[2022] Match making: what you think

As literally just posted in another thread talking about Matchmaker:

There's a video that explain how it works:

I'm not really sure what people think CAN fix blowouts. Other than ship respawn.

A player did a study of his battles and found little/no correlation to the matchmaking. Games just go the way they go.

I lived in Atlanta most of my life. I remmber not too long ago there was a Superbowl where the Falcons were up like 24 to 0 or something stupid. They ended up routed towards the end in a defeat that is remembered as amazing for how sad it was.

Similarly, other high-end, top-of-their-game matches can lead to blowouts and lop-sided victories. Often, blow outs are a sign of skilled play as skilled players jump on an advantage and break the game their way with it.

If you want disorganized chaos, then you're arguing for the existance of a new-player queue where advantages/disadvantages don't matter since it's one big ball of crazy. That will result in less blowouts as people just slow-brawl the whole game through.

It's Random. That's the point.

There's no favortism when the matchmaker doesn't understand what player stats are. It only matches based of Ship Nation, Class, and Tier.

If I go to a Casino and sit down at a Poker table, I get whatever players happen to be there. If I get up and go to a different table, I get whatever players happen to be there. If I go to a Casino across town and find a table, I get whatever players happen to be there.

You can make an argument that the only "fair" way to play Poker is to have a registry that tracks everyone's lifetime earnings to make sure that people playing Poker are all fairly equal to each other. Or... you can just sit down at a table and do the best you can with whatever hand you are dealt.

Random Matchmaker is Random. It's unbiased because it has no metric for determining what skill is. It's just a way to get some folks together to play the game, and because it's truly random you'll end up having the whole gamut of experiences. From normal games to crazy matches that hinge on a dime because of a bad player doing something so bizzare that no good player ever expected and double-striking a div of unicums.

This is literally provided in the video I mentioned:

Direct Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r7PmOMVLgsE

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In terms of how the Matchmaker sees you, it only "sees" the Class of Ship (Destroyer/Cruiser/Battleship/Carrier) and Tier. It uses different "baskets" to represent single tier situations as well as cross-tier situations.

The "Nation" aspect happens just before a match is dropped. For example, if there are 3 Cruisers per side and one team has 3 US Cruisers while the other has none, the Matchmaker will swap one of the Cruisers to the other side to "even to teams" in terms of "US Cruisers". So only in that way will the Nation of a ship be factored. Unless those 3 US Cruisers are in a Div, that is.

Trying to figure how that might be possible...

If you have Cruiser from a Nation that has a Radar and another Cruiser from that same Nation that doesn't, the matchmaker doesn't differentiate on consumable capabilities. So...

To go extreme with it... you could theoretically have a match with:

6 Battleships:

1 x Constellation (US Tier 8 w/ Radar)


1 x Missouri (US Tier 9 w/ Radar)


1 x Iowa (US Tier 9 no Radar)


1 x Alabama (US Tier 8 no Radar)


1 x Borodino (RU Tier 8 w/ Radar)


1 x Lenin (RU Tier 8 no Radar)

10 Cruisers:

2 x Tallinn (RU Tier 8 Cruiser w/ Radar)


1 x Kutuzov (RU Tier 8 no Radar)


1 x P. Bagration (RU Tier 8 no Radar)


2 x Neptune (UK Tier 9 w/ Radar)


1 x Neptune (UK Tier 9 no Radar)


1 x Drake (UK Tier 9 no Radar)


1 x Balitmore (US Tier 8 w/ Radar)


1 x Anchorage (US Tier 8 no Radar)

8 Destroyers:

1 x Orkan (EU Tier 8 w/ Radar)


1 x Oland (EU Tier 8 no Radar)


1 x Hsienyang (PA Tier 8 w/ Radar)


1 x Hsienyang (PA Tier 8 no Radar)


1 x Chung Mu (PA Tier 9 w/ Radar)


1 x Chung Mu (PA Tier 9 no Radar)


1 x Black (US Tier 9 w/ Radar)


1 x Benham (US Tier 9 no Radar)

Since the matchmaker only looks at Class, Tier, and Nation... once all these ships get made into a group and the game is set to start, the Matchmaker will do a pass to check if both teams have an uneven number of "Same Tier, Same Nation, Same Class" ships.

While it could have initially been:

All PA DD on Team A, and All US/EU DDs on Team B for instance... those will be split evenly across both teams.


or All UK Cruisers on Team A and All RU cruisers on Team B... those will be split evenly across both teams.


All 3 US Battleships on Team A and Both RU Battleships on Team B? Those will be split evenly across both teams.

However, since the matchmaker does not factor in consumables... you Could have a situation where Team A has no Radar ships while Team B has 12 Radar ships. Is it likely? No. But it could happen.

It would be:

Team A:
Iowa
Alabama
Lenin
Neptune (Smoke)
Drake
Kutuzov
P. Bagration
Anchorage
Chung Mu (Smoke)
Benham
Oland
Hsienyang (Smoke)

vs

Team B:
Missouri
Constellation
Borodino
Neptune (Radar)
Neptune (Radar)
Tallinn
Tallinn
Baltimore
Chung Mu (Radar)
Black (Radar)
Orkan
Hsienyang (Radar)

I'm more a game enthusiast, so perhaps this is a mode of description I'm unaware of.

I did google it just now and saw:

That conversation would end up being about a ship's "Power Budget". In other words, if a ship has Radar as a part of its kit, then you should expect the ship itself to have a weakened performance parameter elsewhere to account for that.

Ideally, each ship brings a certain amount of "Power" to a match to that each player at a Tier is similar in expectation. This is why the Matchmaker isn't keyed to look for consumables.

As for Radar being powerful, it surely can be. It's highly rated as required in terms of competitive matches and loudouts in Clan Battles. As for Random Battles having a host of uncoordinated players using their ship primarily as just the ship they rode in on however, that's going to be something that factors in long-term statistic-wise.

Please don't mistake my ignorance of military callsigns and processes as something that WG is guilty of. WG is rather obsessed with military history and information, and you can meet some folks here that could certainly school me on these terms as you have done.

For me, I've been trying to take an active role in "getting information out to players" about game design processes and concepts. I understand many folks don't want to know about the game design basis for decisions they don't like, but I've come to learn the Community is old enough to handle mature discussions. I feel many of our players prefer to have the information to make their own judgements with, so I've made it a goal to get helpful information out as opposed to conjecture and misplaced concern.

This makes sense. Thank you for the breakdown. Worth noting they say "Ship Type" in the official video~

Having played a wide variety of games like Dungeons & Dragons, World of Warcraft, Diablo, and... well a lot more... the common "Game Term" for picking a Character Type with a unique concept is slang'd out as "Class".

IE: "What's class is your character?" "Oh, he's a Barbarian"

That can further be delineated by "Spec" or "Specialization" which denotes the sub-Type.

IE: "Did you spec for Beserker Fury or Great Weapons?" "Berzerker! It's too much fun"

Sure, I've heard the concern before. Again, it's not always about your ability to detect something. German ships are great open-water boats with Cruisers that are ready to knife-fight with torps that radar Cruisers don't often have. German HE pen and shell flight time is great. IJN shell grouping and flight time is great too. It really just comes down to what happens in the craziness of the match happening.

Every nation has their own playstyle and capability set, and all Nations are played in the game.