Boosts are fine everyone, matchmaking is what is broken

[Finn.the.Hylian]

Boosts arent the problem. This game would be dreadful if everyone at end game had the same lineup and all the creatures had ALL the same stats. People would begin memorizing or recording each and every hit from creature A to creature A and creature A to creature B and so on. Then they would factor in crit and buffs. It would become a mechanical ball of rolling repetition. Stat boosts allow you to have lower tier creatures become comparable to high end uniques. They also allow creatures at end game to have different stats than others of the same creature type and level. I have a stat boosted level 25 Paramaloch that I refuse to give up because more than enough times, it has saved my ass and won the match against all level 30 stat boosted creatures. I have two lvl 26 as my highest leveled creatures. Sure it’s frustrating when someone has a Thor with a boosted attack over 2600, but that’s why diversifying you’re team away from the meta team can throw these players off and get you the win. If Ludia would have started the game off with creatures getting leveled and having and gaining different stats than other creatures or if they did what Pokémon go clearly did, which was give you various critters at different levels so that you could have five Pikachus, some having higher attack and others with higher health than others it would have worked without stat boosts, but having the same exact stats as everybody else made that impossible and I’m frustrated with the boost thing too sometimes but I realize I would’ve been long gone ago quit playing thIs game if boosts weren’t in this because I don’t wanna fight against level 30 Thor with my level 30 Thor (when I get to end game) and it’s just a matter of RNG playing the game. At that point, the game would just be RNG as everyone would use the meta teams, it’s then a game of chance only; and I’m sorry but that’s sounds awful.
If you play daily, in 350 days (less than a year) and just get the daily battle incubator, you can acquire at 4 boosts each category acquire 14 attack, speed, and health boosts for free. That doesn’t include stat boost strikes (which I agree they could run these more often, 3x in two weeks sounds fair) or the 15 min, 3 hr, or 8 hr incubators to receive free boosts. The simple fact is that Ludia is a company that like every other company, they aren’t making this game because it’s their passion, they’re making it for profit. So they absolutely are going to reward players who spend more money than those who don’t. Otherwise no one would spend any money. Am I correct in that assumption? Well that sounds like the worlds worst business plan I’ve ever heard, does it not? By making the game free to download and play, they have to generate an income somehow and if people who spent money got no advantage over players who didn’t, well then they would generate zero revenue and no one would have JWA to play.
In fact, I encourage you to tell me what game out their doesn’t have to pay to play and is a free download and is an amazing game with a team of devs who do an amazing job as they do in this one? What massively popular game is free an gives no advantage to those who spend money launderers? Please everyone raise your hands and don’t all speak at once. And if you have an actual answer for this, I then ask, well why are you playing JWA then and not that amazing number one game? It’s because they don’t exist.
The matchmaking is in need of a giant fix. One that apples stat boosts more heavily in your opponents you face. Honestly an entirely new algorithm needs to be created, and possibly one that gets rid of arenas altogether because I was in the library for a while and kept fighting players with level 28-30 fully stat boosted creatures against my level 21-25 fully stat boosted creatures and would often lose 9-12 matches in a row bringing me to the aviary. First battle there I would absolutely destroy the next player I went against bringing me back into the library and would then win 3 and lose 2 until that time that I would plummet back down to the aviary only to stay in there for one match. Also, perhaps rewarding players who join the tournaments with stat boosts above 2-2-1 until rank 5000 or whatever to only get 5-5-3. No incentive to play a tournament that is anything but skilled with epic and common leveled 26 across the board. That is more RNG based than skill based in every way. And that’s precisely how this game would play if stat boosting didn’t exist. And for those who wonder why stat boost refunds are only half of what is put in, that’s because if you got a full refund, then after 30 boosts x 8 creatures, no one would buy any more stat boosts sbd they wouldn’t generate a profit after that point. Cuz id simply refund all boosts on one creature to put them in another creature if I changed out a member of my team. You essentially wouldn’t need any more boosts after that.
If they took away stat boosts (and believe me, I get just as frustrated as everyone else does because level 30 boosted creatures out power mine not only because higher levels means higher attacks and health but for every level they have that many more stat boosts they can apply to their already higher leveled attacks and health), I would demand a refund for all I’ve spent and quit this game forever. I don’t wanna play a turn based RNG game, I’d rather play Candy Crush or something dreadful like that.
One more note, the speed equation in this game is screwed up and rewards players with better rarity and higher levels regardless of the speed of your creature is faster. That is definitely broken and deters me from stat boosting any speed on creatures or buying those boosts until I’m level 30 when rarity and levels can’t win as they’d be the same.

