Let's talk Battlegrounds matchmaking.

So, as many have noticed recently, Battlegrounds matchmaking has had a change done to it and with that, it has its issues. I immediately noticed I was getting matches with people that absolutely dwarf my account in terms of R4 6 Stars and overall $ spent (all brand new champs), this is coming from last season where I had a great time fighting people at or very close to my level.

Because of this change and the comment made by Kabam that they don't want to reveal what the new matchmaking system bases it's algorithm on, I decided to do a little testing and see just what the hell the matchmaking uses to find opponents. So after a bit of forfeiting and logging my opponents Prestige, Account Base Hero Rating & Progression level, I think I finally know what the new system uses. To put it straight up, it uses Base Hero Rating for the algorithm. Now, there were some oddities with the testing, like matching people who I just shouldn't with any algorithm, but that was less than 10% of the time, the other >90% was people that had very similar or in the ballpark Base Hero Rating.

The reason I find an issue with this new system is, not only is it absolutely screwing me on 70-80% of the matches but I also am seeing people with rosters far below mine getting matched against me. People with newer accounts that didn't rely on ranking up their 3, 4 & 5*s are looking to have these matches on easy mode, do to their rating being far lower than a long time casual player who has gone through needing to rank up those champs over the years. I can't imagine it's a fun time for someone with a 10k prestige account getting curb stomped by a 15k prestige account, just because one person decided that ranking only their top 6 Stars is what they need. This is no complaint towards those players by the way, this is a complaint towards the matchmaking system, it's screwing a lot of players from Cavalier to Paragon. I for one will not be ranking up anymore champions that aren't going to R3 as a 6 Star, since that's all that matters now.

TL;DR Battlegrounds matchmaking is now based on Base Hero Rating and it's screwing mid-endgame players.

Comments

Bazzingaaa

I've given up trying to understand it.
When I use my best (mainly 5*) I'm destroyed by bigger accounts with ranked up 6*.
When I use half 2* im matched with other sandbaggers lolz.

Timmy2xs

Lets talk champ selection... get 5 champs that wont help with the champs ill be fighting... reroll and get the same exact champs. Its ridiculous. Half the people I fight dont ban Torch or AA...but do u think they pop up? NOPE! Have to waste a reroll to get the same champ pool I had...Just have to attack with the same 5 champs Im always forced to use. Between that and the modders, BG is getting old fast.

IamGrO_ot

Great that they are working to detect cheaters and ban their accounts, but we all know how easy and short time it takes to create a new account that is TB within hours in autofight mode.

As long as you don't compensate the players for their losses, you will never get anywhere realistically. BG has the greatest potential of any content ever created, but the experience is ruined on a daily basis by cheaters.

At a minimum, Kabam should at least remove losing 1 medallion in the Victory Track when losing, to limit the damage cheaters do to other players. But we don't even get that.

Unbelievable, simply awful customer service.

Ironman3000

Well that's a terrible way to do it. Good players with low total rating will just breeze their way to the GC where the top will have to slog through the VT to get there. Awesome work Kabam!

IRQ

And then there is dropping input too, that doesn't happen nearly as often in any other game mode. One has to wonder if this is also some kind of modders activity.

I also observed it tends to happen more the closer I am to advancing to next league. That could be a base for some rather unfortunate implications but I'm not accusing Kabam on being actively malicious on the matter. The competence, however, does leave a lot to be desired.

altavista

In my experience, matches are fairer now compared to how it was before.

Lets say my roster strength is a 5 (on a scale of 1-10). Before the fix, I was regularly facing 8+ strength rosters (and using 2-stars to trick the system into think its a 5 strength roster). Now after the fix I am facing rosters that are 4-6 strength, meaning of comparable strength.

As with anything, matchmaking is not going to be perfect. Some people liked the previous matchmaking system while others hated it, and now different ppl like the new matchmaking system while different people hate it.

The most recent changes probably makes it harder for accounts in between Progression levels (like new Paragons/advanced Thronebreakers, or new TB/advanced Cavaliers, etc)

Mackey

I haven't seen this myself and I usually check the profiles of the guys I face for the same reason as you testing it. I am around the 2.2m bhr Mark and have matched against accounts that are under 1m and well above 3m. I think it is just well n truly random now ... from my own experience anyway

Graves_3

Not really random. I think it’s prestige based now. All my matchups have been within 1k prestige of mine. Accounts rating has been between 2-6mil while mine is close to 3mil. But having prestige of 14.8, I have faced accounts between 14.5-15.9k prestige.

Aleor

And that is the most stupid option to go. Just a normal leaderboard would've work so much better.

SuperDuperBuuu

That's what I thought it was based on too before I did the tests, but after getting matched with several people that were 4k less prestige than myself while being within 200k Base Hero Rating, it seemed pretty obvious to me.

I do want to clarify as well that this is only for Victory Track and not Gladiator Circuit, Kabam has made GC so anyone can match anyone from the very first season, nothing has changed there.

