I’ve given it a week or so, maybe a bit more, and have decided that dirty bomb’s matchmaking system, in its current state, is pure garbage. It hasn’t addressed any of the balance problems it was supposed to resolve and has in fact made some of them even worse than before.
1: Server browser had 6v6, 7v7, and 8v8 servers. Matchmaking is strictly 6v6. Seems like a minor, inconsequential difference at first glance, but each player in 6v6 has far more weight and impact on the team overall compared to 7v7 or 8v8, which makes match balance even more important than it already was.
2: The server browser had maximum level 6 servers and minimum level 10 and 20 servers, so newbies to the game had a sheltered space to learn and adjust to the game a little bit before being thrown into real matches against experienced players, and high levels- if they chose to do so- had a place to go where they weren’t held back by inexperienced low levels. Those are all gone with this new matchmaking system, so there’s potentially even less control over what players are put in matches together.
3: The matchmaking system itself is just terrible. It seems like you’ve made getting into a match quickly the top priority to shorten queue times, which makes the balance algorithm largely ineffectual. One of the main problems I hoped matchmaking would address was players of wildly varying skill levels playing together and against one another. The problem seems to be that instead of putting players of similar skill levels together, it will put players of varying skill levels together as long as the combined average of both teams are roughly equal. I’m level 75 with about a thousand hours of playtime according to steam, and the algorithm’s idea of balancing a match seems to be filling the rest of the slots on my team with new players that have no idea what they’re doing to bring the team average down to meet the other team’s.
4: The only improvement matchmaking has over the server browser is the party system that came with it which allows you to play on the same team with your friends, but that’s only an improvement if you’re in a party yourself. I’ve solo queued and been matched against parties of 4, 5, even 6 players on numerous occasions. Matchmaking should have some kind of restriction or preference for matching parties against other parties, if some system isn’t already in place. If there is such a system in place, it doesn’t seem to work as well as it should. I’ve even been completely stomped by a team, and then queued against the exact same team a second time immediately afterwards, with one more player in their party than the previous match. (it went from 3 people with the same clantag to 4 people with the same clantag)
All of these problems come together to make solo queueing a nightmare, which limits the game’s playability for me, as I don’t always have friends available to play with. And even if I did, it doesn’t excuse what a poor job you guys have done with matchmaking so far.
I love this game; I think you guys at Splash Damage are on the right track and I appreciate all the effort you’re putting into improving the game. I just hope you put getting matchmaking into a respectable state at the top of your list of priorities. All the new content in in the world won’t make up for the current state of matchmaking.
Hopefully this is a fair critique and won’t be written off as just being salty. Feel free to correct me anywhere I’m wrong, I don’t claim to know anything for sure, I just have my own experiences to base this off of.
