Pilots! An important PvP matchmaking system update has been uploaded to our servers.
The game now has three matchmaking queues depending on the ranks of ships placed into your slots:
We invite you to take part in voting and discussion of this change.
As I have been repeating for years, matchmaking by battle statistic will never work with minds of players as long as you have a distinct visual tree progression, where ships visually become stronger so you have to equalize them by rank bonuses in PvP battles.
People do not get equalization, plus equalization does not work equally for all ships.
We have been dancing around tiered and tierless system matchmaking for years, and unless you consolidate your ship progression tree , making it less 'vertical" and more “horizontal” (condensing ships in same ranks, like having 3-5 ranks instead of 15) your tierless** system will never settle in the player’s mind** plus you wont be able to properly balance the ships with just ranked bonuses. Even though the unified system where all ships play together is much better than the restricted tiered system.
Hello,
I salut to this proposal and to this poll.
This is the way to see what players like.
While I favor different tiers I would suggest change to the first Tier.
52 minutes ago, Deelena said:
1st queue for ships of ranks 1-10
On paper, this OK and much better from what we have now,
but there would be problem from old-veteran players farming new players,
so I would add that players with more then 100 or 200PvP games played would automatically be in T2.
So even if lets say I’m using R3 ship I would not be able to enter T1.
Other tiers look good to me.
Regards
Wait did this go live with the post? I was doing PvP a little over an hour ago and I was still encountering the same stingray stupidity at rank 17.
9 minutes ago, xKostyan said:
As I have been repeating for years, matchmaking by battle statistic will never work with minds of players as long as you have a distinct visual tree progression, where ships visually become stronger so you have to equalize them by rank bonuses in PvP battles.
People do not get equalization, plus equalization does not work equally for all ships.
We have been dancing around tiered and tierless system matchmaking for years, and unless you consolidate your ship progression tree , making it less 'vertical" and more “horizontal” (condensing ships in same ranks, like having 3-5 ranks instead of 15) your tierless** system will never settle in the player’s mind** plus you wont be able to properly balance the ships with just ranked bonuses. Even though the unified system where all ships play together is much better than the restricted tiered system.
On 8/11/2018 at 2:53 PM, GatoGrande said:
you know, there is a simple solution for all these rank bonuses,
remove all numbers that are in ship tree that is showing us now level=rank of ships.
This way all ships will be of the same rank.
Make all ship have the same number of passive module slots ( where are Tai’kin in not OP advocates now? 11 passive module slots on that ship ),
and finally
remove rank numbers behind modules and weapons.
The result of this will be all ships in one class (interceptors, fighters…) can use the same weapons and modules.
This way all bonuses will be absolute.
Also grinding in game for leveling modules and weapons because of different ranks that we have now would be also reduced as benefit of this.
Solutions are here, people just need to see them.
Doesn’t look like it, there is no data to download in the launcher and no EULA on the login screen.
1 minute ago, xXThunderFlameXx said:
Doesn’t look like it, there is no data to download in the launcher and no EULA on the login screen.
matchmaking is 100% server side, you don’t need a client update for these changes.
23 minutes ago, SunnySweet said:
but there would be a problem from old-veteran players farming new players,
so I would add that players with more than 100 or 200 PvP games played, would automatically be in T2.
I agree.
Veteran or Elite players should not be permitted in the 1st queue, even if their ships fall into that queue category.
How to determine who’s the Veteran or Elite player?
Simple. Either by the win ratio or just by the number of (won) games. Still, I think that 100 or 200 (won) matches, is too low. I would go for 250 or 500.
Also, I would remove all passive ranked bonuses (hull, shield resistance, damage buff, etc.) and I would slightly change how the Implant system work to compensate for this removal.
So, if you unlocked all factions up to Rank 15, you would have full access to all Implants. In other words, your pilot matters, not your ship when it comes to unlocking new technologies.
This is actually motivating players to reach the end of the Tree and thus granting them all the benefits of technological Implants that can be fully applied to any ship, without restriction.
26 minutes ago, xKostyan said:
We have been dancing around tiered and tierless system matchmaking for years, and unless you consolidate your ship progression tree , making it less 'vertical" and more “horizontal” (condensing ships in same ranks, like having 3-5 ranks instead of 15) your tierless** system will never settle in the player’s mind** plus you wont be able to properly balance the ships with just ranked bonuses. Even though the unified system where all ships play together is much better than the restricted tiered system.
