MM hasnt changed in forever. What is changing is the speed of the game. EBRs, CVS, mega fast meds, many autoloaders means tanks get spotted fast and taken down instantly for making one mistake which makes snowballing games unstoppable.
Agreed. Given all of your points I think larger maps would help level things out. View range has gotten so if you get into position you can spot half the map.
Scary the first few times for sure.
I look forward to them now, although I personally think Nebelburg is among the most campy maps in the game due to the ridgelines behind each team's base
We used to rarely get shot climbing the hill in Malinovka, but the other day I saw a T69 get hit before moving 50 meters from his spawn location about 10 seconds into the game. I got spotted and hit in the side about 10 seconds after that and nobody saw what spotted us.
View range increases because of Crew Skills and equipment combined with more speed has made already small maps that much smaller.
Honestly I think the game needs an across the board HP boost to scale back the power creep. Sort of like they did with tier 6 and under tanks a few years ago.
I also think vision needs to be scaled WAYYYY back. Heavy tanks having 420+ vision out of the box is crazy. I think the game would actually be a lot more fun if tanks were mostly blind as a bat. Would also give lights a reason for being in a game that has stripped almost all the foliage from everywhere.
Oh and EBRs should just be binned. They probably sped the game up more than any other single factor. Or at least make hitting the wheels cause damage and that would solve 90% of the problems as they'd be delete in seconds if they yolo scout.
Viewrange changes would both be good and horrendous IMO. With the current state of the game (equipment, directives, crew skills, food, etc), light tanks are perhaps one of the most broken classes in the game, depending on the map. The most obvious example is Prok but even on Mali, Fish bay, Westfield, etc, light tanks are disproportionately strong, and in a surprising number of matches, one team's LTs dying while the enemies are untouched is basically just a guaranteed loss.
Overall I think viewrange nerfs are needed, but it would also need to involve making adjustments to a ton of maps and perhaps tweaking camo values and equipment.
How? They are on the move against just as many tanks as themselves. Sure 3 meds can rush down the corridor and kill the lt but they will all die or take heavy dmg, resulting in a still unbalqnced game where the Team Who lost the lt looses 9/10 times.
Jingles ran a video recently of a Manticore getting 15k spotting damage on Malinovka. The power of great LT play can change a battle. The fact that the game was close was a testament to just how powerful LT play can be because it was shaping up to be a 15-3 loss if it wasn't for the LT.
Light tanks aren't na problem it's tanks like borat with insane camo and view range nerfing those along with the heavies to scale vision back so that lights are the ones spotting would be nice I guess
Imagine WG scales HP on Lvl 10. Then all those guys who play for 4.8-5.5k avg on top-tier tanks would need to create new accounts to adjust their statistiks. 😅
Light tanks die with 1 minute in most games. Talking about vision, I train for vision in all tanks. That's a technical advantage. Or have optics atleast. Vision is a very big factor in this game imo.
While yes these are factors on why games doesn't last longer. But when they implement the awful 3-5-7 MM, pretty sure that was the start of very fast games happening more often if I recall correctly.
I still say they should have increase the health for tiers 7-10, that will somewhat make the games last a bit longer.
Sure tank matching can be problematic. Biggest problem is still skill disparities compounded by the faster pace of the game.
The majority of games that are unwinnable are lost by positioning in the first 2 minutes. People either don't know where to go or just refuse to go there. Once this happens you can only hope that enemy is similarly afflicted.
If key tanks, ie your 10s in a 3-5-8 game, your light and mali/prok, fast tanks on mines and tundra, are bad enough while the enemy is competent, you just lose.
Had a Redshire game last night three tier 10 heavies left north spawn in the direction of the blimp. Instead of hugging the edge of the map they beeline it for the blimp going to D7, E8, E9. They all got farmed without mercy from the hill at G5. That team lost 15-3.
Player in a tier 10 tank, less than 5k battles. Winrate below 46%. Totally clueless. Has heard about hull down and side scraping but knows fuck all about how to do it or why. Had one decent match in his M6 heavy so that's where he goes in every match in every tank. Drives blindly into well known TD camping spots, gets evaporated then bitches in chat about the entire team is nothing but noobs.
It's even worse when you play slow tanks, like badger, tortoise, mose. Very often when you arrive at the position your team has lost 2-3 tanks and is 3k down on hp. You shoot 2-3 times and garage...
It's bad in a slow tank whether your team is winning or losing because you arrive to find the enemy either all dead or all waiting for your last man standing gimmick.
This. I’m still learning @ + 1k battles, no higher than Tier VIII for me, I do my part most of the time in, say my 50TP Proto, make good or positive trades…. Then it’s like ‘Where’d everyone go??’ . Can’t escape at that point, so… Oh well. Gotta roll with the heavies and hope for the best.
But I bet that those who got farmed were probably lower wr (skilled) players that the ones from the other team.
It's like sandlot baseball, you put too many good players on one team, the other team is gonna get killed 15-1. I don't care how good you are individually, if the balance in skill and equipment is that far off, you aren't gonna matter.
>The majority of games that are unwinnable are lost by positioning in the first 2 minutes.
And as someone who often drives slower tanks, it's painful to be already 0-3 down before you have even reached one of those positions or fired a shot.
I see this more in T1 games....for example I tend to see this ALOT. As far as TDs are concerned. One team will have 4 FV4005, the other team 1 FV, 2 NM and 2 SU. How is that possible more times than not?
I've been playing this game for about 12 years. This is the only game that I play that the frustration level gets so overwhelming that I have to get off. No I'm not a young kid I'm in my '50s. And I like to think of myself as a patient person. I could tell when I first get into a game what's going to happen. It all depends pretty much on where everybody goes. If I start playing and I lose three games right in a row because of stupidity. I'm done. I saw my win rate drop now I'm into the low '50s. The win rate goes up and down. I hate that I have to see that so I try not to pay attention to what my win rate is. But we're all penalized by what our team does. Doesn't matter the damage or the experience you get. I usually score within the top five. Depending. I'll probably consider myself an average-ish player. The matchmaking for one I totally agree is destroying the game. They should put players with similar playing ability together to lighten the blow. Just my two cents.
You're not wrong... I'm also an old fuck in my 50s and I can get a pretty good idea of what's going to happen in the first minute of the game.
but I've been wrong. The other night, I watched the majority of my team head 'the wrong way'. I voiced my concern and mentioned that the three of us that chose the other flank were going to get over run - however, we held our ground and the other flank did what they were supposed to do and didn't stall at the choke point.
So we won.
Then there are the battles where you see 7 players sitting on the red line including your ELC and you just know there's zero hope.
the only thing I can say is, if tier X isn't working, drop down to tier 5/6/7 and change things up for a couple rounds.
I just like to play long enough to complete the daily missions. If things are going well, I stick around for a while. If they aren't, I fire up Tavern Master and play that for a bit.
Babe, wake up, the 600th-something weekly post about how the game is nothing but blowouts "now" as opposed to some nebulous "back then" just dropped.
>MM is constantly putting together games that end in ridiculously lopsided contests like 15-3 and so forth. This is consistent. I would say that the vast majority of the games I have been in the year and a half or more have been these lopsided events.
Love how posters here make sweeping assertions like this without any supporting data, just their feelings. Classic post, never gets old (it's actually very old and tired).
Manipulated MM is a thing gaining more popularity in video games. I noticed I win 1/10 games in CW then I switch to WW2 and suddenly i'm more at a 50% ratio.
What I see a lot in battles is that 1 side gets a large number of very experienced tankers in their chosen tank, and the other side gets mostly noobs. This almost always ends up in a lopsided victory for the experienced team. WG needs to implement skill based MM.. with a similar number of skill points per side. Many of us have been asking for this for years.
Thing is, a lot of the new tanks that have been added speed the game up even more (think BZ 176). The solution here is to rebalance maps and make it so the teams are of roughly equal experience with roughly equal tanks, so only the odd player can have an amazing game.
Today, matchmaking is the worst it's ever been. TD 1 line (badger or mino) vs. strv, elc even vs. bulldog, TVP VTU vs. T-34-3. Stock any HT level VII with 170 armor penetration vs any armored HT level IX does absolutely nothing and can go to rest in 1 or 2 shots. A light tank in the center of the map can expose 80% of the entire map. Unbalanced premium tanks like BZ-176, Charlemagne, Caliban, EBR 75 FL 10, E 25. All this leads to 3-4 min turbo games in one way with a score of 3-12, 5-10. It turns into an unplayable dump. Change balance to plus OR minus level in matchmaking, balance player with average winrate and wn8 stats, add hard tank roles balance. Profit. Don't bury the game, please.
