Does matchmaking get noticeably worse on weekends? (Phantom 6)

[Wariacik]

I’m curious if anyone else feels the same, because for me this happens almost every Friday.

During the week, matchmaking usually feels pretty normal.
Even when I lose, most games feel at least somewhat balanced, and usually people have a decent understanding of what they’re doing. Bad games happen, sure, but it’s relatively rare to get someone who is completely useless or looks like they barely understand the basics.

But once Friday/weekend hits, the quality of matches seems to drop hard.

Suddenly I start getting teammates who:

• seem completely lost
• build really weird/random items
• look like they’re either brand new or massively out of their depth
• barely communicate at all
• almost never use voice

It honestly feels like the matchmaking pool changes completely on weekends and starts throwing together players with way bigger skill/experience gaps.

I’m Phantom 6, so I’m not expecting perfect games every time, but the difference between weekday matchmaking and weekend matchmaking feels way too noticeable to be just coincidence.

Does anyone else experience this too?
Is weekend matchmaking actually worse, or am I just losing my mind?

 

[cameronthomas787]

Yes, I totally agree with this and my match history supports it. On the weekends the skill rating variance is much larger than during the week (I can discern this by my own skills rating - Archon II - and the average rank of the team). On weekdays, for my games, the average team skill rating hovers around Arch II and then on weekends, it can be as low as Ritualist IV/Emissary I.

I imagine this is much more common at your level given Phantom VI is probably over the bell curve and therefore a smaller number of players with similar skill ratings.

For most MOBAs, good matchmaking relies on a healthy pool of players with similar skill ratings in respective geographies/server locations. You can track player count for many games via: https://steamdb.info/app/1422450/charts/#1m

The trade off is longer queue times for better matchmaking, which I think most skilled players would happily take.

The best times to Deadlock are just after major releases when the player count jumps. In my opinion, Valve need to pull the trigger on public release soon or release content more regulalry to keep players engaged, otherwise the community leaves and often with a bitter taste in their mouth from a string a horrible games (due to horrible matchmaking).

 

[glutenfreevapes]

What if there was a match making mode which would utilize:
- minimum games played (ie. minimum 50 games won)
- no recent bans/restrictions
- specific regional time window for playing (such UTC1800-UTC2300)
- strict ping limits
- no fun allowed

 

[jporter917]

Hacker and smurfs play on the weekends.

 

[nothingplease]

Not a bug so don't know why you are posting this.

Also it's a well known fact that competitive games are horrible on weekends because of all the weekend warriors that can play only on weekend for 1-4 hours. Same in OW, Apex, DotA, LoL, Valorant and any other game.