Ranked Matchmaking

Thank you so much for reading my overly long post (I'm not so good at keeping it succinct) and for replying! : )

I do think I was mistaken. I'm happy to hear the mechanism is to try to group people with those of similar ability. Much better for people who are newer to PvP especially.

I had thought it tries to balance one team against the other by taking some very new players and putting them with some advanced players, to per-force balance down the team if the opposing team was lower.

I do wonder if it might not be helpful to remove the mod slots from PvP gear. Fully modded gear with t4 mods vs someone with no mods = very imbalanced. The more similar the tools opponents have to work with > the more it comes down to skill alone > the better for the purposes of PvP I think.

Similarly, I think it would be a lot better, and much less annoying for the player, if the Rally timers were always the same length, and even for everyone.

Thanks again : )

Ran 2's and 4's both Legends and Arena tonight and think the longest wait we had was like 5 minutes. We faced a few premades along the way (which was nice) and only 2-3 groups that we totally outclassed. Overall it is a lot better experience that prior queues.

Just asking.. For those looking to play Arenas w/out it having affect their rank is their and unranked queue available? I have not played lately and am just inquiring. IF not, why isnt there such a system?

You are correct I don't want competition, or at least the competition that is currently happening. I want to play PvP and have fun where we win some and lose some. Of course we want to play people equal to us but here's the problem, if we are good enough to beat the middle of the road groups that are not running FOTM but we don't beat the elite groups then where does that put us. I guess only time will tell but at this point it appears it leaves us against the elite PvP'ers.

We are not elite PvP'ers though. We don't run FOTM. We don't make people go super speed. We don't require at least 2 healers before we will play a 4's or 5's match. We don't use any of the other things that are currently FOTM in PvP. Yes you'll be removing some of the current FOTM (pet spam and ghost/dog) but there are plenty of other things that aren't being addressed (one example being stacking healers makes the team virtually unkillable so the match goes to time). Why don't we do these things? Because we feel it takes the fun out of the PvP system. How is it fun to have to play specific roles, powers, weapons, and movement modes just because it's the most optimal to win? It's not from our perspective.

When we face one of these 'elite' teams with all the FOTM they destroy us. Why would we want to constantly be in the ranking range where we face them and have to deal with being destroyed all the time solely because we don't want to run FOTM. We would be forced to go FOTM to get wins (since that's the only way to get rewards) or sandbag against the weaker teams to drop our rank. Both options we don't want to have to do.

If your goal is to breed competition and build a competitive community but by doing so you must remove all casual play then I think you will really miss the boat on people wanting to play PvP. I also think you'll see less and less people wanting to participate in it. With the new concept of Rank the only way to get a non-competitive match would be to find groups that are willing to do arranged matches. In the past the way competitive matches were organized was through sync'ing (i.e. they were arranged). Basically you all have taken the people that wanted to challenge each other and are making us all participate in the egotistical junk.

Maybe if there was balance between all the roles then this wouldn't be nearly as big of a concern since it would mean a group of trollers would wipe a group of healers but I have seen nothing to talk about balancing the RPS system posted by SOE.

Sorry for the long post but I hope you made it through and it helps clarify the concern we're having.

There is but those are the matches you have to arrange, so it kind of defeats the point since now you'll have to arrange (syncing in the past) to have fun.

The benefit of be in higher rank is a safe way to be paired with players who are more experienced playing and have usually better gear, be in low ranking is more of a luck to win maps, let's say a map with 3 nodes, no matter how good a player is and never lose a single node, if the rest of the group can't hold the other 2 nodes group just gonna lose regardless of the single player never losing the node even with 2 or 3 in his back lol.

would be cool make pvp base in Tie no in rank.

I see.... the only resolution is to allow the ranked matchmaking to be toggled on/off. Ranked for those competitive allowing for bigger spoils from winning and non-ranked for those not, obviously, giving less spoils for wins due to the lack of risk. Utilizing Arranged matches for those with a desire to fight specific ppl.

This + 1 Million!!!!

Wouldn't this lead to even less players in queues overall?
And isn't arranged matchmaking just that?

Arranged matchmaking is a private lobby. Not everyone wants to shout for an arranged map. Nonetheless, you are correct. Be that as it may the devs just can't up and say, "Well be competitive or get the heck out." It is their job to create solutions and in this situation they are dealing with a problem of "after work-hour" casual players looking to play to win or lose a few with some league mates before they hit the sack.