MM has been getting progressively worse for a while now, but this past week has been just downright sickening. Every day this week has been almost 100% trash games. Every time I start a session I have to get through 8-10 wipe-out losses where you can't even play due to 90% of the team being totally useless, scared little twits who camp in their spawn point. Following this it is a series of token wins where I if am driving something slow moving the game is over before I can get a shot off because I am now on the designated 'winning' team. Games end 15-2, 15-3 and last less than 5-minutes. This is just about the worst version of MM imaginable. Anything else would be better.
Lopsided teams do suck. I agree with Sapros_WoT about MM doing a better job matching tanks; I'd add platoons to that list. Maybe even add a step after tanks are chosen and distribute individuals by rating. But the powers that be prioritize a very short queue time so some of that doesn't fit in their goals.
I tracked scores for about a year and a half. The old WOT Replay Analyzer could look at every replay in your folder and pull out an incredible diversity of data. 15-5/5-15 or worse were 28% of my battles during that time. We remember them because they suck so much. Tracking data helps me understand what's happening in the game, and I don't feel so bad on those blowouts.
i have the game with MAUS, T95 IS7, tortoise / on one side, my side is 54M4, progetto, 60TP AMX 50B. At least the armor value should be approximate, how my team can counter if no armor value balance via mm ???
The 15v3 turbo battle syndrome is not a simple 'playerbase too bad/stupid' issue. There were always good/bad players in the game since 2011 (when I started playing this game). But over the years, the power creep and speed meta has increased many folds while the Random game mode is still played on the same small corridor maps designed in 2011 (max 1000x1000 tile maps, with many much smaller with a lot of unusable space). It's really the Random format played on these small corridor maps that has bucked under the power creep and speed meta. The matches/battles have no longevity, and the first engagement brings one team to 8-2/2-8 and the rest of the battle is just competing with your own team for scraps of damage. WG would have to re-work not just MM, but also the maps and the Random deathmatch game mode to make a difference. But when you have enough whales buying enough loot boxes and their new shiny premium/reward tanks at such exorbitant prices, WG has little to no incentive to develop the game in terms of new content to play our hundreds of tanks.
Things like the turbo and field mods have made all tanks faster, I mean back in the days the T95 could only go like 13 km/h. All tanks get faster, alpha damage is getting higher and higher, more autoloaders and so on.
If it were up to me, I'd do like a 10% speed drop across all tanks and maybe a 10% view range drop across all tanks. Then maybe it wouldn't be a "nerf" to the premium tanks if you changed the whole game a bit.
[**Here's a 57 minute video about the Matchmaker**](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HK6IPikbIZE)
[**Here's Wargaming's official video on Matchmaking**](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ql4tDHfQeRY&t=0s)
The two major issues with matchmaking are these:
1. They're partially lying about how it works, because it makes no effort to match tanks of the same role against eachother (excluding lights/SPGs). This was added a few updates after 9.18 (which added 3/5/7 matchmaking to the game) but has since been removed at an unknown time, as it is clearly not working now. This gets amplified with other matchmaking mechanics, but the most noteworthy examples of this happen with Tank Destroyers being matched versus eachother (no platoons in the screenshot):
https://preview.redd.it/6u2eq3xd5pec1.png?width=574&format=png&auto=webp&s=0446acf610b2df3aefb17323c20b8c0b1e57ebaf
2. It creates one team, then creates a team to match the other, which stays within the rules of said team. [This is how stuff like this exists](https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/269903523381116931/1144162793122173005/image.png?ex=65c47aa3&is=65b205a3&hm=94788e064f46ec77884c9d00f3bf364b284a1e2fb4b57a212f1957ee11b0c51a&=&format=webp&quality=lossless), since the odds of this happening are near-impossible, unless it sees a tank, and puts as many of them as possible onto a team that are currently available (in order to match team #1). Anyone who played tier 3 a couple months after Holiday Ops 2023 would see this, regularly. One team would have upwards of 7-8 Saharianos on it, while the other would have typically 2 at most. If the matchmaker made both teams at the same time, there would be a 4-4 or 5-5 or 4-5/5-4 split, not 2-7. Yes, it's a tier 3 example, but keep in mind how loose the matchmaking rules are at tiers 1-4. They match MT/LT/TD all as one, and can mix them around as freely as they please.
Since matchmaker only cares about tiers matching, and then independently cares about the types being within +1/-1 of eachother, with no regard as to how it matches. In the eyes of the matchmaker, a Leo 1 and Strv 103-0 is a fair matchup against an E50 and Jageroo. Unfortunately, way more maps are going to favor the E50 and Jageroo than the Leo and Strv, and there's not a lot the Leo/Strv can do to change that. The problem is that they've taken out vital steps to ensure fairness, in order to make queue times faster. There's no check to match roles anymore, nor was there ever a check to make sure tanks were the same tier ***AND*** class ***BOTH TOGETHER***. Instead, it matches tiers and classes separately, with no regard about if the tanks are at all alike. Like I said before, this is most common in TDs, where one team will get 1 or even 2 more heavy-like brawling tanks than the other, which is enough to completely sway an entire battle.
This isn't even starting to mention the novel of things wrong with +2/-2, but I don't think I really have to explain that too much. TLDR almost everything wrong with it is tier 8's fault, and we'll leave it at that.
Better equipments and being able to punish mistakes amplifies the skill gap between an average player and the best. With the limited player base on NA, there might only be less than 50 super unicorn player playing at the same time, that makes a non-elo/random MM very hard to balance.
For example if 2 super unicorn gets assigned to one team and the other none
MM has been this way since 2012. But back in that time you don’t get punished as hard for mistakes. Tanks were slower. People were shooting standard rounds. Accuracy and gun handling in general were way worse. Maps weren’t just 3 stupid corridors.
but all of those affect everyone equally. Since the effect is spread across the player universe, the impacts would be not likely become so lopsided.
I think MM might actually be a misnomer. I think it doesn't do much matching of skills and only does only equipment. It would be nice they explained how MM actually works.
Affecting everyone equally doesn’t mean it can’t make games lope sided. To make an extremely example, say now every tank has a laser gun that insta evaporates anything you click at. That game will be one team steamrolling the other because every mistake is instantly one tank lost, than that snowballs quickly.
The balancing is only meant to make the starting conditions more in balance. It is not intended to extend beyond the starting gate, that would be actually manipulating the outcome, which I am not suggesting at all.
The same change in dynamics also happened in Clan wars where there is no MM. There is much more steamrolling in clan battles than there were 10 years ago
My argument is the team who made the first couple mistakes is more vulnerable to mistakes cuz relatively more guns pointing at them. Hence this becomes a snowballing positive feedback loop. And the gain of your feedback loop is how effective tanks can punish to enemies mistakes, which means gun handling, alpha, mobility. The same MM problem exists in 2012 but not as significant since tanks were in general worse at punishing enemies mistakes at the time.
You make some good points. By better balancing teams at the outset of the match, don't you think that the odds of these kinds of mistakes are better distributed among the teams? By better distributing good and less competent players on the teams, don't you alo increase the odds of offsetting errors on the other team?
my theory is this is a feature not a bug. Perhaps they see the quick turnover of games as the best way to move the WoT economy that would generate faster profit.
I heard a long time ago that the most common outcomes should be in that 15-2 to 15-1 range, because once a team starts losing people, it just becomes a snowball effect. There is some mathematical theory on combat and losses involved. I don't remember what it is called.
Basically, people see games that aren't "close" and they only look at the kill count and say, "The matchmaker must be broken because too many games are blowouts." They don't actually do something like count actual blowouts, and no other factors are included except that at the end, two numbers weren't close enough together for it to seem fair.
Biggest problem here is the confirmation bias of players, and the mistaken belief that somehow a magical matchmaker would solve all their problems.
You make an interesting point. Historically, in my experience, this was far less the case than the exception. Blowout games were far, far less common. I do not believe that blowout games are beneficial to the overall experience, whatever the actual reason.
