Matchmaker Discussion Thread & MM Balance

[Darkeid]

3 hours ago, geschlittert said:

Ok, I want to give my opinion on the MM, or how I deal with it.

It must be clear from the outset that you cannot win all battles. It should be obvious that in a team game you are also dependent on your teammates. This circumstance can now also lead to the fact that even if you play perfectly, you can lose several games in a row - is statistically simply to be expected.

 

Now I come to an unpleasant truth: You can win 70% of the games playing solo - in almost all ships (speaking as a T10 main here). With a few BBs/DDs/cruisers you even get towards 75% with perfect play. Some CVs even approach 80%. How do I come to this conclusion? By looking at the stats of the best of the best.

A few examples:

https://wows-numbers.com/player/538619355,TheSailingRobin/?type=solo

https://wows-numbers.com/player/500701135,RNGsama/?type=solo

CV main: https://wows-numbers.com/player/526953200,El2aZeR/?type=solo

Thanks to conscientious reflection, I myself have managed to improve steadily over the years - but even now there are still a lot of mistakes that need to be ironed out.

You can follow the development of your own stats over the years very well here: https://proships.ru/stat/eu/main/

 

My conclusion: It simply doesn't make sense to get excessively worked up about the team members. The primary focus should always be on analysing what you have done wrong yourself and what you can improve - if you find this difficult to recognise yourself, there are also help offers such as the Help Me discord. It is also unhealthy to always get upset - it doesn't help you or the teammates you might be grumbling at.

@geschlittert Respectfully, It simply is not possible to not get worked up or excessively worked up when the teams/battles are like this:

 

Following your mindset the guys on the opposing team should think, "oh there are 20-50 players in the whole word that are elite, so its okay that this battle is rigged (through the unfair / imbalanced MM engine) and there is no way to win regardless of what i do. I`ll just try to sink half the team myself even if situationally being crossfired? Being left alone in a flank after the clueless DD charges in and sinks? because players that shouldn't be playing in T9 are allowed to. " . " Lets see what i did wrong and try to improve it despite the fact that the game will add a negative score , but its ok , i`ll try to become elite".

Partly , in some way , it is similar to the discussion/argument that @Pukovnik7 wants to raise only he stated that map design , ship allocations or any other "invalid" attribute, is the reason, when the answer is staring both of you in the numbers depicted above. A team of below average and bad rating accounts created by the MM, cannot win vs a team of experienced players even if they play the same battle 9 out of 10 times. 

EDIT: It has been mentioned many times since page 97 of this thread , but people that are seeing this for the first time should know that the MM system does not always create these impossible odds, in a very rough estimate, around 4 or 5 out of 10 matches are either slightly or greatly one-sided. 

[ColonelPete]

4 minutes ago, Darkeid said:

Following your mindset the guys on the opposing team should think, "oh there are 20-50 players in the whole word that are elite, so its okay that this battle is rigged (through the unfair / imbalanced MM engine) and there is no way to win regardless of what i do. I`ll just try to kill half the team myself even if situationally being crossfired? Being left alone in a flank after the clueless DD charges in and sinks? because players that shouldn't be playing in T9 are allowed to ruin the fun. " . " Lets see what i did wrong and try to improve it despite the fact that the game will add a negative score , but its ok , i`ll try to become elite".

Partly , in some way , it is similar to the discussion/argument that @Pukovnik7 wants to raise only he stated that map design , ship allocations or any other "invalid" attribute, is the reason, when the answer is staring both of you in the numbers depicted above. A team of below average and bad rating accounts created by the MM, cannot win vs a team of experienced players even if they play the same battle 9 out of 10 times. 

There are more than a fourthousand of these players...

And the information about the weaker team is incomplete.

 

And there are more than enough ways for both teams to win.

[Aethervoxx]

2 hours ago, ColonelPete said:

And there are more than enough ways for both teams to win.

ROFL

[ColonelPete]

7 minutes ago, Aethervoxx said:

ROFL

I am not suprised that you do not know more than way for a team to win...

