We have been working on a number of changes to the matchmaking system in the game which we hope will fix some weaknesses in the system that have been getting exploited in addition to providing better matchups for players on a more consistent basis.
We currently plan to implement these changes on Wednesday, October 16th, which is right at the beginning of the next ranked play season.
Handling "Alt" Accounts in Matchmaking
We are aware of an issue where certain players have been taking advantage of the fact that there are not a lot of people playing at all levels at all times and were able to repeatedly and consistently match up against certain other accounts. This allowed them to choose which account would win or lose in order to artificially inflate the ratings of their accounts and therefore the rewards earned. In some cases this was intentional and in other cases not, but either way it was all within the rules of the system.
Ultimately, the best solution to matchmaking is to get more players, which is what we are actively working on as our primary focus at the moment (more on that soon). Until then, we plan to implement the following changes to help address the issue under the current conditions.
Going forward, the Splinterlands team will be actively working to identify any accounts which are repeatedly and consistently matching up against certain other accounts (whether intentionally or not) and/or purposely losing or surrendering matches with the goal of artificially inflating their ratings and rewards. We will be looking for multiple accounts run by a single player as well as "rings" of separate players working together.
Whenever we identify such activity, we will act as an oracle and publish the list of account names to the blockchain so that the matchmaking system can use it and avoid matching these accounts together in the future.
We want to be clear that there is no issue with people playing multiple accounts, just as long as they are played fairly and are earning their ratings and rewards by defeating real opponents rather than by taking advantage of a current weakness in the system. Additionally we want to be clear that the only thing that will happen to accounts that are identified as belonging to the same person or group is that they will no longer be matched together. This includes ranked battles as well as in the first/qualifier rounds of tournaments (when it can be avoided).
We also encourage (though certainly not required) anyone using multiple accounts to volunteer to have those account names be recorded so that the matchmaking system will know not to match them together.
We understand that this adds an element of centralization to the game, which goes against our overall mission, however our hope and expectation is that this will only be temporary. We will monitor the situation on an ongoing basis and as soon as we feel that there are enough players playing in all leagues at all times of day then we will discontinue this system.
Removing Guild-Based Restrictions
One good thing to come out of this, other than reducing matchmaking irregularities, is that after these changes are put into effect we can remove the temporary restriction that had been put into place preventing members of the same guild from matching up against each other. So, in the near future you can all go back to beating up on your guildmates! Trash talking in guild chat is highly encouraged.
Inter-League Matchups
The final update to the matchmaking system in the game for now deals with allowing matchups between players in different leagues.
Currently players are only matched with opponents in their same league (i.e. Bronze, Silver, Gold, Diamond/Champion). This causes a situation where when players first move up into a new league they end up facing much higher rated players, often with higher level cards, making it overly difficult to move up. This has been referred to as "Diamond Hell" by some of our players as it is most noticeable when moving from the Gold to the Diamond league.
Going forward, players will be matched up with the available opponent closest to themselves in rating, even if they are in different leagues, but no more than one league tier apart. In this case both players will be subject to the level caps of the highest rated player. So that means that if a Gold I player is matched with a Diamond III player, both players will be able to use max level cards in the match.
Stay tuned for more updates from the Splinterlands!
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You can take note of my 4 accounts as well as my relatives
@sirtorito
@sirtorito2
@gaarakazekage
@sirhenderson
Family or relatives:
@rubenolmosg
@annaolmos
@josemar
@frangel
@neltito
@bji1203 is not mine nor do I have a direct relationship, but if they don't let me pair with her I would be happy lol
Just record/link me, @jaki01, together with @kobold-djawa (my wife). Most of the time I use to play with both accounts at the same time, not with the aim to play against each other but just to save time (it's much faster to start them parallelly instead of consecutively when doing the quests). Good if the system prevents them to play against each other.
That sounds really good, because I like to be matched with many different great players (even if then I might lose more often) to learn and have fun.
Recently, being member of the "Immortal Gods" meant to be excluded from matches against nearly half of all top players ...
Fascinating. I look forward to seeing how these changes shake out.
Fascinating. I
Look forward to seeing how
These changes shake out.
- mattclarke
I'm a bot. I detect haiku.
Perhaps I will be the first to admit.
@cranium
@prettysnake
@andruto
@koment
@komentator
You are @prettysnake good to know :-)
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Ok, all these accounts are my alts, especially these from top10:
lol 😂
I really loved the fact not to play against your own guild friends - Why changing this ? Btw @jaki01 - best or most cool players are in the one and only "Legendary Dragons" team 😁 - #justsaying
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Even if you are obviously kidding ("Legendary Dragons" and "best" in the same sentence, are you sure?:), I have to say that my 'friend' is the whole Steem Monsters community (you know: thinking globally not locally), and I love to play against (and learn from) any player (and any spreadsheet) around. :-)
Agree on gloal approach of community friends - rguild you will see in future :-)
I think most gold league players don't have diamond level decks, so it doesn't solve the problem. It can be helpful only at the beginning of the season.
