Guild Event Mechanics (Match Up Portion Complete!)

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How Match Ups are Handled by Fantasica

One of the things I noticed going through the guild battles, was people stating that the match ups are both random and unfair.

While some of the match ups 'are' unfair, there is a reason why we have these kinds of match ups.  This post will explain in detail how the match up system works.

First off, let's start with the numbers.

There were approximately 4064 guilds who competed in this event.  This number is +/- around 50-100.

Where did I get this number you may ask?  It's actually really simple.  Since the Gods of Olympus guild was one of the top guilds heading into the event, we were 11-0 at the end of our 11th game.  From this vantage point, we were able to get an estimate of the number of guilds in the guild event due to the fact of something I shall call a 'peak'.

A peak is the last match where the match up system can match a guild with another guild with a similar w/l ratio.

Since we lost to Ice Plume in our 12th fight, that left only two guilds left who had 12-0 records.

At the end of the 13th battle, Ice Plume reached the top of the peak and was the only guild who went undefeated 13-0.  

Now, leading up to this point, none of us were re-matched against each other after we met once.  So we knew that once we reached this 'peak' the system would match us up against guilds who were at a similar pool level OR were one level below if it could not find someone in the same pool.  This was why I was 100% sure that once you faced a guild YOU WOULD NOT BE MATCHED UP WITH THEM AGAIN EVER

So to use Ice Plume as an example at 13-0, since there were no guilds left who were undefeated, the system went down a step, and started matching them against 12-1 guilds.  Since Ice Plume had already faced us (Gods of Olympus), it skipped us as a viable match and went to the next available 12-1 guild.  Furthermore, there seems to be another rule, guilds with a higher win rate had priority in match ups v. a lower guild.  

For example, if there was a 10-1 guild and a 9-2 guild, and the only match up was a 1-10 guild and a 2-9 guild, the 10-1 would get priority over the 9-2 guild in facing the 2-9 guild.  Even though the fight would be 'more fair' for the 2-9 guild if they faced the 9-2 guild, THE SYSTEM PRIORITIZES HIGHER RANKERS FIRST.

If there are several 2-9 guilds the 10-1 guild could face, it's luck of the draw who gets the 'higher win' guild v. the 'slightly easier guild' at 9-2.

Also, as I'm sure everyone noticed, until you reached your 'peak', you were matched up against guilds who had EXACTLY the same number of wins/losses as you.  Once you started facing guilds with different win/loss ratios than you, either their downward trend intersected with your upward trend, or you were on your own downward trend.

Now back to using Ice Plume as an example.  Ice Plume was reaching the downward slope of their 'peak'.  Any opponents from this point on would be below their w/l ratio simply due to the fact that they were undefeated.  And thus, were most likely weaker than them.  This, is the start of the downward cycle for the top rankers.Once they passed their 'peak arch', any fights after 'should' be easier than their peak fights.

What this also meant was, the sooner you reached your peak, as long as you won (At least for this guild event), 2 wins against the the top 6 guilds and had no losses to anyone else, you would get Archibald (4 losses max total) as all guilds AFTER the big 6 would be easier to win.

What this also meant was, if you were going to get Archibald, you had to have faced the top 6 (Les, Gods, Ice, Death, Power, or Super) and had to have won at least 2 or more battles against them.  If you had ANY losses heading into the fights with them, there was no way you could win Archibald.

The top guilds already knew they would win Archibald for sure (Or nearly 100% since nothing is certain) if they faced their peers and won at least 2 matches against one another.

So, to give a visual example for those who need a visual of this extra long post,  I shall now make a really lol picture using picture heads!


D^--------------------        <-------------Top 6 Guilds
I |----------------------- <-------------Top 6 Guilds
F |--------------------------<-----------Archibald Cutoff
F |-----------------------------  
I  |-------------------------------
C |---------------------------------       
U |-----------------------------------
L V-------------------------------------
T
Y
<--------------------------------------------->  <-----28 battles


All guilds have their own personal 'peaks'.  Those who lose early on only DELAY their peaking, as they HAVE to face the top 6 in order to get Archibald.  So it did not matter whether or not you won against easy guilds or not on the way up.  In the case of Archibald, you had to win at least 2 matches against the top guilds to get him.  If you didn't, you were out.  If you lost to a guild that wasn't the top 6, you now had to win 3 games against them.


