about 3 years ago - /u/EA_Charlemagne - Direct link

Pilots,

The following are the server-side balancing changes we've made this week:

General

  • Matchmaking improvements to reduce time to find a match while retaining balance
    • No matchmaking changes were made last week as we were monitoring changes from the week prior
  • Skill Rating penalty added when leaving from the Fleet Battles lobby
    • This will go live on 25 February after a brief downtime

Starfighters & Components

After last week’s tuning, the TIE defender is performing more in line with our expectations but is still overperforming at the top levels of competition. After listening to feedback and comparing it to our data, we’re reducing the shield regen rate and tweaking the boost for the TIE defender.

The TIE defender will still perform very similarly at most levels of gameplay to how it does now but the “boost skipping” technique used in high-end play will be slightly less effective. It’ll still be able to bounce around, but less sharply than before and while needing to focus more on shield integrity. This should also give more viability to a wider range of components.

  • TIE defender shield regeneration rate decreased by 35%
  • TIE defender boost acceleration decreased by 6.5%
  • TIE defender boost activation cost increased by 28%
External link →
about 3 years ago - /u/EA_Charlemagne - Direct link

Originally posted by arctic_ninja

just to confirm, the TIE Defender changes are already applied and the matchmaking updates are going live tomorrow?

Everything is live right now except the leaver penalty. That'll have downtime tomorrow. The matchmaking improvements are also live.

about 3 years ago - /u/EA_Charlemagne - Direct link

Originally posted by AlcomIsst

TIE defender shield regeneration rate decreased by 35%

f**k.

Language.

about 3 years ago - /u/tibermoon - Direct link

Originally posted by Cascades_Climber

It will backfill if someone leaves during the initial 120sec ship selection phase before match start. And the issue is it fills with literally anyone it can find.

That was indeed true. Until the change we made two weeks ago. It now accounts for MMR when backfilling. It’s not weighed as strongly as it is on initial game creation (since we don’t want you timing out waiting for someone to backfill if we can avoid it) but it’s definitely a factor now.

about 3 years ago - /u/tibermoon - Direct link

Originally posted by StonesideAF

Did you also do something to the matchmaking in Dogfights? I was playing today and the matches seemed a lot more balanced. I didn't have a single match were I was hammering on newbs, it was all similar level sweats...

The only problem was that I was waiting quite a bit longer to get into a match (queing with one buddy) He's got good stats 4.25 K/D and like Level 80 something and I'm a 2.85 K/D level 160.

To be clear, the matches were awesome but we were waiting 5-7 minutes with a few that were even longer. I don't mind you keeping me away from clubbing newbs. That's fine. But waiting that long to get a match definitey had me stop playing earlier, today, than I would have.

I appreciate you endlessly trying to improve this game before you stop tending to it... Just reporting what I experience. Also really appreciate how quickly you guys respond to people on twitter. Ian and Charlemange both responded the other day when the EA server had a few hiccups.

Yes, yesterday's MM change should result in better dogfights (but, yes, longer wait times on average) and slightly shorter avg wait times for fleet battles. No changes have been made to coop MM, as it doesn't have any skill-based elements.

We will continue to monitor and adjust further if needed (if the dogfight MM changes prove to cause too big of a tradeoff in terms of wait times, for instance).