And I’m sorry but if you’re mad that Lucia wants to make money, they please give cry somewhere else. No duh they want to make money. Do you go to work everyday and bring home a zero figure income? Of course not, that’s absurd. Or do you get a ps4 or xbox1 game for free and not pay anything a month for subscription or online charge and the game is amazing and beautifully developed with online pvp capabilities and continued updates? If you do, then go play that and stop complaining about stat boosts. You’re not forced to play this game or spend money on it, and since you believe non pay to play win games that are free to download exist, why do you spend another second on this game at all? I did one, am so glad with the boosts, and yes, I did like the original boost system better and right now the speed boost equation is considerably broken, but I can pretty much guarantee you that Ludia likes being a company and the employees love getting paid for work instead of free labor, so the game would have one of two choices, either pay to win or charge you a $150 to download. And no one is stopping you from creating your own game that you think could easily outdo this one and you could offer it for free and do all the hundreds of thousands of man (and woman) hours necessary to create and upkeep it. Good luck on that endeavor.

[anon6342928]

Wow that’s long. Also I think both matchmaking and boosts are the problem (Obviously boosts make the arena harder unless your team is near max boosted or is max boosted) since the matchmaking is only trophy based at 5k+, you run into people with teams stronger than yours all the time because of either 1) they are droppers and farmed arena incubators and dbi, 2) they bought boosts from the store, or 3) they have some type of way to alter the matchmaking system so that this happens. Boosts are the problem. it’s what makes people lose all the time.

[Finn.the.Hylian]

But if you always won, wouldn’t you end up fighting the top players with higher leveled creatures and they would win and you would go back down. Boosts are just a way of expanding the scope of the levels. If we could level creatures to level 90 instead of 30, then it would be the same as level 30 being the max but boosts in there to change it up. But with 90 levels each creature still has the same exact stats as another similar creature at the same level. With boosts I can have a level 24 indorat g2 with a substantially higher attack than your indorat g2 at level 24 and you have substantially higher health. It allows us to alter the stats to our liking along the way to the max level.

[Finn.the.Hylian]

Though I agree that matchmaking after 5000 trophies is absolutely broken as power levels no longer apply only trophy levels. I have complained for 3 months straight to CS about that especially as the top players get over 7300 trophies at the end of the season now, I think 6000 or 6500 trophies should be when power levels are faded out of the matchmaking algorithm

[Finn.the.Hylian]

Essentially everyone is really upset at the pay to play factor, not the boosts. If Ludia gave everyone all free boosts on all their creatures, would you continue playing. Then everyone could tailor their creatures to their liking. Or would you rather play against no stat boosted creatures with all the same stats at the same levels? No diversity in creatures, which would then beg the reason why do even have levels for them. Let all be level 1 creatures with the same stats. Super boring right. Without an ability to alter level 30 creatures to your liking, some want super high health, others want more attack and some like even across the board, but regardless without diversity in stats (meaning every level 25 Thor has the same attack, etc…) then this game would get old quick. And if Ludia gave out free boosts or the ability to alter your creature to make them different than everyone’s creature of the same kind, then no one would make a complaint about boosts. It would be about matchmaking because level 25 would still be stronger than level 21. And say they did give us all free stat boosts, but charged everyone $500 to download the game, would you do it? My point exactly. People want the game for free and to not put any money into it and still be number one. But then no one would put money into it, as why would someone. Here Ludia, here’s $500 of my money, please take it cuz I live free players who pay nothing still beating me. I wouldn’t, would you?
So that’s what the ultimate root cause of everyone’s frustration is, pay to win, simple as that. Who has put in over $2000 in this game towards stat boosts and Hayes stat boosts giving them an advantage? Anyone, anyone at all? Didn’t think so. Those players issues lie in the matchmaking being broken. And that’s the real problem. But until you’ve put in a bunch of money to pay the hundreds of employees salaries, the computers, the desks, the rent for the offices, the internet and other various equipment, the servers, the advertising and marketing company, and the various other costs made to make this game a reality, you shouldn’t complain at all. How can you complain about something that was free and has costed you nothing? And if you have our money into it, that means you we’re trying to get an advantage over other players, even a dollar was sought out to become better or stronger in the game faster than fellow players and now your upset that someone else was able to put more money in than you did. But both of you had the same goal in mind.

