New matchmaking system is a failure

[Aviars]

Many people, especially top players, see the new ranking system as a failure and rightfully so. More often than not, you can be a current top player on the leader board and somehow be INSTANTLY paired up with people who never played the game mode once in their life. Today as a Gold player I sat in a sub 1 minute que and I somehow was placed with 3 unranked players, two of which explicitly expressed they are brand new players and it was their first game ever. This is not fun to me or the players that ended up on my team because more likely than not the other team is likely to be more balanced than mine and will end up crushing us within 2 minutes in a game mode that normally last the entire 8 minutes.


The current matchmaking prioritizes unranked - silver and gold - diamond, which sounds good on paper for a established leader board. But when you completely wipe people's rank and everyone starts from scratch, it becomes far more likely that as top players start to rank up through silver and gold that they get paired with people who are unranked, causing disparity and unfairness. This creates a situation that no more how hard you may try, the people on your team aren't up to par with you and you have almost no chance to win. It isn't the new players fault, rather it's the matchmaking that places golds with players with 0 rating. In the bid to fix what a lot of people were complaining about in season 1 they created the SAME EXACT PROBLEM IN A LOWER TIER. The only difference now is that rather being platinum or diamond, we are just gold.

The only solution that makes sense to me is that they need to be far more precise will the matchmaking. They need to prioritize unranked vs unranked, bronze vs bronze and so on, it cannot just be the way it is now when a gold such as myself will get INSTANTLY qued with brand new players without the system even trying to put me with silvers first. It would be much more fun for a gold like me to be paired with people closer to me and for unranked player to be paired verse unranked players because then you actually have a fight, fights where unranked players can actually maybe learn the game rather than get crushed, and higher rated players can get the quality matches that they desire.

This is really about a sense of fairness across the board. right now the games are not fair, Gold tanks/dps get paired with unranked healers and automatically the unranked healer will just be permanently dead while a Gold healer with unranked dps can't hope to land a kill no matter how hard they try. It really just kills motivation to play not only for top players but for unranked players who want to learn but get overwhelmed in severely lopsided teams. Lopsided teams are no fun, balanced teams are.

I hope you fix this SE, otherwise the mode will ultimately just slowly die like it did last season. Remember why you made the change to matchmaking in the first place, the only difference now is that it is a problem for silver/golds rather than plats and diamonds.

[coco1851]

Did you ever consider that maybe this is for the best experience for everyone? Because my experiences show that inexperienced players would hardly ever get things done because nobody has knowledge to know what to do. In fact would promote people buying clears which I have never agreed with. Although I'm not quite sure why you feel your knowledge isn't up to par. A good teacher can help & make even the dumbest person good in fact I used to be that nub that didn't know anything my teacher taught me extremely well I'm not the nub I used to be when I started mmo's. I'm not the greatest but not nearly as bad.

[Aviars]

Did you ever consider that maybe this is for the best experience for everyone? Because my experiences show that inexperienced players would hardly ever get things done because nobody has knowledge to know what to do. In fact would promote people buying clears which I have never agreed with. Although I'm not quite sure why you feel your knowledge isn't up to par. A good teacher can help & make even the dumbest person good in fact I used to be that nub that didn't know anything my teacher taught me extremely well I'm not the nub I used to be when I started mmo's. I'm not the greatest but not nearly as bad.

I can't teach people everything within the minute they give you at the start of the game let alone when I actually have to devote my keyboard to playing rather than explain to them what to do. Also it does no good for unranked players to be paired with me when the game is one sided, they learn nothing and I leave frustrated. They would have a better time being eased into higher ranked rather than thrown into the meat grinder. That is usually how a majority of games work, however in this one, they think that a balanced and fair team is simply balancing the rating numbers regardless of rank which isn't the case at all. Would you make a 1st grader do college calculus? No you wouldn't.

[coco1851]

Would you make a 1st grader do college calculus? No you wouldn't.

Well if you can't handle it, you can't handle it. I've seen plenty of people teach/tell inexperienced players how to do such & such without making excuses & clearing whatever, but hey what do I know? For me I'd rather be with people that know what they are doing (as long as they are not being elitist, pricks) or in your words being thrown in the meat grinder. No I wouldn't, but sorry to say no mmo should be referred to as hard as a 1st grader doing calculus, lol.

[Aviars]

Well if you can't handle it, you can't handle it. I've seen plenty of people teach/tell inexperienced players how to do such & such without making excuses & clearing whatever, but hey what do I know? For me I'd rather be with people that know what they are doing (as long as they are not being elitist, pricks) or in your words being thrown in the meat grinder. No I wouldn't, but sorry to say no mmo should be referred to as hard as a 1st grader doing calculus, lol.