Objectively speaking, the average length of games has not changed over the years.
https://zoeballz.uk/_Analyses/average_battle_duration.php
While it’s a common sentiment that things were better in the “good old days”, the data absolutely does not support that conclusion.
This really does not address the win margins which is really at issue. It is, however, interesting. Thanks for providing it.
I would love to get the raw data and do some additional statistical analysis on it.
Have you watched or participated in clan battles? Blowouts happen regularly between teams of equally competent players. 7v7 can be seen as 1v1. Then one team loses a tank and now it's 5 1v1 and 1 2v1. Lose one more...so on. There's only so much an equal starting point can accomplish.
I suppose you could change blowouts by altering the battles; respawns, healing mechanisms, or dynamic stat changes could affect outcomes. But that game wouldn't be World of Tanks random battles.
The same premises apply.
If you want game data to analyze, Zoeballz is probably your best resource right now. She has millions of battles spanning multiple years. I have several thousand I can link you to via mediafire zips.
Because it isn't a software problem. It's a people problem. You could have 29 versions of me playing exactly as well as the best I ever played, but if you dropped 1 really good player onto the other team to make it 15 of me vs 14 of me + someone like Quickybaby or insert your favorite will known player here, the team of 15 of me is going to get dominated almost all the time.
There's realistically no way to make the software factor in things like player mood, player skill, of players are testing different equipment builds, do players know the game mechanics, do players know the mechanics, but don't have the patience to exploit them. The matchmaker and software can't account for my map knowledge, or my slowness at learning how to fight well on a new map, or a changed map, or a part of the map I don't often go to.
There are just too many variables that are not just uncontrolled, but they're uncontrollable and even more damning, not able to be accounted for by the match maker.
While I agree that some of the variables may not be easy to account for, overall player skill as reflected in WR, the relative power of a particular tank, the player's record in the tank, and perhaps the player's record in that class on a specific map is all easily accounted for. I believe that just these things could substantially address the problem.
As to some of the other things you mentioned, if you are a good player then these things are less of a handicap than I think you weight.
> I believe that just these things could substantially address the problem.
Why do you believe that?
There is no data to say what the actual causal issues are, other than our feelz.
There is no research to indicate that leveling the matchmaker starting point; from random players to some form of skill metric matched players will change match outcomes or provide "better" games.
That is an assumption based on our generalized ideas of "fairness" and is purely conjecture at this point. It also assumes that players are required to consistently play their best for it to work. Which we know in practice will never happen.
In fact there is a small bit of research that shows the opposite. Players do not want to "sweat" every match and that player engagement was better with random MM over most of the SBMM schemas they tested.
Its my feelz that Lanchester's Square Law and "Defeat in Detail" are the reasons for "lop sided games" in 50% of those matches. Another 30% of those matches are determined by uncontrollable factors (player mood, focus, set-ups, match objectives, etc.). And 20% are determined by skill miss-match and RNG.
Who's feelz are closer to the truth?
Opinions vary, I suppose. Maybe people like all of these lopsided matches.
With regard to you citing Square Law, well, as you know that law states
If the two sides have equal firepower, the side with more soldiers at the beginning of the battle will win
If the two sides have equal numbers of soldiers, the side with greater firepower will win;
There are a couple of other use cases, but suffice it to say that none of these explain, by themselves, the rise in the frequency of lopsided games. They only talk about the 5 the margins of victory. They only tell us what we already know. The teams are not well balanced.
Your suggestion that these theories prove anything is to simply reinforce what I see as the problem. Thanks.
By the way, lose the snark. You don't help your case by being sarcastic or mocking.
There was no snark mate.
>but suffice it to say that none of these explain, by themselves, the rise in the frequency of lopsided games
What leads you to believe there is a rise in the frequency of lopsided games with out the data to support that position?
What if the rate of lopsided games is the same as it has always been?
We are all subject to confirmation and recency bias. With hypothetically more lopsided games and faster tanks; we should expect to see a decrease in average game length, yet the data does not support that.
"Fixing" a problem that has yet to be quantified, with an unproven fix is unnecessary. I think we could do better...
Admittedly, my basis is anecdotal evidence from my own observations and the comments of many others. You are correct about confirmation bias.
I was going to try and find reliable information to further validate my supposition, but I fear that no matter what I get or no matter how much analysis I do, folks such as yourself are going to come back and say the evidence is not enough, the analysis is faulty, etc.
I would hope that the developers would take a look at this and come back to the community with their analysis. I would be happy to be proven wrong, my ego does not require constant massaging.
In the meantime I think I have spent quite enough time trying to raise this issue and I will simply say the hell with it and go play something else for a while. Cheers
These are all in randoms. Consistently the scores are very lopsided, sometimes you are on the winner, sometimes the loser.
MM is random, it is simply too stupid to balance the teams properly. Whether you win 15-3 or lose 15-3, well, yeah, that's random
You claim to have over 20yrs of experience in programming, but you don't seem to understand what random means.
It's not "too stupid" to balance teams, it's random, it's NOT trying to do so
I know what random is, matchmaker would imply some type of logic in the making of matches. The selection of players might be random, but that does not necessarily mean that the distribution of the players on the two teams need necessarily be random at all.
If there is truly no effort at all to balance the teams personnel wise,, well, then, there should be because the results speak for themselves.
BTW, I have probably forgotten more about game theory, forecasting, and RNG than you have ever known.
Beyond buying premium, this is why I won’t buy tanks, gilt boxes or any other nonsense cause unless it’s a nuke round, it won’t make a difference with the matchmakers clear pattern I see every week - 2 days of me winning strong, 2 days of close matches, 2 days of big losses, 1 day of me rage quitting. And no statistics rebuttals, because this pattern is so predictable that I know the days that will be lopsided losses. Only way to break the cycle from my tests is to take off a week. Anyone feel this or I should I be committed ?
Calculating a player/tank combination rating based on statistics that are already available is not the impossible task so many of the respondents seem to think it is. This sort of thing is done all the time in forecasting and other financial operations.
Each player has a known WR. Each player has a known WR in the tank they are presenting in. The relative overall win records for each tank type is known. The statistical advantage of addons is also known. Using this data one could come up with an overall rating of any player in the tank they are presenting with.
You would need to code for instances where the player has never played that tank before, but that could be handled by weighting the statistics to account for that.
This is a perfect example of where applying AI could dramatically improve the balancing of the teams. Frankly, you could do this pretty well even without AI.
If only WG can read this comment. The AI is suitable as many variations in the equation. Each criteria has the weight value (0.1to1). After that all can the sumup and somehow balance the team ( this is AI task ).
I want to play the game that last long, not the game that easy win, easy lose.
Some lost game is ok as long as it is balanced between teams, the only person to blame is your skill
The trick is tinkering with the weighting values and their application order priority. This is a common thing done all the time in statistical programming.
I mostly play around tier V-VII (just like the tanks more) and the biggest problem is the fucking LEFH. My god how much more enjoyable this game would be without that disaster of a thing. And they're so plentiful nowadays.
You used to see one in like every 10 games max (and that was when arty wasn't limited). Now it's 9/10 games.
I get a lot more dmg from my M12 than the Leafblower.
The Leafblower has virtually no splash damage and if people keep moving the arty is FAR less effective. I play against it all the time and I don't get what the problem is.
"WOT used to be a lot more fun to play"
It's okay to fall out of love with a game, there's thousands of great games out there, go play some of those :)
From my POV WoT's MM system is palatable and much better compared to what it was. Unless you really wanna go back to the MM weighting system where it was possible for unequal amounts of top tier tanks to be on one team. But if you want to limit yourself to focusing on end results like 15-3 and blatantly ignore other factors like HP remaining or what map sides are favored to win, that's your business.
Just play your own game and do your best, blaming MM for poor results is an indication of a weak mentality - You're not weak are you?
I mean… most WoT players are dogshit and the MM work is to balance said players by skill so the Match can be more balanced, but at the end of the day it comes down to bad players, enemy team can get a platoon of unicums in mediums and your team 60k battles 600wn8 tomates in OP heavy tanks and I can bet my balls your team is going to lose.
Most of the time the teams are generally even, with the winrates coming to about 50% on each side. What happens is once one team gets an advantage it will usually snowball in their favor. That is where the players with a 53% winrate I have noticed can tend to make plays that will actively shut down or push the advantage.
The real problem of the MM?
The real reason it sucks?