Now, as I mentioned earlier, higher rank teams had higher priority on matching queue than lower rank teams.  When you combine this with the fact that each team has individual peaks and downward trajectories, when this intersected with a lower rank guild who had still not reached their peak due to early losses, this in turn led lower rank guilds to have a chance of meeting higher rank guilds who had 'much' more wins than them.

D^--------------------    
I |-------------------------  <---------------Possible Meeting Point
F |----------------------- ----- <----Possible Meeting Point
F |------------------- ------------ <-Possible Meeting Point  
I  |--------------- ------------------ 
C |------------ -----------------------        
U |--------- ---------------------------- 
L V------- -------------------------------- 
T
Y
<----------------------------------------------------------->  <-----28 battles

= Higher Guild's Curve (Archibald Guilds)
  = Lower Guild's Curve (Demetria Guilds)

Using these curves, since we (Gods of Olympus) faced all the top 6 guilds early on and won against 2 of them, I knew that even though we had to do 6-8 straight wins to get Archibald at this point, unless we screwed up or gave up a fight, we were going to get Archibald since all fights AFTER our peak arc were MUCH easier than prior battles at the peak due to way the system matches us up on our downward peak.

The only ones we had to worry about were those whose peaks intersected our peak at certain points (Guilds aiming for Demetria for example).  Hence the seemingly random string of fights.

Easy Easy Hard Hard Hard Hard Hard Easy Easy Medium Easy Easy Medium Easy Easy Easy


Questions?  Hopefully this explains it somewhat, comment if you still have questions and I will answer them and update this gigantic ass post  as I answer the questions.

Suggestions for Future Guild Events


28 Battles > 14 Battles
4 Time Slots per day > 2 Time Slots per day
Halve the requirement for each reward.
Make GP prizes GUILD GP prizes not individual

Considering how matches are set up, they would have spent = or greater than the current spending spree simply because people have less chances, and more people able to be on = greater competition.

Top Guild Match Ups

Les Neuf Dieux - https://youtu.be/JFvtTyKnIm0

Ice Plume - https://youtu.be/d9zd9B6WyS8

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At work now so can't finish it, will finish it tonight though. It will explain a lot of the things people are frustrated about and how things will work for future guild events.

Sudden noob realization:

Looking at the video and seeing ~300 tonics. I have realized I will never be one of the top players for this game.

Looking forward to your take on match-ups.

I'm posting and entering as I go along explaining.

Done with the info dump.

BkWiz wrote:

I'm posting and entering as I go along explaining.

Thanks for confirming my suspicion. The GP killed the team I was in. We faced tougher matches way earlier with our near perfect start. Appreciate you sharing your insights as always Bkwiz.

GP had little to no bearing on match ups.

Personally I lean towards it has ZERO effect on match ups. Match ups were strictly based on w/l ratio. With the only accompanying rule being that higher win guilds have priority when matching against the same person than a lower w/l ratio guild. Simply due to the fact that they probably have already faced all the other prior / similar ranked guilds.

You confirmed some of my suspicions. Thanks

BkWiz wrote:

GP had little to no bearing on match ups.

Personally I lean towards it has ZERO effect on match ups.  Match ups were strictly based on w/l ratio.  With the only accompanying rule being that higher win guilds have priority when matching against the same person than a lower w/l ratio guild.  Simply due to the fact that they probably have already faced all the other prior / similar ranked guilds.

I'd also point out that if higher win guilds didn't have priority, it would be even MORE unfair to the next team down.

i.e.
For example, if there was a 10-1 guild and a 9-2 guild, and the only match up was a 1-10 guild and a 2-9 guild, the 10-1 would get priority over the 9-2 guild in facing the 2-9 guild.  And the 9-2 guild would face the 1-10 guild.  Both matchups with an 8 win delta.  If the higher ranked guild didn't get precedence, then it would be 9-2 vs 2-9, 7 win delta, more fair for them... but the other matchup would be the 10-1 to 1-10 battle, a 9 win delta, even MORE unfair to the poor 1-10 guys... and even easier for the 10-1 folks.

Hmm it's exactly as i thought but i estimated there would be about 8000 guilds (I guess a lot of the weaker guilds (Too casual to log in the first or second battle) drew a match at first or second round thus eliminating them from the top)

However I noticed from the start of this game that in our and everyone with 6* teams i have talked too that our first match was with a 5* team minimum (thus i think they made the first match be done by * of the guild leader and eliminate the extreme casual guilds from affecting the win ratio)(or they do it by number of players in a team)

I mean seriously 8000 guilds was a reserved estimate as I know there were at least 14K teams in the last team event

GM BKWIZ is at it again! many thanks for the effort!