Due to the current matchmaking, a majority of new healers are just getting utterly dominated. Most of the game they are dead and they can't handle what is coming to them. If they can't hope to live for a few seconds then how are they going to learn? They won't and are more likely to quit than spend time on the floor. Also it's great you enjoy being paired with people better than you, I highly doubt it's the same for those people though.

Also my comparison was fine, you can imagine a unranked brand new healer being placed against silver+ dps and not being able to keep themselves alive for more than a few seconds. You are just avoiding the reality of how bad it is right now.

[NoelNoel]

Did you ever consider that maybe this is for the best experience for everyone? Because my experiences show that inexperienced players would hardly ever get things done because nobody has knowledge to know what to do. In fact would promote people buying clears which I have never agreed with. Although I'm not quite sure why you feel your knowledge isn't up to par. A good teacher can help & make even the dumbest person good in fact I used to be that nub that didn't know anything my teacher taught me extremely well I'm not the nub I used to be when I started mmo's. I'm not the greatest but not nearly as bad.

What a load of casual talk. And with the underlined sentence you basically advocate for carries. It's not the best experience for everyone, this is a ranked competition, if you are no good you shouldn't be paired with players who know what they are doing and who's rank might be affected by a newbie's inexperience. I do find sad that there's no way to properly practice how to fight at high lvl in PVP. There are even PVP specifities that you couldn't find anywhere if you didn't chat with other people, which is SE's fault. But anyway no, an unranked player shouldn't be paired with a gold player, they should keep being paired with silver and bronze until they get enough practice to pull their weight. As mentionned above the 1 min thing isn't enough to teach anything, and typing during the match is dangerous.
It's amazing to see all these people who pop in PVP who don't even know they have PVP abilities, and who can't even do a decent PVE job. You're left wondering what they were expecting, or if they even looked up what a PVP match could be like. We all start somewhere, but make sure your start doesn't affect others in a ranked competition.
And no, some people never improve, thinking of a WAR on Primal who after playing many games still isn't able to pull more than 40k dmg on a 8 mins match, or a MCH who ignores crates/kits after playing for so long... To the point I stop queuing when I see these people.

[Zojha]

[...]they should keep being paired with silver and bronze [...]

They shouldn't even be paired with bronze and silvers, ideally. Elo difference between the highest and lowest player should "ideally" be single digit while people who have yet to establish a stable skill level should primarily be paired with others who have neither. We just don't get any matches to pop if we had "good" matchmaking.

The PvP population here in FFXIV is downright dysfunctionally small on the NA/EU data centers and what SE really should look into are the reasons for that. I mean, just look at the consequences of it: You can't have good matchmaking, GC restrictions prevent games rather than being a minor annoyance, Newcomers are forced to choose between ranked and a completely different mode (It's like only having Ranked Summoner's Rift and ARAM popping) and matchfixing/wintrading becomes feasible (Since the chances of being matched against each other are high).

Somebody kindly did a player poll over in the general forums and so far, less people care for PvP than for Lord of Verminion. I'd not be surprised if that was actually accurate, because that's how it feels like ingame as well. Anyway, that is the core issue that really needs addressing. Everything else really is secondary - IMO.

[Aviars]

The PvP population here in FFXIV is downright dysfunctionally small on the NA/EU data centers and what SE really should look into are the reasons for that.

Biggest thing is PVP gets the shaft when they give mindless grinding modes like PotD decent rewards like useable weapons and grade V materia. PVP literally has nothing going for it other than bragging rights of skill, which is less enticing than what monotonous grinding can net you.

[Zojha]

Biggest thing is PVP gets the shaft when they give mindless grinding modes like PotD decent rewards like useable weapons and grade V materia.

Diadem had the V materia before it was cool and up until PotD was released was the only way to reliably get V materia that was not weekly capped. Did it help its popularity? Last I checked, it was barely kept on life support for battle classes while the gear inside was relevant and has since turned into a gatherer only thing.
Savage has the best rewards in the game and yet pretty much nobody bothers. Nidhogg EX has offered i235 weapons before PotD was released, which means people enticed by the weapons are primarily people who cannot get into/beat Niddy EX. And then you have people put up with divebomb and meteor instagibs for as little as an orchestrion roll. Or doing 500+ FATEs for some glamour weapons.

