Warzone matchmaker issues

[supertimtaf]

Hey there

I'm gonna go ahead and quote directly @JackieKo here because that'll be easier to explain
 

Quote

With that in mind, starting in 7.2.1 there will now be a much higher priority during matchmaking to pair premades against each other when possible. There are two considerations that we will be monitoring very closely: 

• This will likely increase queue times for all players as we are enforcing harder matchmaking rules up front to pop a match.
• With this in mind, as time passes with a player in a queue there becomes a delta where we will prioritize popping a match over everything else. Meaning you can still be paired with a premade but it will take a longer duration of time to pass in the queue for that to happen.

Basically, this says that the matchmaker will try to pair large groups of players against each others. And that after a bit of time it'll just make a warzone appear no matter what.
I'm fairly sure now that this is absolutely bugged and that one of these two condition is not applied properly. It's been a few games that I played where either one "big group" or multiple groups were allowed to queue against solo players, back to back.

This either means that the matchmaker doesn't actually try to pair groups of players against each other, or that the time before it enforces a warzone pop is set so short that this allows a group of player to queue right after a warzone and enter a new one next to immediately.

I'm not trying to say that one is more likely than the other, just that this should be probably looked at. The instances where I've seen this happen were on Darth Malgus, yesterday and today. The groups of players were on imperial side, but I mean, that's 70% of the pvp players now so that probably doesn't help.

Have fun on this one, team ! ;D

[The_Hightower]

Which server are you playing on?

On less populated servers (which basically appears to be every server except Star Forge and Darth Malgus) there are usually not enough people in the queue to perform the matchmaking such that premades are only placed against each other.

On Star Forge I played >100 Arena and >100 Warzone matches solo . In 2 or 3 arenas I had a 3-person premade in the opposing team (not very good ones though). Regarding Warzones, I didn't notice any premades. If they were there, they were not better than the random solo players on my team.

However, on Tulak Hord (my main server) premades are regularly placed against solo players which imho is not surprising because even during PvP-Season and "PvP-primetime" on Tulak hardly more than two warzone matches or one arena and one warzone take place simultaneously. If there are only 16-24 players in the queue and eight of them are in a premade (we did that a couple of times) the premade is regularly placed against (basically the same) solo players. However, on Tulak a large part of the premades do not play objective, so it's possible to win the match nevertheless.

 

 

[supertimtaf]

8 minutes ago, The_Hightower said:

Which server are you playing on?

Darth Malgus, as stated by my original message

 

I know that the game needs to enforce PvP to pop sometime on smaller servers, but DM has always had a somewhat healthy population. My issue isn't "groups are getting queued against solo players", rather "groups are getting queued really fast against solo players", which -going by the changes on the devpost- shouldn't be a thing.

[Bar-Da-Voya]

There's so much messed up with warzone, arena and GSF matchmaking that it's a lost cause at this point. The devs have basically said they don't care about quality matches and it's all about short queues. New players don't come back to those modes after trying the intro missions and getting slaughtered so there is no population on most servers to get a decent match with. Can't even get a pop on some servers at peak time even with a PvP Season running and PvP and GSF objectives in GS.

[supertimtaf]

On 5/16/2024 at 6:19 AM, Bar-Da-Voya said:

There's so much messed up with warzone, arena and GSF matchmaking that it's a lost cause at this point. The devs have basically said they don't care about quality matches and it's all about short queues. New players don't come back to those modes after trying the intro missions and getting slaughtered so there is no population on most servers to get a decent match with. Can't even get a pop on some servers at peak time even with a PvP Season running and PvP and GSF objectives in GS.

For me there is a difference between "not caring" and straight up "lying about changes".

I prefer to assume that this is a tricky bug rather than a malicious attempt at making us believe that they changed something.

If I don't see this adressed in the coming months and if I keep seeing this matchmaker behavior however, my opinion will slowly shift to the later. Which is bad, because you don't want players to start accumulating proofs of work not being done/straight up lies.

Edited May 17 by supertimtaf

[PianoMatt]

There is also this fact to consider on the lower populated servers: if there are solo players in queue when your first match pops and they do not make it in that group, they are still waiting and on the timer.  It may even be just one person.  When you get out of your match, the system sees that long timer and immediately finds them people to start their match.  That may include the premade you were just up against.

