Please abolish match making SE

[DustySlippers]

Dear SE,

I am sure the community appreciates the effort you put into making the match making system, however a match making algorithm cannot effectively work with low q populations. On my data center (Aether) the wolves den Q has been dead since 2.2, until Wolves den is overhauled completely this will not change. You will not see 8 rank 40's qued up at once unless the community itself organizes such a thing, in fact the vast majority of the time there aren't even 8 people of any rank (2 of each role) que'd up.

Delaying a wolves den match for the sake of balance when said balancing cannot even occur due to the lack of people in que hurts the pvp community more then imbalanced matches.

[DustySlippers]

I have tried to jump start the wolves den Q by organizing enough solo players to satisfy the requirements for 2 full teams(at minimum)on more then one occasion. The players in question were of various ranks and que'd solo. I would expect the Q to not be instant due to the variance in our ranks... however the Q's lasted for over 10 minutes in some instances. In previous occasions pre 2.2 I have been pulled into games with 7 low ranks as a 40 through instant ques. Not only were the ques long or non existent in some situations changing party composition created instant ques (ie instead of 8+ solo players (2 of each class min) we would have players enter the que as a dou).

[DustySlippers]

My observations point towards the match making system being irrelevant and broken. I understand that the low population of players that participate in wolves den do not really warrant the consumption of the dev teams resources. however the solution is simple, get rid of the match making system.

With i80 Sync wolves den & all base pvp abilities unlocked at rank 1 there is no real need for a match making system

[IveraIvalice]

You keep saying match making system but I don't know what your talking about because there is no system called the match making system. If you mean the duty finder then that covers more then just the wolves den and there's no way they would remove the whole duty finder because the wolves den has low queues.
Even so the system is working fine, it already searches between all servers to find teams so I don't know what more your expecting. It's not an issue with how the search is done, there's just not many people that want to do the wolves den anymore after front lines. They would have to add more to it to make it more appealing

[CeveArthu]

WD matchmaking attempts to create a match where all participates are of similar rank

It's very easy to notice, get 2 parties of rank 40's and the queue pops instantly, have a party of rank 40's and a party of 3 rank 40's and a rank 38 and there is a 30-60 seconds delay on the queue popping

its the reason why queue times slow down considerably when your rank gets closer to 40

[Gor]

You keep saying match making system but I don't know what your talking about because there is no system called the match making system.

yes, there is. the match-making system is the built in programming that Wolves Den uses to group people of same or within a bracket of ranks, classes and party composition. there have been many changes but the match-making system was initially implemented in patch 2.15 when low rank players cried rivers of blood because they were getting farmed and steamrolled by, then max rank 30 players, game after game after game, for hours on a daily basis. they had an unfair advantage because a rank 30 premade or pug team could get put up against a low rank team and literally just crush them in seconds; it was an auto-loss for the lowbies and discouraged new players from coming to the den because high ranks were point farming newbies.



this matchmaking system only affects Wolves Den; PvE content has their own matchmaking system that works differently.

Even so the system is working fine, it already searches between all servers to find teams so I don't know what more your expecting. It's not an issue with how the search is done, there's just not many people that want to do the wolves den anymore after front lines. They would have to add more to it to make it more appealing

yes, you're correct. the system is working fine but the problem is it is out-dated because it now impedes on players' game experience. it was fine when WD was new and the population of Wolves Den players was there but it has now out-grown its usefulness now that the WD community has dried up and is now only a shadow of its former self. it IS an issue with how the search is done because depending on your rank if queuing solo or your party's average rank when queuing in a premade, the system makes you wait XX amount of minutes before it winds down to look for lower ranks and if you are an 8 man premade like the op is talking about, just trying to get matches going between friends, then you will wait even longer because it will also make you wait longer based on party composition even though you have already premade the two teams yourself. there is no need to force players to wait when they have already made their own teams which is what the op and others are complaining about and rightfully so.

Due to that the Wolves Den has pretty much boiled down to a few 4v4 enthusiasts per data center and a few pugs who still want to do it, SE should just remove the matchmaking system because there is no need for it anymore. the population of WD is so small now that low ranks just get grouped with high ranks anyways so there is no longer a need for a matchmaking system since there is nothing there to match. there is no need for players to have to wait 10-30+ minutes to play just to get grouped with the same ranking composition that the system was designed to prevent. furthermore for those people of level 50 without pvp gear, now that everyone is given the first tier of pvp skills (which was part of the issue with doing 50s, the lack of pvp skills), the addition of the ilvl80 sync WD makes a matchmaking system even further null and void. all its doing at this point is serving no purpose at all but just making everyone have exuberant wait times for no reason at all when its going to group you with whoever of any rank anyways.

the matchmaking system no longer serves any purpose so SE should just get rid of it

[Skeet]

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...-in-Wolves-Den

[DustySlippers]

Thanks for the SS of the patch notes Gor

I'm not just talking about the delay in MM when you have multi ranks queuing. I have on multiple occasions had 8+ people solo Q (2+ of each role) and stood in the duty finder for over 10 minutes without anyone getting a Q pop. I have then started shuffling players in and out of parties and the Q pops and will continue to pop. The delay in matchmaking is tedious especially when there are not enough players for it to be useful, however in some situations it seems to refuse to put together 8 people

In some circumstances the MM algorithm seems to just not work, period.

[kisada]

The MM system is completely debilitating; players have to wait upwards of 30+ minutes for queues, and I'd say more than 75% of the time someone misses the queue forcing me to wait yet another 30 to find the right rank for that last spot. By the time you do get in, you're playing a match that lasts at most two minutes which is a ridiculous disparity between the wait and actual gameplay.

Imagine you are new wanting to try out den for the first time. You wait 40 minutes for a 30 cap. You are a healer, the worst class one could play at 30. Ten seconds in and you are dead and you're kicked out of the arena wondering why in the world you wasted 41 minutes for 10 seconds of gameplay when you could have done FL at least twice. Most reasonable people would never try again, and while I'd like to say that's an exaggeration this is something that I hear ALL THE TIME from players new to den.

[kisada]

The worst part is the big picture. Because of MM any players with even remote interest are driven away from WD. What is fun about waiting 30 minutes for a 2 minute game? And with any interest in WD being continually marginalized to nothing, SE can never prioritize it into something it needs to fix. It's a catch-22: In order to prioritize and fix den issues, there needs to be at least a modicum of interest in it. But den will always be losing interest because MM shuts it all down. As a result, SE won't prioritize fixing the big issue (MM) because people don't want to do den.

Unfortunately until SE recognizes the disparity of spending the greater part of an hour for just a fraction of the gameplay, I am not sure things are going to ever get better.