[Locked] MATCHMAKING FEEDBACK UPDATE – November 5

vibr8high wrote:

why is it so easy to rank up now... I know I have gotten better but I see so many champs now.... like what the hell is going on... any one know? population drop???

ZaedynFel wrote:

Playlist UpdateWe have been monitoring playlist health constantly over the past year and have a noticed a few trends worth pointing out.

First, our very minimum bar is that, at the very least, a solo queuing player can find a match within a reasonable amount of time in any playlists at any time of the day. We consider playlists that don’t meet that minimum bar as better fits for rotational lists because while on rotation, they get plenty of players for a brief window. To be clear, most rotationals lose that player base towards they end of their rotations, but for the first 1-1.5 weeks they lists do quite well.

There are some exceptions within Ranked. We are not as strict with FFA because it is still being played competitively, even if the format we use isn’t exactly the same. Also, we keep Elimination up because it’s the only way to finish the Breakout Commendations.

Outside of that, there are a few playlists that are falling below our minimum bar.

Warzone AssaultWarzone Assault has long been behaving more like a rotational than like a permanent playlist. It has also gone several days at a time without any matches played at all because the number of players we see trying to play at peak times is not enough to form a complete match. To make it easier to get matches in Warzone Assault, as I mentioned before the weekend, we are going to start running it as a rotational the first weekend of each month. We have noticed in our data that when we take less popular lists and run them periodically instead of permanently, they receive orders of magnitude more players.
Big Team BattleFor a long period of time BTB was a solid social playlist and in fact the minimum popularity bar we used to judge whether a list should stay permanent. Lately, however, it has become near impossible to find matches for around half the day. It appears the bulk of players needed to maintain a healthy list now prefer the Super Fiesta variant, leaving only classic BTB enthusiasts still engaged in the original BTB playlist. We feel it would be more beneficial to those who love BTB to be able to have a good experience with it rather than waiting 5 minutes without a match.

Our current plans with BTB are as follows:

• Monitor it as we enter the holiday season. If holiday traffic is enough to keep it alive, we’ll leave it up and reconsider its future in January
• Begin work on a refresh. If BTB can hang on long enough, we will see how well it does after a refresh before moving it to a rotational
• If these both fail, then BTB shouldn’t be an exception given how much better every other list has done as a rotational when it starts behaving this way.

Playlist RanksHere are how they rank in popularity over the last week since we haven’t done this in a while. You may notice BTB is Ranked above Doubles, but keep in mind that Doubles only requires 4 players to start a match. So while BTB is getting more playtime overall, Doubles doesn’t have the same issues with failures to find a match:
Super Fiesta
Slayer
Castle Wars
Big Team Super Fiesta
Heroic Warzone Firefight
Warzone
Quick Play
Infection
Team Arena
SWAT
Legendary Warzone Firefight
Big Team Battle
Ranked Doubles
Mythic Warzone Firefight
Grifball
Free-for-All
Elimination
Warzone Assault
Warzone Warlords

LotosDraigg wrote:

I cant play anything at all anymore: ranked, community, warzone.. i cant get in any of these. Do i need now more players in my fireteam to play? I mean i search mostly alone for a game and i only have few friends that play it.. so the most people i get are up to 2 me included.

eLantern wrote:

LotosDraigg wrote:

I cant play anything at all anymore: ranked, community, warzone.. i cant get in any of these. Do i need now more players in my fireteam to play? I mean i search mostly alone for a game and i only have few friends that play it.. so the most people i get are up to 2 me included.

You shouldn't require other players.

May I ask what region you're in and what time of day you're searching?

Also, what ranked playlists? And what do you mean by community? Do you mean the Customs Browser?

eLantern wrote:

LotosDraigg wrote:

eLantern wrote:

LotosDraigg wrote:

I cant play anything at all anymore: ranked, community, warzone.. i cant get in any of these. Do i need now more players in my fireteam to play? I mean i search mostly alone for a game and i only have few friends that play it.. so the most people i get are up to 2 me included.

You shouldn't require other players.

May I ask what region you're in and what time of day you're searching?

Also, what ranked playlists? And what do you mean by community? Do you mean the Customs Browser?

Im from germany and it was 17:30 when i tried to get into matchmaking and ranked but no playlist works. Every playlist tells me i need more people in my fireteam. Yes i meant custom sry^^*

Are you searching on the Expanded setting? If you're searching on the Focused setting it'll restrict you to the local data center (or local data centers). And the Balanced option may, or may not, prevent you from connecting to a US East data center, but it should open up other European data centers that the Focused option may prevent.

1730 (GMT1) seems as if it would be entering into a peak time period over there, so it suggests to me that the game's population (locally & perhaps regionally) is struggling fairly mightily.

Your best bet within the ranked playlists is often going to be the Slayer playlist. But you said you tried them all, right?

Depending on your skill-level and the available population the matchmaker may be struggling to put together a match that meets its bare minimum allowance regarding match odds. This is likely more prevalent within the ranked environment which often makes the social or warzone environments better options when pop is low.

If you don't mind playing the social arena environment you should be able to find people within any of the Fiesta playlists. They tend to be the most populated options within that particular environment.

The Customs Browser is going to be dependent on what's available. You could try loading up a Custom game yourself and then opening it up to the public so that others can find it within the Customs Browser.

Lastly, have you at least tried the Warzone Firefight modes? Usually people can find a game there as there's zero MMR influence within the matchmaking.

KotorBay85 wrote:

Noticed today, loads of Onyx players are getting matched in mid-plat games.

Why??
Even if onyx guy has a bronze on his team he's too good and people just quit.

One game today, my team was a 4 of mid-plat against 2 onyx, 1 plat 3 and a bronze.
Within 2 minutes 2 of my team had quit.