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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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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Like I was saying in the BP thread, the best way to enjoy the game is to ignore the structures of incentives and disincentives put in place and just set your own personal goals.
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Gaijin is very sneaky. I get constant losing streaks, sometimes lasting for days. It’s mathematically almost impossible to lose 18-20+ times in a row, but in gaijin world this happens ALL THE TIME.
I even caught the game cheating with the stats, as I was writing (already sick of monumental losing streaks years ago). I was spading my AD-2 in Arcade. I had something like 23 losses and maybe just like 1-2 wins… that’s from stock. All I remember was that the game didn’t count 4 of my losses in that AD-2 and the stats were stuck at 19 losses. I even waited 2 extra days for the stats to “catch up”, if there was some delay, but the counter never moved. I played that plane later as a spare only when I knew that our team will win just to get back to better % win rate on it. It ended up at 49% as it is now and that’s after all the extra work choosing when to play it.
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Yes, but the main issue is that most of “newer” players are simply trapped at certain stages and follow illusions as some of the implemented “obstacles” are not easy to identify or to detect.
So if they start with a small “buy-in” they come sooner or later to a point when they have to decide how to proceed (so throwing even more money into it, arrange with the cards they have, or to quit). Admitting mistakes requires strong personalities - it is much easier to complain than to reflect own actions.
Technically there is nothing wrong with gaijins approach to satisfy customer needs, but the large increase of players in the last 5 years which are willing to buy overprized pixel packages in order to play a CoD duty like game play altered the character of this game significantly.
If you look at several discussions in this forum just a few try to see the whole picture. Almost everybody follows his agenda and almost nobody has a clue how this game works or how a fruitful discussion works.
The total absence of any moderation activities like merging similar / identical threads or just cooling down heated debates with massive insults is another indicator that gaijin is following his own path and most of the time posting here has the same effect than talking to your cat.
I am case - have a good one!
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I guess my original thoughts behind making the thread at the beginning was in the hopes that I wasn’t the only one with 10 losses in a row. I know some claim Russian bias in various ways, but I do agree that most of the time it’s just some players are better than others. When I play my Russian tanks, no one has any trouble destroying them, so not sure where the bias is. Honestly, I agree with many in this thread who’ve mentioned or eluded to the fact that some players aren’t mature enough and wish to find some other reason to their losses. Personally, I own my 48%. :)
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You’re not alone in those losses, and for some of us that are disabled for various reasons the game can be brutal in every match. I try to play with friends that help me with those struggles and sometimes we have fun regardless of the many issues mm has.
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Understandable, but again . . I can make those kinds of decisions about the map & what to play without looking at the leaderboard. As I already have a goal in mind before the game starts, which vehicle I might be “working” or what to use to finish as task or wager. Priorities change . . and all games tend to evolve differently, even on the redundant and overly simplified maps/layouts . . . just going to have totally different teams in every match anyway, so . . . but I get where you’re coming from, and we all play differently . . . all good
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Of course, don’t get me wrong, sometimes I also just sit down and say “I feel like playing X tonight, come what may”. And then you end up in unusual situations that can pleasantly surprise you sometimes!
Or you have a BP task to complete or whatever, like you said. Just wanted to point out that if you remove all the internet flame wars connotations, uptier and downtier (as revealed by your vehicle spawn cost) can be a tool to inform your first vehicle decision if you’re in the mood to minmax/play to win. Of course, it got distorted far past that by now.
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I’ve been mainly focused on buying all the vehicles and spading them, so have the Israelis already gained, except now for the new SPG that they just added which I’m working on now. I’ve played top tier in a few battles and even though they’re brutal, I do enjoy how nimble and fast they seem compared to the lower ranked vehicles. I’ve been lucky enough, at times, to survive a whole battle with my first tank but those moments lately are few and far between.
matchmaker are ±1BR yes? today i play 8.0 and vs 8.7 and 2 ppl in squad from my team have bigest tank Tiger ll H 6.7 and Tiger ll H SLA, this Tigers are 6.7BR, wtf is going on in this game,
screenshots? replay? Because for example I talked to a dinosaur today and I was on mars to drink coffee
The only way that’s supposed to happen is if they have at least one at 7.7 in their lineup. Unless for some reason they’ve changed the rules on Matchmaking.