Most Diamond III players also don't have diamond level decks, especially later in the seasons. That's why "diamond hell" exists. Just because someone makes it from Gold I to Diamond III doesn't mean their cards all the sudden got better. If they do have high level decks, then they will quickly move up and no longer be ranked with gold players, otherwise they'll remain with a more level playing field.
That's not true Matt. There are many players who rank up and then back down deliberately to "camp" in lower leagues to literally make life hell for other players. They do this to beat up on people with lower capped cards, and some of those accounts belong to many bot owners and Mavs. It's a blight on the game that this continues to take place and is allowed to continue as a feature of the game. The caps should be lowered to the correct level of the leagues when players move back down. I hope you realise how much of a horrible experience it is for lower league players and newbies who have to deal with this on a daily basis when trying to complete quests. It's called deliberate and manipulated hell, which means that ELO ratings are irrelevant in many cases.
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yep , you are right ..
Indeed. This might make life harder for Gold 3 players rather than easier for Diamond 1 players
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Those last paragraphs are really great news! Curious to see how will it work out, but will probably make climbing up the ranks a lot more fun!
Awesome updates and everyone thanks you guys for changing Diamond Hell..🤣🤣🤣 Onto them new cards, we are patiently waiting like crack babies 🤣🤣🤣
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Crack baby... 1 health, 1 attack + enrage
Death splinter
!monster !fantastic
Change is good, we will grow together @steemmonsters 👍
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That will be nice not to match with Champion-level players when I'm in Diamond III. Those matches when I have 3000 points and they have 4000+ points don't tend to go in my favor. Ha ha.
This is awesome. I always get annoyed when I am running through the daily quests with my wife's account and my account and they end up getting matched against each other. I think it is funny that some people take advantage of it when I just wish it would stop!
I would prefer not to be matched against my own accounts. Lately it's not been happening. I think the matching code it working.
It's good to hear that SM is addressing the highly discussed topic. Such kind of updates keep the game alive.
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Hey there, I didn't know it was you playing when we got matched or else I would have said hi. :) The first time we were matched way back when, I learned the importance of card placement. This time, well, let's just say I'm glad I didn't use a cocatrice in front!
Thank you for making the matchmaking changes. These are great updates and truly needed. It is a great fix until we get more players onboard.
@mellofello, @hossainbd, and myself (@beeyou) all play our own accounts, but we share the same resources, meaning the cards belong to me and Mello. Can we opt-in to have our accounts not be matched?
Also, we have our two gold foil accounts, @epicteam and @showmethequan that we three use to play in tourneys. Sometimes we each take an account or if busy, let whoever is free play. Could these accounts opt-in to not be matched as well?
Thanks a bunch, Matt!
Edit: I forgot about @chasingunicorns. The account is usually delegated out to a contest winner or help someone grow. You can add that one to the list of accounts to not match. Thanks!
Edited again: I don't care to unblock the person below to reply to the comment (not worth my time either), but do apologize the drama is dragged on to your post.
Yeah, this should be a great change for your "team". Maybe now that you don't have to be matched together, you won't feel the urge to help yourselves to some good old fashioned strategic and targeted surrendering on the final day of the season and win all those juicy booster packs and rewards at the expense of your guinea pig "guild mates" accounts. You know, like that time when the shit hit the fan when you all got busted for doing exactly that, and then you all went into damage control overdrive, to squirm your way out of it, by using your deceptive lies to cover up your bullshit and then making sure that another players account was left idle to slip out of the top 50 and all of your team accounts all made the top 10 and top 25. Remember that?.....I bet you don't, since you would prefer to keep that quiet and then pretend none of it ever happened. But of course it did! The very next season, you all did it again! So thank you very much for using your delegated player to cheat me out of those packs and rewards. The prissy little community queen thought that I wouldn't notice. I would suggest that all the "principles" that you constantly talk about and spam everywhere, suddenly just vanished (cough, cough). You sure do have a healthy dose of convenient amnesia that sets in at the just the right time.
But at least you can still use other peoples accounts to screw them over and steal rewards from them, when they are offline and not watching, and make it look like they were the ones who surrendered to you. I guess that's how it works in the monopoly beeyou guild, where you only look out for your own entitlement above everyone else. It's ok though, nobody knows about how it all works, so we will just keep it between ourselves. I mean, how could anyone possibly know, when it's an entire protection racket made just for you. You have some great cover at the very top.....especially since you are part of that 'top' with your special little admin powers that you use to cover yourself and then exploit to silence anyone who dares speak about it.
Congratulations are in order, and I hope you enjoyed screwing others for your own gain! AGAIN..........
No @beeyou, you talk like low cap investor, who can't understand the future development. It is evident that you are governed by envy and greed. But if you lower your emotions and look wider, you will understand the obvious, in the crypto industry you will not be able to survive if there are hints of centralization. And if you are really worried about the development of monsters, understand that it will be impossible to grow to 100 million cap with this approach. Especially, if the solution to the problem is as pleasant as the increase in new active players. Solve the problem, take care of decentralization.
