Competitive Match Making Gone Wrong

(DB Genome editor) #1

I don’t know if it is related, but before getting that actual game filled up and started, I had about 10 match attempts that failed before reaching a full set of players. Several of these were terminated before I could even accept the match, the acceptance popup literally blinking on and off for a fraction of a second before the system cancelled the match and started looking for another.

Anyways, once the game got underway, it was immediately clear we were outclassed and both rounds were over in less than 10 minutes (including warm-ups), one of the worse mismatches I’ve experienced in comp MM in a long time. But that made a lot more sense when the final scoreboard revealed everyone’s rank:

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How did these three guys ever get matched with the rest of that group?!? I’ve never before been matched with anyone more than 2 ranks away from mine either way, yet these guys were 4 to 7 ranks above the rest of us, all the way to Cobalt 1 :eek:

By the way, the top and bottom guys had the same clan tag, and considering all of them had pings suggesting they were playing outside their region, I’m pretty sure they were a party. Not sure if that fact may have contributed to this anomalous match or not…

(ZGToRRent) #2
  1. Every player can choose mm region to play, I think they decide to play on Europe region when they are from US which is unfair.
  2. If searching for match is long, it means, the game will pick random players to finally made a game.

Solutions?

  1. Ranks should be splitted via regions so in EU You have different rank than in US. It’s better than doing penalty for changing.
  2. MM should never build a match with random players. After 5 minutes for example, it should show information that there is no players equal to our skill/ranks in the queue.
(Ashog) #3

Probably a party of four. This happened exactly in the same way with our lobby last week, tho we had somewhat better k/d in the end. It were probably even the same dudes (2 cobalt ones). In our case they confirmed they were a four. Which means mm probably can’t do much about that because the average rank in their party wasn’t cobalt, obviously

(DB Genome editor) #4

Even if one of the two Silver 1 were part of their group, that still puts the average rank of their party around Gold 1, i.e. 4 ranks above our team if we stick to simple maths and assume the spread between ranks is roughly constant. As ZGToRRent said above, the match making should have given up rather than making this match.

(Ashog) #5

I am not sure.

Nothing can be more frustrating than not getting any match. That means usually giving up on a game straight away for many people.

Also, as frustrating as it can be, losing to much higher ranks still means you are learning, since it’s always faster to learn from the better players than you.

(ZGToRRent) #6

[QUOTE=Ashog;537830]
Nothing can be more frustrating than not getting any match. That means usually giving up on a game straight away for many people.[/QUOTE]

I think, being spawncamped by more experienced players in multiple matches is more frustrated to be honest. Most players will just give up and stop playing :slight_smile: We need these silvers/bronzes/unrankeds to play in the same ‘group’ for bigger diversity+better calibration.(If Ranks have percentage margin, how many players can be on 1 rank)

(KeMoN) #7

I agree that the balancing needs a little work. I would honestly also prefer to NOT be matched rather than matched with pro players, waste 20 minutes and be frustrated the rest of the time.

(Ashog) #8

Meh, we just got spawnraped by better players in mm, but it doesn’t make me wanna quit. It makes me try harder. And they got spawnraped just the match before by even better players.

Somewhat frustrating yes, but not for long and is also motivating.
There’s always someone who is better than you. And getting no games at all is critical, because there’s nothing you can do about it, no matter how hard you try to press the find match button. It just wouldn’t find anything and then you quit.

(DB Genome editor) #9

[QUOTE=Ashog;537834]Meh, we just got spawnraped by better players in mm, but it doesn’t make me wanna quit. It makes me try harder. And they got spawnraped just the match before by even better players.

Somewhat frustrating yes, but not for long and is also motivating.
There’s always someone who is better than you. And getting no games at all is critical, because there’s nothing you can do about it, no matter how hard you try to press the find match button. It just wouldn’t find anything and then you quit.[/QUOTE]
Getting spawnraped or steamrolled by a team that is slightly more skilled than you or just played better as a team is one thing, but this is like showing up at your local football field for a friendly pick-up game and finding out that the guys on the other side of the field play for Manchester United… :eek:

There is nothing to be learned when you’re completely outclassed, I’d much rather be told that the system can’t find a proper match for me, go play some non-comp SW for a while and come back later.

