"New" players and unranked players shouldn't be in a game with me.
#This should not be happening.
clever urchin
charred bay
Your options are to wait 44 hours until 7 other grand masters all decide to log in and queue at the same time, or take Classic a little less seriously.
Though not for nothing, I agree it's a problem.
It's just, how do you fix it?
agile ember
It's just, how do you fix it?
easy, just get more players 🙂
charred bay
I guess trickle UP could work, theoretically. If we get 3.2 million extra players thrown into this game, some percentage of them will probably stick and some smaller percentage of them might actually become good enough to compete at high ELO. And then some small percentage of THOSE, could probably be persuaded to queue in classic at the same time as Fudgemuffin
clever urchin
Come on, be fair.
I understand I can't always be matched at my rank.
I do however expect to not be matched with players that have the "new player" tag and those that are unranked.
The game in question had a total new player and 4 unranked.
Either I was in the wrong game, or they were. It shouldn't be mixed.
Surely there are plenty of bronze/silver/gold for them to be matched with and at minimum I should be matched with gold, but not if there are unranked or silver/bronze players in the lobby as well.
I think it just needs some fine-tuning.
Even at the cost of longer queue times.
Personally, I don't mind 4-5 minute queues for Classic games which usually last 25-35 minutes.
charred bay
I was kind of glib, that's true. Maybe we can go back to tightening the ranges again, and re-instate the "find me a match now" button for those at 2k or higher ELO. We haven't done that in a long time, perhaps the community is grown enough now to revisit that.
But honestly, my personal opinion is that this is an unfortunate reality for people at the top of their game. Regardless of the context. Not everyone is Tom Brady, not everyone is a GM in chess, and statistically speaking at least 50% of our playerbase was at or lower than gold as of around a month ago.
We certainly do have tools to make matchmaking more strict though.
clever urchin
Idk if I agree with a "find me a match now" button.
That's kind of along the lines of "let me stomp some lowbies and ruin their experience".
That's just asking for a bunch of trolling, and there's already too many trolls in the top ranks for that to not affect the new player experience.
charred bay
I guess the way to do it would be to send a poll out to everyone who's above some arbitrary ELO minimum and ask their opinion. If most of y'all would be fine extending queue times for your ranges only then perhaps that could be done.
agile ember
Come on, be fair.
I understand I can't always be matched at my rank.
I do howeve...
Perhaps you don't mind having a longer queue. But if a new player starts a game, see that the queue is 5+ minutes long, they have quite some chances to just leave the game because they'll think the game is dead. And if new players leave the game, the game will be dead.
The playerbase just isn't there for a strict 4v4 matchmaking. And the devs already told it multiple times. If you want a strict matchmaking, play 2v2.
clever urchin
@agile ember You think it's a better new player experience to be matched with rainbow players?
I'm not asking for 'strict'. I'm asking for "new" and unranked players to not be matched against the top 1%.
I don't want them in my lobbies, and I'm sure they feel the same.
agile ember
then what I described would happen...
clever urchin
I think you're exaggerating. A lot.
They have the largest portion of players to be matched with.
Adding a criterium to the extent that 'Senior Master', 'Grandmaster', and 'Legend' ranked players don't get matched with unranked and new players will mainly affect the queue times of those 3 ranks, and the overall queue time very slightly.
Which is more than a fair trade for new players not being matched against the peak of the player base.
The game in question made even me want to stop playing. I can only assume it wasn't a positive experience for the other players either.
charred bay
Honestly we had what, thousands more people play during F2P weekend? I don't have current retainer metrics but it could be worth revisiting
agile ember
I think you're exaggerating. A lot.
They have the largest portion of players to ...
Why specifically these ranks? Ranks in classic aren't reflecting skill as much as rank in ranked. Do you think it's more enjoyable for a master to be matched more often against/with new players just because they are in "that" bracket? Also, I think you underestimate how much it would affect queue times.
clever urchin
@agile ember I may underestimate how it will affect the queue times, but until I'm given actual metrics to the point, I think it would be the better option to tighten the matchmaking up a bit.
If I'm wrong, then I'm wrong, and so be it. Then the matchmaking can't be tightened up with the current player base.
Then we need to at least identify when these kinds of changes can be made and implement them asap, no?
sinful oak
Trust us when we say this, but classic matchmaking has had its issues for a very long time, Devs have known for just as long if not longer. But they dont have any good solutions for atleast 2 years. The core issue that they have the numbers for but would rather not share, is that theres not a large enough playerbase for tighter match making. Finding 8 players within a close rank is not easy.
deft cargo
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lofty cape
make que tighter 2days a week