Skydad23

It’s a joke! I got to diamond 1 the first two seasons. Then got to gold 1 this season only losing three matches to get there. Took like a week off. Came back and have been at gold one for 36 matches. And I have had to face eight legends. this is a quick way to make everyone quit this mood! I mean, I don’t have a problem trying to work to get to the track but come on losing three matches to move up seven tracks and I’ve been stuck at the same one for 36 matches is just bonkers. Especially the fact that every time I get 2 tokens I get the most ridiculous matchups!

Ironman3000

What's your hero rating and prestige?

Shriek_And_Donk

Matched with a paragon today im only Uncollected

Chatterofforums

I still can't figure out why some UC and Cav think they shouldn't be matches against TB or paragon when everyone is competing for same rewards. If Kabam ever said that BG was designed to give everyone fair matches the. I'd understand however they never said that nor would that be in line with how the MCOC game modes generally work so thus thought process confuses me.

Lokx

because this game mode is about skill, no matter how much skill you have. If another account has a better roaster built from playing the game longer, spending more money and etc it defeats the purpose. i would agree with you thats its inevitable but i think the cut off should be in the gladiator circuit. Thats when people should expect to fight bigger accounts. But victory circuit should be more leveled.

Searmenis

Because:
1- That's why there s TWO levels of progression, Victory and GC for better/best players, with different, extra rewards. GC gives tokens, and whoever gets there, also gets the Victory level rewards as well.
2- Victory rank rewards are basically pay to get, so whoever you are, you can get a good chunk of them by spending units, money, aka elders marks.

Chatterofforums

Who says this game mode is only about "skills"? Again, I have never ever seen anyone from Kabam say that. Only people I've seen say that are low level accounts who don't want to fight strong accounts.

I have said it before and I'll say it again, all of these assumptions on what the primary purpose of BG is could be better settled if anyone from Kabam would actually address the issue. Simply let us know, is BG supposed to be about "skills" and "fair" matches. Or is it supposed to be like other modes where everyone fights for rank rewards such as AW and AQ where it takes a combination of multiple items but stronger accounts will have a massive advantage.

Think about it, the closest modes to BG are AW and AQ and to some level arena. In AW alliances with UC could face Paragon player alliances depending on AW tier, the strongest and most dedicated get best rank rewards.

In AQ, strongest accounts with best prestige get best points leading to higher AQ rank rewards placemwnts. Even in arena, the top rewards each cycle (excluding bots) will go to the most dedicated players who will need deep rosters to put up the ton of points to score at top of leaderboard. When has anyone from Kabam said that BG is supposed to be anything different than than king standing concept on how rank rewards content has been for years?

ThePharcide

Because they aren't. Myself and a lot of others know we will not even break into GC for those rewards. We are doing it for fun, solo/alliance milestones, and the minimal rewards up to G1 (for me at least).

Just_grinding

I’m a fairly new paragon. With 6 R4s. But these matchups are a joke. If you make it about prestige (which I swear is all they are doing), all you get are whales. All this does is disincentivize players to rank up their rosters. I’d happily play against a team of r3s. But these are all folks who have rosters stacked with r3s/R4s and the latest champs. @Kabam Miike this is not an improvement.

Just_grinding

LiLbee2

Weak!

Skydad23

Absolutely the only reason I play anymore is battlegrounds and every time I rake up my roster it makes battlegrounds, much harder. Shouldn’t it be the opposite? The stronger my roster is, the better I get in BGs? I have literally held back ranking up champs I use in battle grounds because it makes my matchmaking ridiculous if I have any rank 4s. The nice part is, it has been an incentive not to buy deals.

ItsClobberinTime

As much as sandbagging annoys me I agree with OP. I am UC and these past two days I've only lost 3 matches and won about 15, which is way too much considering I was already in Gold when the changes were made. While I definitely don't want sandbagging back I do think there has to be a way to not harm stronger players this much and give weaker players like me easy wins.

Vergeman78

@Just_grinding you are on gladiator circuit, only criteria for matchmaking is rating

Anly

@Chatterofforums they dont think they should fight them cause theres no chance of winning one is not competing for the same rewards if they're constantly being curbed stomped

Ironman3000

Wrong.

They 100% are fighting for the same rewards.

ItsClobberinTime

Normally I'd disagree with that guy but you're wrong, we are competing for same rewards. We get the same amount of trophy tokens and elder marks. We're even competing for the same ranked rewards.
Do you think it's fair for us to be pulling off 7-8 win streaks in a row while the stronger players can barely get 3? The result is going to be us getting better ranked rewards than them and maybe even making it into GC, which makes no sense. I'm not saying matchmaking should be random as soon as you start your first fight in bronze 3 but there should be a brick wall for us so the stronger players can keep climbing up and then we climb up after them, not the other way around.

Searmenis

It is Not the same rewards, the tokens you get for changing ranks are just like arenas or incursions milestones. Stronger players get the same as everyone else at the start, but after climbing to GC they get the better sets of rewards as they deserve. Plus the milestones before of course.

ItsClobberinTime

We all get the same amount of trophy tokens per league in VC though, that's literally competing for same rewards.

Bulmkt

All I know is I have 9 R4’s and I’m up against opponents that seem to have closer to 20 R4’s in their BG roster.
And half the time I might be lucky to select 2 or 3 of my R4’s yet the opponent seems to have a smorgasbord to choose from their R4’s