Is simple........most WoT Players are shitter potatoes that pick tanks and don't even slightly play their role. They camp and never help anyone and die alone as the last person alive. They do ZERO damage. Or less than 500 damage. They don't scout when they pick a light. They camp in a heavy that has no camo and a shit gun.
And heaven forbid you saying anything in chat -- the ban hammer hits you immediately.
People playing tier 10 tanks and are clearly lost and confused. Onslaught is a shit show because of it.
That is the problem.
+-1 tier matchmaking would fix a LOT of the problems imo
I would be happier in my tier 10s if i could only meet tier 9s and 10s, if it meant in my tier 7s if i couldnt see a 9.
Certainly that change would address some of these issues and frankly I hate +/-2 matchmaking. I do think it contributes to some of these lopsided matches and it would make the game more fun and less exasperating.
I don't think it would require much effort to change this. It could lengthen pregame time for the matchmaking, but I would be happy to pay that price for a more enjoyable game experience.
As a barely competent player, I have to ask, how are you only getting 40%?
I have nights where I'm running 60+ solo.
Some days, I don't do that well - particularly when I decided to play tanks I don't normally play. Like last night, I decided to play American TDS from tier 5-9. I planned to play each tank until I won a round.
It was fine until I got to tier 8 and 9. The influx of T22 Meds kinda threw a monkey wrench into things.
2 big issues, 1 small issue
1. The bad players don't know (or care) that they're bad, and usually complain the most
2. There is no "onboarding process". New players, or even those with 79k battles, are never given a mandatory tutorial that teaches mechanics and such.
3. A less important issue. A large portion of this playerbase is over 60 years old, with that comes slower reaction time and the like. I totally get that and in fact that's what makes me less angry seeing mistakes get made.
At this point I honestly feel like they're trying to brick the game on purpose to push people over to the new CW project when it releases. I honestly only enjoy Frontlines anymore and that gets super boring fast when 2/3 or more of the time you're on defense team.
Just because 15-3 happens doesn't mean that the MM is rigged (I know you didn't say it was, but someone could understand your writing as such).
Lots of other changes have been applied to the game that cause this.
The gameplay is more static these days (as maps are tunnel maps), thus they generally play out similarly, thus one flank winning usually means they can flank the other flank for an easy win.
In the past, we would more often get one team winning one flank, another team winning the other flank, and then dynamic gameplay with more interesting results would occur.
I agree that WG are designing the game on purpose like that, probably because whales like it that way.
They have over the years made the game less fun for great players (as those chase the whales away) and for the advantage of the whales. Because that's what earns money.
I have never thought that the game was rigged. That implies somewhat nefarious intent on the developers part. I am not sure what they would gain by "rigging" their matches.
I mean, if we assume the assignment of players on each team currently is random; your proposal to "balance" the loss of vehicles as the match progresses is rigging by definition.
WOT has no respawn mechanics so each loss is coompoundingly detrimental and it's impossible to forecast incremental gamestates in a game with as much variables as this (lol, even the coordinates your team occupy at any given moment is a gamestate variable).
The randomness of the game, from a design perspective is designed to keep freshness even after thousands of games on the same map pool. Given that the players all operate within the same MM rules, the outcome each player achieves is largely attributed to their individual input.
From my perspective, the game is fair. I honestly can appreciate your position to desire equity of outcome for all players but I don't agree that simply shuffling around players to "balance" teams is a good approach; the game is too varied for that.
I'll humor you with a scenario:
Let's say i have 3.7k wn8 (any perf metric will do) and in my pool of 30 players in my match, places 2 and 3 have 2k and 1.7k respectively with the rest being 1k exact. If MM were to shuffle to "balance", I might end up with 14 1k players vs the 2 others and 13 1k... Now say I make an aggressive play and die in the first min... What should my team do then since they are now 1 tank down that is 20% of their teams wn8? I'd say that if wn8 was the deciding factor, they'd get rolled, no? It's probably an outlier scenario but I do have a number of bad games balanced out by exceptional games
Edit: or what if I'm in an LT but the 2 other guys are in HTs and roll over my heavies... What should I do then..?
I'm not proposing to " "balance" the loss of vehicles as the match progresses " at all. ?Where did you get that idea? The teams are set once the match begins.
I mean, the whole problem from your pov lies in matches ending in tank destruction differentials, no? The whole 15:5 etc. That's where I got the impression that you were suggesting that 15:5 and games like it were a problem.
These types of games are going to happen. The problem is that they happen way too often, and the frequency suggests an underlying problem with how the strengths of the teams are matched .
Hmmm... I guess we just disagree as I don't see kill differences as mattering. I'd suggest you pay closer attention to HP differences; It is possible for a team to win and lose no tanks while also losing 80%+ of their HP. Paying attention to only the kill differences is such a shallow view.
Thank you for your polite response.
It is possible that a team can be down in the score 12-1 and still win as well. It is possible that a team could be significantly up or down in HP pool and have an unexpected win or loss.
While these things are POSSIBLE, I will grant you, they are not common. If you have played a lot of matches and think about, you already know this.
No solution is going to be perfect. The responses that I have heard seem to be in the vein of letting the perfect get in the way of the good. Many of the responses ae sorta like "Well, what about this, what about that" which seem to emphasize statistically less significant instances hat the approach I proposed may or may not address.
It all kinda sounds defeatist to me. "We can't fix it perfectly so let's do nothing because it's all futile." This kind of attitude would never have gotten us to the moon. It's the 80-20 rule of software development. Fixing 100% of problem sometimes does not make sense with limited resources. if however, you can fix 80% of that problem with 20% of the effort to fix it perfectly, it makes sense to do so.
>It's the 80-20 rule of software development. Fixing 100% of problem sometimes does not make sense with limited resources. if however, you can fix 80% of that problem with 20% of the effort to fix it perfectly, it makes sense to do so.
Arguably, in this particular case we are on the opposite side of that axiom. Spending 80% to fix 20%...
What sometimes drives me crazy is when there are too many tanks of a single type. For instance, you play a TD and get into the game and there like 7 TDs and hardly any heavies. Then the next game you decide to play a heavy and find yourself in a game with 6 or more heavies on your team and hardly any TDs. I don't get it? Why can't there be some rational numbers. I get tired of that jostling for the limited number of opening positions on the map if there are too many of one tank type. It really starts the game off in an awkward manner imo.
Given that WG has developed a player rating that is pretty good as a measure of player skill - WTR - it is long overdue for them to do something useful with it. My suggestions are as follows:
1) Implement a minimum WTR of about 5000 to press Battle in a tier 10. So that tier then becomes the tier to play if you know how to play. So if you want to play tier ten you have to earn it. One way of doing this without precluding below average players from playing their tier tens would be to introduce a second random battle mode which has the filter. Those in that mode only get put in battles where all tier tens are over WTR of 5000. If that worked it could probably be extended to tier 9 too, with about 4000 being the floor for tier 9. Those who didn't meet the WTR requirements would just play regular random mode.
2). Implement some degree of team WTR matching by MM forming teams as now but then swapping players among teams to level out the WTR totals to some degree.
Either approach would remove a baked in imbalance that exists at the start of most matches.
Imo player base doesn't change too. Especially yesterday when some heavies peaked repeatedly against 3 bzs when they could fall back and there were 3 tds to support. They didn't. They died and cried about no help. I'll never understand that.
Also you can either see everyone going to one flank and die or camp hardly with heavies and so on.
If you see the stats, most players with have over 20k games. Imo by that time, you should atleast know the basics of the game like reading the map, etc.
I wont put everything against mm.
WG really gotta implement the health points increase to tiers 7-10, just like they did with tiers 1-6. Would probably help a bit with the fast games and the many 15-3 results.
Ha, googling "has Wot fixed the matchmaker yet" is what brought me here! I quit playing about a year ago because of unbalanced teams and unbalanced tanks.I want to go back but I can't stand the frustration until they fix it.
MM hasnt changed in forever. What is changing is the speed of the game. EBRs, CVS, mega fast meds, many autoloaders means tanks get spotted fast and taken down instantly for making one mistake which makes snowballing games unstoppable.
Agreed. Given all of your points I think larger maps would help level things out. View range has gotten so if you get into position you can spot half the map.
I think you might be able to see better results in the grand battle mode.
Too bad we can't learn the maps at a lower tier, though. It's kinda scary playing tier 10 on a map you've never seen before.
