Hi, I'd like to offer a short explanation of what yesterday's matchmaking fix was all about.

In essence, there was a problem with squads getting added on the wrong team in public and academy battles.

So if you had a 4:8 battle and joined with a 4 player squad, it would sometimes put that squad on the team with 8 players, causing it to be 4:12. That should no longer happen with the fix.

However, you may still end up with temporary imbalances if someone joins with a 6 people squad on an already balanced match, say 10:10, as it won't break up the squad. Thus you'd get a 10:16 (or 16:10) match until more players join the queue.

Similar imbalances might happen if you have an 11:16 battle and all players in the queue are 6 player squads, as they would not fit into that battle.

Thanks,
CCP Draco

So there's no fix coming for the all-too-common situation of "2 full proto squads on one side vs all lone wolves on the other"? Surely, a better fix would be to make sure that each team has a premade squad before adding an additional premade to a team with one already.

I mean, listen, I'm all for Dust being difficult, and I get that there will always be gearing imbalances. But stacking squads on one side of the match doesn't really make the game more fun or even challenging. Those well-coordinated squads just end up stomping the other team, driving them to the redline, then harassing the redline once they have total domination. It's not fun, and well, this is a game after all. It should be fun.

And before all the fanboys come in with "oh Vespa you should join a squad!," I normally do play in squads. My corp is very active, and there's always guys to run with. But sometimes you queue up solo. Sometimes it's faster than waiting for the squad queue or sometimes you want to play a different game mode (FW) than the squads blitzing ambush matches. It happens, and when it does, it should at least be fun and competitive.

The advantage would be that the person quitting would get nothing from quitting. They don't get their isk payout and they can't join another match until the current one is over anyway.

Thus trapping poor souls who find themselves on the wrong side of a horrendous redlining against a full team of protostomping squads with 9 tanks. GG

Thus trapping poor souls who find themselves on the wrong side of a horrendous redlining against a full team of protostomping squads with 9 tanks. GG

Ouch. I've never failed to get paid in a match when I had done anything...
Something I just thought of, once cloaking devices come out, it will be much harder to redline the other team, though you'd probably have to train up to them first.

It's still having some imbalances.

http://i.imgur.com/WleLjMZ.jpg

It seems like this is a ground up problem. Scotty is taking players 1 or squad at a time and putting them on a side in a match instead of getting a full pool of 32 players THEN putting them on sides.

Maybe this was originally envisioned as the better method because you would be placed in the WB on a particular side as players joined? I know in other FPS games I've played, they would fill the game first, then divide based on balancing.

Edit: I guess a problem with filling is the potential for five 6 man squads which couldn't divide evenly. Scotty would have to be smart enough to stop at four 6 man squads.

I wonder how much of the match making problems are due to the increase in squad size from 4 to 6? 4 divided into 16 nicely. Lets get matches up to 18v18 to help match making!