Rovio, your matchmaking is atrocious for a PvP

So I decided to dabble in ranked matches after being warned how bad it is, and, well all the rumors are true.... it's the worst matchmaking I've ever seen in this game.

Let's get serious here... this is supposed to be a competitive PvP. As such your sole responsibility is to put together competitive matches for all players. So, why I'm seeing deltas as much as 70% of overall Infamy? Look, who cares about a few extra SECONDS wait time when you would be saving players MINUTES of frustration in an unbalanced match. My Infamy is hovering around 2600, I expect to be competing in ranked matches with players around 2600 Infamy. Instead I get an Infamy delta as much as 1900 Infamy in the same match. That's 75% of my ENTIRE Infamy. What's going on? Seriously.. WHAT IS GOING ON WITH MATCHMAKING?

In casual, it's not as big a deal, but let's face it, it IS a big deal. Your job is to put together competitive matches, and that's not happening in Casual either. I'm seeing a broad spectrum of players in my matches... and they are frequently unbalanced as a result. You can do better.

So my only other choice is go over to Event HCTDM, and hope that's better, but as expected, not a chance. In fact it's worse... worse than everyone thinks because it's pure RNG. RNG favors whales because they will always be holding the seal club. This is explained further in my latest Discord suggestion.. please go there and vote for all suggestions.

Currently HCTDM matchups are essentially RNG, but we need them to be fair and competitive. We know they are RNG because matchmaker doesn't know what gear each player is going to use before the match begins, making it impossible to put together a fair match. Captain Level is not a proper input by itself because holds little relation to the Gear a player will use in the match. RNG matchmaking raises huge questions about the legitimacy of this game as a competitive PvP. The solution is fairly straight forward: force all players player to choose all boats to be used in the match in advance, and apply a weighting based on how much each boat may contribute to the match, for example, if 5 kills are required, 70% for boat 1's Gear Score, 20% for boat 2, and 10% for boat 3... or if 10 kills maybe 50%, 40%, 10%. Regardless of some ability to game the system (e.g., suicide weak boat 1 out the gate to bring out beasty boats #2 and #3), it will be worlds better than we have now.
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In summary this is what needs to happen

Ranked: You should never more than 10% Infamy delta. If that means big wait times, so what. Fairness > RNG.
Casual/Events: You should never have more than 10% of adjusted Gear Score (adjusted by training). Maybe use both 10% delta in Captain Level and GS both if you want to make it ultra simple and avoid specific training calculations.
HCTDM: Same methodology as Casual... which requires players pre-pick all boats in advance, as I explained above.

All of it is fairly simple to do... not doing it indicates manipulation of the system toward whales, which will drive away everyone else in the game. If you want the game to survive, you're going to have to do better than this.

 

If you bring a fleetmate -800 Infamy to a match, you had better be confident they can play at your level (the match level), else you are screwing your teammates. So if that's the case, great. But fleeting is a choice where you can make that decision. The rest of matchmaking is the responsibility of Rovio, which is what this thread is about... and my examples above have no fleets. Also as you can see from above this shows a 1900 Infamy difference, which is 2X the fleet maximum.

What I do know is the increased wait will be less time than a bad match will take. Another of my Discord suggestions is this:

I would propose to add a preference setting to allow the player to specify whether they are more interested in quick matchups vs more competitive matches with tight Infamy/GS range...., something like "reduce wait times" or "I'm ok to wait a little longer for competitive match". This way if a player just wants first available, great, if they are more interested in competitive matches within a tight range, they can choose what they want.​

What I am proposing doesn't take into account how good anyone is, or what their gear is, or in non-ranked, what their Infamy is. If you are more skilled than others at your Infamy and/or have better gear, you will rapidly move up, and won't remain long at those low Infamy ranks. That's how a ranking system is supposed to work, and how it seems to be working for you in your mini account. In higher level accounts toward NML it's a little different.

Also with a tight matchmaking system, balancing can even be done by RNG. With a wide gap in Infamy/Gear the balancing algorithm has to jump through all kinds of hoops to try to compensate and manipulate sides to attempt to create a fair match. That's highly complex, highly error prone, and frequently results in lop-sided matches.

 

I certainly think they could put some work into matchmaking .. I've had to accept that if I'm sunk before the enemy team are all in burning heaps, it's an automatic loss.


But, in all fairness, I don't think infamy is all that reflective of a player's ability to perform right now ..

1) The FB nerfs have affected many players ability to compete at their former levels - so their infamy should be much lower - and many seem to play far fewer ranked matches, especially with casual and events as an alternative, so it'll take a while to even out.

2) With the expansion of NML, the range of infamy differences between players in a match was certain to increase. And I think they're still losing more players each month than they're gaining - so it'll be increasingly harder to keep infamy ranges close.

3) With balance changes and tanking penalties, players are still being matched in their old infamy ranges - and that makes some matches look worse.

They could loosen tanking penalties and stop matching 1k infamy players at their old 3k infamy levels, but they're also trying to protect their newer players for as long as possible ... understandably.

4) There's still the issue of players with infamy 1-2k points higher because of fleets - so when they play solo, it'll either be balanced and look unfair or it'll look fair and be unbalanced (expecting a greater contribution than they're able to give).



Anywho, I think there's a larger issue that's affecting the game as a whole - including players' ability to compete in the midst of the changes - but I'm struggling to find the motivation to write it up .. it feels like a massive waste of time at this point.

 

It doesn't actually matter whether or not Infamy is correct, what matters in ranked matches is for players to be put in matches of similar Infamy so that over time Infamy works itself out.

