One of the main objectives of the game is to battle, and I love the game and fight a lot. And I would love to fight against my facebook friends in the friends leaderboard - but I do have a problem: 90% of my friends are below my player level, most of them very far below. I could smash their dragons in an instance - but they won't stay my friends for long if I continue to do so! And these fights would feel very wrong to me, too. I want a challenge, not a slaughter.
So could you please add a mechanism to make friends leaderboards fights more balanced? For example:

• The attacker loses 1 dragon from her attack force for every 10 levels difference that her friend is below her. If the defender is 20+ levels below, the attacker fights with only 1 dragon against her opponent's 3.

• Or the defender gets an additional dragon for every 10 levels that her attacker is above her.

• Or the attacker can only choose dragons of the same level than her opponent's. If the defender's best dragon is level 15 without any stars, then the attacker's dragons cannot be higher than level 15 and can't have any stars. If the defender's best dragon is level 32 with 2 stars, then the attacker's dragons must be level 32 or lower and have a maximum of 2 stars.

• There is no such bonus if one attacks a stronger opponent. You choose to challenge a stronger player at your own risk.

Thank you very much!

encouraging you to keep dragons of low levels/stars is against the interests of sp, they want you to spend food so you need more and spend gems for it.

Yes, you're right, of course they want us to spend money. Because game developers / designers / artists do need to eat and have homes and families like everyone else. I consider that very legitimate.

And no, I don't think that fighting with lower level dragons against lower level friends will keep players from feeding up their dragons:

• The reward that you get for winning a challenge is not really that rewarding.
• I for example do have a lot more dragons than I can level up, and I'm getting more with every event. So I'm continually feeding dragons to level them up, and I don't think that it's only me who is doing so. There are a lot of very good reasons in the game to level up your dragons.
• ...for instance: My friends are getting better, too, so I will eventually need better dragons to challenge them.
• Choosing dragons of the same level was only one suggestion. I would be very motivated to level up my dragons if I'm to fight with fewer dragons than my friends.
• I think maybe you're too pessimistic. Yes, Socialpoint wants us to spend money, but they also want us to have fun, so that we continue playing the game and tell all our friends about it. My suggestion is about having more fun in the friends challenges. Because it's not much fun if you're continually getting smashed by your higher-level friends... And I think that in that case, players would rather lose interest in the game instead of trying harder.

Cheers, ..zZZ..

i actually use the friends challenges to level up my dragons, i prefer one hit victories, because then its faster.

Maybe I'm making myself a little unpopular here... But you do realize that this is the best reason for SP to change the friends challenges rules? So that it's not so ridiculously easy any more to rank up your dragons.

Dear ////zz,

Maybe you might be getting unpopular, but those traits are also part of innovation.

Besides, SP does need to improve their arena matchmaking, and how to improve ways to increase ranking of our dragons.

I am actually glad that you started this thread, I tried before but I never get enough attention - story of my life LOL.

Frankly I have no idea at the moment how arena matchmaking could be improved. I think that trophies might be the only reliable measurement of player strength that is available in the arenas.
If you would take dragon strength into account, too, then you would get "bubbles" in the arenas where players with weak dragons were fighting only against each other and people with strong dragons were fighting only against each other. And both groups would earn similar amounts of trophies and progress through the arena. We surely don't want that.

@zzz Hi, i don't know exactly, too and your statement about same groupings might not be as positive as I first imagine (in my head, did not discuss it here).

i actually thought that was a good idea - same profiles battles each other. and if the lower profiles wants to battle with the top rankings, then they have time to improve their dragons while getting rewards in similar profile battles.

@apoli , I had some time now to gain experience with the friend's challenges and found out that I totally agree with you! Nowadays I only use the friend's challenges to rank up my dragons, and by now I'm the one who removes friends.
The reason is: Friends help each other, and the best way to do so is by deploying a baby team in your last fight so that all your friends can win and rank up their dragons easily. Every 'friend' of mine who deploys their strongest dragons (especially if they're already rank A+) gets kicked.
Here's my baby team: