Letting people join matches in progress, or launching matches that are not full, is a major flaw that has ruined many a game. This is doubly problematic when you don’t have any kind of matchmaking balance system.
Now consider the following situation, done with both an auto-balance and without.
With Balance:
Tier 5 match loads up. 3 ESB and a random. The ESB team has to be split up to make it a 2v2. Within a minute of play starting more randoms rock up or even more teams, which in turn need to be split. Very quickly, we have a game where the players in a group are being forced to fight each other when, if the matchmaking had just held off from launching for 30 seconds, they could fly as a group.
Without Balance:
Tier 5 match loads up. 3 ESB, 3 ALPHA and 3 NASA on one side, and miscellaneous opponents on the other. “Random” side sees three teams and there is a mass ragequit. The game is now a 9v3, and each time new players join that game they see it’s broken and quit. It’s entirely possible that match will devolve into a 9v0. In objective based matches, that could well be desirable for the Corp-heavy side; they just fly in and grab beacons for free reward.
As bad as our matchmaking may be, it’s issues are primarily caused by tier mixing. Fix that, and we’re golden.
Here’s the thing fix: When teams enter unbalanced, as per your first example, have the team with fewer pilots fly with a bot. Or, better yet, have games only start with even numbers of players. Then, only let people join in pairs or when an even number of people are in the queue. That way there is less of a wait time. That way teams stay balanced. As far as numbers go at least.
My suggestion to fix the player skill level balancing is to have teams be reorganized based on efficiency in the previous match. Assuming my proposed lobby system, the longer you stick in a lobby and play with the same people, the better and more balanced your games are. The way things are there is almost no balancing and more often than not it shows all too clearly when one side completely bashes the other. Balancing based on DSR is not effective either especially now that we are being forced to fly with lower tier ships in order to unlock proper versions for our tier. Balancing should be based on average efficiency for a specific game mode.
I see what you’re saying about having unbalanced corp battles but I believe I have already mentioned a fix for that. First, squads should not be guaranteed to be on the same team. The way it is now allows for a trio of elite pilots to easily win the game because they will be able to coordinate and work together. The fix for this is firstly to allocate members of a squad to either side of the battle depending on balance and also to introduce a method of communication in game within a team other than typed chat. I’m talking about a built in voice service. Most players aren’t serious enough to be playing with a raidcall or teamspeak set up. In fact, most people play “solo” and treat it as such. There is no easy method for communication and as such there is little to no team work. Any TEAM based game is much better with teamwork. Duh.
If things are balanced properly, people shouldn’t be leaving games. If people do, compensate by adding a bot in their place until someone else joins in.
