New Players Do Not Stand A Chance

Well, mate, the only reassurance we can give you is that it gets saner after Master 1...

 

I sympathise with your situation and I hope that things start to get better for you. Whilst it is difficult, take it as a compliment that you are strong enough in your other matches that you get put into matches like this.

Whilst I understand why you would say that they should include gear score in matchmaking (and when it was pure infamy, players started asking for infamy to be included). But what we’ve found is that when these things get added, it makes things worse, not better.

I’ll explain. Say you have a ship with a gear score of 5000, and you suddenly get lucky and get a legendary weapon of your choice which raises your infamy to 5500. You would expect that due to having a better weapon that you’d win more matches in the short term and that your infamy would rise. But what actually happens is that rather than being balanced against ships of 5000 infamy, you now get matched against ships of 5500 infamy, so your odds of winning games does not increase and you do not gain infamy. (It works the same with the game using ship level rather than gear score, but this time when you get a better ship you get balanced against ships of the same level, and so your chances of increasing infamy do not increase).

What many players would like is a pure infamy matchmaking system. This would mean that anyone who improves their ship or gear should see a rise in their infamy, which would result in fewer high powered ships being seen at lower infamy levels.

Anyway, as I said, I hope things get better for you and that you continue to enjoy playing the game.

 

I’m sorry, I don’t understand. The situation that you describe can happen no matter what matchmaking system is used can’t it?

I think the only way to solve that issue is to have a rewards system where you can get more rewards from making a small damage contribution at a higher level than you can from making a large damage contribution at a lower infamy level. (And so it is a rewards issue, not a matchmaking issue).

 

Yes, there are still problems with a pure matchmaking system, which I think come down to players perceptions rather than actual unfairness.

Say you have a match where everyone was 2000 infamy. One team was all mk5, and the other all mk6s. Theoretically the mk6s would have stronger ships, and the mk5s should have better skills (that’s why they all would have 2000 infamy) but overall they would be balanced. However, the mk5 players would look at the match as think it was unfair. They can only see that the opposition has better ships. They can’t see that their team has better skills. Again, theoretically, if you played that match 10 times, each team should win 5 games each (ignoring factors such as some maps being better for certain ships than others etc).

And that is the exact situation that we once had before ship level was introduced. But then players complained because of their perception of the unfairness, and so the matchmaking was changed.

However, if the same match took place under the current matchmaking system (with ship level included in matchmaking - I know it actually couldn’t due to balancing but just go with the hypothesis), the mk6s would win hands down about 90% of the time. And that is the perversion of the current system - two ships of the same infamy but different ship levels should be equally effective in battle, but they’re not. (It’s like saying two teams in the NFL with 7&3 records are equally as good. They aren’t necessarily, it depends upon the strength of the other teams in their divisions who they have to play more frequently).

Sorry to go on, I like talking about matchmaking.

 

Is it fair? No it’s not fair that a ship can be killed by one shot. Many players acknowledge there is a problem, and sympathise with you.

When in battles with high mark ships, as a speeder try to employ more ‘hit and run’ type tactics. Your aim should be to distract the enemy enough so that they can’t fully concentrate on your teammates (who will do the majority of damage in the game), but not attract so much attention that more than one gun is aimed at you at any one point in time.

However, you have learned one important lesson that all players learn the hard way, don’t get too close to teammates (especially when big torps are flying about). Obviously you will improve as a player as a result of that experience as you won’t repeat it