Welcome!

By registering with us, you'll be able to discuss, share and private message with other members of our community.

SignUp Now!

Unfair Cartel Wars matchups

BACONSTRIps

New Member
Joined
May 5, 2019
Messages
2
Our cartell Norwegian Gordos, currently the second best cartell in Norway, are getting really frustrated and upset about what we see as extremely unfair matchups in cartell wars.

Since New Years, we have continuously been matched against the Top 20 best cartells in the world roughly about every third cartell war we search for. It doesn't seem to differ if its a long or short search, or whether we search for an opponent or accept someone else's. Moreover we have tried to edit our search perimiters by adding more players to the war and/or excluding our best players.

Now we are currently in a war against Down n Durty, and we have previously met among others; NoBull, Nomads, French Narcos, SOEC, italy war and Unstoppable.

Our cartell level is 65, our rating is just over 53k and we have currently almost the worst win rate among the top 20 cartells in Norway with only 121/281. We lose on average 3-4 out of 5 wars because we seem to always meet cartells that are way above our level.

This results in us not even bothering to perform attacks and these top 20 cartells gets "Free Victories" which from what ive read in this forum occurs a lot with other cartells as well. Its also very frustrating that we are stuck in these totally lost wars for two days, not able to do nothing but wait. Either giving us a message with "no suitable cartell war opponents was found" or a "surrender"-button would be appreciated, although this is not a fix to the problem but merely a quick solution while you work hard to fix the real underlying problem; namely your match-making algorithm. Introducing a limit of lets say 10-20% above or below in range, or something similar would mayne solve this. But now there seem to be no roof/floor of what you can meet.

For us it is not understandable how it is not possible to match us with more similar cartells with similar parameters, because obviously our parameters are FAR away from those in the top 20. Understand me right in my complain here, because we're not looking for easy, 10-levels-below-us opponents that would give us "free speedups", but rather closer rated cartells where we can have interesting battles with close wins to either cartell. But as it is, in 9 out of 10 wars, one side will win almost without an effort because the other side simply gives up without a fight.

This problem is furthers emphasized with the new updates in the game, introducing Don Neto talents and Warden Towers, which makes the cash/resource flow of our cartell members and most likely others as well, close to negative and especially when it comes to cash.

Participating in a Cartell War with BoG with torchers cost us 3.6 mill cash. Now, when we cant even attack other players on the map, because we have not spent $1000+ on the roulette to obtain 4/8/12 Davids with the necessary required tallents and skills, it is simply impossible to get enough cash/resources to make the game flow as it used to. Having to reinforce our troops for 1.2 mill cash everytime we try a difficult base, either because we want to improve ourself by testing matchups against better players or simply to try to get resources and improve our rating level, it isnt feasible in the long run. The only option once past level 61 is to "invest" hundreds of dollars on Davids, which may even disappear before the year is over. And with players that have already spent close to that amount on previous updates and meta game sicarios we simply feel we get no return for the money we spend.

The core group of our cartell members have played this game now for 3-4 years. Many are expressing such deep frustrations at the moment that they are seriously considering to quit. Most likely these frustrations are equal among other cartell members around the world. We love to play, we love to compete, but FTX, if you continue down this road you will loose a lot of players in the mid-range to nearly top-range players because no one is interested in loosing 9 out of 10 cartel wars. And then you would be left with only the very top 1% of players and the bottom 10-20% of players. This is certainly not in any on of us' interest, so please do something to fix this as I would hate to see my cartell crumble after having spent 3 years playing and had the joy of becoming friends with many people through this game.
 

Slik

Member
Joined
Nov 6, 2017
Messages
79
Either giving us a message with "no suitable cartell war opponents was found" or a "surrender"-button would be appreciated, although this is not a fix to the problem but merely a quick solution while you work hard to fix the real underlying problem; namely your match-making algorithm.

The only option once past level 61 is to "invest" hundreds of dollars on Davids, which may even disappear before the year is over.
The surrender or forfeit button is a good idea. No one wants to be in a lopsided War on either side

Davids are not the only option after level 61. I take out top bases everyday with Torchers and FB sicarios...
 

BACONSTRIps

New Member
Joined
May 5, 2019
Messages
2
The surrender or forfeit button is a good idea. No one wants to be in a lopsided War on either side

Davids are not the only option after level 61. I take out top bases everyday with Torchers and FB sicarios...
Now, I can also beat pretty good bases with Torchers and FB or Nukes, but the game is really unbalanced because there is no way you take out those bases without losing most of your torchers. And when you are left with maybe 3-400k cash for defeating these bases it simply doesnt add up when the cost of reinforcing all of your troops is 3.6 mill. Then you have to loose no more than 2 torchers for it to be beneficial. Non-player bases reward you with anything up to 100k but that means you have to take out 36 of them before you have earned enough to reinforce your torchers once. Thus, the game isnt balanced at all in my opinion
 

Slik

Member
Joined
Nov 6, 2017
Messages
79
Now, I can also beat pretty good bases with Torchers and FB or Nukes, but the game is really unbalanced because there is no way you take out those bases without losing most of your torchers. And when you are left with maybe 3-400k cash for defeating these bases it simply doesnt add up when the cost of reinforcing all of your troops is 3.6 mill. Then you have to loose no more than 2 torchers for it to be beneficial. Non-player bases reward you with anything up to 100k but that means you have to take out 36 of them before you have earned enough to reinforce your torchers once. Thus, the game isnt balanced at all in my opinion
I concur especially in War. Loading Torchers cost 2x to 3x more than the $ that you get with winner spoils.
 

