Matchmaking

I want to take a moment to dissect this concept of longer match making times and what COULD be done.

First, when we match up against Elite teams, etc. They have very solid W/L records. There's no way the majority of teams could all be elite and have those kinds of records if the community was that small. They have to be beating someone and it can be 70/30 within their peer group.  At best it would average out and they'd end up somewhere near .500, not .750 to .800 win percentage.

Second, the RPs go up for wins and down for losses, so, with all the higher level players they must be winning a lot to get their RP up that high and the lower levels must be losing a lot.

I think it's fair to say that there is still a fairly even distribution for skill in the community, even if it has grown smaller.  What I see from EA is a statement that says SBMM (skill based match making) would lead to longer match times. That might be the case, but it would lead to more gratifying game play.  Right now EA is banking on lower skilled players sticking around and being happy enough matching higher skilled players.  Those games are not fun. So, lower skilled players will leave the community. This will effectively lessen the ability to match make and lead to longer match times. The thing EA is trying to avoid in the first place.

Might I suggest that instead of making assumptions and not giving players what they want you implement a system that allows players control over the skill based match making?  How would it work?  Here's your free product idea:

• Teams set an upper differential for how high the opponent can be in order to allow the match.
• Teams will always be able to match with those lower than them in RP (assuming the team below them has that higher team in their limit)
• EA averages the RP of the players on the team.
• If a match is available within the upper differential then a match occurs.
• If a match is not available, then the matchmaking times out and the team can choose to increase the range or continue searching.

This will not protect against upper level players creating alts.  This is already happening. With all skills unlocked at level 1 there's no pain in starting an alt player as you don't have to level them up to get better.

This will allow teams to have control over their search times.

If EA does not give the community what it wants then the community leaves. There's nothing worse for a product than to have no one buy it. While I have years in product management leadership, I did not need all those years to know that.

Right now my team looks at the W/L record of the other team and drops if we get a highly unfavorable match up. This does not benefit us or the other team. It makes the whole experience worse and that's not what EA needs right now.

The issue with this is that some lower skilled players will quickly become discouraged and quit playing the game, as will those of us who may be medium-to-high skilled players who aren't looking for every game to be a massive sweat.