Hellen Wheels, on 28 June 2014 - 03:38 PM, said:
That is true. Everything else you wrote is utter speculation.
The fabled and mythical "MM" is nothing more than a random game generator: it plops the people who are ready together into the same game, without regard to any other consideration than to start a game.
And my anecdotal evidence is just as plain as yours.
"MM," "Elo", etc. is just myth.
Completely random. Period.
Not completely random, but the matchmaker parameters are very loose. The worse part is once you get to a high Elo bracket as a solo player you are stuck there. You generally only play against better players on premade teams (usually 2 teams per side), and when you side lose your Elo score doesn't move because the "expected outcome" was supposed to be a loss.
In defense of the matchmaker I will say the following, I am (or was) a very good Heavy pilot, and when I drop in my heavy mechs I see a lot of familiar names from the tournaments, and a lot of poptarts and consumables.
Additionally I almost never play light mechs, in fact until the clan mechs I only had 25 drops (out of 5000) in light mechs (and a <1 KRD and W/L). And it is very uncommon for me to see familiar names in those drops. And there is a lot less meta (front loaded damage) and poptarts in those games.
So there is some segregation going on, unfortunately the boundaries are so vast that it doesn't appear that way. I also think the leading contributor is pre-made groups, they can bring in very high and very low Elo players that break the matchmaker boundaries. Now all of a sudden the matchmaker is scrambling to accommodate a 2800 Elo player and an 800 in the same match.
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