Matched outside of tier way too often in Road to the CFP
Unfortunately right now there is little incentive to not play a Tier 1 team in Road to the CFP:
The way it's designed and operating currently, it seems like the matchmaking system searches for around 10 seconds for the tier you specify in Road to the CFP. After it doesn't immediately find a match, it appears that it widens the search to other tiers.
The issue with this:
I think it's safe to say that more people online use higher tier teams online, than lower. They're better teams, and players want to win. Furthermore, they're successful programs with large fanbases.
So this leads to an issue where people using Tier 3 and 4 teams often getting matched with Tier 1 teams.
Further complicating the issue:
Matchmaking now has to match you with a team on the road, if it's your turn to play at home, and vice versa. This essentially cuts the matchable playerbase roughly in half, making it more likely that you will get matched up with a higher tier team for the same reasons as above. I don't think that this change was properly taken into account with the matchmaking system.
This isn't the end of the world, but the delta (especially in the passing game) seems to be increased between the best teams and the mediocre teams this year, leading to a lot of, for example: Jeremiah Smith absolutely burning mid-to-high 70s OVR DBs that play for a tier 3 or 4 team over the top. Not super fun.
That being said, it's NOT impossible to beat a Tier 1 team as a lower tier team - it's difficult but not impossible. This however is not the issue at hand. Let players that are confident in their lower tier team play against them - IF THEY WANT TO.
The fix is simple, if a player specifies they want to play against a specific tier of team, don't expand the matchmaking search after just a handful of seconds. There is already a message that sometimes appears letting the player know that it's taking a while to find a match, allow the player to either accept an expanded search, or continue waiting for a lower-tier team.
All weekend there was actively 100+ players searching for a match at any given time. That's just players searching! I personally wouldn't mind waiting 30 seconds to 1 minute even to match with a more evenly matched team.
I'd additionally like to see a higher rank gain for managing to beat a Tier 1-2 team with a tier 3-4 team to counteract this.
In my 3 seasons played so far in Road to the CFP - 4 or 5 games out of 12 each time have been against higher tier opponent teams.
The issue boils down to this:
If you are going to get matched up against them anyways, and there's no major incentive to try to beat higher tier teams with a lower tier team, then why would you ever play as a one?