[Finn.the.Hylian]

One last thing. I have almost my entire team max boosted. Yet I sat around 5100-5400 trophies for about 3 months. You don’t think I lost too. Boosts haven’t brought me to number 1 yet, so boosts can help you win, yes but doesn’t guarantee a win.
Also I played against a player whose name was NoStatBoosts the other day. Level 30s a 29 and a 28 on his strike team. I went after the match and looked and sure enough, not one of his creatures had one boost on them. I only saw 2 of his creatures in action because he massacred me, with slightly lower leveled creatures with 22-26 stat boosts on each one. He sure didn’t need any stat boosts to beat me. He slaughtered my team. And I am higher up than we’re I should be rendering my skill level to be better than average. His skill was exceptional. So either be upset at pay ti play and find a game that doesn’t want revenue and yet somehow will be as well developed as JWA and play that non-existent game or pay to win. Like everything else in life. Sorry not meaning to offend, but logically Ludia doesn’t care if free players leave and don’t come back. Why would they. In the end, they supply a good, and in return want revenue for that good. They don’t mind having a free trial to entice consumers to try it and then commit revenue to acquire the good and in fact, they went further by allowing that good to remain free, without providing revenue and thus I don’t grasp how that consumer has any right to say anything about that good that they did not purchase. And again, if you made a purchase, then you’re ultimately upset that other people paid more and got a bigger advantage, which you have the power to change that, by providing a bigger revenue stream for the good than they do. Be mad at capitalism as a whole then.

[Sixty-Four]

You should break your writing into paragraphs. So that it’s not so long it makes it harder to read it.

It makes it easier to go through instead of a huge wall of text mate. So no harm meant. Just giving a tip for you there.

Boosts aren’t always the problem but a lot of times they’re. Sometimes I can lose to a team 3 levels lower than me. Just because of boosts. But I see what you mean about variety.

Boosts at the same time make it hard to have a real creature variety because you get stuck with your boosted dinos.

[Finn.the.Hylian]