(Szakalot) #10

[QUOTE=Djiesse;537840]Getting spawnraped or steamrolled by a team that is slightly more skilled than you or just played better as a team is one thing, but this is like showing up at your local football field for a friendly pick-up game and finding out that the guys on the other side of the field play for Manchester United… :eek:

There is nothing to be learned when you’re completely outclassed, I’d much rather be told that the system can’t find a proper match for me, go play some non-comp SW for a while and come back later.[/QUOTE]

what he said.

And Ashog, dunno your skill level but I would be surprised if it was the level of those average lvl5-8 players that jump into matchmaking.

Played two MM games with two mates (people round gold rank) and we got matched with unranked players and silvers, wasn’t very fair for them.

(Ashog) #11

No one says it’s fair. What is more unfair is announcing mm when in reality you can’t play it.
There is a lot one can learn while being steamrolled completely. For example what’s the best way to break the spawn rape, what one could change next time in tactics, aggressiveness and merc selection.

(Kl3ppy) #12

[QUOTE=Ashog;537851]No one says it’s fair. What is more unfair is announcing mm when in reality you can’t play it.
There is a lot one can learn while being steamrolled completely. For example what’s the best way to break the spawn rape, what one could change next time in tactics, aggressiveness and merc selection.[/QUOTE]

I rather prefer no match vs a match like yesterday. We spawn camped them on Underground and it was boring. When we attacked, after 2 mins it was over, also boring.

(Szakalot) #13

[QUOTE=Ashog;537851]No one says it’s fair. What is more unfair is announcing mm when in reality you can’t play it.
There is a lot one can learn while being steamrolled completely. For example what’s the best way to break the spawn rape, what one could change next time in tactics, aggressiveness and merc selection.[/QUOTE]

not everyone has this attitude and it can’t be expected from people either. Most newbies that will get locked at spawn will just get frustrated to no end. Its hard to learn when you have bile spilling out your ears.

This puts people off matchmaking, and its no fun to steamroll newbies either

(Ashog) #14

Good that we have different attitudes then.

(BomBaKlaK) #15

Maps sucks hard … Most of the matches finish as a spawn rape.
Rape or be rapped … only about 5% balanced games in MM

(Szakalot) #16

i have your attitude too lol, but we are ‘hardcore DB’ players who care to improve.

People that want to just have some fun with balanced games won’t give a damn about ‘learning from better players’ when their experience is limited to being locked at spawn and getting shot from all sides.

(Ashog) #17

[QUOTE=Szakalot;537880]i have your attitude too lol, but we are ‘hardcore DB’ players who care to improve.

People that want to just have some fun with balanced games won’t give a damn about ‘learning from better players’ when their experience is limited to being locked at spawn and getting shot from all sides.[/QUOTE]

They will, with time. And leavers will leave anyway. Can’t hold them all. That’s just the way it is.

(KeMoN) #18

Competition players may be the core of every game community, however you should never underestimate the casual players.
I played W:ET for nearly 10 years and never had a single competition match. It was always nice to connect to a server you knew the players on and spend the first 20 minutes in spectator just talking, then playing some matches and leave again.
The last part is already missing in this game because there are no dedicated servers (yet?) and everything is highly anonymous in this game which is the biggest downside imo.
Since that feature is missing for casual players, purposely pushing them out of competition is literally the worst idea you could come up with.
I consider myself to be quite a loyal fan, however the amount of people using the chat option or even just saying hello and bye is disappointingly low.

Why should one continue playing a game in which they get spawncamped over and over again, if there is no real connection to a community/server keeping them there?

*Talking as a casual player.

(Mustang) #19

Which it isn’t, it increases (or decreases) exponentially.

You probably already knew this, but just thought I’d mention it for everyone’s befit.

QFT

(Szakalot) #20

you don’t want just hardcore players in your game. You want the casuals that ‘wanna have fun’ as well. I’d argue they are more important to the game’s longevity than the hardcores.

Without the casual bridge, new players don’t have equally skilled enemies to learn from. Its you - the new player; and everyone else - who knows the game in/out.

This is also true for competitive MM. You don’t just want cobalts and elites, you want dedicated (and bad) silvers who just play for the lolz. And these players care about having a balanced game, not about the ‘learning experience’.

Bottom line is: games have to be more balanced for comp MM to have any future.