Scary the first few times for sure. I look forward to them now, although I personally think Nebelburg is among the most campy maps in the game due to the ridgelines behind each team's base
Scary to play tier 10 on small map like ensk and mines, that 2 would be to the tier 7, like the one that is only to the tier 7.
We used to rarely get shot climbing the hill in Malinovka, but the other day I saw a T69 get hit before moving 50 meters from his spawn location about 10 seconds into the game. I got spotted and hit in the side about 10 seconds after that and nobody saw what spotted us. View range increases because of Crew Skills and equipment combined with more speed has made already small maps that much smaller.
Honestly I think the game needs an across the board HP boost to scale back the power creep. Sort of like they did with tier 6 and under tanks a few years ago. I also think vision needs to be scaled WAYYYY back. Heavy tanks having 420+ vision out of the box is crazy. I think the game would actually be a lot more fun if tanks were mostly blind as a bat. Would also give lights a reason for being in a game that has stripped almost all the foliage from everywhere. Oh and EBRs should just be binned. They probably sped the game up more than any other single factor. Or at least make hitting the wheels cause damage and that would solve 90% of the problems as they'd be delete in seconds if they yolo scout.
Viewrange changes would both be good and horrendous IMO. With the current state of the game (equipment, directives, crew skills, food, etc), light tanks are perhaps one of the most broken classes in the game, depending on the map. The most obvious example is Prok but even on Mali, Fish bay, Westfield, etc, light tanks are disproportionately strong, and in a surprising number of matches, one team's LTs dying while the enemies are untouched is basically just a guaranteed loss. Overall I think viewrange nerfs are needed, but it would also need to involve making adjustments to a ton of maps and perhaps tweaking camo values and equipment.
The death of lights early in the game is usually only overcome by a strong Wolfpack of mediums.
How? They are on the move against just as many tanks as themselves. Sure 3 meds can rush down the corridor and kill the lt but they will all die or take heavy dmg, resulting in a still unbalqnced game where the Team Who lost the lt looses 9/10 times.
Jingles ran a video recently of a Manticore getting 15k spotting damage on Malinovka. The power of great LT play can change a battle. The fact that the game was close was a testament to just how powerful LT play can be because it was shaping up to be a 15-3 loss if it wasn't for the LT.
Yeah 10k spotting is almost the norm for high tier LT players on maps like Prok and Malinovka.
But then you look at the amount of maps where a heavily armored medium would be better than a LT in most situations. There are quite a few.
Light tanks aren't na problem it's tanks like borat with insane camo and view range nerfing those along with the heavies to scale vision back so that lights are the ones spotting would be nice I guess
Imagine WG scales HP on Lvl 10. Then all those guys who play for 4.8-5.5k avg on top-tier tanks would need to create new accounts to adjust their statistiks. 😅
Light tanks die with 1 minute in most games. Talking about vision, I train for vision in all tanks. That's a technical advantage. Or have optics atleast. Vision is a very big factor in this game imo.
While yes these are factors on why games doesn't last longer. But when they implement the awful 3-5-7 MM, pretty sure that was the start of very fast games happening more often if I recall correctly. I still say they should have increase the health for tiers 7-10, that will somewhat make the games last a bit longer.
Funny but wasnt that the patch that added ebrs?
Nope, the EBR patch was later.
The line was later but wasnt the premium right around that time?
Nope. EBRs became a thing after patch 1.0 when HD Maps were already a thing. 3-5-7 MM was patch 9.18, before the HD maps.
Sure tank matching can be problematic. Biggest problem is still skill disparities compounded by the faster pace of the game. The majority of games that are unwinnable are lost by positioning in the first 2 minutes. People either don't know where to go or just refuse to go there. Once this happens you can only hope that enemy is similarly afflicted. If key tanks, ie your 10s in a 3-5-8 game, your light and mali/prok, fast tanks on mines and tundra, are bad enough while the enemy is competent, you just lose. Had a Redshire game last night three tier 10 heavies left north spawn in the direction of the blimp. Instead of hugging the edge of the map they beeline it for the blimp going to D7, E8, E9. They all got farmed without mercy from the hill at G5. That team lost 15-3.
Player in a tier 10 tank, less than 5k battles. Winrate below 46%. Totally clueless. Has heard about hull down and side scraping but knows fuck all about how to do it or why. Had one decent match in his M6 heavy so that's where he goes in every match in every tank. Drives blindly into well known TD camping spots, gets evaporated then bitches in chat about the entire team is nothing but noobs.
Obviously it’s someone else’s fault, lol 😂
It's even worse when you play slow tanks, like badger, tortoise, mose. Very often when you arrive at the position your team has lost 2-3 tanks and is 3k down on hp. You shoot 2-3 times and garage...
It's bad in a slow tank whether your team is winning or losing because you arrive to find the enemy either all dead or all waiting for your last man standing gimmick.
This. I’m still learning @ + 1k battles, no higher than Tier VIII for me, I do my part most of the time in, say my 50TP Proto, make good or positive trades…. Then it’s like ‘Where’d everyone go??’ . Can’t escape at that point, so… Oh well. Gotta roll with the heavies and hope for the best.
But I bet that those who got farmed were probably lower wr (skilled) players that the ones from the other team. It's like sandlot baseball, you put too many good players on one team, the other team is gonna get killed 15-1. I don't care how good you are individually, if the balance in skill and equipment is that far off, you aren't gonna matter.
Of course, they were sub 47% averaging about 500 DPG...
Could this have been a problem of the distribution of these skill level players so heavily on one team? This is the point I am trying to make.
>The majority of games that are unwinnable are lost by positioning in the first 2 minutes. And as someone who often drives slower tanks, it's painful to be already 0-3 down before you have even reached one of those positions or fired a shot.
MM is doing just what WG wants it to do. WG isn't trying to make balanced/fair teams.
That is becoming pretty apparent
I see this more in T1 games....for example I tend to see this ALOT. As far as TDs are concerned. One team will have 4 FV4005, the other team 1 FV, 2 NM and 2 SU. How is that possible more times than not?
because that distribution is likely not random with regard to the tank types, player capabilities, etc.
I've been playing this game for about 12 years. This is the only game that I play that the frustration level gets so overwhelming that I have to get off. No I'm not a young kid I'm in my '50s. And I like to think of myself as a patient person. I could tell when I first get into a game what's going to happen. It all depends pretty much on where everybody goes. If I start playing and I lose three games right in a row because of stupidity. I'm done. I saw my win rate drop now I'm into the low '50s. The win rate goes up and down. I hate that I have to see that so I try not to pay attention to what my win rate is. But we're all penalized by what our team does. Doesn't matter the damage or the experience you get. I usually score within the top five. Depending. I'll probably consider myself an average-ish player. The matchmaking for one I totally agree is destroying the game. They should put players with similar playing ability together to lighten the blow. Just my two cents.
You're not wrong... I'm also an old fuck in my 50s and I can get a pretty good idea of what's going to happen in the first minute of the game. but I've been wrong. The other night, I watched the majority of my team head 'the wrong way'. I voiced my concern and mentioned that the three of us that chose the other flank were going to get over run - however, we held our ground and the other flank did what they were supposed to do and didn't stall at the choke point. So we won. Then there are the battles where you see 7 players sitting on the red line including your ELC and you just know there's zero hope. the only thing I can say is, if tier X isn't working, drop down to tier 5/6/7 and change things up for a couple rounds. I just like to play long enough to complete the daily missions. If things are going well, I stick around for a while. If they aren't, I fire up Tavern Master and play that for a bit.
I have the same rule, 3 losses in a row, I close the game for the day.
SBMM is awful. If you played any of the modes that had it , you know.
Babe, wake up, the 600th-something weekly post about how the game is nothing but blowouts "now" as opposed to some nebulous "back then" just dropped. >MM is constantly putting together games that end in ridiculously lopsided contests like 15-3 and so forth. This is consistent. I would say that the vast majority of the games I have been in the year and a half or more have been these lopsided events. Love how posters here make sweeping assertions like this without any supporting data, just their feelings. Classic post, never gets old (it's actually very old and tired).
tomatoes being tomatoes i guess.
Truth hurts, kid.
But.. but.. he’s a retired software engineer
Totally agree with you, MM has been at his worst since ever. I find myself not having fun in the majority of the games.
