Matchmaker

I just logged in and had 4 Defeats in a row at 8.7-9.0 BR and had to log off.

Here is matchmaking = pay4win wall. If you have tank with elite crew with all skills maxed out vs new player with basis crew then you you beat the person already regardless the BR.

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I agree. I’m also frustrated with the fact that we’re now getting thrown into a battle that’s already half over. I accept that every other battle is either getting steamrolled or steamrolling the other team, but it’s a waste of a booster when you’re thrown into a fight that’s already lost and you can normally only play one vehicle before it’s over.

bro

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I dont get the complaint…IF there is a team balancing system, isn’t this supposed to make for FAIRER matches? Or are you saying you want to be on a stronger team so you can win more?

BTW…all players should check their win ratio before complaining for too many losses…most players are within the 45-55 win ratio, usually 49-51…which is the usual value. Simple reason, the individual effect is small, so if you play enough matches you will win as many as you lose…at least in arcade. In RB and SB the nation and BR have a larger effect.

Of course there are some bad days…i also get 5+ losses in a row on occasion…but we usually notice more “losses” than “wins”…even if the are balanced…

The fellow player described an easy to watch phenomenon - the longer you play successful, the less skilled your own team becomes, your full uptier ratios get higher and your enemies gets smarter - all on average view.

This EOL or player rating system has from my view some flaws as somehow the mode you are good at is not really considered, so you find often better than average tankers on top of the enemy team.

But at a certain point you run into a quite good enemy team with a hell of good fighter pilots and your own team consists of rookies - at least in Air RB.

And from a holistic pov ELOs in all f2p games have the goal to serve the overall purpose of the game - to support income by selling stuff.

A fair match is not really supporting such a goal.

Even if you as an individual see this different - psychology and the ability to predict player behavior show that you need fully intended obstacles in order to keep the average player motivated. Btw the same rules apply to everything in life…

Why? If you proceed too easy you might not see the need to increase your SL/RP income by buying premium stuff - if you proceed too slow you might lose interest. Very delicate balance.

I’ve definitely noticed in the higher BR fights that many quit after they lose their first or second tank, which for those who still are trying to mod their vehicles, that makes for a much longer grind. I can’t imagine what it’s like for a developer of such a game that’s not only trying to make money to stay in business, but also keep their player base happy. I never expect to win every battle, that’s unrealistic, but after an already stressful day I jump on to continue working on mod’ing vehicles and then just get smoked, sometimes right off of the spawn point by helicopters, that enthusiasm wanes really fast.
But… I still play. lol Glutton for punishment, I guess.
I’d honestly be interested to see what the turnover rate is for WT - how many inactive accounts there are.

If you want to invest some time and money - google your question and you find a lot of pages like this:

Company profile

I am quite sure i found some time ago a similar site offering their annual reports for aroujnd 20 € - and they stated that revenues were 121 million € some time ago.

In all developed countries financial data have to be published if the company is a “limited company” (no matter of share or capital based). The duty of making their annual report publicly available was created to protect investors, customer or others doing business with them - so they have the chance to assess if they lose money or not.

As Hungary is part of the European Union they have to publish their annual financial reports like in Germany, France, etc.
At least in theory the access to these data is free, but it is a complicated process if you are not living there and you have no clue how to ask the right local authorities to get these data.

Hence, there are a lot of service providers offering those data for a small fee - like in this link 30 $.

The main problem is that the duty of publishing financial data does not imply to expose extremely detailed data; usually your question:

…can not be answered by ordering the annual report foreseen to be published as those data are just fulfilling minimum standards. That is the reason why several versions of annual reports exist.

In any case - seeing that a Chinese state investor is involved since a few years you might see a correlation between bias and suffering for certain nations and why China and Taiwan are in the same TT…

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That explains a few things, definitely. I wonder how much say that investor actually has in game development though.

Translation…as you get better, the game matches you with also better opponents.

You made a long text…but it reads as wanting to get easier matches, even when the player is already experienced??? How…making lopsided matchmaking???
There is no middle ground…if you have 8 good, 8 average and 8 bad players…fair way to mix, would be 4 of each on each team…not clear to me what alternative is being proposed.

No - the described increase in difficulty within games has nothing to do with getting better as this effect is related to current (let’s say the last 10 matches) performance and has nothing to do with your overall performance.

