Bad Matchmaking Thread

I am so grateful of being able to play this game every single day and having the opportunity to suffer through this "50/50 equal chances of winning" system designed by an AI! I love this game please keep it up I'm sure you'll continue to retain players with this system where I get 4 useless players on my team.1734166459562.png
 
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and our team was the Emissary V? I was the only person who did well in the entire team and all the other 4 lanes didn't even bother at all.

This genuinely felt like a bot game, except I'm sure bots would've played better than the people I got.
 
last 3 games i played over 2 days, ~10 min queue time which is long (maybe due to less players in general) i get matched into foreign matches. i notice based on player names and languages they speak , also my ping incredibly high. no restart of game or disc-reconnect changed over 200 ping... unplayable in match could only farm and split lanes. same thing happen for another 2 games so had to abandon becuase it is not playable. usually cap at 50ping i am in south africa usually on eu server.
 
Figure this may be useful since it's a 6-stack scenario. Matches listed were played consecutively with the first being relatively well balanced, and the two following being absolute stomps. In both of the stomps, my team was losing by about the 6 minute mark.

I'd say the experience level of my team is a pretty wide mix between somewhat regular player and very occasional matches, but most of us run a build from the build menu (that is to say there is very little intentional counter-play for 4 of the 6 of us, like buying knockdown for example). One of the matches, an ally was playing McGinnis for the first time and was lane matched against an experienced Vindicta who held the souls lead from 3 minutes onward.

Balanced Game: 30409561
Bad Games: 30410626 , 30411432
 
30436536 55k soul gap in 25 minutes and also why am I in an oracle 4 game when i'm like archon 3?

30451104 41k soul gap in 24 minutes
 
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I'm archon 5. Last 3 games and a 4th a few before that are oracle 2, oracle 6, oracle 2 average, and oracle 2 average.
 
Why is the match making insistent on ensuring that the minute I play one good match the next match will be horrible. I want to say its a coincidence. However when trends happens for at least 20+ game you have to wonder. I mean this time it was an ok match into, people who where so blatantly throwing that should be hardware banned.
 
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Up until around the 14 minute mark or so, I was the only member of my team with a kill. It was a wonderful combination of our team being completely outmatched in every single lane, along with the Ivy and Vindicta on my team being super toxic and screaming at each other on comms (which I realize you can't control).
 
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My average team rank was Seeker VI, they were Alchemist V. It was not even close, as the average rank of the teams would suggest, I was ok in my lane but every other lane melted. Part of a series of 5 or 6 extremely poorly matched games in a row.
 
Another game, another 4 useless teammates. Is this enough data for your research?View attachment 32852
This is an interesting case study in player frustration. These two teams actually see mostly fairly equal, and yet the experience is frustrating.

The total soul disparity is only about 10% with none of the usual telltale disparity of having 15+ kills or deaths. The top stats are distributed between the teams, and 11 of the 12 players are in a 30-36k range of souls. The top line numbers seem like the game should feel close and winnable.

So why does it feel bad? Where are the disparities and what can they tell us?

its tempting to look at the Warden vs Infernus matchup and note how many souls were fed to Infernus as deaths. However that isn't the biggest difference between the teams. 30 vs 45 kills probably didn't feel great, but its recoverable. 37 vs 76 assists is huge. That suggests the Sapphire Flame grouped up more

Of course obj damage is what ultimately wins the game, and this is where the biggest difference lies within each team. Overall its roughly 40k to 65k, but half of the Amber Hand's objective damage was done by Warden alone. Paradox and Abrams barely looked at an objective the whole game.

This data paints a picture of a game where Sapphire flame grouped up and pushed objectives together, while the Amber hand split up with most of the team chasing individual kills in small groups, while warden pushed objectives alone. If there is a skill issue here, its not mechanical or tactical, but strategic. Amber failed to communicate and coordinate.

How does a match making system account for this? Its hard to think of a metric that could capture how well a player contributed to their team. "time on mic" or "number of pings" both go up when people are flaming. Is it reasonable to expect any random group of six people will naturally vibe together or come up with a shared leadership and coordination? Is "matchmaking" really a form of speed dating? Do we need psychological profiles to create good teams?

It seems that deadlock was specifically designed to reward teams who group up and coordinate. Players failing to do this isn't experienced as their own lack of communications skill though, its at best internalised as a lack of mechanical skill, or more often externalised and blamed on team mates and the game failing to matchmake. So if the problem with matchmaking isn't the matchmaking, how do we solve a lack of coordination?

Currently there are very few in-game tools to learn or encourage coordination. Playing vs bots is the only current form of game practice, but training only covers basic laning, and late game coordination is what the bots are worst at. So, how do we help players progress from intermediate skill level to advanced? How do we gently remind players to do the things that win games and make their team mates happy?

Yet again my conclusion is that in-game diagetic prompting, training, and contextual queues are the solution to align player behaviour with intended play patterns.
 
Use this thread to share matchids for games that you think the matchmaker did a bad job at. If you can explain what you felt was a problem in it that would be helpful as well.

Do not post matchids for games that were within the past 24 hours from this post. Games older than that are fine and games going forward are fine.

Thanks for the help
30453747 - This is beyond infuriating. Sticking a team of Archon 4 in with a team of Oracle 4. It really just speaks for itself.
 
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