Warrior General Games

My team is in Journeyman, there is 11 Journeyman team owned by users, and one managed by CPU.
Out of 3 ladder games we've been matched 2 times vs a Pro team, both of them had perfect record while my team record hasn't been since I lost my oppening game.

We got blown out 89-0 last ladder game and we are matched again vs a Pro team that is 5-0, this is just not fun, why the match making system doesn't match us vs one of the 9 (!!!) user teams in Journeyman that I haven't played in ladder yet ? Not to mention some of those team actually have the same record as my team, and not a 5-0 record so they should be way way higher priority to face my team.

This has happened to multiple J teams this season and is really making us salty (as you can probably tell).

Suggestions :
-Never play up or down during the first 10 ladder games, under no circumstances. Even if you have to play a team multiple times, it would still be way more enjoyable than being handed a free loss and an uninteresting game.
-When you actually play up the team you play should have a much worse record than you, this seems so obvious to me but it's not happening currently (my second ladder game my team was 2-1 and faced a 3-0 pro team, my 3rd ladder game my team had a 3-2 record and got matched vs a 5-0 pro team, I already said it but I can't stress enough how senseless that is).

Yeah, again I do not understand why the devs can't / wont make enough cpu teams in each tier so that we do not have to play up or down.
I do not understand what the purpose of playing up or down is aside from there not being enough teams in some leagues.
I can remember the days when there were more than enough teams for at least 2 leagues in each tier.At this point I am just going to keep posting this suggestion until the devs either ban me or explain to me why they can't / won't do this or until they actually do it or until this game dies or until I quit and move onto something better.

Right there with you. Journeyman was a rough ride for us too.

I guess in the meantime you take your licks and dish it back out when it's your turn to be the higher ladder team

I don't really mind it. The one part I don't care for is that it is not even. I believe one week we played the #2 Vet team. The #2 pro team played some crappy vet team and everyone else played down. I don't think it effects your ELO too negatively so it's not that big of deal, other than a loss showing up on your coaching record with little you could have done about it.

Originally posted by Bretto007
I guess in the meantime you take your licks and dish it back out when it's your turn to be the higher ladder team
Yeah I will be so proud when my team blow out a team that has absolutely no chance of competing against us

@OSIRIS : it doesn't break the game, but we could have fun games between rivals team of the same tier, it just takes away the opportunity to have a fun and interesting game, on top of handing a free loss to a team and a free win to another, which makes ladder unfair, even if ELO changes are smaller because it's inter-tier.

It really upsets me because I think that it could easily be fixed. Maybe I am wrong but the devs won't even bother replying, I am at the point that I do not think they even care about the game or their customers. If they ever respond I will drop it either way.

Originally posted by agerm73
Yeah, again I do not understand why the devs can't / wont make enough cpu teams in each tier so that we do not have to play up or down.

Not sure how that fixes anything at all. Beating up on CPU teams for 15 of the 30 games every season isn't exactly going to be riveting gameplay, either.

I was wondering if there was a fair way to handicap. Maybe the lower tier starts with a touchdown. Or they start with 100 morale instead of 50, amped up for a clearly tough matchup.

Playing against a CPU team of the same level is better than playing against a team with a decided skill point advantage. I will use my No Drama team as an example. We had the "priviledge" of playing up against Bowie Bay (https://glb2.warriorgeneral.com/game/game/581173)
We are a pretty good Journeymen team but did not stand a chance against Bowie Bay. As a veteran coach, this is kind of unwinnable match up is disheartening. I can't imagine tht it is any better for new coaches.
Thank you for responding.
Now, as promised, I will shut up.

Originally posted by agerm73
As a veteran coach, this is kind of unwinnable match up is disheartening.

Perhaps.

But a nearly insurmountable challenge is probably more engaging than an insignificant pushover. I agree that it sucks getting put against tops teams a tier above you, but that was one of the sacrifices people agreed to with the seasonal ladder reset.

I've always been a fan of making CPU teams stronger, so they aren't essentially a dead game in the schedule and could be used to flesh out leagues and tiers more. People have not taken kindly to losing against CPU in the past, though. Which I still find weird...people don't complain about the game when a boss kills them in World of Warcraft or when they die from falling into a hole in Mario. "I paid money for the game so I should never lose to the game" is odd to me.

What I meant by unwinnable was 0% chance of winning. With the WoW analogy, if I had to fight an unbeatable boss, I would not complete the quest or do the dungeon / raid. I would not mind tougher CPU players and teams.

There have been times, especially when I was a new coach, when I was in leagues with experienced coaches with super star roster that I would get beat 100 - 0. It was nice to have some easier games. I am glad that I have enough experience now to compete with the other human teams in my tier otherwise the idea of going 0 - 30 wouldn't kep me around for long.

I would rather play a strong CPU team of my tier (and potentially lose if you make them this much stronger) than getting whooped for free because you can't make a decent match making engine.
Losing 17-14 to a CPU feels better than getting no-matched 100-0 in a game that's boring for both teams.

If the match making system works decently, ladder games should be close most of the time, of course you can still get big wins and early on you can still get blow-outs because of the reset, but this is the 3rd ladder game and the system doesn't recognise that a 3-2 J team is way weaker than a 5-0 pro team ?

You didn't answer the suggestions in the first post, which doesn't mention adding CPU team, could you, please ?

Even if there is a reset every season, teams start at different ELO value depending on their tier, right ? You would just have to increase the base ELO difference between tiers to make it less likely to have inter-tier matches early on, wouldn't you ?

I generally like the challenge of facing and possibly embarrassing teams a tier above me. There is no pressure. If you win then you're great, lose and you have an excuse and may be playing down instead of up the following week. It gets boring to me playing in tier teams over and over and giving them stuff to look at later on.

Originally posted by Corndog
Perhaps.

But a nearly insurmountable challenge is probably more engaging than an insignificant pushover. I agree that it sucks getting put against tops teams a tier above you, but that was one of the sacrifices people agreed to with the seasonal ladder reset.

I've always been a fan of making CPU teams stronger, so they aren't essentially a dead game in the schedule and could be used to flesh out leagues and tiers more. People have not taken kindly to losing against CPU in the past, though. Which I still find weird...people don't complain about the game when a boss kills them in World of Warcraft or when they die from falling into a hole in Mario. "I paid money for the game so I should never lose to the game" is odd to me.

I would be in favor of stronger cpu teams in general. But how would that work? For instance would I be able to own a cpu team and - since presumably the cpu players are stronger - I would then have a stronger team? Or would you guys figure out some way to simply buff cpu teams?

Also when folks agreed to the "seasonal ladder Reset"(?) - whatever that was - was there not more human controlled teams then? Are we not in a completely different situation now?