It’s time to shorten prep day again

[Hippopotenuse]

Years ago, when prep day was first shortened to 23hrs in length, it largely alleviated the problem of progressively getting later in the day until eventually losing a day of warring time. Now, either due to matchmaking refinements or simply fewer players (most likely some of both) it often takes much longer to get a match, especially if you restart every hour to avoid wild mismatches as seems to still be recommended.

For this reason I believe the time has come for a 22h, 21h30m, or 21h prep day.

[joshsgrandad]

Years ago, when prep day was first shortened to 23hrs in length, it largely alleviated the problem of progressively getting later in the day until eventually losing a day of warring time. Now, either due to matchmaking refinements or simply fewer players (most likely some of both) it often takes much longer to get a match, especially if you restart every hour to avoid wild mismatches as seems to still be recommended.

For this reason I believe the time has come for a 22h, 21h30m, or 21h prep day.

Another option would be to fix your roster..
And stop resetting the spin, because there is no evidence of the MM parameters widening as the search time increases.. It times out after 24 hours now instead of giving a bad match.

[FatDaveMeow]

We usually war with TH12-13's, maybe some 11's thrown in sometimes to make numbers. We spin 20-25vs at around 6pm-8pm GMT and always match within 15-20mins. Sounds like you might be spinning a less common roster.

[Skrags]

) it often takes much longer to get a match, especially if you restart every hour to avoid wild mismatches as seems to still be recommended.

As Josh has suggested, there is no evidence of MM parameters widening, and i wouldn't recommend restarting searches.

If you are experiencing long war search times, the most common reason these days, is likely to be purely that you are running an uncommon roster, hence reducing the pool of similar clans to match.

[Rizzob]

As Josh has suggested, there is no evidence of MM parameters widening, and i wouldn't recommend restarting searches.

If you are experiencing long war search times, the most common reason these days, is likely to be purely that you are running an uncommon roster, hence reducing the pool of similar clans to match.

Isn't a long spin time indicative that the matchmaker is more likely to find a bad match (if one at all)? In this case, stopping the spin, adjusting your roster, and re-spinning might not be a bad tactic.

But re-spinning with the same roster is like the tongue-in-cheek definition of insane - doing the same thing and expecting different results.

[OnyxDS]

And stop resetting the spin, because there is no evidence of the MM parameters widening as the search time increases..

Yes there is - the distribution of search times.

The actual, mechanical search will take a small fraction of a second. Matches almost always last for minutes or longer. So something has changed in the system state which makes a match happen at start+30 minutes when it didn't match at start+0. There are 2 possibilities that I can think of:
(1) Another clan has started searching which is a good match
(2) The search has slowly been widened

In the first case, 50% of matches would be instantaneous, when you are the second clan in the described situation. And the other 50% of search times would follow a particular distribution (albeit with some time of day variations), with a very long tail, even for the same lineup, and any given time being more likely than any longer search time.

That's not the case. Very few searches are instantaneous; nor do they decay in the correct way after that instantanous period. Instead they are, for my clan, clustered around the 10-40 minute range.

There's a 3rd option in fact for a particular search algorithm. One way of implementing the search would be to maintain N clans in the pool at all times. Once there are N+1 clans, take the clan that's been searching longest, and match them to their closest match, no matter how good or bad. However this still gives a particular distribution of times: half of matches take the time required for the clan to be the longest searching. It would vary a bit by time of day, but half of matches should take a particular time with nothing longer. Which again is very much not what is observed.

There was once a more advanced version of this suggested where the match for the longest waiting clan has some safety limits, so they don't match if it would be TOO awful and instead they're put back at the start of the queue. But this would still produce a time distribution with a big spike at one exact time that we don't see. It would also mean that if you didn't match then (say at 30 minutes) the chances would be exceedingly high that you'd never match. Whereas, although wacky clans can time out, those with only somewhat odd lineups can AFAIK match consistently in a few hours.

Which all leads back to the search widening over time.

Anyway, I'm pretty sure Mr D once confirmed that it did widen.

[joshsgrandad]

Yes there is - the distribution of search times.

The actual, mechanical search will take a small fraction of a second. Matches almost always last for minutes or longer. So something has changed in the system state which makes a match happen at start+30 minutes when it didn't match at start+0. There are 2 possibilities that I can think of:
(1) Another clan has started searching which is a good match
(2) The search has slowly been widened

In the first case, 50% of matches would be instantaneous, when you are the second clan in the described situation. And the other 50% of search times would follow a particular distribution (albeit with some time of day variations), with a very long tail, even for the same lineup, and any given time being more likely than any longer search time.

That's not the case. Very few searches are instantaneous; nor do they decay in the correct way after that instantanous period. Instead they are, for my clan, clustered around the 10-40 minute range.

There's a 3rd option in fact for a particular search algorithm. One way of implementing the search would be to maintain N clans in the pool at all times. Once there are N+1 clans, take the clan that's been searching longest, and match them to their closest match, no matter how good or bad. However this still gives a particular distribution of times: half of matches take the time required for the clan to be the longest searching. It would vary a bit by time of day, but half of matches should take a particular time with nothing longer. Which again is very much not what is observed.

There was once a more advanced version of this suggested where the match for the longest waiting clan has some safety limits, so they don't match if it would be TOO awful and instead they're put back at the start of the queue. But this would still produce a time distribution with a big spike at one exact time that we don't see. It would also mean that if you didn't match then (say at 30 minutes) the chances would be exceedingly high that you'd never match. Whereas, although wacky clans can time out, those with only somewhat odd lineups can AFAIK match consistently in a few hours.

Which all leads back to the search widening over time.

Anyway, I'm pretty sure Mr D once confirmed that it did widen.

i get where that may be theoretically correct..
But my small anecdotal evidence suggested otherwise..
it always took a long time to match, but once it did, the result was fine..
I put this down to waiting for that opponent to start their spin, rather than any widening of matching parameters..
I have also had spins that time out with a similar roster, which gives some substance to my view (on a personal basis)

There are also the posts whereby people have complained about a bad match, even tho the spin was quick..
So far as official response, i thought they confirmed it didnt widen.. But that was some time ago, so my memory may simply be wrong.

be it as it may.. I personally dont ever stop and restart.. I havent seen any reason for doing so (Ever since they changed the algo some time ago).. i take on board your comments, and will adjust my responses accordingly.

[2222]

My recommendation on the whole restart thing is to do so if you have a common roster that usually matches fast and for some odd reason this particular time it does not. You're in a clan that wants an even match and likely will get it pretty quickly on the new search. This assumes the clan isn't bad at war and hoping to get an uneven match. There are plenty of terrible clans out there that are happy to get one uneven match in their favor and the next against them.

On the other hand, if I was running a very odd roster, while I suspect search widens as time goes on, there also is the reality of me needing a similar enemy clan to search at the same time. So, I'd let it keep going.

This all applies to classic war, of course. In CWL the advice from SC has consistently been to just let the search keep running.

[Thegreatpuma]

I've not seen any evidence of matches getting worse based on search time. We usually stop simply because we don't want wars ending in the middle of the night.

[crazybod]

I've not seen any evidence of matches getting worse based on search time. We usually stop simply because we don't want wars ending in the middle of the night.

We war with all th13s,25s,30s,sometimes 40s and the search takes anywhere between instantaneous and just a few minutes. Maybe it has something to do with OP's line up.