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i used to really like playing this game solo. Over time, the solo experience has degraded both in terms of fun as well as viability for a reasonable gameplay experience. It is both my experience and that of many others that in the game's current state, group play is the only way to avoid incredible amounts of frustration. While the solo experience can still occasionally be okay for some, these times are becoming more and more limited to higher population times, and less frequent. A recent test run for me of the solo experience over a 13 game sample produced almost universally short and stompy losses against a variety of high-skill premades that the matchmaker could not effectively balance. I would characterize these as hopeless and unplayable games, and it was a miserable experience as a solo player. It was bad to the point where I considered why I was even playing a game in which the experience was so inescapably poor when other games exist.
The flaws of PSR post-reset and the current ills of the matchmaker have been well documented on these forums. It is commonplace within the community to assume the matchmaker is hopelessly incapable of assembling competitive games, and often the nature of the teams that we see in our lobbies reinforces this belief. It is common to see lobbies where the 4-6 best players are all on one side, and these games inevitably play out as someone who knows this community would expect, resulting in quick, extremely one-sided, stompy, unenjoyable games. As the solo experience has degraded, more and more players are seeking the safety of group play in an attempt to regain some amount of control over the gameplay experience. It does not take much imagination to foresee that solo players will eventually either refuse to drop solo, or move on to other games further reducing the player population, both of which will serve to make matchmaking more difficult and further reduce match quality.
If we are stuck with 4 man premades, the current matchmaker, and the current PSR calculation, I believe the game has reached a point where it desperately needs secondary lobby balancing. I believe a solution like this could be implemented without a huge amount of rework to existing systems, although as a non-developer I cannot guarantee this. Since I, and many others, would like to regain the ability to drop solo in MWO without guaranteeing myself a horrible gameplay experience, I would appreciate it if this type of system could be considered in the immediate future.
System and situation description copied in from a later post: the mm is tasked with going out to the queue and sourcing 24 players it feels like "match" for a game lobby. it divides those players among the two teams as best it can via Tier and PSR, leaving premade groups intact. that is what we have today, and it is not good.
the concept of secondary lobby balancing is to have another round of logic that takes the 24 players already chosen, ignores any premade grouping that players have requested, and sees if the MM solution still makes sense. i.e. If team 1 has 4 99% players that were selected in a premade, and the highest rated player on team 2 is at 95%, then the secondary lobby balancer would "choose" to break up the team 1 premade, and assign two of the 99% players to team 2. similarly, if team 2 has a premade of 4 75% players and the lowest rated player on team 1 is at 80%, then the secondary lobby balancer would "choose" to break up the team 2 premade and assign two of them to team 1.
so for such an example, instead of launching a game where the 4 best players are guaranteed to be on team 1, now we have a game where at least two of them are guaranteed to be on each side.
Edited by morosis, 25 December 2020 - 05:25 AM.