Rewards are a factor, yes. But they're far from the only thing that matters. If it's too hard, people don't bother, which is why Savage cannot pick up despite offering superior rewards while people are well willing to grind the Anima instead. This is something PvP suffers from as well - I doubt you stand the sliver of a chance in PvP if you can't perform well in PvE.
Moreover, latency is a huge factor in PvP, much more so than in PvE, so people without a good connection will have a much worse experience (People randomly jumping around and being impossible to follow as melee, skills animating and even locking you in place as if they went off without actually doing damage because the other person was registered as out of range etc) and be less likely to bother as a result.
The community is an often cited factor, though I personally didn't make overly bad experiences yet - really just one WAR who took the rage thing a bit too literal.
Furthermore, it has a higher entry barrier - You need to grind a long time until you're on equal footing with other players (PvP skill points gained via PvP ranks).
There's also the barrier of knowledge, though that just explains low population, not why people who know about it do not bother.
And to name more subjective factors: It's likely not commonly considered fun to lose control of your character without means to prevent it (See Paladin advice in this very forum: "Run away from him!"). Newer DPS will often cite that it felt unsatisfying because they felt they did very little damage, even though that wasn't the case - the damage was merely healed back up quickly. And some people might have sticked to this game precisely because there's little competition - lack of rewards simply does not explain why Mana has a lot less issues with PvP despite offering the same rewards.

Just a few factors off the top of my head that have nothing to do with rewards. It's why I say SE should look into the factors why people don't bother - if people don't want to PvP "solely" because of the lack of rewards, well that can be fixed, no biggie. If it's another of these factors or something else entirely, rewards might fall flat, because you do nothing against the actual issue. To get back to the above, PotD weapons are relevant primarily because Nidhogg EX and Savage rewards fell flat for many people - otherwise people would already be decked out with better or equivalent weapons. They aren't, because that content is not accessible to them and no amount of rewards fill fix that, only changing the content would.


Sorry for the rant.

[Nalien]

PVP literally has nothing going for it other than bragging rights of skill, which is less enticing than what monotonous grinding can net you.

Personally, I think PvP has the best rewards currently... Exclusive rewards and bragging rights seem far more enticing to me, than some item level-who-cares weapon that'll be redundant in a few patches... I enjoy stuff like Palace of the Dead for its content, not its rewards... PvE rewards have long since become fairly irrelevant to me... That's not to say PvP rewards are fine... Wolf Marks are anything but, they're incredibly dull... SE could remove them from the game and I wouldn't notice, there is definitely a problem there IMO, but Feasts rewards specifically are fine, for the most part. The fact that Season 2 is actually reasonably active at all (despite zero new rewards) is evidence enough of that...

Where I think PvP really suffers in this game is the developers... They've got no clue what they're doing, they've got a "Throw shit at the wall, and see what sticks" approach to new PvP content... There is no structure here and no longevity in any of the content... Feast might break that cycle, but 4.0 might also render it completely irrelevant, and it's a competitive mode anyway... There is no solid foundation for non-competitive PvP in this game, the best we've got is Frontlines, which is terrible... Is it any wonder the PvP community is so small and unskilled? There is no where to practice without getting your head chewed off, and the developers show a complete disregard for the content itself... It's generally just off putting for new and old players alike...

They really need to focus on Wolves Den IMO, I don't think there is really a place for Frontlines in this game... Not if they're going to refuse to fix the damn thing at least... Why they wasted time on Shatter I don't know, though there are somethings that they just can't fix with Frontlines... It's a three sided cluster f*ck that takes too long to get into and goes on for too long, and is ultimately just a complete waste of development resources; Borderland Ruins and Seal Rock are collecting dust, Fields of Glory is certainly going to follow regardless of whether they add some new worthless mode to Frontlines... People get bored with the lack of variety, either you make them all relevant before of working on a new map, or you perpetuate this stupid cycle... Since I don't trust SE to fix any issues with Frontlines, I'm just going to ask that they stop developing it completely... Put that effort into new Wolves Den maps and modes, give us a Wolves Den Roulette, make that XIVs front-and-center PvP option, because filling a 4v4 match is so much easier than filling a Frontlines match... Wolves Den matches are quicker, more rewarding, more educational... Any fun I had in Frontlines, I'm almost certain can be better replicated in Wolves Den, and I'd be able to enjoy it more frequently...

I would say most successful PvP based games work by; Giving players a variety of similar game modes to play. Adding new maps to add variety to those game modes. Then adding a competitive mode on top of that... What SE has done is just a mess... Wolves Den and Frontlines are vastly different, and we have zero variety... Frontlines itself could have had variety, Secure/Slaughter/Seize/Shatter are all game modes, Borderland Ruins/Seal Rock/Fields of Glory are all unique maps, they could have had twelve combinations there... Instead we have one; Fields of Glory (Shatter). That's one way they could fairly easily improve Frontlines IMO, but it doesn't really matter... The issue here is with the competitive mode, and Frontlines is far too different from Wolves Den to really matter for that... They've effectively made two entirely different games and now we're stuck with the majority sucking or not being interested in the relevant one because they spent years focusing on Frontlines...

They really should either have never bothered with Wolves Den, or never bothered with Frontlines IMO... I'd rather have had one thing done well, than two things done poorly... Feasts a lot better than it has any right being, but the community had zero build up, we went from Seize to Feast... It's no wonder things are so terrible...