[SteveTheCynic]

On 5/17/2024 at 10:17 AM, supertimtaf said:

If I don't see this adressed in the coming months and if I keep seeing this matchmaker behavior however, my opinion will slowly shift to the later. Which is bad, because you don't want players to start accumulating proofs of work not being done/straight up lies.

Given the explanations above your post that the matchmaking algorithm cannot work (hint: it cannot(1)) as advertised if there aren't enough players queuing that there are at least two premades available, what you say here is completely unreasonable.

(1) If there's only one premade queuing, then of necessity the matchmaker ***cannot*** make a premade-vs-premade match.

[supertimtaf]

3 hours ago, SteveTheCynic said:

Given the explanations above your post that the matchmaking algorithm cannot work (hint: it cannot(1)) as advertised if there aren't enough players queuing that there are at least two premades available, what you say here is completely unreasonable.

(1) If there's only one premade queuing, then of necessity the matchmaker ***cannot*** make a premade-vs-premade match.

I don't disagree with that

however, if there is no premade to be faced, the game should definitely wait a bit before trying to force a queue no matter what, as stated in the explanation above. The issue is that I don't see this "wait time", rather it feels like that the game will just trigger a warzone immediately if it has the required player numbers no matter what, which shouldn't happen *that fast*.

Hope I made my point a bit clearer !

[SteveTheCynic]

19 hours ago, supertimtaf said:

I don't disagree with that

however, if there is no premade to be faced, the game should definitely wait a bit before trying to force a queue no matter what, as stated in the explanation above. The issue is that I don't see this "wait time", rather it feels like that the game will just trigger a warzone immediately if it has the required player numbers no matter what, which shouldn't happen *that fast*.

Hope I made my point a bit clearer !

OK, fair point, although it would slow down pops, which in such a situation are going to be pretty danmed slow already.

[supertimtaf]

3 hours ago, SteveTheCynic said:

OK, fair point, although it would slow down pops, which in such a situation are going to be pretty danmed slow already.

I think that at this point, slower pops will definitely happen at first due to the smaller number of players playing the gamemode for now. However, if slower pops also means better quality games most of the time, then it will incentivize people to try it again, fixing it naturally over time. The question is to know if the devs are willing to take that risk of slightly reducing engagement metrics for a bit until they go up again from the improved quality of games.

[DeannaVoyager]

12 hours ago, supertimtaf said:

I think that at this point, slower pops will definitely happen at first due to the smaller number of players playing the gamemode for now. However, if slower pops also means better quality games most of the time, then it will incentivize people to try it again, fixing it naturally over time. The question is to know if the devs are willing to take that risk of slightly reducing engagement metrics for a bit until they go up again from the improved quality of games.

Even in worst case scenario, the slower pop times would only happen to premades. They can then decide to keep their premade and accept the slower pops, or break the premade and get matches faster. 

[Anhkriva]

47 minutes ago, DeannaVoyager said:

Even in worst case scenario, the slower pop times would only happen to premades. They can then decide to keep their premade and accept the slower pops, or break the premade and get matches faster. 

Solo players would also wait longer for a match. How would a smaller player pool not make the wait longer?

 

[DeannaVoyager]

10 hours ago, Anhkriva said:

Solo players would also wait longer for a match. How would a smaller player pool not make the wait longer?

 

Not really because you would have more people playing: 

- a lot of people who don't currently play because premades would start doing pvp again
- newbies wouldn't flee after trying it once
- some premades would disband their group to be able to play instead of sitting in a queue

[Exly]

On 5/20/2024 at 11:27 AM, DeannaVoyager said:

Not really because you would have more people playing: 

- a lot of people who don't currently play because premades would start doing pvp again
- newbies wouldn't flee after trying it once
- some premades would disband their group to be able to play instead of sitting in a queue

I agree with you 100%. 

I get why people would want to play with their friends and have the ability to be able to queue up as a team, but not at the expense of those who solo queue.  That's why I favor a separate queue for premades.