, so that no one wants to or can run knife fighters anymore.

Therefore I AM SO EXCITED for these new league point changes, you know, the ones that went over so well a few months ago that Pixonic changed them over to what we currently have now, so they could ultimately decide to go back to the same system that we know already didn't work last time. Also, anyone who disagrees with me is completely wrong. Forgot to mention that earlier.

I don't understand this post. Is it ironic? Wish my English would be better...

Yeah, I am saying these problems happened last time when Pixonic made it where the top two red team losers got positive league points, and I quite simply hated it. The fact that we are going back to the same system again, that was so unpopular they already took it away once, is not good. They are going to add a little bonus for beacon running this time, but it's such a small bonus that it seems like an insult and shouldn't really help at all.

This update isint going to fix jack, and here's why:
-The people tanking habitually know how to avoid LQ. It's not hard. Pixonic is being too soft on them, and LQ detection is way too lax. They need to implement stricter detection. Habitually don't use half your hangar before you quit? Enjoy a 60 second (or higher) cool down before you can match again.

-As someone previously stated in the thread, people want balanced matches BELOW champion. As diamond, I don't want to face elite, master, and champion. It's bad enough there are plenty of 11-12 hangars in diamond stomping my L9 hangar. Which, by the way, if you can't make matches between league players of the same type, you're really having a hard time convincing me the game has a decent player pool.

-There is still no incentive to climb higher. Why do I want to push to Diamond and elite when my damage will only continue to drop? Not everyone has max level hangars, and my silver income is continuing to drop the higher I go. We need *real* rewards, not 'the prestige' of higher league.

In short, another swing and a miss by the developers at Pixonic.

There have already been threads in this forum about the unfair treatment given to beacon cappers by the game.
Pixonic invited 15 players, representing all of us, they put on the table this problem and the urge to improve the cappers role.
Pixonic said yes, they commited to give beacon cappers quite more relevance so people will have different hangars becouse capturing beacons will be worth.

They kept their word... so now they give you 1 to 3 league points for beacon capping.

Well, I tried to write an ironic post, with an ironic applause to remark it.
The fact was that most of players asked Pixonic for more relevance for beacon cappers, meaning more gold or silver to make the work of capping be really worth.
Pixonic said that they'd do it and just announced that they'll reward them with 6 sad and useless league points.
I agree with you, I don't want to climb the leagues in a rush, I want to play enough in every stage to enjoy and deeply develope my robots/weapons, even trying odd combos.
I'd tell you what Pixonic could do with this 6 league points, but moderators will ban me for a week so I won't.
I'll just say that without gold and silver beacon capping is an undervalued feature of the game, and so it will be after the june update...