[Pukovnik7]

2 hours ago, Darkeid said:

Partly , in some way , it is similar to the discussion/argument that @Pukovnik7 wants to raise only he stated that map design , ship allocations or any other "invalid" attribute, is the reason, when the answer is staring both of you in the numbers depicted above. A team of below average and bad rating accounts created by the MM, cannot win vs a team of experienced players even if they play the same battle 9 out of 10 times. 

I play the game for fun, first and foremost. The game I just now finished was one of the most fun games I played. My team got absolutely crushed - by the time I got overwhelmed (brawling three enemy ships, nacht), enemy had 2-1 advantage in number of living ships. But it was fun.

 

Now, it is true that matchmaker is bad, and a major element in the blowout games. But it is not the only factor, so imho focusing just on matchmaker is wrong. It is a combination of matchmaking, map design and HE spam, all of which serves to multiply the advantages of an advantaged team. But unlike the matchmaker, it is possible to somewhat satisfactorily resolve the other two.

[GarrusBrutus]

7 hours ago, Darkeid said:

A team of below average and bad rating accounts created by the MM, cannot win vs a team of experienced players even if they play the same battle 9 out of 10 times. 

Self fulfilling prophecy. 

7 hours ago, Darkeid said:

Respectfully, It simply is not possible to not get worked up or excessively worked up when the teams/battles are like this:

Just read what you said again. You get worked up around different matchups. Matchmakingmonitor is annoying you. Why don't you get rid of it? Despite your knowledge of both teams, it doesn't seem to be an advantage to you. Quite the opposite in fact, it gives you frustration. 

 

Besides: the matchmaker will always remain random. Which doesn't mean fair. It has gotten significantly better over the years, accounting for ship types and numbers. If it starts to account for winrates or experience as well, you will punish the best players and be a crutch to the less skilled players. This way, in the long run the system will kill the metric it uses to function. However, in the long run a "random" system will be the most fair to all players. 

7 hours ago, Darkeid said:

Following your mindset the guys on the opposing team should think, "oh there are 20-50 players in the whole word that are elite, so its okay that this battle is rigged (through the unfair / imbalanced MM engine) and there is no way to win regardless of what i do.

No matter how hard I try, I'll never adopt this "predeterministic way of thinking". Even if the match is unwinnable, I try to achieve the most I can. That in itself makes you a better player. 

[Bear__Necessities]

On 9/8/2021 at 11:26 AM, Pukovnik7 said:

Situations where ship(s) from weaker flank just ran away to center seem to be a regular occurence. But what I was talking about is the fact that, if map is wholly open, it is easy to farm HE damage - and there are few ways of mitigating it. So no matter what you do, weak flank will collapse, and relatively soon. Which means that if the strong flank does not push hard enough, or simply aren't as good at long-range targeting as the enemy strong flank is, the whole team collapses.

Gonna have to disagree here. I've held thw weak flanks solo and or in very low numbers, and WON that flank back. It's never always a lost cause at all. 

 

Example A. 

 

Though I have some recent cruiser replays I need to upload which show how to kite the "weak flank" and win it ect. 

[Pukovnik7]

9 hours ago, Bear__Necessities said:

Gonna have to disagree here. I've held thw weak flanks solo and or in very low numbers, and WON that flank back. It's never always a lost cause at all. 

 

Example A. 

 

Though I have some recent cruiser replays I need to upload which show how to kite the "weak flank" and win it ect. 

I think massive islands at A helped quite a bit.

 

Last time I was on a weak flank, I kited all the way to the map border (in Friedrich der Grosse, which is not an easiest ship to take down), and then along the map border... but because there were no islands available for cover, this simply didn't buy enough time. Difference between "oh, there is a massive island I can park my [edited]next to" and "every enemy ship on this flank can BBQ me at will" is rather massive, unless I'm doing something wrong with kiting.