Noted and will edit that last post and responses and in future posts. I don’t take offense at all, feedback and criticism is really only offensive to those unwilling to accept change. And that’s unfortunately the only rule in existence, the only constant thing in life is change.
I do agree that boosts have their issues in those who have them, such as making it harder to diversify your team as investing 22-25 boosts per creature 8x makes you less likely to invest in other creatures, but that’s really on the players. I didn’t have to put all my boosts on my strike team and could have spread them across all my legendaries and uniques, giving them 4 or 5 boosts each, but that’s a matter of personal preference. The only real way they could possibly phase out boosts this far into the games development would be to release another 100 creatures at once, so there isn’t a pool of just 25-30 end game creatures to pick from. If there were 100 uniques with all different stats and moves, then stat boosts wouldn’t be necessary. But with every Thor starting at the same stats and gaining the exact number of stats per the sane level increase, and only having 25-30 total creatures, the end game players would have left the game in sheer boredom long ago. Being able to alter the stats either could have happened in the beginning if game with RNG deciding how much your attack goes up per level thus creating different stat levels at end game,Ike PGo;
Or the way Ludia did it, by giving us the option of altering our stats so we are not all the exact same thing. And since they went the route of acquiring one creature and leveling that up instead of us darting the same creature in the wild and collecting multiples of the same creature with varying stats, that meant the only way to not end up in monotony is allowing us (and of course, our money) to alter the stats to our liking.
Because even if we got creatures with varying starting stats and leveled them up with various increases based on RNG, people would complain that their initial creature started with all lower stats than someone else’s and that’s not fair. PGo got around that by allowing you to collect multiples of the same exact Pokemon, all with varying stats and allowing you to keep the one you have or trade it out or keep them both. However once you leveled a legendary with all the dna required to do so and you got a new legendary with lower stats than your friend, you would be upset as going back to do it again in hopes that RNG will treat you better on the next time around would simply make you complain about dna requirements as it would take forever to get the best RNG hybrid legendary or unique.
If broken down logically, Ludia could have made JWA or Jurassic Pokemon Go as the biggest difference besides battle mechanics is in the way creatures are acquired and leveled. And those are the only two ways to do this. My father is a seasoned and avid Pokemon ho player. He’s collected them all around the world, goes to their conferences, hosts regular 25+ people in raid parties and spends probably 12 hours a day of his retired life playing that game. Also he retired from teaching AP stats and Calculus in high school after 22 years and him and I have discussed these mechanics at length, mostly due to both of us thinking our game is the better one.
I don’t mean to upset anyone with my comments, but it’s hard to hear people complain constantly about something they’re getting for free. Seeing how I’ve put my fair share of money into this game, I feel my complaints are unheard because it’s hard to filter them out from all the free players who complain. I’m sorry but I was taught if you were given something free, that you should appreciate it and even if you don’t, you don’t complain about it. Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth. Maybe I was raised in a different moral system than most others.
And if you have paid money into the game, then you we’re trying to gain an advantage over fellow players sbd thus have no right to complain because others put more money than you and are now getting a better advantage than you are.
And honestly I haven’t played against anyone lower level or at my creatures levels since I only had rare creatures and common ones. Since then I have only played against players higher than I, in fact I was in the aviary with one legendary and the rest rare or epics. I didn’t get my first unique until I got into the library, which for about 4 months has been my home until finally today I made it to the gyrosphere Depot. I still currently have 4-8 legendaries and uniques prior to the boa update that need to be unlocked and of course all the upper level creatures from these past 2 updates unlocked. Lately I haven’t went against an opponent who’s average creature level wasn’t above 28, sans the tournament. I was usually battling 6-7 leveled higher creatures with just as many, if not more stat boosts than my own.
I understand how frustrating stat boosted creatures can be but in my mind, they all find their place in their respective arenas eventually, they may be lower level but the stats are higher, well then they should be winning and at a higher arena stance than you. That’s the biggest problem, which is matchmaking related is people need to stop looking at the number next to their creatures.
It’s irrelevant.
What matters is the numbers next thing their attack and health and speed. That’s how matchmaking should be done. No arena levels, no creature levels. No player levels. All of that in matchmaking is irrelevant. I want a match of equal strength to be made against ST another player. All that matters in making that creature as close to equal to mine is its attack, health and speed. Simple as that. And since ludia can’t fix thst oroblem, that’s what everyone should be upset wuth.
Does that make sense? Or am I delving too deep into logic and ignoring emotion because often I can do that as I view emotions whether love or hate, they are all the same thing, the opposite if reason and logic. Cuz I feel my logic is absolutely sound in my debate

[Ardens]

[Jeff_Moog]

Yes matchmaking is a problem, but we cant tell how much of a problem coz boosts swamp everything. Same with arena balance. No idea how well balanced everything is coz boosts smother it.

Get rid of boosts, then we can see what else needs fixing and how.

[Poezzzie]

Read the best part, left the rest. But continuing your theory… this would only be the fact if Boost were applied after you’ve reached max level. So if you’ve reached lvl 30 and you’re in the upper arenas then you apply boosts to avoid the cap. Also this should mean that when you drop you can’t use these boosted creatures until you’re back up there.

[Detonatress]

The boosts don’t bother me as long as I am not pitted against maxed out stuff (meaning lvl 30 with huge amount of boosts, whereas my highest level is a lvl 28 Kaprosuchus that’s barely boosted). Yeah, I have a ton of boosts allotted to the best of my crew (Erlidom, Erlikospyx, and a T10 HP Smaxima), but none of those boosts were bought, they were won. The only advantage I have over others is the time I’ve spent gathering these.

