World of Chel Matchmaking

Not the only one asking for what is essentially skill-based matchmaking. I have not seen EA officially turn it down but its been mentioned that the player base is not big enough and it would "punish" those at higher ranks with less people to match with or make matchmaking longer. I think Aljo has said that during club playoffs there is skill-based matchmaking but I'm not sure if I am recalling that accurately as this was back on last years game.

There has been protests about this from the other side as well, I seen a few posts from players that were elites saying those types of matches are not fun for them either.

I made this before NHL 26 came out and I forgot about it until now, just a forgotten pitch on a matchmaking system for clubs.

To be nice, if anyone wants to quote any texts from that picture I'll put the description here.

During times of the day when the population is over a certain threshold, matchmaking should follow the green boxes; if the population falls below the threshold, then matchmaking can expand to compensate for the drop in population. This can be the global population of WOC or the population per rank, whichever is more efficient.

This does not need to be limited by the example Pop-based matchable; it could be the lower the pop. the lower the ranks you can match with.

There can even be a population threshold where a system like this is turned off completely when there aren't enough players to match with efficiently.

The chart should use the average rank of the entire lobby/team; this does not prevent ranks from still being able to match with any rank if the team average allows for it using the chart. For example, a team composed of platinum/diamond/elites would likely have an average closer to diamond, allowing for elites to play against teams who can match against diamonds... an elite playing with a team of bronzes, etc.

Another idea is a system that won't prevent matchmaking with higher/lower ranks, but searches/prioritizes for the closer ranked opponents during time of matchmaking, that way a team of silvers has lower odds of playing a stacked team of elites unless they were the closest ranked team during the time of matchmaking, keeping matchmaking efficient while trying to have balance.

I would also say adding player rank icons to player banners in pregame lobbies would be a decent thing to add, display your rank while in a lobby, this can have an affect though on matchmaking as teams can back out if they don't like the ranks they are matching against. But being able to know the ranks of your opponents prior entering a match would allow teams to better prepare for the matchup.