As this Clan War Season comes to an end, I just wanted to comment on a problem I have noticed with Free Wins.

Free Wins are there to help low ranked clans to get wins on the off chance that they don't have enough opponents. This is great in concept, but from what I have seen this can be exploited by high rank clans to great affect.

The most common thing that I see is that 2v2 templates are often camped out by these high rank clans. The template is generally less popular, so there are fewer players. Sometimes single players join and they don't count. And other players know that these high ranked clans camp out there, so they tend to avoid it. As a result, the high ranked clan gets a Free Win because there are no opponents. They don't care if their rating gets a boost because it already is high. And if they get opponents, they are generally skilled enough to beat them anyway.

As a result, the high ranked clan has high odds of getting a double Free Win with very low risk.

Clan Wars would be more fair if either top ranked clans were ineligible for Free Wins, or did away with Free Wins entirely.

Alternatively, it would be nice if Clan Wars functioned more like QM. There would be no windows that may not fit in players' schedules, and they would be matched with available opponents. Perhaps have wide windows to join CW/QMs to keep in the same spirit, but be more flexible and less likely to need Free Wins due to unmatched players. (Or more windows, 4hrs is better than 6, but still sometimes hard to line up with schedules.)

I just wanted to know if anyone else has noticed this or had other thoughts on the matter.

I like how you avoid claiming that Masters is camping the 2v2 slot.

To prevent this issue, i suggest just dropping the 2v2 template. That will prevent masters from bullying all other clans out of 2v2, it prevents single players from not getting a game due to lack of teammates, etc...

2v2 allows me to say That I gained my clan 10 points in 10 games, and have people assume i have a 100% win rate

I think 2v2 is an ok template. My suggestion would be having people who chose 2v2 to pick a secondary template, if they are not able to be matched for 2v2 then they will be sent to a secondary template

It's not a problem with free wins, your key point is this:

And if they get opponents, they are generally skilled enough to beat them anyway.

It's ok and proper for someone to join the template they are most skilled at. If nobody can compete with them, they deserve a win.

Edited 6/14/2021 14:34:48

Fair enough. Nothing wrong with that.

I guess I was just trying to say that they scare opponents away because they are known to lurk there. As a result they get easy Free Wins that they would be unlikely to get in any other template due to the numbers of players joining.

But, as stated, if they are skilled enough to hold a template under their control, then maybe they deserve to get their Free Wins.

we need more 2v2 templates imo, one isn't enough

you can't blame someone for being good, that makes no sense

True. I agree with beep and fizzer though even my clan is scared to play 2v2 since we lost to masters :D

Not blaming them for being good.

They are well within their rights to use their skills to scare off other players out of a template. I was under the impression that Free Wins were built more to assist weaker clans. Having a strong clan exploit it seemed against it's original intention, but it appears that I am in the minority on this. I just didn't think it right to have a situation where "my clan is scared to play 2v2 since we lost to masters."

Is this actually a material issue? How many free wins are they getting? Doing a quick rough count ...

Oh wow ... only looked at the top 3 Masters players, and what I see is:

- 34 game instances actually played, among which 33 wins, 1 loss = 97% win rate among games they actually play
- 28 free wins = 98% win rate including free wins, getting free wins 45% of the time

Tbh, I don't think it would matter if they actually played those 28 games or not, they'd probably win all or most of those too. And it would be unfairly punishing to give them nothing despite being ready to play. Their win rate speaks for itself, they've earned it.

The real question is, how many games are actually being played on this template that don't include Masters? Are other clans playing on this template, perhaps at lower rating levels, leaving Masters the odd clan out (45% of the time)?

All that said ... even with such a high # of free wins, it's still not enough to keep #1 rank. MH is unstoppable this season with their ultra high participation & high win rate.

Edited 6/14/2021 15:28:33

Couldn't this problem be avoided by instead of ticking a particular template that button just has the effect of being the preferred template?

Sometimes you don't get free wins but no games at all. This is a threat for our bomb connoisseurs when we join with something like 8 players against 8 opponents. If two players from higher ranked clans join, then 2 of our players miss out on their game. In this example the matchmaking algorithm also fails to maximize the game count.

You have no power here

Free wins are not for low rated clans by design, they are for people that did not get a game, despite showing up / preparing in time to join. Lowest rating is just a factor on which clan gets them.

There are few other templates other than 2v2 with very tough competition, but simply because at least few people join, free win will rarely go to high rating clan.

I'm not sure about removing the template. If no one is willing to play, maybe it's better to add another template instead, but it's not the fault of the template itself (cause it's not that bad skill-wise), but the fact it's 2v2, so needs more participation by default.
This season however it seems we do have a bit more love for the template?

https://www.warzone.com/Clans/War?ID=4&Timeslot=580
https://www.warzone.com/Clans/War?ID=4&Timeslot=586

My suggestion would be to maybe show how many whole teams are ready for 2v2, rather than number of players, and when people join let people know they need a teammate.


Generally speaking, it would obviously be good if we could reduce the amount of free wins, but I can't think of good way to do so.
Reducing the number of timeslots or the number of templates in a timeslot would help a bit, but I don't really like those.

And one last note, from certain perspective it would actually be better for our clan to get a game, rather than a free win, seriously.


In my opinion what Norman wrote is much more of an issue, no free win and no game, without their fault, just wasted time. Sure, they may play next timeslot, but why should they be punished like that?
I don't think it's bad to change matchmaking slightly to adjust for the high participation from one clan.

Perhaps if no opponents could be found, a player (or two) in qm would get signed up?

thats a great idea @goodgame, but how long should it search for on QM? SE1W will start quickly, but 2v2 might take half an hour to start.

@Widz not getting a game is a very big issue if you can only play the last slot like me

Are there any statistics for how long it takes 2v2 to fill up in qm?

Without that info I'd just go for 5-10 minutes. About the time a realtime game would take to finish anyway.

@JK, Tbh, I think the answer to that problem is better (more) timeslots.

@all, We can't just mix CW & regular QM games. It has to be among people queued for CW. It is _clan_ wars after all ... so first they have to be in a clan, and not the same clan on each side.

BUT maximizing making matches rather than prioritizing matching ratings and templates would be better imho. I say "round down" to the next smallest/common template if you don't get a game in the one you queued for. That way there would only be 1 free game required for all queued players for an entire CW timeslot.

yep, improving matchmaking would fix a bunch of issues regarding CW. (but not Masters being too good)

Solve 1 problem at a time, JK ... we can solve the "Masters are too good" problem another day. (;