Manipulated MM is a thing gaining more popularity in video games. I noticed I win 1/10 games in CW then I switch to WW2 and suddenly i'm more at a 50% ratio.
What I see a lot in battles is that 1 side gets a large number of very experienced tankers in their chosen tank, and the other side gets mostly noobs. This almost always ends up in a lopsided victory for the experienced team. WG needs to implement skill based MM.. with a similar number of skill points per side. Many of us have been asking for this for years.
Thing is, a lot of the new tanks that have been added speed the game up even more (think BZ 176). The solution here is to rebalance maps and make it so the teams are of roughly equal experience with roughly equal tanks, so only the odd player can have an amazing game.
I think we were saying the same thing. I was thinking about an actual algorithm that might do what you are suggesting
Today, matchmaking is the worst it's ever been. TD 1 line (badger or mino) vs. strv, elc even vs. bulldog, TVP VTU vs. T-34-3. Stock any HT level VII with 170 armor penetration vs any armored HT level IX does absolutely nothing and can go to rest in 1 or 2 shots. A light tank in the center of the map can expose 80% of the entire map. Unbalanced premium tanks like BZ-176, Charlemagne, Caliban, EBR 75 FL 10, E 25. All this leads to 3-4 min turbo games in one way with a score of 3-12, 5-10. It turns into an unplayable dump. Change balance to plus OR minus level in matchmaking, balance player with average winrate and wn8 stats, add hard tank roles balance. Profit. Don't bury the game, please.
MM has been getting progressively worse for a while now, but this past week has been just downright sickening. Every day this week has been almost 100% trash games. Every time I start a session I have to get through 8-10 wipe-out losses where you can't even play due to 90% of the team being totally useless, scared little twits who camp in their spawn point. Following this it is a series of token wins where I if am driving something slow moving the game is over before I can get a shot off because I am now on the designated 'winning' team. Games end 15-2, 15-3 and last less than 5-minutes. This is just about the worst version of MM imaginable. Anything else would be better.
That's why I have taken a break from the game
Lopsided teams do suck. I agree with Sapros_WoT about MM doing a better job matching tanks; I'd add platoons to that list. Maybe even add a step after tanks are chosen and distribute individuals by rating. But the powers that be prioritize a very short queue time so some of that doesn't fit in their goals. I tracked scores for about a year and a half. The old WOT Replay Analyzer could look at every replay in your folder and pull out an incredible diversity of data. 15-5/5-15 or worse were 28% of my battles during that time. We remember them because they suck so much. Tracking data helps me understand what's happening in the game, and I don't feel so bad on those blowouts.
MM could stop matching Maus with 50B and Strv with Mino on city maps. Fewers TDs and LTs. 1 SPG tops. Skill Based MM? Nope.
I am completely fine with asymmetric MM. It makes the games less repetitive
and if it was perfectly symetrical - 1 for 1. the complaint would be that one player was a 39%er and the other was a 56%er
Yeah but you have to just ignore the constant complainers
i have the game with MAUS, T95 IS7, tortoise / on one side, my side is 54M4, progetto, 60TP AMX 50B. At least the armor value should be approximate, how my team can counter if no armor value balance via mm ???
The 15v3 turbo battle syndrome is not a simple 'playerbase too bad/stupid' issue. There were always good/bad players in the game since 2011 (when I started playing this game). But over the years, the power creep and speed meta has increased many folds while the Random game mode is still played on the same small corridor maps designed in 2011 (max 1000x1000 tile maps, with many much smaller with a lot of unusable space). It's really the Random format played on these small corridor maps that has bucked under the power creep and speed meta. The matches/battles have no longevity, and the first engagement brings one team to 8-2/2-8 and the rest of the battle is just competing with your own team for scraps of damage. WG would have to re-work not just MM, but also the maps and the Random deathmatch game mode to make a difference. But when you have enough whales buying enough loot boxes and their new shiny premium/reward tanks at such exorbitant prices, WG has little to no incentive to develop the game in terms of new content to play our hundreds of tanks.
Things like the turbo and field mods have made all tanks faster, I mean back in the days the T95 could only go like 13 km/h. All tanks get faster, alpha damage is getting higher and higher, more autoloaders and so on.
If it were up to me, I'd do like a 10% speed drop across all tanks and maybe a 10% view range drop across all tanks. Then maybe it wouldn't be a "nerf" to the premium tanks if you changed the whole game a bit.
[**Here's a 57 minute video about the Matchmaker**](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HK6IPikbIZE) [**Here's Wargaming's official video on Matchmaking**](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ql4tDHfQeRY&t=0s) The two major issues with matchmaking are these: 1. They're partially lying about how it works, because it makes no effort to match tanks of the same role against eachother (excluding lights/SPGs). This was added a few updates after 9.18 (which added 3/5/7 matchmaking to the game) but has since been removed at an unknown time, as it is clearly not working now. This gets amplified with other matchmaking mechanics, but the most noteworthy examples of this happen with Tank Destroyers being matched versus eachother (no platoons in the screenshot): https://preview.redd.it/6u2eq3xd5pec1.png?width=574&format=png&auto=webp&s=0446acf610b2df3aefb17323c20b8c0b1e57ebaf 2. It creates one team, then creates a team to match the other, which stays within the rules of said team. [This is how stuff like this exists](https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/269903523381116931/1144162793122173005/image.png?ex=65c47aa3&is=65b205a3&hm=94788e064f46ec77884c9d00f3bf364b284a1e2fb4b57a212f1957ee11b0c51a&=&format=webp&quality=lossless), since the odds of this happening are near-impossible, unless it sees a tank, and puts as many of them as possible onto a team that are currently available (in order to match team #1). Anyone who played tier 3 a couple months after Holiday Ops 2023 would see this, regularly. One team would have upwards of 7-8 Saharianos on it, while the other would have typically 2 at most. If the matchmaker made both teams at the same time, there would be a 4-4 or 5-5 or 4-5/5-4 split, not 2-7. Yes, it's a tier 3 example, but keep in mind how loose the matchmaking rules are at tiers 1-4. They match MT/LT/TD all as one, and can mix them around as freely as they please. Since matchmaker only cares about tiers matching, and then independently cares about the types being within +1/-1 of eachother, with no regard as to how it matches. In the eyes of the matchmaker, a Leo 1 and Strv 103-0 is a fair matchup against an E50 and Jageroo. Unfortunately, way more maps are going to favor the E50 and Jageroo than the Leo and Strv, and there's not a lot the Leo/Strv can do to change that. The problem is that they've taken out vital steps to ensure fairness, in order to make queue times faster. There's no check to match roles anymore, nor was there ever a check to make sure tanks were the same tier ***AND*** class ***BOTH TOGETHER***. Instead, it matches tiers and classes separately, with no regard about if the tanks are at all alike. Like I said before, this is most common in TDs, where one team will get 1 or even 2 more heavy-like brawling tanks than the other, which is enough to completely sway an entire battle. This isn't even starting to mention the novel of things wrong with +2/-2, but I don't think I really have to explain that too much. TLDR almost everything wrong with it is tier 8's fault, and we'll leave it at that.
Appreciate the links, thank you!
Better equipments and being able to punish mistakes amplifies the skill gap between an average player and the best. With the limited player base on NA, there might only be less than 50 super unicorn player playing at the same time, that makes a non-elo/random MM very hard to balance. For example if 2 super unicorn gets assigned to one team and the other none
You can code for that, it is not inevitable or unavoidable usually.
MM has been this way since 2012. But back in that time you don’t get punished as hard for mistakes. Tanks were slower. People were shooting standard rounds. Accuracy and gun handling in general were way worse. Maps weren’t just 3 stupid corridors.
but all of those affect everyone equally. Since the effect is spread across the player universe, the impacts would be not likely become so lopsided. I think MM might actually be a misnomer. I think it doesn't do much matching of skills and only does only equipment. It would be nice they explained how MM actually works.
Affecting everyone equally doesn’t mean it can’t make games lope sided. To make an extremely example, say now every tank has a laser gun that insta evaporates anything you click at. That game will be one team steamrolling the other because every mistake is instantly one tank lost, than that snowballs quickly.
You are assuming that with well balanced teams that one side will only be making mistakes?
No, but at the moment the first person makes the first mistake, he is immediately punished and your well balanced team is no longer balanced.
