Blue Star Matchmaking

[swift kraken]

The matchmaking for the blue stars is just atrocious. You have people who are brand new to the game, just starting, who are going up against people who have max level ships and or modules. It's way too easy to unequip modules so that you can have one superpowered one, or bring five late game modules at low levels so that you are still paired with people who are new to the game. This is a direct pvp aspect of the game, and it's easy to make it blatantly unfair to the people that you're fighting. This causes new players to want to give up early, and later game players get tired of the grind. If there were an option for Bot lobbies- even ones that had less payout per victory, or less room for Smurf accounts to work with; I would be a lot happier. I am sure that anyone who isn't taking advantage of this would be happy as well.

[feral cedar]

I could recognizes one of the players - they all fit in 26-36 tier

we got BLS killers as opponents - bad luck - dont give up - get vengence 7 and bond 2-4

you could get 30-40% chance to win

@swift kraken

[narrow ice]

thing

the smurf problem is ungodly

[swift kraken]

Tap on the bronze 'u' looking emote to up vote

[hollow lion]

or just... (;emperor;)

also isnt this a duplicate?

[swift kraken]

I couldn't find the original one, hope it doesn't end up being a problem. I just wanted to try and bring attention back to the topic. I'm hoping people will share their clips/ screenshots here

[hollow lion]

ill throw one in cause why not
find the odd one out (impossible)

[hollow ingot]

I (has a lvl 200 alt based on pvp) play against lvl 999 like twice a day. what could I do with lvl 10 and less module ?

[swift kraken]

That's what we're trying to get updated

[nova umbra]

Blue Star Elo. That would solve everything

[hollow lion]

lose matches = loss in elo?
just makes it a little harder to smurf but they could just... lose... like on purpose

[nova umbra]

I mean, I suppose you could purposely lose a bunch, but it would certainly make it harder than just equipping some bad mods. It would also help prevent straight up bad matchmaking.

[hollow lion]

true

[swift kraken]

Just trying something new would go miles. I think the matchmaking should be based on ship level, number of equipped mods, the rarity of those mods, then level of mods equipped. Number one thing it should stop is people dropping arts to Smurf, hopefully it would fix the bogus matching too. Ships vastly outpowering each other I mean

[trim mason]

or there is a new lobby directly for players that only has rs6 or below mods

[hollow lion]

that doesnt really help the problem though

[swift kraken]

I think it would have to be a little more complicated than that

[nova umbra]

I mean, this guy isn't even smurfing. That's a good high-level bls build. But why is he matched with me, when I just hit bs5, and have lvl 10 Regen as my highest mod?

[hollow lion]

i feel like the matchmaking has gotten worse

maybe its just more people are breaking through the lvl12 mod barrier but like surely a 4-5 lvl discrepancy is too much to be reasonable

[nova umbra]

I think it's just less players on bls. I mean less players there means the matchmaker has to match you to someone. Especially if you play during low-activity times like me.

Still, surely improving the program should make it a bit better

[hollow ingot]

The best solution is making more people playing the game

[swift kraken]

Only a guy 4 times my level with some 30+ more levels to his mods

[hollow lion]

remembered this existed so here ill put this in (not my game)

[scenic sapphire]

congrats @swift kraken , you did it

[swift kraken]

WE did it!

[hollow lion]

what did you do?

[jolly ferry]

As someone who learned a about smurfing yesterday, this seems like theoretically good change. In practice it just means that now I pretty much always fight way stronger opponents and BLS continues to be frequently blatantly unfair.

You need someway to handicap higher ship/mod levels or boost lower ship/mod levels if you're gonna mix them together.

How am I ever supposed to compete against a ship like this?

It's not like this is rare, it happens every single match where I don't play against all bots which is just trying to dodge vengeance.

Why not atleast drop those mod levels down to a fair level given the opponents?

