How Match Ups are Handled by FantasicaOne 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 EVERSo 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!
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<-------------Top 6 Guilds
I |---------------
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<-------------Top 6 Guilds
F |------------
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<-----------Archibald Cutoff
F |----------
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I |--------
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C |------
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U |----
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L V--
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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 |---------------
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<---------------Possible Meeting Point
F |------------
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<----Possible Meeting Point
F |----------
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<-Possible Meeting Point
I |--------
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C |------
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U |----
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L V--
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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.