No clue how you came to your conclusion that i want to have easier matches vs less experienced enemies. I was talking multiple times about hidden / undisclosed “features” within the MM in case you have ongoing win strikes - and nothing else.

Maybe a translation issue or i was not precise enough…

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That is just it…HOW do you (and others asking for this) want MM to handle it?
Assuming there is some hidden/undisclosed algorithm based on previous results…THIS would be actually a good thing IMHO. A “large” group of players playing at some BR would be adjusted between matches so those winning more were distributed by both teams…i fail to see the problem IN GLOBAL.
Players (probably other players) complain they are always on the worse team, or that they have a losing streak…the system you describe would gradually place ALL players on even teams…it would not “single out” any player, would pick the winning players and distribute them on different teams…BUT even after the distribution, someone would win…

AS ALL SYSTEMS, there is always someone who MAY get a bad series due to bad luck…but overall i dont see an issue, as this system would make for most players having a daily 50% win ratio…
Actually…one of the reasons i think the system does not exist…is that RNG provides roughly the same results…albeit with more “lopsided” games…the “last results used for MM” should make more balanced games, pure RNG should have more uneven games. Both converge on roughly 50% win ratios.

Currently, I’m at 48%, but I’ve also noticed that when I play in the evenings - EST US - I see more losses than wins. Of course, the population on the server has gone from 160k down to around 88k by that point. To be honest, I don’t think there’s an easy answer for a system in matchmaking.

All video games have player rankings added to their MM - just google “ELO”.

What you fail to understand is that players and game providers have different views on things - especially regarding balance and how to use ELO in their MM.

So if i refer to posts in the old forum or own experiences with the MM this is totally independent from your own view on things.

From my pov you should invest some time researching “goals of and psychology implemented in f2p games”. Don’t get me wrong, from a holistic pov i share most of your general view on things, but as soon you refer to wt you simply assume that your view is somehow reflected in wt - even in case it is objectively seen not.

So as nobody wants to repeat himself in infinite loops - check the whole thread again regarding educated guesses of what is or might be implemented in the MM and just try to align your view on things with them. Even admitting that this is more less speculation as nobody here has seen the MM rules in detail, a lot of indicators are confirming various assumptions of “sinister” features within the MM.

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I look at it to decide what might be the best vehicle for me to spawn in first. If I’m at 6.7 and I get Ardennes, it’s probably better for my odds if my first spawn is a LeK rather than a Tiger II.

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Typically I’m starting a battle with the vehicle I’m still working on mod’ing, regardless of the battlefield. Tactics, of course, become based on cover, etc.

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That would be a skill based matchmaker: players of similar skill are pitted against one another.

What’s being theorised here is not a skill based matchmaker, but an engagement optimised matchmaker, which (if it exists) would try to make players converge towards a more or less 50% win rate; if someone is winning a lot, you put them in teams where their odds of winning will be lower, and viceversa. The “engagement” part lies in the fact that the player never rests on their laurels or feels like they’ve finally conquered the challenge.

EOMs are an existing technology in other MMOs, so it’s technically feasible, though obviously that doesn’t automatically make it true that there is one in WT.

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I play(ed) several games with ELO based systems. I know it…and in fact, took part in several discussion where players want to “improve” the system. As usual, there is never a consensus and someone always thinks he is being punished by the system.

AFAIK WT has no such system, just the BR and RNG. But i am willing to discuss it…i also dont think impossible that WT has some hidden “makeshift” system based on the last X games and the player average position on those. MY PERSONAL opinion is that it is easier to use RNG, the winrate is 50% in both…
A skill based MM supposedly would reduce uneven matches…but i see no evidence of such in WT…and the empirical (i.e. personal experience) data doesn’t prove it.

As to the sinister part…and psychological effect in f2p. I believe in those, and saw it on several games…which i usually stop playing due to those effects. Paywalls, golden ammo, unfair benefits to paying customers…etc…i just don’t feel those in WT, so i keep playing…BUT i may be wrong, of course.

WT has one f2p effect…the “king of the hill” effect, where you always assume the enemy killing you is what you need to be a killer…and when you get there you find that “there is always a bigger fish”…but i accept this as part of the f2p model i am willing to follow as a free player.

AFAIK, the game does NOT try to DELIBERATELY penalize me because i am good/bad or paying/free player…but again…i may be wrong…

THAT SAID…i guess i am repeating myself…i didn’t understand that the “claim” is that WT penalizes some players in a “deliberate” way…as any ELO or similar MM seems to be good on average…

That’s it should be done.