[hollow lion]

so apparently new bls matchmaking rolled out today

time to test

pretty good ngl

it is just one tho

[jolly ferry]

Well, for me BLS is now grinding over and over and hoping the higher level players kill each other so I have a chance at third and some rewards ...

Wanna guess how many BLS i did today trying to get the dailie?

[hollow lion]

mmmmmmm not so good but smurf got totalled lol

[hollow lion]

7

actually

8

im seeing nothing new in terms of higher level mods

looks the same

[jolly ferry]

I lost count after a dozen so I don't actually know

[hollow lion]

hm

whats your mods?

[jolly ferry]

I have several different loadouts I try but usually some mix of destiny, teleport, emp, solitude, fortitude and whatever else I have levelled.

But out of all those games, not once was I the highest levelled player and more than half I was the lowest level

[hollow lion]

solitude+fortify is interesting combo 🤔

what levels you got?

[jolly ferry]

So I guess I'm just high enough to get pulled into the matchmaking with highest level players to fill out their matches

Everything is at 10 my max

[hollow lion]

yeah sounds like me

theres some weird jump from 9-10 that makes everything way worse

[jolly ferry]

Since I learned about smurfing yesterday, I was leveling everything I wanted to use.

[hollow lion]

at lvl9 i would never get anything >11 and now i consistently get matched with lvl12s,13s, even the occasional 14 and 15s

[jolly ferry]

Daily grinding for 3rd place gets tiring, especially since you have to wait out the BLS timer after a high level player kills you in the first 30 seconds with bond

[hollow lion]

i just use 3 bs to do bls

[jolly ferry]

I use 4

[hollow lion]

mm

rare for me to get killed in under a minute tho

wonder why they early target you but not me?

probably mirror

yeah definetly mirror

[jolly ferry]

Mirror is the only shield I have levelled since I'm an old returning player from back when module activation in RS cost hydro

[hollow lion]

the only one? wow

i dont remember much from pre-dn but i thought regen didnt use hydro

[jolly ferry]

Regen added to the move cost if I remember correctly

[hollow lion]

makes sense

[jolly ferry]

It seems like now, all the high level smurf players switch to their high level mods and now there are way more of them in matchmaking range.

BLS was always kind of a slog but today was one of the worst I've ever seen. It took one 2nd place and 5 3rd place finishes to complete the daily rewards so I would estimate it was 20 ish BLS matches to do it

[swift kraken]

Yeah the matchmaking needs tweaking for sure

[stuck ridge]

I last ranked bls were horrendous match making. A relatively low build meets full 13. miss match over over 100% , I have an alt account and there the mod level total on ranked bls of my opponent were 400% my level.
Makes no sense now, that is sure.

[swift kraken]

Yeah idk how they 'fixed' it. Looks like they took off any and all parameters. After yesterday I'm really tired of thinking about this game. Gotta give it a few days

[covert smelt]

Don't smurf for me Argentina 😢

[wanton otter]

and....... upvoted!

[nova umbra]

I have some ideas on fixing the matchmaking... https://discord.com/channels/255083954036670464/1409392515097952276
Upvote, downvote, sidewaysvote idk

[feral cedar]

matchmaking has never been so unbalanced

mixing BS7 and BS4

lvl.1 smurfing is solved make the same players victims to lvl.13 whales. from one hunter to another hunter - "Out of the frying pan and into the fire."

[hollow lion]

bs7-4?

crazy

[void basalt]

The fun part smurfing is not even solved, u can still do it, if u fit for the lowest bracket

[hollow lion]

ykw while im here
i made a catalog of my matches

[void basalt]

Not available for bs5+(or we don’t know yet), but you can do with bs2-3, with some chances with 4

[void basalt]

Mod avg is not rly helpful, coz ppl can have like rep drone 5, or suspend 1, the rest maxed and it is not affecting the power much

And lvl1 seems affecting the power for mm differently also

[hollow lion]

thats why i put mode

oh i see you mean for each individual

fair point

[hollow lion]

how'd you get the mods to show up like that?