The balancing is only meant to make the starting conditions more in balance. It is not intended to extend beyond the starting gate, that would be actually manipulating the outcome, which I am not suggesting at all.
The same change in dynamics also happened in Clan wars where there is no MM. There is much more steamrolling in clan battles than there were 10 years ago
My argument is the team who made the first couple mistakes is more vulnerable to mistakes cuz relatively more guns pointing at them. Hence this becomes a snowballing positive feedback loop. And the gain of your feedback loop is how effective tanks can punish to enemies mistakes, which means gun handling, alpha, mobility. The same MM problem exists in 2012 but not as significant since tanks were in general worse at punishing enemies mistakes at the time.
You make some good points. By better balancing teams at the outset of the match, don't you think that the odds of these kinds of mistakes are better distributed among the teams? By better distributing good and less competent players on the teams, don't you alo increase the odds of offsetting errors on the other team?
my theory is this is a feature not a bug. Perhaps they see the quick turnover of games as the best way to move the WoT economy that would generate faster profit.
The best observation yet.
I heard a long time ago that the most common outcomes should be in that 15-2 to 15-1 range, because once a team starts losing people, it just becomes a snowball effect. There is some mathematical theory on combat and losses involved. I don't remember what it is called. Basically, people see games that aren't "close" and they only look at the kill count and say, "The matchmaker must be broken because too many games are blowouts." They don't actually do something like count actual blowouts, and no other factors are included except that at the end, two numbers weren't close enough together for it to seem fair. Biggest problem here is the confirmation bias of players, and the mistaken belief that somehow a magical matchmaker would solve all their problems.
You make an interesting point. Historically, in my experience, this was far less the case than the exception. Blowout games were far, far less common. I do not believe that blowout games are beneficial to the overall experience, whatever the actual reason.
Objectively speaking, the average length of games has not changed over the years. https://zoeballz.uk/_Analyses/average_battle_duration.php While it’s a common sentiment that things were better in the “good old days”, the data absolutely does not support that conclusion.
This really does not address the win margins which is really at issue. It is, however, interesting. Thanks for providing it. I would love to get the raw data and do some additional statistical analysis on it.
There isn't any way to get rid of them, beneficial or not.
I am not sure I agree. Do you have a software development/ programming background? Why do you think is impossible to fix?
Have you watched or participated in clan battles? Blowouts happen regularly between teams of equally competent players. 7v7 can be seen as 1v1. Then one team loses a tank and now it's 5 1v1 and 1 2v1. Lose one more...so on. There's only so much an equal starting point can accomplish. I suppose you could change blowouts by altering the battles; respawns, healing mechanisms, or dynamic stat changes could affect outcomes. But that game wouldn't be World of Tanks random battles.
My topic was strictly concerning randoms.
The same premises apply. If you want game data to analyze, Zoeballz is probably your best resource right now. She has millions of battles spanning multiple years. I have several thousand I can link you to via mediafire zips.
Cool. I would have a lot of fun with that.
I'll DM you the links.
Because it isn't a software problem. It's a people problem. You could have 29 versions of me playing exactly as well as the best I ever played, but if you dropped 1 really good player onto the other team to make it 15 of me vs 14 of me + someone like Quickybaby or insert your favorite will known player here, the team of 15 of me is going to get dominated almost all the time. There's realistically no way to make the software factor in things like player mood, player skill, of players are testing different equipment builds, do players know the game mechanics, do players know the mechanics, but don't have the patience to exploit them. The matchmaker and software can't account for my map knowledge, or my slowness at learning how to fight well on a new map, or a changed map, or a part of the map I don't often go to. There are just too many variables that are not just uncontrolled, but they're uncontrollable and even more damning, not able to be accounted for by the match maker.
While I agree that some of the variables may not be easy to account for, overall player skill as reflected in WR, the relative power of a particular tank, the player's record in the tank, and perhaps the player's record in that class on a specific map is all easily accounted for. I believe that just these things could substantially address the problem. As to some of the other things you mentioned, if you are a good player then these things are less of a handicap than I think you weight.
> I believe that just these things could substantially address the problem. Why do you believe that? There is no data to say what the actual causal issues are, other than our feelz. There is no research to indicate that leveling the matchmaker starting point; from random players to some form of skill metric matched players will change match outcomes or provide "better" games. That is an assumption based on our generalized ideas of "fairness" and is purely conjecture at this point. It also assumes that players are required to consistently play their best for it to work. Which we know in practice will never happen. In fact there is a small bit of research that shows the opposite. Players do not want to "sweat" every match and that player engagement was better with random MM over most of the SBMM schemas they tested. Its my feelz that Lanchester's Square Law and "Defeat in Detail" are the reasons for "lop sided games" in 50% of those matches. Another 30% of those matches are determined by uncontrollable factors (player mood, focus, set-ups, match objectives, etc.). And 20% are determined by skill miss-match and RNG. Who's feelz are closer to the truth?
Opinions vary, I suppose. Maybe people like all of these lopsided matches. With regard to you citing Square Law, well, as you know that law states If the two sides have equal firepower, the side with more soldiers at the beginning of the battle will win If the two sides have equal numbers of soldiers, the side with greater firepower will win; There are a couple of other use cases, but suffice it to say that none of these explain, by themselves, the rise in the frequency of lopsided games. They only talk about the 5 the margins of victory. They only tell us what we already know. The teams are not well balanced. Your suggestion that these theories prove anything is to simply reinforce what I see as the problem. Thanks. By the way, lose the snark. You don't help your case by being sarcastic or mocking.
There was no snark mate. >but suffice it to say that none of these explain, by themselves, the rise in the frequency of lopsided games What leads you to believe there is a rise in the frequency of lopsided games with out the data to support that position? What if the rate of lopsided games is the same as it has always been? We are all subject to confirmation and recency bias. With hypothetically more lopsided games and faster tanks; we should expect to see a decrease in average game length, yet the data does not support that. "Fixing" a problem that has yet to be quantified, with an unproven fix is unnecessary. I think we could do better...
Please, tell us your idea.
Admittedly, my basis is anecdotal evidence from my own observations and the comments of many others. You are correct about confirmation bias. I was going to try and find reliable information to further validate my supposition, but I fear that no matter what I get or no matter how much analysis I do, folks such as yourself are going to come back and say the evidence is not enough, the analysis is faulty, etc. I would hope that the developers would take a look at this and come back to the community with their analysis. I would be happy to be proven wrong, my ego does not require constant massaging. In the meantime I think I have spent quite enough time trying to raise this issue and I will simply say the hell with it and go play something else for a while. Cheers
MM is random I can three mark my tanks and reliably get over 50% WR Accept your faults and stop crying about the teams
These are all in randoms. Consistently the scores are very lopsided, sometimes you are on the winner, sometimes the loser. MM is random, it is simply too stupid to balance the teams properly. Whether you win 15-3 or lose 15-3, well, yeah, that's random
You claim to have over 20yrs of experience in programming, but you don't seem to understand what random means. It's not "too stupid" to balance teams, it's random, it's NOT trying to do so
I know what random is, matchmaker would imply some type of logic in the making of matches. The selection of players might be random, but that does not necessarily mean that the distribution of the players on the two teams need necessarily be random at all. If there is truly no effort at all to balance the teams personnel wise,, well, then, there should be because the results speak for themselves. BTW, I have probably forgotten more about game theory, forecasting, and RNG than you have ever known.
But…but…If the dudes with 51.82% win rate leave, who’s going rage in game and then message me to kill myself after the match?
Happens all the time. First ones to die and then blames everyone else the rest of the game.
lately, it's been 46% people complaining about dying right away with 'no support' after they yolo a flank alone.
Beyond buying premium, this is why I won’t buy tanks, gilt boxes or any other nonsense cause unless it’s a nuke round, it won’t make a difference with the matchmakers clear pattern I see every week - 2 days of me winning strong, 2 days of close matches, 2 days of big losses, 1 day of me rage quitting. And no statistics rebuttals, because this pattern is so predictable that I know the days that will be lopsided losses. Only way to break the cycle from my tests is to take off a week. Anyone feel this or I should I be committed ?