Exactly!

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Despite i see this exchange more or less as a theoretical view on things we should acknowledge that nobody can actually prove his pov. But if you see how many scientists try to prove that there is something callled “dark matter” - without having any actual evidence - there seems to be a consensus that dark matter might exist as it fills some holes in other theories.

If my hypothesis is that wt uses his own form of ELO system this would imply that players were somehow “ranked”. A proof for a player ranking can be given indirectly: The order of players in the lobbies right after spawn.

You can easily verify this by yourself - play some decent games in a row and your name will be displayed higher on the scoreboard right after spawn. This fact alone should convince you that i might be on the right track.

The rather poor result of trying to balance players (just assuming that it exists) might be a result of gaijin’s approach to minimize queue times - so they prefer short queue times instead of balanced matches (as imho their current ranking is dysfunctional) - or there is currently just a lack of experienced players and “the show must go on”.

But as a player who plays for fun only, the result is rather disappointing. And actually idc if something might look fine on average. Fun & challenge in a perfect mix strengthens the player commitment - but fun & challenge has for everybody a different meaning - that’s why you see a lot of guys sealclubbing at rank I & II with 30.000 matches.

The MM in its current form is simply crap - same as game-set up, 16 vs 16, map design or dysfunctional player skill evaluation.

Long term players have usually realized, that his game requires to find some workarounds in order to have a decent mix of fun & challenge whilst playing. Otherwise playing would be useless, at least for me.

Why? Because the MM is unable to create fights on equal terms regarding player skill involved.

My workarounds when playing wt

If you are only interested in WW2 air combat the BR setting policy of gaijin and lobby setup with hordes of undertiered premium planes (Wyverns, XP-50) forces you find the right balance.

  • If you fly an op or simply very strong plane around BR 4.0 you can beat your mostly less experienced opponent way too easy, no challenge, no fun.

  • If you fly a less stronger plane in order to have a challenge (so compensating your experience advantage with lower performance) you can have fun and a challenge.

  • But - you run sooner or later in matches were you find equally skilled pilots in op planes which are able to nullify all of your individual strengths and outperform you in all other aspects.

  • So in order to have fun & a challenge you have to use rather mediocre planes because you face usually less experienced/skilled pilots - but you are screwed if experienced pilots fly those planes. That can’t be right.

That is one reason why some experienced players in Air RB do a standard “quick lobby check” right after spawn - they check the enemy team by looking at their vehicle stats (not player level, not positioning) in order to identify the most dangerous opponents in order to predict their used planes and to gain at least a positional advantage if they fly superior aircraft.

As a result of those “checks” (if your do them long enough) you see patterns regarding positioning of the players on the scoreboard right after spawn and you get a good feeling how the match will develop.

Usually you can predict the outcome of most matches just by checking the enemy team and after a look at the plane choices of your own team - and sometimes just by their names.

Example of game decision by MM due to unbalanced lobbies:

Just open this replay, and check the vehicle statistics of the players (small 7 vs 7 match on Pacific map) direct after the spawn, no necessity to watch the match.

The JP team won just by the lobby set up - a hell of US rookies vs JP veteran players - including a well known stat optimizer (20:1 k/d in a rank II Ki-44). There was never a realistic chance for the US team to win - even with our B7A2 bot (with a rather cheap bot script) and a tanker in a helpless Ki-49 bomber the outcome was predetermined by the lobby set up.

All i had to do was baiting their highest guy up (cloud match) for another B7A2 and to kill their last player with a high speed zoom attack from below as the clouds are reducing the marker range significantly.

And exactly these kind of unbalanced lobbies you have to face if you have ongoing win strikes. Not always so clear visible as in my example, but extremely often. That your full uptier ratio increases significantly within ongoing win strikes might be a coincidence, but both factors come way too often into play than to be just the result of a (“coin floipping”) random event.

So even if my own experiences are not important for the overall picture (just due the low sample size) the presented evidence brought me and many others to the point that the MM has many functions that might be not really helpful as described multiple times in this thread.

If you read the statements of this fellow player:

again and see the overall tenor of this thread “too many loss strikes” you might rethink your own assumptions regarding what might be included in the MM - not change them, just think about them.

Claiming that the MM works fine on average is imho on the same level as setting BRs based on average results is fine - technically correct, but not helpful for players without a Joe Bauers profile (“Idiocracy”).

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