Brian Christensen

New Member
Joined
Jan 3, 2019
Messages
27
Also a problem here, warsearch matching an oppoment in top 20, you should make +- 10.000 in rating, then war would be fair.
Rewards in wars, 3 torchersteams costs 2-3 times more than rewards, why not make free warteams?
Troops, get prices on other troops up, if you use max level torchers, then max level fuego should be same price.
The dollarsflow in game, simply not enough cash, upgrades, quests, wars, I could see a marketplace as an option, selling wood, stone and metal to your own cartelmembers
 
Joined
Sep 27, 2017
Messages
18
Our cartell Norwegian Gordos, currently the second best cartell in Norway, are getting really frustrated and upset about what we see as extremely unfair matchups in cartell wars.

Since New Years, we have continuously been matched against the Top 20 best cartells in the world roughly about every third cartell war we search for. It doesn't seem to differ if its a long or short search, or whether we search for an opponent or accept someone else's. Moreover we have tried to edit our search perimiters by adding more players to the war and/or excluding our best players.

Now we are currently in a war against Down n Durty, and we have previously met among others; NoBull, Nomads, French Narcos, SOEC, italy war and Unstoppable.

Our cartell level is 65, our rating is just over 53k and we have currently almost the worst win rate among the top 20 cartells in Norway with only 121/281. We lose on average 3-4 out of 5 wars because we seem to always meet cartells that are way above our level.

This results in us not even bothering to perform attacks and these top 20 cartells gets "Free Victories" which from what ive read in this forum occurs a lot with other cartells as well. Its also very frustrating that we are stuck in these totally lost wars for two days, not able to do nothing but wait. Either giving us a message with "no suitable cartell war opponents was found" or a "surrender"-button would be appreciated, although this is not a fix to the problem but merely a quick solution while you work hard to fix the real underlying problem; namely your match-making algorithm. Introducing a limit of lets say 10-20% above or below in range, or something similar would mayne solve this. But now there seem to be no roof/floor of what you can meet.

For us it is not understandable how it is not possible to match us with more similar cartells with similar parameters, because obviously our parameters are FAR away from those in the top 20. Understand me right in my complain here, because we're not looking for easy, 10-levels-below-us opponents that would give us "free speedups", but rather closer rated cartells where we can have interesting battles with close wins to either cartell. But as it is, in 9 out of 10 wars, one side will win almost without an effort because the other side simply gives up without a fight.

This problem is furthers emphasized with the new updates in the game, introducing Don Neto talents and Warden Towers, which makes the cash/resource flow of our cartell members and most likely others as well, close to negative and especially when it comes to cash.

Participating in a Cartell War with BoG with torchers cost us 3.6 mill cash. Now, when we cant even attack other players on the map, because we have not spent $1000+ on the roulette to obtain 4/8/12 Davids with the necessary required tallents and skills, it is simply impossible to get enough cash/resources to make the game flow as it used to. Having to reinforce our troops for 1.2 mill cash everytime we try a difficult base, either because we want to improve ourself by testing matchups against better players or simply to try to get resources and improve our rating level, it isnt feasible in the long run. The only option once past level 61 is to "invest" hundreds of dollars on Davids, which may even disappear before the year is over. And with players that have already spent close to that amount on previous updates and meta game sicarios we simply feel we get no return for the money we spend.

The core group of our cartell members have played this game now for 3-4 years. Many are expressing such deep frustrations at the moment that they are seriously considering to quit. Most likely these frustrations are equal among other cartell members around the world. We love to play, we love to compete, but FTX, if you continue down this road you will loose a lot of players in the mid-range to nearly top-range players because no one is interested in loosing 9 out of 10 cartel wars. And then you would be left with only the very top 1% of players and the bottom 10-20% of players. This is certainly not in any on of us' interest, so please do something to fix this as I would hate to see my cartell crumble after having spent 3 years playing and had the joy of becoming friends with many people through this game.
Few players keep playing
David&smoke, warden tower ecc ecc
People are tired about this, only in my cartel 7 top players are quit the game,there aren’t new players who make war, just the same person in the same cartel
1 year ago it wasn't like that
 

Tampico Sunrise - Shark

Active Member
Joined
Mar 10, 2019
Messages
150
I think the problem is there are not enough cartels to find even matchups *at any given time*. So the game matches up 2 cartels that are “close enough”.

