Xarian, on 01 May 2014 - 02:00 AM, said:
Imagine, if you will, a status screen. It says, "Mechs currently queued for match:", and then it has a list of weight classes. Next to those weight classes are numbers. Numbers that say how many of that type of mech is queued.
Then imagine, if you will, a player who is trying to queue for a match as an Assault. He notices that there are 35 players queued as Assault, 23 players queued as Heavy, 5 players queued as Medium, and 18 players queued as Light. He gets tired of waiting, so he cancels his match and switches to his Hunchback.
Now imagine, if you will, all 81 of these players trying to join matches. They aren't joining at the same time. Some are joining earlier, and some are joining later. Some have to wait more time, and some have to wait less time. At some point, there will be enough of every class to play.
Now let's further imagine that people don't play the classes equally. Say - 27% Assault, 27% Heavy, 27% Light, and 19% Medium. This means that, on average, you've got 24% of the available players waiting for a match. Of course it might be a little more because we've got to wait for 6 players of each type.
Now, I want you to do something for me. Go to Wikipedia, and look up the term 'impossible'. Then feel shame.
Imagine, if you will, that people don't play the classes equally. Say - 27% Assault, 27% Heavy, 27% Light, and 19% Medium. This means that, on average, 81% will be matched within one matching-cycle. So, the 24% that was in queue for the first matchmaking-cycle didn't get matched. Imagine further that the 24% that didn't get matched in the first matching-cycle now has queued all the way to the front for the second matching-cycle.
This will lead to longer (not endless) waiting times for Assault, Heavy and Lights. All the while Mediums will be matched every first matching-cycle. After a while a thing called natural selection will take care of the rest.
Will player base suffer? Most likely.
Impossible? Definitely not.
Edited by Sapstengel, 01 May 2014 - 06:04 AM.