Besides those who play to remain competitive do not want to meet with a group that is not willing/able to put up a fight its just that simple. I was a part of ps3 group of "cereal pvpers" and it was disheartening walking into a fight knowing you will win. An added unranked queue MAY slim down the queue population for ranked but it will improve quality of fights.. Thats worth more than an auto queue.

Playing with your friends should be encouraged, not frowned upon.

Does your gear affect your queuing at all?

Great job ruining PvP thanks...I'm done with this **** I can't even come on and have a casual match anymore i have to play my heart out everymatch and they always seem to last the full 15 mins...what a waste of time

No.

Good.

If you're in T2 and you're able to compete with people with T3 there should be no restrictions on that.

Cheers on data gathering. I think you need to look at:

• # of people queued by time of day.
  If you have sufficient volume for decent matchmaking at peak then that gives a nice datapoint to show off, but it's not an accurate measure of the other 22 hours per day. (And if your algorithm waits for players that don't exist, then you've made that a worse experience.) Furthermore, play during these off-peak periods which is inevitably lopsided will skew ratings, so that a decent person who got wins all day will face elites for a string of losses during the latter period. This isn't really what you want.
• Whether elo provides the results promised during repeated matchesIn chess, it's generally expected that a 72 point difference in elo rating results in 60% / 40% wins. This is because there A) enough people that ratings are properly spread, and B) there's unexpected variation in games. However, if you were to take a small group like my family, and rate something that's expected, like a footrace, then elo is meaningless. On any given day I'm always going to outrace my 64yo mother, and my son is always going to outrace me. You'd need a pool like "just olympic athletes" and even then there don't tend to be too many upsets.
  
  What I'm getting at is that when the parties are known, I bet the results are predictable with pretty decent accuracy. Much better than a 60/40. If matchmaking results in arenas won by 300 points instead of 1000 points, then sure that's an improvement but only over a low bar. When those 300 point losses are consistent and predictable, they won't be satisfactory.
• The predictability of role dominanceGiven two people who otherwise have equal rankings, but one is a healer and the other a tank, what's the chance of the tank winning? 40/60? Or is it more like zero? When two people can have even ratings, but the resulting match is completely lopsided, then rating is meaningless.
• The movement of a player's rating over a short timeIt's expected that over time rating should change. But if a person can go up or down a couple hundred points in a day, or moves considerably down and back up in a single session, then you have to admit that at no point can the rating be called "accurate". Persuant to points above, I suspect what you get is a person bouncing between always losing to the one above him and always beating the one below. With the occasional shakeup of a new person entering the queue and getting bubble-sorted into position. That's effective for ranking but isn't actually making any even matchups.

I strongly recommend by starting with data from Legends. Throw out matches with Steel and Hal because they're outliers. (You don't have to admit it, but they are.) See how rating behaves there, and use that as your benchmark. Then compare ratings for arenas. I say there will be predictable results with widening spreads during low volume periods, and wild swings from role matchups during high volume. These will be signs that elo can't fix what's wrong.

In summary, it sounds like you're making good effort, Why. But I think the design has given you a case where Kobe Bryant, a local high school player, Danny Devito, and a 4-year-old show up to play basketball. And your job is to arrange good 1-on-1 games for them via matchmaking.

Greetings. I first must say that the matchmaking does work better. Usually fight better geared now. But still something bothers me. Since this applied, i know have usually +/-10-20min wait before entering 1v1 Lair Battles. And did a test, if someone else would launch arena 10mn after me, he would still go in first, and i'd be waiting. So making the fights more fair also makes people with highest or lowest scores wait very long. In addition to that (not really his place here) if people leave 1v1 arena before end of first round or before it starts, nothing is won (feats / marks). So with both combined, can sometimes do lair battles for 1 Hour and get absolutely nothing. Wich is a bit annoying ^^
V.

So is this system currently live or not? Cause if it is, I am very disappointed with what is going on. Not with getting matches, those I get fast enough; I am mad because all the noob robins and harleys that do less than 4000 damage in a legends match ALWAYS seem to end up in MY team! This is driving me nuts. The opposing team always is always consisting of proper players! I pretty much solely play legends pvp and whatever is going on is about to stop me from pvping at all.

Is there some system in place that is supposed to make the teams more balanced in terms of past successes or not? If there is it certainly isn't working. Its stupid hopeless trying to fight a good team of proper characters with my team consisting of me and noobs who have hard time getting out of the spawn room let alone doing any fighting!

In other words: solo queueing seems like wasted effort now.

**** this ****.

Remember kids,

By 'casual' we mean stomping players that are beneath our proficiency level, where we barely have to play we outgear/class them so much.

That's fun stuff.