[geschlittert]

It seems like the biggest issue for most people is the huge amount of one sided wins. Well, what's the reason behind this? I'd say it is the lack skill and game knowledge for a huge amount of the player base which is caused by the lack of tutorials, if they at least were forced to read a small text before they can play a new class it would already help. WG, finally bring some good tutorials!

Example for a small BB guide

 

[Bear__Necessities]

4 hours ago, Pukovnik7 said:

think massive islands at A helped quite a bit.

And? Islands work both ways. I held and won an entire flank almost solo and did that under the threat of 2 CV's.

 

I could have just run. I could have given them free reign. I didn't. We won. I had a massive contributing factor in that win. 

 

I also kited and held up my 2 weak flanks in a Roon last night with minimal island cover. And won. Your summary of it's always a lost cause is wrong. It's not easy, but can be done. 

 

[bloodynicknames]

more "tH1s 1s R4nd0m" matchmaking 

 

[Pukovnik7]

11 minutes ago, Bear__Necessities said:

 And? Islands work both ways. I held and won an entire flank almost solo and did that under the threat of 2 CV's.

 

I could have just run. I could have given them free reign. I didn't. We won. I had a massive contributing factor in that win. 

 

I also kited and held up my 2 weak flanks in a Roon last night with minimal island cover. And won. Your summary of it's always a lost cause is wrong. It's not easy, but can be done. 

 

Islands are a massive advantage for a weaker side. If you are outnumbered, main issue - aside from volume of incoming fire - is that, if the enemies are spread out, you cannot optimally angle against incoming fire. An island significantly reduces this issue by blocking certain lines of fire.

[bloodynicknames]

51 minutes ago, Pukovnik7 said:

Islands are a massive advantage for a weaker side. If you are outnumbered, main issue - aside from volume of incoming fire - is that, if the enemies are spread out, you cannot optimally angle against incoming fire. An island significantly reduces this issue by blocking certain lines of fire.

islands magically attract terrible players to camp behind them, wanna see what a 46% team does with islands, this:

 

 

90% of the playerbase are pure trash and I hate having to put up with crap like that. 

give us [edited]skill based mm already. id rather wait for 5min than having to suffer time and time again with these moronic teams where matches are a pure waste of time. 

id rather stare at a [edited]loading screen then see 3 sub 45% DDs rush into a cap and have my team 3 ships down by the 4min mark. 

[edited]this 

[Darkeid]

Any of the OFFICIAL WG staff listening ? Are they even reading this ? They promised to start listening last week 

[bloodynicknames]

12 minutes ago, Darkeid said:

Any of the OFFICIAL WG staff listening ? Are they even reading this ? They promised to start listening last week 

as long as the sub 45% trash keeps throwing money at them they're not going to listen to anything. 

this crap MM has been going on for ages and unless ppl actually start to stop spending nothing will change. 

 

[ColonelPete]

24 minutes ago, Darkeid said:

Any of the OFFICIAL WG staff listening ? Are they even reading this ? They promised to start listening last week 

If they did not listen, MM would still look like this:

Spoiler

 

[Pukovnik7]

39 minutes ago, bloodynicknames said:

 islands magically attract terrible players to camp behind them, wanna see what a 46% team does with islands, this:

 

 

90% of the playerbase are pure trash and I hate having to put up with crap like that. 

give us [edited]skill based mm already. id rather wait for 5min than having to suffer time and time again with these moronic teams where matches are a pure waste of time. 

id rather stare at a [edited]loading screen then see 3 sub 45% DDs rush into a cap and have my team 3 ships down by the 4min mark. 

[edited]this 

And without islands, they instead camp at the map border. I constantly see battleships and even destroyers hanging out with carriers. At least when they are close to islands, they have a chance of being forced to do something useful.

