Options
BG Matchmaking.... did something change this season from last season?
Nameless_IW
Member Posts: 1,220 ★★★★
Last season, matchmaking was pretty much right on point up until i reached Platinum tiers. However, this season right from the get go (right now in silver tier), i'm facing off 14k, 15k and 16k prestige accounts 7-8 times out of 10 matches. My account prestige is only 12k. I only have 2 rank 4 champs and facing accounts with 15+ rank4s. Not complaining because this is possible a good way to sharpen your skills and stuff, but with so many losses in a row, this puts a huge burden on one's mentality and mojo. I would like Kabam to take a look at their BG matchamking system, because something seems way off this season.
Thank you
Thank you
6
Comments
My prestige is 16132 and hero rating 2800000. So based on my stats it is just a prestige.
What smaller accounts did not understand is that prestige is only 5 top champs. So you can have top5 prestige champs in game and rest of your roster could be 1stars and you will be matched against „stacked” paragons. It is same „fair” game as cavalier matched against paragon. It is same „fair” game as 2mil paragon account matched against 3mil paragon account.
Only fair match is when it is random. I understand that I can play agains cav player and I get it that sometimes I can be matched against 4mil account with 30r4s.
If they ever did balance the matchmaking perfectly it would be the boring slog PVP is in most every other game. You quickly get to the point where your luck of the draw or crits decide matches because they are too even so you go into RNG rage and it becomes the worst version for everyone.
There's nothing fair about an UC Account coming up against a Paragon at the gate.
And here are 3 matches I had in gold 2 and gold 1.
My roster strength was way above theirs and I honestly felt bad for them.
1. My own match data doesn't support prestige matching. I am actually a good corner case for prestige testing, because I don't rank for prestige. So my account has an atypical prestige compared to other statistics. If the BG match maker was using prestige, then my matches would center on my prestige. However, my current prestige is 14975, and the average prestige of my last 16 matches is 15694. If we include relics, then my own prestige rises to 15420 and my competition's average rises to 16118.
That's high compared to me, but it could just be that the matcher looks in a wide range of prestige. More significantly is that out of sixteen matches, only *one* was lower than my prestige (14820/15182) while my highest match was 16460/17329.
To help visualize just exactly how my prestige compares to my recent competition, here it is graphically, both for standard prestige and also relic prestige (I'm circled in red):
While this is not a statistically conclusive sample size, it is highly unlikely that I am being matched against players of comparable prestige, standard or relic.
2. When the devs said they would respond to deck matching concerns, I (and others) specifically told them that prestige matching would not be a good idea. We were told it would not be prestige matching specifically at that time. That's not an official declaration of how the match maker was going to work, but I take it as strongly suggestive.
The logical thing for the devs to have done was to change from deck strength to top 30 champion strength. This specifically follows from the notion that the devs wanted players to "use their best champions" and get no advantage from using weaker ones. Matching based on what your top 30 champions are would essentially pretend like everyone was just placing their top 30 champs into their deck. While this is imperfect - it ignores meta advantages for example - it is a reasonable thing to believe they would attempt. This is also a number we can't trivially guess or calculate from our opponents.
However, it *does* make sense that someone like me would be matching against higher prestige accounts. Because I don't rank for prestige, and instead tend to rank much wider (I have more R3s than R2s, for example) my roster is "stronger" than its prestige would suggest, because the strength of the champs just outside of prestige calculations are stronger for my account than they are for other accounts on average on a relative basis. Which matches my experience that I tend to get matched against accounts with a few strong champs, but not a supper-strong deck full of R4s.
A deck full of R4s would still have the same prestige as one with only a few, but would be vastly stronger if you were looking at top 30. The fact that I match against accounts with several R4s but not a lot of R4s also suggests that the match criteria looks at more than just top five prestige champs. This would be hard to see on an account that tended to rank up in a manner similar to the average (high roster) player. But it would be noticeable on an account that did not rank typically, like mine.
My matches are mainly anywhere between +-1k Prestige after relics.
I have 9 r4s and 45 r3s, so my deck consists of minimum r3 champs.
I match people with minimum 4-5 r4s in deck and had couple of match ups that had over 20 r4s one deck.
Whether it’s top5, top30 or topX Prestige, it doesn’t change the fact that it’s still Prestige matchmaking, and it doesn’t change the core problem, which is Prestige matchmaking itself.
You can’t matchmake by a specific parameter, and don’t reward players proportional to that parameter either.
It’s not only unfair, but it’s also an unethical thing to do.
It’s basically rigging results and rewards distribution, since the pool of rewards is shared by all players.
At this point, this is nothing more than an exploit, that small accounts use to their knowledge or not.
But the most annoying is, that Kabam still approves it.
They want data?
Check Mysterium2 bracket at GC.
It’s full of 150k-200k UC accounts that sit there comfortably, from day 8 of BGs.
That’s serious data, considering how many Paragons are still at low VT tiers.
How long do people need to suffer this situation, till things change?
My bronze 1 matches:
I didn’t think I would run into a rank 5 at my level. But most of the time I’m running into 1k+ prestige opponents.
Kabam NEVER released how matchmaking was calculated in fear of people exploiting it.. stop crying saying omg i got someone with 500 more prestiege its unfair...
Prestiege only calculates the base PI of your top 5 champs before masteries... There is a chance your 6th-10th champs might be stronger than someone with a higher prestiege...
IMO, they're putting people into bands based on those factors and only matching people within their bands. They might go up or down a band based on wait time but that seems to be it.