@TSF_VindictiV wrote:
I was one of the people that believed everything was fine with matchmaking... until a couple of days later when you start seeing a CLEAR difference between the everyday joe that works and cannot play all day everyday and the "others". The game rapidly became frustrating for the "casuals" as those do not have much chance of winning anymore.
I can already hear elitists with no counter arguments and just spamming strawman fallacies like "get good" (try to bring objective counter arguments pls) but there needs to be a match making for several reasons:
1)Noobs getting into the game won't enjoy nor will they actually improve if they get vaporised without any chance of learning.
2)Better players will not improve if they simply stomp noobs.
3)You have randos/strangers with work and responsabilities forming squads of casuals without any real teamwork as they don't know each other at all versus sweaty mc tryhards squads that haven't showered in the past 2 days that play all day/night together.
With a proper skill-based matchmaking you get:
1)Noobs will be facing noobs giving everybody a fair chance
2)Average Joes facing average Joes for fair/entertaining and non frustrating games
3)Pros, twitch streamers and sweaty tryhards will be put together and the game will be much more challenging for all of them
4)You can even make a "ranked" queue/mode that rewards top squads with bonuses such as crafting metals for example to give an incentive to better players (or masochistic noobs) to play on there instead of the regular queue.
The argument of "people will be playing always against the same people" is bs as there is more than 25 million players on the game as of this day.
Also, everybody wins. Games will be more challenging, fairer, more rewarding and a LOT less frustrating overall.
The only reasons somebody would be against matchmaking, would be because he's pitiful and only wants free wins against worse players or if he's a noob player himself and, well, he's the definition of a masochistic noob lol.
We agree and disagree - I have also made a post discussion the current state of matchmaking from my perspective, and how I think the SBMM system needs changes. Here is that post - https://answers.ea.com/t5/General-Feedback/Lets-Talk-About-Skill-Based-Matchmaking/m-p/8518898#M34493
Your first section is a little hard to understand. I'm going to interpret it as "I thought matchmaking used to be fine - But after playing a bit, I do not think it is. I feel casual players found the game to be frustrating because of unfair lobbies." but do correct me if I am wrong. Before I respond to this, I want to make it clear that we do not understand the exact intent behind the current SBMM system. I come at this from the perspective presuming that Respawn developers want to encourage a space for new or low skill players to bond with the game and develop some game sense. I agree that the casual first time player experience gets worse the longer a game goes on, because the average skill-level increases. However, I do not agree that the best approach to solve that problem is the current SBMM system where the matchmaking scales for every player. You can see an alternative recommendation I had in mind on my post I mentioned above, which effectively boils down to "SBMM should only apply to the newest or less-experienced players.". If you or anyone are curious about my perspective and want to offer your perspective (In good faith.), feel free to stop by my post. Also, could we all not act like 6 year olds and insult people who disagree with us? Directly or indirectly.
Continuing on - In your first section you "Other" average people. In your second you "Other" people who play more by calling them elitists. I do not think this is in good faith and healthy for discussion regarding the current state of SBMM. I would encourage you to try and understand when someone takes fair issue with SBMM or has a fundamentally different perspective instead of just chalking it up to the elite players versus the average players to not make this issue seem so black and white, because it isn't. Speaking of fallacies here, saying "Get good." is not a strawman fallacy. I think it is dismissive, which is bad, but that is besides the point. Ironically you are using that statement as the 'elite players' argument, that means you are strawmanning people who might be likely to disagree with you. I think my suggestion helps new or low level players get time to learn the game. You then go into presuming that good players just want to stomp in pubs - I mentioned this in my post, but I cannot play with my friends anymore. One of my favorite parts of the game was playing with randoms (Of all skill levels.) and queuing up with them to make the team work. Most friends I have or meet now that want to play are unable to play in my lobbies and contribute. They are just not able to keep up with the coordination and skill of the other squads in my 'unranked' lobbies. That means I cannot play with my friends and randoms as much or at all, which is something I want to change and I hope you could understand. I also then mentioned how I can no longer solo queue, because I cannot expect the same level of effort or coordination from my team as I can from enemy teams. If I need to have a good pre-made squad, need to display top level effort and coordination, and am only going to fight people of a similar or greater skill level, I'm better off queuing for ranked matches. What you could learn from this is that for people who play enough and do well enough, the experience of the game will inevitably feel like casual matches are actually just ranked by another name.
You continue on and talk about proper skill-based matchmaking. I think the whole reason for disagreement is largely due to the fact people do not agree on whether SBMM is proper at all or in its current form. At the very least in an attempt to reach the middle ground, I hope anyone reading (Yourself included.) can agree that the current SBMM system does need some changes, maybe not all the ones I or you describe, but changes. Maybe there is merit in some of the ideas you or I have, maybe there are alternative ways to adopt these ideas for either of our perspectives.
As for the "People will fight against the same people." idea, it's actually not that far off. I find it odd that you think it wouldn't happen, and I'll explain to you why your understanding may be flawed. There are around 400,000 active NA players, 16 active servers where they can play, and 'active player' means in-game not necessarily playing. If we divide 400,000 by 16, we get around 25,000. This is the rough average of the total number of players based on the current active user count which one might expect in their server, but you can expect anyone outside of New York and California to have lower numbers than the average, so I am being generous to your argument outside of major coastal cities. The math doesn't end there - You then have to factor in SBMM, we'll use the actual ranking system to guess at how people would be distributed in SBMM if they make it to at least platinum. 19.1% of players are platinum or above, take that out of 25,000 and you have a queue filled with 4775 players. You can actually remove the number of diamonds you could expect by dividing 4775 by 8 (Since diamonds make up 1/8th of that number.), so 556. Then if you wanted to remove predators you could divide 4775 by 10, so 476 rounded up.
So let's use that quick maff I did 556 for diamond and 476 for predator. Divide by 60 to see the number of matches one could at best expect as a higher level player (Meaning it is going to be lower because some matches are already running.). Rough averages say there are 9.3 (Rounded up.) diamond level games running at any given time, in queue or already started.
Rough averages say there 7.9 (Rounded down.) predator level games running at any given time, in queue or already started.
So when someone says "I fight the same people.", I think you should be a little more fair to their argument if they are platinum of above. Also, those numbers I gave you don't even have ranked factored in. If half the people who are predator or diamond level play ranked instead of casual games when they are active, you can see that average number of lobbies get cut in half in casual games. Enjoy waiting in queue to get into 4 or 5 active lobbies as a highly skilled player only to fight the same people you did previously. On a personal note by the way, I do tend to see the regular names in my lobbies. I think these numbers can also help people understand that if the SBMM system stays as is that the game will only be seen as less competitive to players the longer play and better they get.
So long story short - No, Mr. Condescending, I do not think everybody wins here. I am not against keeping the current skill-based matchmaking system because I just want 'Free wins against worse players.' or because I am a 'Self-hating noob.'. I am against SBMM as it stands because I want to play with my friends again! I want to play around with randoms and make new squads! I would like to queue up into ranked and have it feel like a separate mode! I want to play with new people and meme around!
Put simply. I want to play this game, not feel punished for doing well at it.