[LemonadeWarriorITA]

1 hour ago, bloodynicknames said:

islands magically attract terrible players to camp behind them, wanna see what a 46% team does with islands, this:

 

 

90% of the playerbase are pure trash and I hate having to put up with crap like that. 

give us [edited]skill based mm already. id rather wait for 5min than having to suffer time and time again with these moronic teams where matches are a pure waste of time. 

id rather stare at a [edited]loading screen then see 3 sub 45% DDs rush into a cap and have my team 3 ships down by the 4min mark. 

[edited]this 

What are you doing overthere?

[bloodynicknames]

2 hours ago, LemonadeWarriorITA said:

What are you doing overthere?

staying where I spawned instead of following the lemming train 

[LemonadeWarriorITA]

3 minutes ago, bloodynicknames said:

staying where I spawned instead of following the lemming train 

Mini map doesn't look too bad. Your position is only a bit weird.

[Aethervoxx]

4 hours ago, ColonelPete said:

If they did not listen, MM would still look like this:

  Reveal hidden contents

 

Another useless contribution.

As if WG will ever 'balance' the MM. It's been 'fixed' ever since WoWS (& also WoT)  times.

 

[ColonelPete]

7 minutes ago, Aethervoxx said:

Another useless contribution.

And that from you...

You are hilarious

 

So WG came up with the changes themselves, without listening to players?

[Harvin87]

En 11/9/2021 en 22:14, GarrusBrutus dijo:

Besides: the matchmaker will always remain random. Which doesn't mean fair. It has gotten significantly better over the years, accounting for ship types and numbers. If it starts to account for winrates or experience as well, you will punish the best players and be a crutch to the less skilled players. This way, in the long run the system will kill the metric it uses to function. However, in the long run a "random" system will be the most fair to all players. 

If the MM was accounting for WR and XP, why would it hurt the best players? Even in a balanced enviroment, any good player on any given match should be able to carry a game, still in deed, the very best players will remain at the top of the pyramid but at least you could potentially or at least lower (by a lot , I think) the number of blowout matches, which is the most frustrating part of the game. Losing is ok, but losing in the first 5 minutes when you are still full hp kills the fun. IMO.

[GarrusBrutus]

39 minutes ago, Harvin87 said:

If the MM was accounting for WR and XP, why would it hurt the best players? Even in a balanced enviroment, any good player on any given match should be able to carry a game, still in deed, the very best players will remain at the top of the pyramid but at least you could potentially or at least lower (by a lot , I think) the number of blowout matches, which is the most frustrating part of the game. Losing is ok, but losing in the first 5 minutes when you are still full hp kills the fun. IMO.

Because let's say youre a 65% wr player. Now the matchmaker constantly pairs you with a few 45% players, to even the odds of both teams. Due to this, over the course of thousands of games, the 65% player will drift towards 50% and so will the previously 45% players. Do you see how this doesn't work? 

 

Also blowouts mostly happen due to the nature of the game (slow paced, no respawn and full of RNG dice rolls), not particularly due to skill disparity between teams. Even in clanbattles, where the teams are mostly even in terms of skill, steamrolls happen quite frequently. 

[Harvin87]

13 minutos antes, GarrusBrutus dijo:

Because let's say youre a 65% wr player. Now the matchmaker constantly pairs you with a few 45% players, to even the odds of both teams. Due to this, over the course of thousands of games, the 65% player will drift towards 50% and so will the previously 45% players. Do you see how this doesn't work? 

 

Also blowouts mostly happen due to the nature of the game (slow paced, no respawn and full of RNG dice rolls), not particularly due to skill disparity between teams. Even in clanbattles, where the teams are mostly even in terms of skill, steamrolls happen quite frequently. 

Well yea, but what if the MM would operate on let's call them "spectrums" .... a 65%WR will only play with players within certain spectrum, let's say 58% and up. That way the drag wouldn't by any means be too heavy. A 58%wr player is a very solid an experienced one and should be able to carry even when faced with 60-65wr% players any given day. Same goes for Unicum players.

The spectrum could be like this?

 

0 - 45 WR% 

46-50 WR% 

51-57 WR%

58 - ∞

 

Would it be too horrible?