For a long time, one of the biggest pieces of feedback from players has been centered around matchups among King Levels. Going up against a player who is several levels higher than you while playing the game, for example.

Today we are addressing this in a maintenance break!

A global change coming to solo matchmaking.

Players will now get matched by default with players who have a King Level +1 or -1 to their own (alongside an equal match).

E.g King Level 12 player will get matched with King Level 11, 12 or 13.

Note: This rule will not change any current matchmaking rules based on Trophy counts.

However to keep matchmaking times acceptable, these parameters will increase by a further +1 / -1 every 5 seconds of search time, up to a maximum of +3 / -3 at 10 seconds.

This is to ensure that players are not getting stuck searching for a game for long periods of time.

The exception to the above rule is in Clan Wars 2, where the time to increase King Level matching will be 20 seconds instead of 5 seconds. This is due to feedback about current Clan Wars matchups, which we hope this will address and allow more time to find an opponent with a King Level nearer to your own.

These changes will go live shortly in a maintenance on Thursday Feb 25th.

We will be monitoring this matchmaking change to see if any issues arise and will make changes if we see any negative impacts, so (fair warning here) this might not be a permanent change if we see players unable to get matches, for example.