The only other valid approach is to use a handicap system to allow high and low ranked players to be in the same battles. I'm not sure how to best handicap a game like this because Gear Score is so important, but one could try a side to side imbalance of players with Infamy, for example Two 5K players vs Four 2500 Infamy players, or three 4k players vs four 3k players. There's substantial risk though because man advantage favors certain boats over others. A single Defender/Shooter has hardly a chance against 3 opponents, while a Speeder/Enforcer does.

 

As I said in earlier posts "Casual ??? for whom?" cause I had just played a game where the rest of the players were 4000-3000 infamy and there I was and another poor guy from the other team with 1100 infamy getting cleaned up in less than 30 seconds into the game.
GREAT JOB ROVIO THUMPS UP for such a great job at matchmaking.

 

when they put Ace league player against 1k infamy then skills doesn't matter . strategy sometimes can help if team work together but mostly 1000+ infamy players have better weapons and with more training . so they have more dmg + rng + low cooldown . they just crush the team . and suddenly who carry 3 battles by himself can feel like whats went wrong .


I also carry battles by myself sometimes . in some battles when i left alone and unfriendly have 2-3 and sometimes i also save battle or make it draw but when they put ace players against us then all skills doest matter when they sink you with big dmg weapons . I had to upgrade my items and boat to at least have some battle with them but still its not fair to have 1000+ infamy difference . one of the reaper had custom with me after a battle and when he sinked me said it was easy . i did good dmg to him but he heal faster and did more dmg them me in less shots . no doubt it was easy for him .

i don't think match making should give us unfair battles where even good skill player may feel like a noob .

 

Doesn't this all stem from the fact that this game has a slowly dwindling player base? Eventually there won't be enough people at any given time to make something even resembling matchmaking.

 

Agree completely. Another note is the addition of "Casual" mode. Less players are grinding in ranked and I think it will take awhile for the infamy to balance out through the bay. If fewer players are playing ranked consistently, there is less propagation of infamy from the lowest levels up to the highest levels, and therefore less infamy in the entire player pool to support a large NML rank base. I think there are fewer players in NML this season than compared to previous seasons.

Not sure, I think the playerbase is shrinking but all I have is anecdotal evidence of not seeing familiar names anymore. I still think the advertising campaign for this game ran through April of 2017 when the game was launched and then Rovio scrapped it. In my bubble, NOBODY (other than those I've told about it) has heard of or played this game.

 

For the sake of not create double posts I wanted to highlight the same issue.... lowest infamy ~858... I have gone from almost 3000 infamy and dropped to 2200’s within days, due to being matched with players who typically rush in and aren’t used to fighting at a higher level.... not to mention my contribution to guild quests has been almost nothing due to progress not counting unless you win. I’m sorry but I’m losing patience with a game that I have spent money on that is becoming increasingly unstable. I hate to play the “I’m quitting unless you fix it” card but honestly why play a game that causes frustration and stress?

 

Sounds like your better off playing casual and events. Also are you sure it’s just your teams fault? I’m only at 500 infamy and people here usually play quite well, almost nobody I see rushes in just to get shot like you claim.

 

I play ranked because I enjoy the competition and the need to be a little more calculated in the approach. I have recently enjoyed a long stint in the Ace league and to be fair there is a marked difference in the level of weapons as well as a certain quality of play. I’m now playing people from 2 league below my own, and am now also looking at joining them in the not so distant future.

I’m not sure what your comment suggests about playing casual isn’t the point of a ranked system vs. A casual one fairly obvious???

What part of my post suggests casual is more my thing?

 

I hadn't played a ranked battle in like 2 months, but I decided to wade back in the last 4 days.
In two days I dropped from 3895 infamy to 3384(I admit, this is partially due to my own adjustment back to ranked gameplay from the event Rambo mentality). Have since climbed back above 3700.
Ranked is far different than it was 3 months ago. 1 out of every 5 battles I am getting guys with 50 to 1500 infamy in my battle.
2 out of 5 battles have some type of weird ship balance such as:
3 fixers vs zero
5 yellows vs 3 shooters and 2 fixers
These imbalances create games that just aren't fun. Easy Wins or Disastrous Losses. Sure they might even out at 50/50 win rates. But in my opinion, total domination wins and loses aren't fun and they seem to happen much more frequently now in ranked battles.

 

Considering a narrowing player base along with additional match options, we are obviously going to have an increase in wait times. Lowering wait times requires widening of requirements, but if done too much the matches themselves become RNG. Let's widen ranked to 1-6000 Infamy. matchmaking becomes RNG. Widen Gear Scores 1-15000. Matchmaking becomes RNG. I argued that we should have at most 10% deltas in match participants, but while most people like the idea, and it is the most optimal form of matchmaking, higher level players don't care.. because they are almost always OP in the match with widened requirements. It's fun to be OP, but it's not fair... and then again this is a P2W game.

RNG offers a 50% win rate... over time you are either on the OP side or the side that the OP team crushes. At that point we have to ask ourselves, what's he value in this game? It's no longer competitive... it's just plain frustrating half the time.... which is too much to justify this as a mostly fun game. Progression is essentially dead... you are either OP or you aren't.

When matches are no longer competitive (and I'd argue we're almost there), then there's no value left in playing this game. It can be partially addressed by limiting the available game to one type, but I'd hate for that to be HCTDM, because it hasn't a clue what each player brings to battle.. and is already RNG.

In other words, if the core issue is # of players, then Rovio's #1 job is to get more players. Nothing else will fix the problem.

 

Exactly, I think you are the only one so far who describe the current matchmaking system issue very clearly in this forum.