More thoughts on the current state of matchmaking

I've been spending a lot of time trying to figure out why my win rate is sub-par in both HCTDM and Casual matches. Being a Captain Level 50 I've noticed that my matches are frequently lop-sided, seeing a lot of 0-5 defeats in both. Looking at player composition it is actually more rare than not to see a match with competitive sides. My observations are the following:

1. Matchmaking is done solely by Captain Level, almost always +/- 1. I'm a Max 50, so i'm always with 49-50. I can't find evidence of any other criteria used for matches.
2. Gear Score - All over the board... I frequently see 8k-13k Gear Scores in the same match. I think we all understand how anti-competitive it is for an 8k boat to meet up with a 13k boat.
3. Infamy - All over the board. I see 1k-5k Infamy in the same match. 1k and 5k are uncommon, but 2k is as common as 4.5k. At any rate Infamy isn't supposed to have a place in Events, and maybe not in Casual, but alas, one or the other has to be used to put together a fair match.
4. Balancing - If Gear Score or Infamy are not being used as match inputs, it's also not being used for balancing. I've been in many matches where one side or the other is at a huge disadvantage in terms of one or the other, commonly both. This is what makes or breaks match competitiveness.
5. HCTDM - All the problems above get compounded by the use of multiple boats... matches are put together before a player even selects a boat, so it's technically impossible to put together a competitive match... so it's more like RNG.

What I want more than anything are competitive matches, and I do not believe a competitive match can be had with the Gear Score ranges I'm seeing above (and/or Infamy as you like).

This is the suggestion I wrote up in Discord...

I'd propose to tighten up matchmaking in Casual matches so as not to have such a huge disparity in participants and sides. I'm seeing huge Gear Score ranges amongst participants (8-13k+) and neither Gear Score nor Infamy is being used to balance side to side, as I'm seeing huge imbalances in both of those as well, frequently resulting in lop-sided matches. Casual appears to only match on Captain Level, but that's not enough input for a competitive match. Please keep Gear Score within 10% max deviation for all participants and balance Gear Score side to side. If you want to replace GS with Infamy in the above for Casual, that's fine too.​

I'd urge everyone spend time voting on all ask-the-devs suggestions (yay or nay) as well as submitting some of your own well thought out suggestions.

 

I mostly play ranked battles but the matchmaking is really bad right now. Most of the battles were lopsided because of the matchmaking. If you don’t look at the loading screen, you can be really surprised during battle.

Below are some SS of bad matchmaking. I was on the other side too where we had unfriends sunk before I even know why.

 

Yup! My friend shared this battle in discord. I can't believe how he got matched with 1500 infamy players . The match making is broken right now and I don't think I will be playing ranked again unless they fix this mess

 

Holy crap, I was just pointing out how bad matchmaking is in Events and Casual... apparently it's that bad across the board. I just verified the one ranked game I played today had the same problem... Infamy deviation was from 1669-3214, a deviation of nearly double. That's insanely broken.

I don't understand how the devs can't hold tight on a common sense matchmaking algorithm and call it good. Since they can't get Gear Score right, the least they can do is couple Captain Level Gear Score together to get a rough estimate and set the deviation at 10% max.... same with Infamy, 10% max deviation.. and if that hinders NML, widen it there a bit, but not below. So many bugs going on.

I was playing another PvP game today and ran into bad matchmaking... it immediately made me turned off the game and stop playing. PvP's have one job: to make competitive matches. Without that, there is no value to the game.

 

I think part of the reason is the latest wave of people quitting. There are lacking players now to find a decent matchmaking. If you look at the top 50 guilds right now, the infamy total are getting lower. Infamy pool is shrinking.

 

My and my friend was fleeting . both 900-1000 infamy range . i reached 994 infamy then we got battles against blue league players . then started losing .

in casual i see some 2k players in unfriendly on regular bases . winning against them is very difficult . there is huge difference in gear score .

 

..bad?

 

It's shrinking because no one is playing ranked any more... they just sit on their reset infamy rather than push back up. In other words there's no longer an incentive to play ranked at all if one can just sit in their desired league until the game dies. IMO to get league rewards in any given season a player should play ranked (league) battles.

 

What I would like to see is a season system like Clash Royale has. It would work like this:

Once someone reaches 4000, they enter nightmare 5. If someone reaches 4300, they enter nightmare 4, and so on until nightmare 1, which is at 5500 infamy. Obviously, each of the leagues you reach would have better rewards than the last one. As an added bonus, you wold get an icon next to your IGN that signifies what league of nightmare you're in.

Season reset would reset you to the nearest league, rounded down. So if I had 4500 infamy, I would go to 4300 infamy.

 

Supposedly with Nightmare II there will now be 2 NML resets at 4000 and 4500?? That is great, but it also requires incentive to get to NML1 from NML 2. If the reward difference isn't big, they are all going to stay at the 4000 Reset like they are doing now. It's progress in the right direction anyway.

 

I saw a player with T5 rare tri torps at 200 infamy in my mini account. Wrecked everyone.

 

4 fixers 1 reaper

 

and here is another example . I am keep getting battles against 1700-2000+ infamy players . i reached 1000 infamy today but i am getting battles against them when i was at 750-800 infamy .

when we fleet there is a rule that we can't fleet with a player if infamy difference is higher then 800 . then how can we get battles against Ace players who are 1000+ infamy higher then us . i checked the results and mostly my team had all 800-1000 infamy players . there is no way winning against higher ranked player . ( I do have won some against this player had good 1v1 with reaper at last part , this why i became main target for them lol )

but winning against then is difficult as they are more skilled players and have good level items with better training .

nothing against players . they are good and one of them was my guild mate .

 

We really need the devs to speak up on the current state of matchmaking. Majority of my battles now have people atleast half my infamy in battle. I even have people below 1k in my battle that was not fleeting. Low end Master League with Ace 1 and NM players. The battle were really messy with them in it.

 

Seriously, what is fair about this? And in a ranked battle? I can understand these happening now and then in Casual wherevinfamy wont tank because of this, but ranked play like this just isn’t fair to fixers.

And to lose 27 infamy versus the normal 23-25? Come on.

 

There's no justification for this level of Infamy disparity in ranked.

 

I'm afraid the disparity we are observing is due to the following factors:

1. Shrinking overall pool of players. I think a lot of the changes have pushed people away from the game and there has not been a effort to replace with and retain new blood
2. Casual mode and constant events further constrain an already thinning pool of players, so to be able to maintain reasonable (already getting pretty long) wait times, the team has had to adjust the matchmaking parameters to allow larger infamy variance in a single game even if the averages are roughly balanced for the two teams

Unfortunately even if Rovio pours a ton of resources into marketing, would be hard to get these new users to a level where their cohort would be comparable with folks who have been playing for 12 months plus. They could try and rebuild the user base though.

 

To be honest I don't buy it. If the player pool has shrunk to the point where it's necessary to create imbalanced matches, then the game has no more meaning, but there are definitely more players than some of these matches indicate.

It's never too late to market. Personally I haven't seen an ad since global launch.

 

I do think the fan base is shrinking at the higher half. Progression in this game is so slow that the fan base can’t handle this many wave of players leaving at ACE and higher.