JWA - Surviving The Shores: Matchmaking

With Valentine’s Day TODAY and people everywhere dreaming about a romantic vacation on a beautiful sandy beach somewhere, Kelociraptor and Dr.Reeb decided to shed some light on the reality of the Nublar Shores in Jurassic World Alive. This two-part series will focus on the two biggest frustrations in Nublar Shores - Timers and Matchmaking. (If you missed our piece on Timers yesterday, you can find it HERE). While we are blessed to be able to achieve trophy counts high enough to put our toes in the sand on this illustrious beach, the reality is that life isn't always a beach, and sometimes you get sand in your crack... Here is why:

While unequal matchmaking seems to be one of the most common complaints we hear regarding all arenas, we are here to tell you that it does not get any better on the beach. In fact, it may actually be WORSE! Initially you may say that anyone over 6000 trophies has a strong enough team to face anyone else at that range (and we use the term “range” loosely), but that is simply not true. The difference between a 6k team and a 6.5k+ team is immense in terms of creature levels, boosts and strategy.

As members of several different discord servers we see (and experience) this problem from both ends of the spectrum. Most commonly we hear from the team on the short end of the stick (or the low end of the shores), because we know the bad stuff always gets shouted the loudest. “Why am I fighting this team?” or “How is this fair?” are not uncommon at all. Teams with few boosts and levels in the 27-28s getting matched up with teams that are level 30 and fully boosted. Many times, it’s a slaughtering.

Likewise however, as we are in servers that house a large portion of the top players in the game, we hear from them too! They feel bad for doing the slaughtering and exclaim things like “How is this fair to this person?” or “I just swept this poor guy, I feel bad.” Because yes, the majority of them do not like it any better than we do.

Here are some examples of the wide range of trophies people are fighting on the beach. Now, we do know that these trophy counts only reflect our opponents highest score, not necessarily their current score, BUT in our discord servers we often reach out to each other after battling in the arena and can confirm that the current trophy range between us is indeed VAST.

*All opponent names have been removed to protect the identities of both the slaughterers and the slaughtered...

Balance Matchmaking! If we were game developers I am certain that we would have figured this out by now, but alas, we aren’t! We know that Ludia has tried several different things in the past to correct these issues but they need to KEEP TRYING, because we certainly aren’t there yet. Unfortunately however, we know there isn’t an “easy” solution with so many people playing the game in their own way. This primarily includes the rank droppers who are trying to get easy incubators and/or trying to avoid the dreaded two-minute timer, which I can imagine makes it far more difficult for Ludia to get this right.

And the sad part is, there really isn't a middle ground anymore. You're either on one side or the other: slaughtering or getting slaughtered. Although it definitely happens, It is far too rare that we truly have a good game with an equal opponent whom we out-skilled or were out-skilled by. Many teams that are all level 30 are catching up with boosts now, and many teams that are heavy on boosts are nowhere near level 30 because they haven't played long enough. So the progression gap is not a straight line any longer... and matchmaking is a mess. (And you can bet Reeb stole these wise words from one of the best players in the game!)

So while we honestly don't have all the solutions, and even some of the top players in the game don't have them... we all recognize that it definitely needs changing. Perhaps the next fix won't get it right either, but perhaps the one after that will. Keep Trying Ludia! 

We want our discords to be full of MORE "Good Game" and "Oh that was so close" and "Could have gone either way!" and LESS of "Oh I am so sorry, I am not sure how/why we even matched up." We want to be able to give shout outs to those that earned it, and for those that we earned... (Speaking of which - anyone seen Bradley, Windmill, BrolyTrex, Dan and some other great players who seem to be nowhere! We have so many shout-outs to give you... Come find us!)

And last but not least, do you have any better suggestions? Any sure-fire ways to fix the broken matchmaking on the shores of Nublar (or in any arena for that matter?)  Join our discord today and let us know!