A unified war time could solve the problem. Or 2-4 firm war times to accommodate all time zones. That way there would be way more cartels to choose from, and with more choices the matchups could be more fair. No doubt in my mind Ftx knows how to accurately match up cartels for war.

Fair = possible for either team to win based on skill, efficiency, offensive specializations/investments, smart choices of which bases to attack.. etc..

This would disrupt planned wars between cartels who enjoy competing with friends and rivals, so an option to start wars with specific cartels would be nice if unified war times is something Ftx is considering.

All the players who started new lean cartel compounds and are easily winning wars are quiet on these issues. But they want fun wars in addition to winning. They’re bored and putting in easy work just to watch their war record. Fun is the whole point. They know they would have more fun with more even matchups.
 

Tampico Sunrise - Shark

Active Member
Joined
Mar 10, 2019
Messages
150
Another idea for making everyone happier is to change something with war record. War record is the most important way to rate a cartel’s performance, and stays with them forever. Perhaps showing different views like last 10 wars, 3 months, 6 months, all-time would help encourage cartels to go hard now. And not be discouraged by their old cartel’s 40% win ratio. It might encourage players not to quit. Poor war record of some cartels is just a permanent reminder to quit or start over. I’m suggesting this because I want people to keep playing.

It would also help potential new recruits see if they are successful recently, which is a better measure of whether a cartel is worth joining.
 

Goose

Member
Joined
Sep 23, 2018
Messages
71
Another idea for making everyone happier is to change something with war record. War record is the most important way to rate a cartel’s performance, and stays with them forever. Perhaps showing different views like last 10 wars, 3 months, 6 months, all-time would help encourage cartels to go hard now. And not be discouraged by their old cartel’s 40% win ratio. It might encourage players not to quit. Poor war record of some cartels is just a permanent reminder to quit or start over. I’m suggesting this because I want people to keep playing.

It would also help potential new recruits see if they are successful recently, which is a better measure of whether a cartel is worth joining.
Great ideas here. Cartels shouldn't be judged by overall record because many have revivals and go on good runs but that isn't reflected in the record.
 

Outofcontrol

New Member
Joined
May 5, 2019
Messages
2
I could not agree more with you, Bacon!!!
Being the second largest cartel in Norway is just a curse. Since you wrote the post, things have gone from bad to worse. We have lost every single war since then due to overwhelming opponents. And since we lose every single war we participate in, it’s not very likely we’re going to get any better in near future. In order to conduct heavy upgrades in our compound, we need ammo and speedups unless we spend a --load of gold. But Hey, isn’t that what FTX wants us to do?
I don’t expect FTX to make any changes either, as that probably will affect their revenue negatively.
So I’m not holding my breath really....
 
Last edited by a moderator:

April - FTX Games

Administrator
Staff member
Joined
Apr 1, 2019
Messages
700
Another idea for making everyone happier is to change something with war record. War record is the most important way to rate a cartel’s performance, and stays with them forever. Perhaps showing different views like last 10 wars, 3 months, 6 months, all-time would help encourage cartels to go hard now. And not be discouraged by their old cartel’s 40% win ratio. It might encourage players not to quit. Poor war record of some cartels is just a permanent reminder to quit or start over. I’m suggesting this because I want people to keep playing.

It would also help potential new recruits see if they are successful recently, which is a better measure of whether a cartel is worth joining.
Hi Shark, thank you for this suggestion. We are going to be adding this to our Community Concerns list.

If anyone has any other further suggestions for how to improve Cartel Wars, I would be happy to hear them.
 

ACK Kappa

New Member
Joined
Apr 25, 2019
Messages
28
April, the Idea of a Time gap in when Cartels are matched sounds like a Fairer idea and a Focus on matching by rating and Number of players selected. The Players nominated for War are all then included and not removed for FTX to find a match... There must be Thousands of Cartels that by having an allocated time gap rather than different time zones for all Cartels to find a match might very well even out a fairer playing field for all..
 

ipasher

Member
Joined
Oct 1, 2018
Messages
69
More matching time gap? For some weak cartels it might sound as goodness, but for those who play this game only because of wars it sounds like ‘go play another game, there is nothing interesting in here’. Some scheduling of wars maybe? For example like every 2 days for 12 hours there is a gap when you can attend to a war and system will be finding you a best match. Then 12 hours for getting materials. And a 24 hours war in result.

But adding to existing matching system parameters like win/loss ratio for past 10...15 wars & time record for those wars like max 3-4 weeks w/o changing timeframes for war might result in better matching with the ones who already wait for war.

But these both might require a bit more data storage. And they both need some testing before implementation to maximize the result in more fair match
 

April - FTX Games

Administrator
Staff member
Joined
Apr 1, 2019
Messages
700
@ACK Kappa and @ipasher , thank you both very much for sharing your thoughts. We are keeping track of everything that you all are suggesting and in doing so are getting a better idea of what potential adjustments everyone likes. Please keep telling us how we can improve so that we can continue to do so.
 
Top