Just a quick question: we were at 5 losses at battle 25 and we met Ice Plume (... yes this is life... they got Archibald after that match).

HOW ISSIT POSSIBUUUUU???? I believe they have 1 loss only right? So we are the next strongest opponent category???

I think you need to correct your number slightly for analyzing the top 6 guilds. You needed to say that they had to win once against the top 6 because they can't face themselves.

Lionpunisher wrote:

GM BKWIZ is at it again! many thanks for the effort!

Just a quick question: we were at 5 losses at battle 25 and we met Ice Plume (... yes this is life... they got Archibald after that match).

HOW ISSIT POSSIBUUUUU???? I believe they have 1 loss only right? So we are the next strongest opponent category???

let me put it this way for you statistically speaking

after match 13 only 1 guild has all wins
after match 17 only 1 guild has 1 loss
after match 21 only 1 guild has 2 losses
after match 24 only 1 guild has 3 losses

IE there should only be 4 guilds with less then 4 losses after match 24

so at battle 25 there would only be about 27 guilds with 5 losses and 3 guilds with 4 (most of them have probably faced each other by now) and since the top guilds have all fought each other they now will for the last 3 matches be placed against the lower ranks
IE the reason most people lost the chance at a 6* was that the top guilds are chosen first for the next down opponent they haven't fought yet. IE from match about 22 all that was left for the top guilds to fight were the people barely hanging on to getting the 6*

Thank you as usual bkwiz for the work on this kind of thing for the community. I want to make sure I understand something about the match ups because if so it seems rather shocking:

On the 25th battle (the first battle of the last day) my guild with 18 wins was matched with a guild leading the event 6* so they had 22 (or more) wins. What you are saying is that there were NO GUILDS on the 25th battle who our opponent in that battle (Super Spenders) had not already faced who had 19, 20, 21, or 22 wins?!?!   Do I understand this correctly?

If this is correct, then that seems like a huge gap in wins near the top going into the last day, and this also drives home - in addition to your estimated total number of guilds - that the active fanta playing base is actually quite small. (Side question: Has the active player base always been this small or are we seeing evidence of shrinkage?)

I put forward that this is further evidence to support bkwiz's recommendation to either make the event shorter (or some other way to have less battles total) in order to avoid this kind of very unbalanced match up. (A difference of four wins in the 25th battle in this event given how the rewards were tiered was huge)

In other words, my conclusion from this data is that the fanta playing base is just NOT LARGE ENOUGH to warrant this large (this many battles with rewards tiered as they were) of an event.

Addendum: Maybe the community can help with this data by letting bkwiz know if you are SURE your guild had 19, 20, 21, or 22 wins going into battle #25 and if you are SURE you never faced Super Spenders before that. AND let him know who you did face in the 25th battle (Perhaps someone with say 20 wins faced someone in the 25th battle who also had 22+ wins?)

Tattycoram wrote:

If this is correct, then that seems like a huge gap in wins near the top going into the last day

Yes indeed there is a huge gap. Seems like apart from the top 6, there were not that many guilds finished with 22 wins. So far I just know our guild (Spankie Lovers) and War Machine made it.

We lost: 7th to Gods; 13th to War; 18th to Ice; 19 to Spender; 21st to Ranger; and then 23rd to Les. So we already had 6 lost since the 23rd and had to maintain straight wins in the last 5 battles.

According the matching system, i would assume we effectively kicked all guilds we have fought in the last 5 battles out of getting 6*, unless some of them have less than 6 losses and battled us from downward match.

BTW our last battle was vs. Thai Spice, and i dont know if they get Deme or not..

Tattycoram wrote:

Addendum: Maybe the community can help with this data by letting bkwiz know if you are SURE your guild had 19, 20, 21, or 22 wins going into battle #25 and if you are SURE you never faced Super Spenders before that. AND let him know who you did face in the 25th battle (Perhaps someone with say 20 wins faced someone in the 25th battle who also had 22+ wins?)

Yeh if we all provide all our battle record (when did we lost and who did we lost to), everything would be much clearer.

I assume BKwiz has all the data for the top 6 teams, lets ask him