I agree. Consolidation is the solution. We don’t need really need 15 Ranks, we could just have a Three-Tier or Era System that’s based on the timeline instead of Ranks for the ships.
Regardless, the Implant system would stay the same, would still be applied to all ships, if the Pilot fully progressed or progressed far enough in this system.
29 minutes ago, xKostyan said:
As I have been repeating for years, matchmaking by battle statistic will never work with minds of players as long as you have a distinct visual tree progression, where ships visually become stronger so you have to equalize them by rank bonuses in PvP battles.
People do not get equalization, plus equalization does not work equally for all ships.
We have been dancing around tiered and tierless system matchmaking for years, and unless you consolidate your ship progression tree , making it less 'vertical" and more “horizontal” (condensing ships in same ranks, like having 3-5 ranks instead of 15) your tierless** system will never settle in the player’s mind** plus you wont be able to properly balance the ships with just ranked bonuses. Even though the unified system where all ships play together is much better than the restricted tiered system.
Couldn’t have said it any better, perhaps if we also shrink the ship numbers with a tierless system it would be a really good start towards balance ideas that will stay. (by shrink i mean ships that have different roles but same texture design like idk crusader for instance, instead of 3 ships you have one that has loadout options, less grind, more depth, visually appealing, less work when in need to change textures or whatever customisation issues may come, just an idea dont bust my ballz plez)
31 minutes ago, xKostyan said:
We have been dancing around tiered and tierless system matchmaking for years, and unless you consolidate your ship progression tree , making it less 'vertical" and more “horizontal” (condensing ships in same ranks, like having 3-5 ranks instead of 15) your tierless** system will never settle in the player’s mind** plus you wont be able to properly balance the ships with just ranked bonuses. Even though the unified system where all ships play together is much better than the restricted tiered system.
Consolidation of all roles would probably lead to a giant upset. There’s a real good reason ships have higher ranks and are better than others, people work for that, sometimes incredibly hard.
Plus, not much at all was wrong with matchmaking as it was before… sure a couple games went south but there was more good than bad as far as changes in my experience.
34 minutes ago, xKostyan said:
(condensing ships in same ranks, like having 3-5 ranks instead of 15)
A true workaround is having the old 5 - tier system or even a 3 tier (1-5, 6-10, 11-17 or something) but with SLIGHT bonuses to lower ships to put them at the highest rank in the rank group.
There are easy ways to make pvp fun, balanced, and timely queue-able without ruining the entire progression line here guys. getting to the higher ranks is a large majority of the long term fun of the game. 
Also did I miss a memo or something?
1 minute ago, Comwp_ODG said:
but with SLIGHT bonuses to lower ships to put them at the highest rank in the rank group
We had the old system but it was too widespread. The biggest problem is the population count. Numbers are not on our side!
Also, NO passive bonuses for lower-ranked ships. That’s not a good solution. I want to feel each ship as it is, for what it truly is.
I like it was before, with all ranks toguether , except rank 1-4, those are clearly too low and need to be separate.
4 minutes ago, Comwp_ODG said:
Consolidation of all roles would probably lead to a giant upset. There’s a real good reason ships have higher ranks and are better than others, people work for that, sometimes incredibly hard.
Plus, not much at all was wrong with matchmaking as it was before… sure a couple games went south but there was more good than bad as far as changes in my experience.
A true workaround is having the old 5 - tier system or even a 3 tier (1-5, 6-10, 11-17 or something) but with SLIGHT bonuses to lower ships to put them at the highest rank in the rank group.
There are easy ways to make pvp fun, balanced, and timely queue-able without ruining the entire progression line here guys. getting to the higher ranks is a large majority of the long term fun of the game.
By consolidating I meant that instead of 17 ranks you have 3, but the same amount of ships, and ship base stats should be next to equal, because what is happening now, is that when your rank 1 fights rank 17, rank1 ship gets hidden bonuses to survivability and dmg to equalize it to rank17, and the only difference is the access to equipment.
The “good old” tiered system had a lot of problems, like the diversity of ships/equipment, better players playing in lower tiers, separation of the player base in a huge amount of buckets
Wow, what an interesting topic.
The “good old” tiered system had a lot of problems, like the diversity of ships/equipment, better players playing in lower tiers, separation of the player base in a huge amount of buckets
At least people played the game back then.
But nevertheless, I still love the game but I stopped playing because of MM. Waiting time was awful and no squads.
I truly hope you will find a solution. Good luck.