[feral cedar]

button on pc on left of 1

[trim mason]

I think it has something to do with avarage and max/min levels

[void basalt]

Maybe, I have a suspicion that even mods lvls weight reverted, now lvl 15 the cheapest. Can’t tell for sure without many tests

There could be also many unknown factors

[trim mason]

I saw some weird builds with lvl5-8 mods but lvl10+ main mods in lower lobbies. but didnt test it, so its a conspiracy for me

suspect a bunch of semiusefull at lvl6 could lower the lobby a bit but you cripple yourself with most of them

[scenic sapphire]

tilde

[jolly ferry]

I guess after this long with no fixes even though the Dev said they could balance stuff with out at uodate, we should just conclude this is working as intended, trying to reward whales and incentivize everyone else to spend money...

[broken pebble]

The risk of making everyone spend money to catch up is it could discourage people from playing the game mode all together which will have a knock on effect if they are not careful.

[void basalt]

I just stopped playing bls on my alt, coz it is not fun to be a cannon fodder. If it was my only account, I’d just deleted the app already, ig this is what low-mid lvl players will do soon, instead of spending thousands $ to catch up with the whales

[cedar roost]

another example of how Blue Stars sucks

[hollow lion]

bs7 🥀

[wanton otter]

they "FIxeD" smurfing for low level rs1-5s but now everyone who isnt a low level newbie, but not a big fat whale either is gonna get MISMATCHED, EVERY single match

just doubled the problem and gave it to a larger chunk of the players

[wanton otter]

its like "solving" or "improving" a business like a store, by raising prices.
If your shop/buisness/trde isn't making ends meet, you dont just raise prices. Just raising prices isn't gonna fix anything, for anyone. People are gonna play other games. Might even end up with less income from the game - and the Dev sure well knows this.

[feral cedar]

The problem could be easily solved by excluding BS7 and BS6 in a different tier than BS4 and BS5

80% or mid range players will be satistied not be "punching bags" to BS7

[wanton otter]

or simply if they just disallowed Dart, leap, vengeance in lower level Blue Stars.
They could make it so that if you own veng, chain ray, dart or leap, your battleship is put on the same level as higher tiers

Like, if say
the matchmaker values leap 7 as 1800 points
They could make it so, that IF the respective battleship does not have a total of 4000 matchmaker rating, it automatically increases to 4000 points

assumably bls matchmaking is the same as it used to but just tinkered with - each module has a set rating, each module contributes to the total rating of a battleship - which is used to then determine the matchup

[trim mason]

that will screw with players who got some free high lvl arts from corp(for WS and whatnot). sure these mods are problematic but the sec you start matchmaking based on modules, its like nothing happened. we just traded back to smurfs from whales. (yes this system now is bad-I lose more matches than preupdate- but i noticed constant improvements in the previous weeks)

[wanton otter]

no no, those players can simply not use those high level modules in BLS. Can they not? Are they forced to equip dart or leap on their bls ship? and plus, if they do use modules like dart, vengeance at such a low level, they have a good chance against higher levels if they get matched.

PLUS, I think we should have higher rewards, for lower places in BLS, for lower level players

so instead of getting only half your total daily rewards for a win - you get all of it. For second place - you get 75%. For third place, you get 50%

BLS rewards being depreciated or completely disbanded furthermore, is even more appropriate than what they did with WS rewards

[swift kraken]

Feels like there's no matchmaking now- you just get whomever searched at the same time regardless of strength

[wanton otter]

thats kinda the converging reality we're at

WS is still matching within minutes, But nobody plays BLS

#RemoveBLS

[mellow depot]

Matching is awesome now. I agree 💯 there is no need to get AI matches anymore. If it is not broken don't try to fix it.

[swift kraken]

I personally disagree

[feral cedar]

check the number of BLS players - it decreased rapidly

the developer increased the "fun" of core BLS players by narrowing the player base.

if this good or bad? there will be different answer depending who will you ask.