Match Making Sense and Sensability by Wetherman

How much better would the game become to put some structure and great match making back into the game of Star Conflict.  There have been so many changes and upgrades to the game, mostly improvements of sorts, but whenever they come it seems to be one step forward and two steps backwards.

It would be great to reintroduce a graduation system and achievement process back into the game’s match making to make the battles more interesting and far less frustrating than it has currently become.  The idea of the Tier system should never have been abandoned.  It was necessary to organize and make sense in match making.  It was meant to match the players skill and progress of ship rank availability to test themselves against other pilots with the same basic levels as a means of fair play and pride in their accomplishments.  As we can all see now the battles have become grounds of complete chaos and ridiculous match ups.  I want to be matched up against better and equal pilots, but want the odds to be reasonable and fair.  I don’t want the choice of the level of match up in this way to be totally taken out of the pilot’s choice as it has now become.

When I go into battle with my Tier 3 ships (ranks 7 thru 9) I expect to be up against other players using those same ranked ships, so I’m matched against players who choose to use the same level of ships regardless of their skill level.  They may have better or lesser skills than I do, but the odds are fair because we have access to the same Tier level of ships and when we go up against a pilot using a higher ranked ship within that Tier level at least there is a chance of winning the match with your lower ranked ship, and with good team work, winning the battle.  This should be the same for whatever Tier level a player should want to play in so they may work on their skill levels and really enjoy playing the game.  As new pilots progress and become better pilots their skills are rewarded by achievements, medals, titles, etc., while they gain more synergy and vouchers in order to purchase higher level ships to progress up through the experience of being a Star Pilot.  Eventually they should become a seasoned pilot and join the ranks of the elite and choose their own destiny in the game play of Star Conflict.

As it is now, there is no choice of the real experience.  We go into battles and find that we are up against pilots with ships outside of the Tier level we are in and are being completely out gunned with no chance of winning in spite of our efforts, skills and team work.  As I sited in my example using Tier 3 ships being matched up against Tier 4 ships is just no contest and a fair contest should be the underlying foundation of the game.  This has been lost because the outcome has become predictable as it is when the Captain in killed in Combat Recon, the other team is going to win 99.9% of the time, only rarely will the team losing their Captain can they overcome the loss depending on the time factor and number of kills.  That’s a fair outcome though, if you don’t protect your Captain you should suffer the defeat, but still in all battle modes the odds should be heavily out weighed in favor of the other team because the match making is taking the chances of winning out of the hands of the players and skills of the pilot by mixing up the Tiers of the ships that pilots are using in battle.  Matches should only be made with pilots using their ships  within the Tier levels so that the odds are placed on a more level foundation.  We can now see pilots with rank 10 ships going into battles where the other team only has at best rank 9 ships and the pilots with the rank 10 ships are having a field day with the ability to mow down any opposition and ensuring the outcome of the battle.  This is not fair play at all.  Not one of us minds being tested against other pilots with higher ranked ships within the Tier level they are playing because there is just a chance that their skill levels will prevail in spite of the match up against a ship with more fire power, but within that Tier level, not a higher ranked ship outside of a Tier level which is not a fair match up in any sense of the word and what is the sense in playing when the odds are completely stacked against any reasonable outcome.  It has just become a joke to play the game any longer.  The game should bring back the grading system of Tier play with some variations that make sense.  Not completely abandoned the good things about the game and contort the game and lose the sense of corporations, squads, teams, and comradeship as the overall experience for players.  There has to be a reasonable sense of fairness in the experience in order to enjoy playing any game.  When it is taken away and when the sense of control for any player is taken away as in any experience in life you will lose and fail.  I’ve spoken my piece, I hope we can see some real changes for the better, or at least try to change back, start over thinking how the game should evolve and make it a better experience to look forward to, participate and enjoy.  Thanks for reading, let’s now discuss and make constructive recommendations and changes. 

Moving from tiered system to a rank progression was a second best thing ever happened to Star Conflict, right after moving to role based ship tree.

2 hours ago, xKostyan said:

Moving from tiered system to a rank progression was a second best thing ever happened to Star Conflict, right after moving to role based ship tree.

Thanks for the comment:  Please explain how it’s better because you cannot match opposite ends of the pole to balance match making using rank progression and there’s no in between either.  You can only accomplish it by using the Tier system.  Allowing for matches between Tiers or groups of three ranked ships gives extreme and unbalanced head to head matches.  A rank 7 against a rank 10 ship, without regard to type of ship (i.e., Guard versus ECM) is a huge mismatch.  Even a 9 versus 10 (e.g. an Anaconda face to face with an Anaconda-M) is not a reasonable match, the Anaconda-M will take out the Anaconda with one shot.  That’s the reasoning behind matching up ships only within Tier levels or groups of three ranked ships, however you want to sort them out.  The only way that I can see doing that is with the Tier system, you just can’t do it any other way looking at the whole ranked ship tree as a whole.  Ranks are fine, but you have to use them in conjunction with Tier or some means of grouping them within three ranks of each other.

The rank system is good. I would just make the matchmaking range to +/- 1 so any rank could only face ships from same rank and with one rank lower or higher ships. In normal pvp mode at least. But of course this will be unlikely to happen because of some unfortunate circumstances. 

You are making a TERRIBLE mistake when saying: "…I expect to be up against other players using those same ranked ships, so I’m matched against players who choose to use the same level of ships regardless of their skill level ". Using the same ship wont make games balanced at all, more skilled players will always win, since skill by far the most decisive factor to win or loose. Problem of match making comes in the mayority from players not being correctly assigned by their “skill” (what is “skill” specifically and how do you measure it? you really cant since players arent bots: behave different every game, have better synergy with certain ships and loadouts, do better along to certain players and circunstances, are under different conditions like ping/FPS, etc). I got this very clear in many situations, like for example the old sec con: everyone flying R15 ships with maxed loadouts, best team/players would always win.

About Tiers, problem with it is that starting ships will always suck and be useless: R1, 4, 7, 10 and 13. Starting players usually have to suck it up with the suckiest ships against vets that fly always the top rank ships of the tier, and repeat that over and over for each tier and faction…its not fair and renders plenty of ships useless. With the rank system you always get much more fair battles with ships of similar performance (most of the times fighting equal or +1/-1 rank, which doesnt make that much difference as you say), allowing those ships from R1, 4, 7, 10 and 13 be usefull. Also, there has been strong changes to modules and some implants to make the boundaries of each tier much less vissible: a R9 can use the same weapons and mods than a R10.

EDIT: The “ideal” scenario would be facing players of the same rank, but queue time would increase drastically and some ranks would prevent ship roles from being present in the game.