I wanna start a discussion on the arena matchmaking system. Im gonna use my own personal observations for this, but I hope as possible many will share theyr own observations aswell.
My experience with the arena matchmaking system is that there is none. Im 2.1k rated player playing with a 2.1k rated partner. When we queue into arena we get intant queues no matter what time of day it is. Well mostly. 5 in the morning there may be some queue times here and there. But overall very low queue times.
The problem with the matchmaking in my experience is that there is no matchmaking at all. We are matched against everything from 1400 to 2200 rated players. Something that does not make sense in a RATED MATCH. When we meet 1400 people we just run in and burst as fast as we can so we can get into a new match.
This gives bad expereiences for both the 2k player and the 1400 player. Now compare this to other rated systems like League of legends, Valorant and even Overwatch. When you queue into a game the game takes time to find the most evenly matched available players. Even when we are matched with evenly rated teams we have many experiences with not getting rating at all, other times we get between 2-5 rating after beating a 1400 rated team. What rating is recieved after winning a match does not make sense at all.
I think the rating reward is bad enough. But even worse is the matchmaking. When we are matched with a team with really low matchmaking and just smash them over it creates a bad experience for them. Now its the same with us. We are just grinding through the match to get to the match where we meet an even team we can auctaully have a chance to gain rating against. I have never witnessed a rated matchmaking system that does not match evenly skilled players. The game just throws you into an arena with the first team available.
The matchmaking works by first determining the average of the team’s MMR combined, and then using that number to place it into a rating range.
It’s basically ± just a few rating points here and there.
What it then does is that the longer you’re stuck in the queue, the more it keeps expanding the rating range it’s trying to match you against. So let’s say it starts on ±25, but finds no match quick enough, so it expands the parameters to ±50, then ±75 and so on and so forth.
There’s a lot more they can do under the hood without anyone noticing it, but that’s irrelevant for this thread.
Most likely that, yeah. I’d guess it’s either intentional, to make certain achievements easier to reach during prepatch off-seasons (since the people complaining about player requirements in the group finder have been whining about it for a very long time), which in turn would just damage the implied meaning those achievements have in the first place anyway.
Or it’s a bug, caused by a hidden metric (like I mentioned earlier, lots of adjustments are possible under the hood) that goes on the fritz when something specific to prepatch PvP is happening.
I quite agree with what you say, Klyde.
I think the reason for that is that there are not enough people queueing, and after some time, the matchmaking algo matches 2 teams eventhough their rating difference is huge (the logic is that it is better to have matches more often even if the rating difference is big instead of rare matches).
I think this problem can be solved if more people play arena, and if all the friction around finding teammates and queue is removed. One idea I had for that is this: Solo queue in ranked Arenas
More people => More likely to find people around you rating