The game is within the rights to adjust the matching algorithm and it’s not very different from previously not allowing intra-guild gameplay. Only change now is not allowing accounts owned by the same person or groups to not be matched, which many have asked for. It’s now allowing many more accounts to be matched.
Saying the game is no longer decentralized is a bit too extreme imo, but what do I know? I’m just greedy, low cap investor.
Go and screw people some more, and then go into discord and point the finger at others to take the attention away from yourself. That is the textbook and go to method of all the scum in society. "Look over there, it's not me who's stealing from you". You sure have taken a leaf from the best cheats and self promoters of this world.
But what I really miss the most from your compulsive liar mouth, is your community blog and crying comments where you would constantly spam the words "reward pool rapist" when it came to the whales of steem. Now you have your own reward pool to go rape with your circle jerk of protectors and cover upers. Go back to discord where you can bully people with your admin monopoly guild, get cover from all your body guards and sugar daddy's, and hide in the shadows with your "team".
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The decentralized game has no right to change the conditions for certain participants. The conditions that have been set for all guilds are decentralized approach! If by all General conditions the player must meet and not meet it is centralization. If the game has centralization, and you write everywhere and raised funds, as in a decentralized game. This is deliberate misleading of investors for the purpose of financial gain, in other words, financial fraud. Get acquainted (https://www.sec.gov/rules.shtml). And I didn't say that you're are low cap investor, I said you talk like low cap investor! And I didn't say you are greedy, I said: "It is evident that you are governed by envy and greed.".
Noted on your explanation above. The decentralization part isn’t the reason why I invested in the game but it is only fair that you stand by your reasons. I am sure the SM team will take your concerns into advisement.
The only thing you invested in, is your own personal mafia circle jerk. There's a real STINC in splinterlands - people like you treating this game as your own personal cashcow and then coming out here on the blockchain pretending to care about the "little people" with your speeches and PR spin...you are more than happy to play the little dictator and bully queen on discord where you hold your own military style kangaroo court hearings, and demand your way while hiding behind your body guards, but you suddenly get very shy in public.
Absolutely hilarious! Talk and respond to the "cheats" you call out on discord, and ignore anything that relates to your own dirty laundry like the coward little discord bully that you are. Go and call all your body guards to come cover for you and save you from the "craziness"....
Very good changes, really. Thank you so much for doing such a hard job of giving us this game that provides us entertainment and real profits.
There are three individuals that have access to portions of my teams’ accounts (myself, my little brother, and my childhood friend Matt) while I actively oversee the whole group. We all play with only gold foils for the most part and play in the silver leagues and the Gold III league when we make it there. Our playable cards are all housed under the @jonnyla08 account and delegated out to the others out of fear of ever having log in issues with the other accounts. (I won’t lose mine...). Those accounts are as follows:
@jonnyla08
@monstermadness - Matt’s account
@steemexplorers
@just4kicks46 - My little brother’s account
@givememonsters
I also have a separate account called @dusthero that is used (from a Steem Monsters perspective) solely for housing max level cards we rent out. This account does not play at all nor do we have any present intentions of using this account to play in the foreseeable future.
Thank you.
Great updates, I am really rooting for what you are doing !!!
My accounts that I personally play on
@tsnaks
@steemitmonsters
A lot of bots at the lower levels.
What makes you say that? I think there are probably more bots in champions league/top 100 than below.
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Instant team creation. You can pick your team in like 3 seconds and your opponent already has there's picked. No way people are that fast, it's bots. I specifically tested by clicking as fast as I could a random team and still, the other team was faster than me.
Yes, that's likely a (semi) automated program. (semi because it could also just be a player submitting pre-made teams via code)
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Now maybe I won't have to worry about being matched up against someone who ranks a few hundred points more points than me
@yabapmatt are you kidding? You are ready to unilaterally openly spit on decentralization, due to the fact, that you can not cope, with the lack of active players?
Сhange it urgently then!
Hello, there are some players who only use several accounts, to be able to carry out the daily missions, not to raise a medal, since for the little economic resources they cannot rent more than 1 single element.
As it was said in the post, they do it, only because of a small number of players, at this stage of the game; if this problem requires you to centralize, it means that the whole game is centralized. Investors, who have come or got plan to invest, should know and understand this, so everything where it is mentioned that the game is decentralized, should be removed!
With interleague matchups it will be more interesting to play. Thank you for such update.
Thanks for the inter league matchup because as a casual player it's almost impossible to get a daily done, sometimes we're discussing if it shouldn't be called a weekly instead when a new season starts and because of the big difference in bronze - silver and gold league summoner limits.
I play on 3 accounts, but I have at least 2 others with steemmonsters cards.
My 3 playing accounts are
@kennybot
@kgroup
@kstarter
I am still playing the game daily and still having fun.
Best wishes in all your battles!