"Matches played" multiplier to SBMM/MMR matchmaking system

[civic sluice]

I was requested to post this as feedback.
#💬│wrf-general message

Basically, there is no good way to prevent smurfing. If you use Leagues or SBMM/MMR scores, KDA, whatever, people can just do bad to lower their score, and match easier opponents. Even if you use Total Power Rating for calculating how many mechs have level 13 modules for example, people can just bring a level 1 mech with no shoulders and 1 gun on the head, or only bring 4 mechs, and still stomp worse and new players.

My suggestion is to track matches played. You get like what, 15 trophies for a win MVP? Last season leaderboard players had at LEAST 1000 matches. I only had around 4000 trophies, so I had probably around 500 matches or more.

The reality is, no matter how bad someone is at the game, by the time you've played 1000 matches, you should easily have more than enough salvage and intel to have really good mechs in your bay. Even if you do awful every match, you still are finishing dailies, weeklies, and matches. Unless you're upgrading things and selling them, you have far better mechs than people with half your matches played. Play time is not a good way to calculate as the length of the match means nothing compared to how many matches played.

Matches Played should be a multiplier for the total matchmaking ranking system. I cannot think of any excuses that people with high hundreds to thousands of matches would ever be comparable to newer players.

[terse gate]

No one is going to smurf with no shoulders and 1 gun. 🤣 idk if you were joking, but it made me laugh.

I don't think intentional tanking is much of an issue in this game. The "smurfs" right now were put there intentionally by the game devs when the season reset. I don't know who in the company made the decision to put the top players in the world into gold to match with bronze and silver players that are just starting out, but maybe that person shouldn't be making more decisions. Just saying.

[twilit maple]

the top players matched only with platinum to noachium from last season as it is only gold vs gold but they should have left gold by now.
I think noachium should have been reset to platinum to parry the fact that there is a lack of players in platinum and up at the moment

smurfing is an issue that is for sure but nothing is made in game to prevent that kind of toxic behaviour I hope it will be implemented soon

[terse gate]

You are providing already established information.

Edit: Unless you didn't get what I was talking about with season rest, maybe? Idk.

[twilit maple]

it is the second as the reset didn't change much regarding matching silvers with top players.
the only probleme with the reset and the new matchmaking system is it need to accumulate a certain amount of games (without smurfing attempts) to be accurate in balancing roughly the games (leaving the team probleme aside for sure but I do hope it will be fixed soon

[civic sluice]

This isn't about the season reset. Last season people were posting screenshots of level 80 bronze and silver players. Also, Leagues are a terrible way to calculate player skill anyway, as people often complain half the players farm bots. Bots or not, 1000 matches is enough to have really good mechs. The 1 gun mech was half joking, but if we ever get to choose game modes, in Team Deathmatch, most people just reuse their best mechs anyway

Myself and others have gone entire matches without even losing our first mech, since we dumped all our time and resources into making it so good. In some cases, you really won't even need all your mechs.

I don't expect "total mech bay power level" to be a matchmaking condition though

People try new builds all the time, especially when new mechs drop each season, it's not a good judge of player experience

[terse gate]

Did they change the matchmaking system for this season? They probably had to right? I haven't seen the details of it.

I don't think all the top players are out of gold yet. I've been pretty much only doing my dailies and then switching to nightreign. So I only got back to plat 2 days ago because I don't play enough matches to climb.

If I crewed with a platinum right after reset, it was basically all bot matches. There wasn't anyone in plat to match with.

I posted on here exactly what you said before reset, that top players should go to plat instead of gold strictly because of the matchmaking system. It seemed like common sense to me.

I didn't like the system last season either. It was one of the worst I've seen.

[terse gate]

My hanger is mostly for fun mechs now. With only two sweaty mechs in case I encounter some try hards. Even my try hard mech have lvl 1 shoulders, legs, and gear slots, because I just never level those up. So I would definitely be considered an unintentional smurf in any sort of hanger bot level system. When I get back to emerald and diamond maybe I'll switch back to all sweat mechs.

If this was a thing it would probably have to be account wide part level, although I would still strongly dislike that. I crafted and upgraded a lot of parts early on that are pretty terrible and I don't ever use, like railguns and thunders. Past scrub me would have been put in a higher matchmaking bracket. Also what if I sold them and got basically nothing back, would that still count against my matchmaking level?

I've played games like that before. It becomes a lean account building game at that point, where a smurf makes a new account and then only levels up a couple very specific most impactful weapons and nothing else. Then they sit in the low matchmaking forever.

Personally, if I had to make a new matchmaker, and I couldn't do anything super complicated or difficult to impliment. I would have it based on your impact in games. Not just flat out your average impact number, but your impact game to game compared to your average and the average of others in the match, that can be used to adjust a hidden soft elo/mmr sort of value.

I think the main issue you will come across is that any system that is fair and fun to the normal progression of players can be exploited by smurfs. Anything that counters smurfs is going to be less fair/fun for the normal player progression, especially players that accidentally deviate from that. That's why a lot of companies don't really try to implement an anti-smurf into the matchmatching algorithm and just handle smurfs on a case by case basis (if at all). You'll do more harm than good with it.

[twilit maple]

nobody has the details but it is said that the new matchmaker uses the amount of trophies and the win rate to balance the games.
from what I have seen it will work for solo players but it is not yet operationnal for teams (which should face bots if no even match is found IMO)

[terse gate]

Well it doesn't seem very operational for solos either. Last night I was still being put into bot matches with only 1 human opponent and 5 bots each. At first I thought it was a crossplay-off bot farmer, but they were console and I was pc, so neither of us could have had crossplay off.

My win rate must be so high no one can match with me. 😜 /j

I did notice the match search timer sometimes goes past 2 minutes now. It would have really appreciated that last season, but now I am just trying to grind dailies real quick, just put me in a game already. 😅