fast trout
This is by far the most frustrating thing to run into in the game when playing with my similarly ranked friends.
We are all plat 3s, yet after we won a few games we were pitted against two top 50s and a legend. The result? We were 5-0'd within the first 2 minutes of the game, making it even pointless to forfeit. It wasn't close, we barely had any opportunities to hold the puck; a game as lopsided like that has frankly no value from an improvement standpoint for anyone in the lobby. The weaker players (us) just turtle up while the pros clearly don't feel any challenge getting past us.
Another Fact: We immediately stopped playing after knowing there was a high chance we would run into them again.
On the flipside, we shouldn't be playing against golds. Both sides of the spectrum are unfair and uncompetitive. The way to improve is by playing against opponents of similar skill (it's a balance of playing against slightly weaker, equal and slightly better opponents).
Ultimately, I think matchmaking needs less rank variance to avoid completely lopsided scenarios. Teams should be somewhat reasonably balanced as well (for example, a Top 50 would need to play with two plat 2s against three plat 3s).
If a bunch of Top 50s are partied up together, they should simply not be able to find matches against plats. If that means they have to wait 20 minutes for a match, then so be it. They would just have to un-party and play on their own if it's so much of a problem. The same goes for lower ranks if the disparity is there.
In the end, this leads to hopefully better experiences for everyone and no one feels discouraged by opponents that they clearly should not be running into. And then hopefully that keeps new players into the game.
P.S. Just want to say this game has come really far from where it started. Compared to experiences I recall in the past (especially before the ranked system), I remember being in matches that felt insanely unbalanced most of the time, so it is nice to see that these situations are less common. I genuinely have fun playing with my friends and most games are a fair challenge. There's always room for improvement though, and I care enough about the game at this point to want to see it get even better! 🙂
frozen bronze
vagrant dome
