Matchmaking Process Explanations

To Developers:

 

If you would explain, perhaps a bulleted list, of how matchmaking creates the teams, players could understand why it chooses what it does, rather than complain about it and play accordingly.

 

I prefer same tier matches because eventually poor players will get good as they play more. For example, see below:

 

  • squad members will experience higher tier ships in the match

  • if you are not in a squad, your match will contain like skilled players

  • etc etc etc

 

 

 

if you could come up with an explanation similar to this, it would be a great help.

 

p.s. since most people like same tier matches, I would suggest putting it back rather than alienating most of the user base. Otherwise, this game will fail as people won’t play or pay for it.

 

Thanks!

The devs are probably too busy designing a 500 galactic standards ’ Equal Matchmaking for 3 Battles’ booster module to respond.

Matchmaking creates teams by saying “Meh, xxxx it.” and just throwing people together.

 

I don’t know what little world the developers live in, but the people playing the ACTUAL game know that throwing mixed tiers together is unbalanced. I am sick and tired of feeling useless because my ships just doesn’t have the raw DPS to compete with ships from the next tier up.

I’d love to know this as well.

 

however keep in mind that changes to MMing aren’t easy. and they will likely take time. The poll wasn’t that long ago (a week and a half maybe?) and they won’t be able to roll that feedback out immediately. they probably just released what they had already been working on, and are now working on what we really want to see. of course this makes it awkward in the waiting period. 

 

Not to mention, when they theorize a system for MMing it may not hold up in the real world. simply because of:

 

  1. Inaccuracy in w/e method they are using to determine skill due to age of the game and number of matches played by players.

 

How many matches do you expect to play before your skill level is determined? 5? 10? 100? the more matches you play, the more accurate your skill score is. 

 

  1. Players thinking they are better than they really are.

 

this is a classic in online competitive gaming. especially in team based games. “I’m stuck at only XXXX rank because bad teams keep pulling me down! I can’t carry these bad players” etc. 

 

  1. players often value ‘fun’ over ‘fair.’ 

 

Everyone hates to lose. but a fair system actually tries to force you into losing ~50% of your matches. not only that, this 50% happens over time. so a lot of times you will have streaks of losses (very unfun) or streaks of wins (fun). 

 

This happens to me a lot in League of Legends. I’ll have really good weeks, and i’ll win 10 matches in a row. othertimes i’ll have bad weeks and lose 10 matches in a row. and almost never will my match histroy look like win/loss/win/loss/win/loss. it’s usually win/win/win/loss/win/loss/loss/loss/loss/loss. this is especially true in the more competitive ranked queue. 

 

however this kind of effect is overshadowed with current MMing. because of mixing of tiers. IE: players have something to blame. “the enemy had 2 tier IV ships! we have 3 Tier 1 ships! Broken MMing! we lose because we are outclassed!” While this may be true, as a T1 ship has little hope of beating a T4, skill can be a major difference. if you put the worst pilot ever in a T4 and put the best pilot ever in a T1, the T1 still has a pretty good chance of winning. granted, this is a 1v1 situation and this is by nature a team game. Either way these kinds of things can’t be ignored. 

 

Not to mention, the highest skilled players would likely like nothing more than to take their most powerful ship against a team of lesser skilled players and just wipe the floor with them. This might be fun for the skilled player, but you have to keep in mind the bulk of your players are actually the baddies. 

 

For me, the bulk of my frustration is that this game feels like it should still be in early stages of closed beta. there are so many things that need work before the game is ready for release. The fact we’re in open beta worries me a great deal. if they were to release the game in its current state next month, it will, without a doubt, fail. 

I’m not sure you can do anything to alter being put into T2 matches as a T1. I recently, as of last night, have been put into T2’s with T1 ships. (I don’t own ANY T2!) Even after trying to switch my hanger to only starter ships with mk1 modules, I was still put into T2 matches. The only difference is a tiny bit more ability with mk3 modules to contribute by way of assists and the occasionaly kill. At no point, barring a few horribly inexperienced pilots, was I able to take a T2 ship in one to one trying multiple setups. Granted that issue is subjective an skill based. Consider that I had little trouble winning a solid 60% of my one on one fights in T1 vs T1.

 

End result…not fun; no incentive to put forth money. No amount of cash is going to fix the disparity between ship tier power levels barring them patching. If the intent was to nudge one toward buying gold ships…that seems less then intelligent since a player in my situation will still not have all the requisite faction rep to fit out said cash bought T2 ship. It apears to be a wide spread viewpoint about an issue with a simple fix… un-mix the tiers (simple) or balance the ships for mixed play (rather complex issue).

I have found one thing that seems to effect me being pushed up into T2 matches… I’ve noticed as of this morning that if I make sure to only use ships of faction level 2 or lower I stay in T1 play. However if I cue up anything like a Raptor Mk 2 or my Lynx-M, it’s back to T2 matches. Now that wouldn’t be cry worthy IF said T2 matches were say, 50/50 split of tiers, or even a variance up to 90/10 in favor of either tier. However out of the 30 or so matches played lately the mix is 8-11 T2 on each side with 1 or 2 of us T1’s… EVERY time. Consider the two ships I mentioned of mine… they were obliterated in any attempt at anything beyond hiding behind my team an taking pot shots at best. I’ll mention many on my teams did NOT appreciate that, but could not argue that I’d have no other useful effect. That’s telling… I don’t want to be there, and THEY don’t want me there. The only T2 player that IS happy to see me in those matches are the OPPOSING T2 ships which get a nice tiddy point boost for popping me repeatedly. Is that really what the dev’s see as contributing to a team in fun and useful way? Even the World of Tanks dev’s aren’t that draconian.