17 minutes ago, xKostyan said:
is that when your rank 1 fights rank 17, rank1 ship gets hidden bonuses to survivability and dmg to equalize it to rank17, and the only difference is the access to equipment.
isn’t that a good thing?
and yes, they get resistance and damage buffs. we can tweak them to work, and be legitimate. I don’t agree with having an Axe be about as tanky as ronin either.
What we have now is essentially one big group of ships in pvp that are buffed to be identical, ONLY for pvp. the changes made to matchmaking should only effect matchmaking.
in other words, Consolidation would be fine if it fixed stats for pvp… but isn’t that what we already have? I don’t want to step on every other gamemode and player progression here. we can find a fix, and I thought we had a great one last MM update.
im gonna pitch a hybrid matchmaker so don’t chew me on it: lower ships do get bonuses, but not enough to compete, not the silly 55% extra. we keep the old all-in-one format, separated by skill, whatever that ends up being.
I’ve come back here just to give my two cents on this problem, because I still have fond memories of this game from its hay day.
Let me be clear - if I am flying a Rank 4-5 ship and I get Rank 10 opponents in my game, I’d ragequit the match. If I get Rank 10 in every game, I’d ragequit the title. I imagine that very few people want to face people whose ships and gear are vastly superior to their own. Say what you like about Call of Duty being a scrub game for filthy casuals, it feels good to be able to go up against a guy with 20 Prestige as a total newbie and wipe the floor with him. That never happened when I played. Ship ranks may not have mattered in T1 at all, and mattered less in T2, but from T3 onwards they counted.
Honestly, I think you just need to decide what game you’re trying to make. I remember when this game was absolutely brutal - when T3 was heavily team-orientated and low kill matches were the norm (and nobody played T4 because it’d be a 4v4 with ESB and they’d wipe the floor with you). It was hard work, but it was also immensely satisfying. Beta T3 was essentially an ancient Greek battle of two sides shoving each other, not doing much damage, until one side broke and it became a total massacre. Not newbie friendly by a long shot, but the game has never recaptured that feeling of teamwork and high pressure play.
For me, the high point was the pre-Destroyer era. T3 was a fun, varied experience that was good for casual and serious players alike. T5 was hyper competitive, just in a different way to before. The customisable R15 ships added something new to the mix and were a goal people could work towards without them feeling completely broken. It was when the game devolved into a mess of lootbox orientated crafting that it died.
I personally don’t think this is the right poll you should be making. I think the bigger problem is that you don’t know what game you’re making. Every major overhaul of the game resulted in anger and masses of experienced players quitting, which I suspect is what led to the game pushing more and more content aimed at forcing people to gamble for ship parts in the hope they’d win a disgustingly overpowered ship. Every time we told you that you were making the wrong choice, you did it anyway. Every time we told you we liked things as they were, you shook up the status quo.
The game used to be great. If you are really serious about fixing the game’s problems, try asking yourself why it was so much more popular back then and making real changes to go back to that style of play.
3 hours ago, Deelena said:
Pilots! An important PvP matchmaking system update has been uploaded to our servers.
The game now has three matchmaking queues depending on the ranks of ships placed into your slots:
- 1st queue for ships of ranks 1-10
- 2nd queue for ships of ranks 7-12
- 3rd queue for ships of ranks 11-17
We invite you to take part in voting and discussion of this change.
I miss somthing or not 
Here is the biggest problem with your survey.
The Survey itself.
Game issues are not black and white, yes or no. You need to actually pay attention to what players are saying in this discussion.
Server population is an issue. Veteran exploitation of rank is an issue. Ship normalization is not a solution, because it completely removes the feeling of progression. 3 tiers isn’t enough, as it will ruin the game for anyone near the bottom of the tier. Premium ships at the top of their tier need to be bumped up to the next tier, so that it feels like both an advantage and a challenge. Example rank 9 premium would move up to rank 12 matchmaking(this would stop all the ‘pay to win’ talk). Also please give manufactured ships at least 25-50% of the synergy/credit bonus that premium ships have, as they are a significant investment of time and materials. Until game population increases, add bots (with difficulty scaled to the tier level and pilot rating) to PvP. Make pilot rating matter so that players want to get better and play in the higher echelon of PvP matches - Very small synergy or credit bonuses to higher pilot rating pvp battles (similar to fleet strength - so not large enough to cause complaints from lower players).
Would a developer please at least respond to this post with a ‘yes we read it’, so that our community can believe in you again? We would like to believe in you.
Thank you
About this MM 2-5 workin 3-5 not
2