[DragonHunter]

TLDR,

10 characters

[Schtemty]

Ok Finn you’ve made your points, and made them well. Sadly in way too much detail for me to have read them all but here’s my take on it.

We played this game for almost a year without boosts.

This is an important fact to remember, since those of us who played without them can remember how different it was. There were issues like speed ties, monotonous battles and so on, but generally when we won or lost it was simply down to rng, skill, or luck. Never because the opponent had spent more money to make their identical Dino better than ours.

Speed boosts took away the only true balance in the game, and early on Ludia had to alter the effect of them as people had TRex faster than Velociraptor, yet ironically that’s exactly how Ludia marketed them!

So we are now in the third version of boosts, and they have been available for over three months to buy daily now. Thus making those willing to pay have the opportunity to sail past those who just use the free ones so much easier. Remember boosts were only available for sale once or twice a week until three months ago.

Of course in a capitalist society companies need to make money.
But there are much better ways to make it than implementing boosts in the way they have been done.

[Qiew]

[Kwaack]

Was it NoStatBoosts or me, UnBoosted?

[Odinsviper]

My son asked me why they don’t disable boosts for trophy battling leaving it completely unboosted. But leaving boosts for strike towers, and adding boosts into friendly battles. That way boosts could stay, incubator battling would be based on skill and friendlies could be a boosted marathon. He makes a lot of valid points. I’m not sure I want to get into that whole conversation with him. Lol

[Dinotris]

Boost didn’t ruined the game, agree on that. Can’t agree that boosts make fights more interesting. Arena was way more fun for me before boosts. Yes you know exact damage, thats why you need to outplay opponent to win in matches of equal lvl creatures. Thats why I like skill tournaments.

To be honest, matchmaking was never good or equal. Though current one is still better than that when they tried to improve it and they broke arena completely.

What some people can’t accept or understand is, that there is impossible to have fair matchmaking in this game. Creature lvls before boosts was closest to fair matchmaking. Your suggestion @Finn.the.Hylian about attack, health speed numbers to be considered in matchmaking, would kill the arena. Why? Top 3 arenas already have limited number of players and this would make finding an opponent almost impossible. We are from all over the world - different timezones. Everybody build their team as they want. So how you imagine finding a match for your team when there are so many ways to boosting creatures.

Current system wouldn’t be so bad if it would be like this from start. Though they messed up twice and everybody had many boosts and cash to use. Soon after reset overboosted Thors appeared, killing fun for many players. These monsters also affected, how, many players boosted their creatures. Even more monsters appeared and most players were forced to use boosts to either stay where they are or climb higher.

Matchmaking up to Aviary allow players with unbalanced teams and boosted teams to go way higher than they should be. Up to Aviary also team strenght counts and then reality hits many teams with matchmaking based only on trophies from Library up. Matchmaking based on trophiest surely isn’t best possible. Though they still didn’t find better solution.

I don’t mind if player, that spends thousands of real money, is higher than me. Though they should find the way to make battling enjoyable even for free to play players, otherwise most of us in top arenas, that will stay, will soon play mostly bots.

[Qiew]

Matchmaking is so broken. (This was in library)
I got to face this team at 5030ish (pics posted in the order of the match)

i know it is trophy based here, but how is this player so low?

[Isaah_Wii]

I don’t like boosts, wish they were never added at all, but i can sure live with them. My issue with boosts is the current boost system that favors tanky dinos that mostly need only 2 stats boosted, and make speedster type dinos worse because they need all 3 stats boosted. When the boost system forces you to bench a whole class of dinos then there’s clearly something wrong with It. The current boost system is bad for variety. Every end game top player with maxed boosted creatures can attest to that, as they avoid using speedsters on theirs teams and many plan to bench the current ones because they just can’t catch up to the rest of tanky team members.
I know Ludia needs to make money and that boosts are here to stay, but i wish they would rethink the current boost system so we can have more variety.