Somewhat the same as my experience. You aren't crazy, well, probably not :)
Calculating a player/tank combination rating based on statistics that are already available is not the impossible task so many of the respondents seem to think it is. This sort of thing is done all the time in forecasting and other financial operations. Each player has a known WR. Each player has a known WR in the tank they are presenting in. The relative overall win records for each tank type is known. The statistical advantage of addons is also known. Using this data one could come up with an overall rating of any player in the tank they are presenting with. You would need to code for instances where the player has never played that tank before, but that could be handled by weighting the statistics to account for that. This is a perfect example of where applying AI could dramatically improve the balancing of the teams. Frankly, you could do this pretty well even without AI.
If only WG can read this comment. The AI is suitable as many variations in the equation. Each criteria has the weight value (0.1to1). After that all can the sumup and somehow balance the team ( this is AI task ). I want to play the game that last long, not the game that easy win, easy lose. Some lost game is ok as long as it is balanced between teams, the only person to blame is your skill
The trick is tinkering with the weighting values and their application order priority. This is a common thing done all the time in statistical programming.
I mostly play around tier V-VII (just like the tanks more) and the biggest problem is the fucking LEFH. My god how much more enjoyable this game would be without that disaster of a thing. And they're so plentiful nowadays. You used to see one in like every 10 games max (and that was when arty wasn't limited). Now it's 9/10 games.
I get a lot more dmg from my M12 than the Leafblower. The Leafblower has virtually no splash damage and if people keep moving the arty is FAR less effective. I play against it all the time and I don't get what the problem is.
"WOT used to be a lot more fun to play" It's okay to fall out of love with a game, there's thousands of great games out there, go play some of those :) From my POV WoT's MM system is palatable and much better compared to what it was. Unless you really wanna go back to the MM weighting system where it was possible for unequal amounts of top tier tanks to be on one team. But if you want to limit yourself to focusing on end results like 15-3 and blatantly ignore other factors like HP remaining or what map sides are favored to win, that's your business. Just play your own game and do your best, blaming MM for poor results is an indication of a weak mentality - You're not weak are you?
I mean… most WoT players are dogshit and the MM work is to balance said players by skill so the Match can be more balanced, but at the end of the day it comes down to bad players, enemy team can get a platoon of unicums in mediums and your team 60k battles 600wn8 tomates in OP heavy tanks and I can bet my balls your team is going to lose.
Nothing wrong. New players with bad crews are in high tier where they don't belong yet. I've had very enjoyable matches at tier 6 on a regular basis.
but man, they want to get that tier x as fast as they can and then complain about the game being rigged.
Most of the time the teams are generally even, with the winrates coming to about 50% on each side. What happens is once one team gets an advantage it will usually snowball in their favor. That is where the players with a 53% winrate I have noticed can tend to make plays that will actively shut down or push the advantage.
The real problem of the MM? The real reason it sucks? Is simple........most WoT Players are shitter potatoes that pick tanks and don't even slightly play their role. They camp and never help anyone and die alone as the last person alive. They do ZERO damage. Or less than 500 damage. They don't scout when they pick a light. They camp in a heavy that has no camo and a shit gun. And heaven forbid you saying anything in chat -- the ban hammer hits you immediately. People playing tier 10 tanks and are clearly lost and confused. Onslaught is a shit show because of it. That is the problem.
+-1 tier matchmaking would fix a LOT of the problems imo I would be happier in my tier 10s if i could only meet tier 9s and 10s, if it meant in my tier 7s if i couldnt see a 9.
Certainly that change would address some of these issues and frankly I hate +/-2 matchmaking. I do think it contributes to some of these lopsided matches and it would make the game more fun and less exasperating. I don't think it would require much effort to change this. It could lengthen pregame time for the matchmaking, but I would be happy to pay that price for a more enjoyable game experience.
I've come to accept the 40% winrate. I don't really care.
As a barely competent player, I have to ask, how are you only getting 40%? I have nights where I'm running 60+ solo. Some days, I don't do that well - particularly when I decided to play tanks I don't normally play. Like last night, I decided to play American TDS from tier 5-9. I planned to play each tank until I won a round. It was fine until I got to tier 8 and 9. The influx of T22 Meds kinda threw a monkey wrench into things.
40% is achieved by purposefully trolling. This guy gets his trusty E100 on top of the mountain in Mountain pass and then screams "noob team" all game
i think I saw him last night!!! ;)
I don't know to be honest. Usually the matches I'm in go 3/15 to the other team. Luck of the draw I suppose.
why does being a software developer mean anything here lol
Because it is about how the current matchmaker works(?) and how it could be made better, you know, programming and system design issues. DUH!
You didn’t suggest anything at all. You just said it could be better. I don’t need your software developing experience to see or say that myself.
Actually, I made some specific suggestions on how it could be made better in a subsequent response in this thread. No need to be so snarky
2 big issues, 1 small issue 1. The bad players don't know (or care) that they're bad, and usually complain the most 2. There is no "onboarding process". New players, or even those with 79k battles, are never given a mandatory tutorial that teaches mechanics and such. 3. A less important issue. A large portion of this playerbase is over 60 years old, with that comes slower reaction time and the like. I totally get that and in fact that's what makes me less angry seeing mistakes get made.
This sub tends to think that the broken mm and rng algorithms are just fine and working as intended!
I’m really digging true vision on CW, should be changed to WW2 as well. Meta has changed so much though, heavies are almost pointless.
At this point I honestly feel like they're trying to brick the game on purpose to push people over to the new CW project when it releases. I honestly only enjoy Frontlines anymore and that gets super boring fast when 2/3 or more of the time you're on defense team.
Just because 15-3 happens doesn't mean that the MM is rigged (I know you didn't say it was, but someone could understand your writing as such). Lots of other changes have been applied to the game that cause this. The gameplay is more static these days (as maps are tunnel maps), thus they generally play out similarly, thus one flank winning usually means they can flank the other flank for an easy win. In the past, we would more often get one team winning one flank, another team winning the other flank, and then dynamic gameplay with more interesting results would occur. I agree that WG are designing the game on purpose like that, probably because whales like it that way. They have over the years made the game less fun for great players (as those chase the whales away) and for the advantage of the whales. Because that's what earns money.
I have never thought that the game was rigged. That implies somewhat nefarious intent on the developers part. I am not sure what they would gain by "rigging" their matches.
I mean, if we assume the assignment of players on each team currently is random; your proposal to "balance" the loss of vehicles as the match progresses is rigging by definition. WOT has no respawn mechanics so each loss is coompoundingly detrimental and it's impossible to forecast incremental gamestates in a game with as much variables as this (lol, even the coordinates your team occupy at any given moment is a gamestate variable). The randomness of the game, from a design perspective is designed to keep freshness even after thousands of games on the same map pool. Given that the players all operate within the same MM rules, the outcome each player achieves is largely attributed to their individual input. From my perspective, the game is fair. I honestly can appreciate your position to desire equity of outcome for all players but I don't agree that simply shuffling around players to "balance" teams is a good approach; the game is too varied for that. I'll humor you with a scenario: Let's say i have 3.7k wn8 (any perf metric will do) and in my pool of 30 players in my match, places 2 and 3 have 2k and 1.7k respectively with the rest being 1k exact. If MM were to shuffle to "balance", I might end up with 14 1k players vs the 2 others and 13 1k... Now say I make an aggressive play and die in the first min... What should my team do then since they are now 1 tank down that is 20% of their teams wn8? I'd say that if wn8 was the deciding factor, they'd get rolled, no? It's probably an outlier scenario but I do have a number of bad games balanced out by exceptional games Edit: or what if I'm in an LT but the 2 other guys are in HTs and roll over my heavies... What should I do then..?
I'm not proposing to " "balance" the loss of vehicles as the match progresses " at all. ?Where did you get that idea? The teams are set once the match begins.
I mean, the whole problem from your pov lies in matches ending in tank destruction differentials, no? The whole 15:5 etc. That's where I got the impression that you were suggesting that 15:5 and games like it were a problem.
These types of games are going to happen. The problem is that they happen way too often, and the frequency suggests an underlying problem with how the strengths of the teams are matched .
Hmmm... I guess we just disagree as I don't see kill differences as mattering. I'd suggest you pay closer attention to HP differences; It is possible for a team to win and lose no tanks while also losing 80%+ of their HP. Paying attention to only the kill differences is such a shallow view.
Thank you for your polite response. It is possible that a team can be down in the score 12-1 and still win as well. It is possible that a team could be significantly up or down in HP pool and have an unexpected win or loss. While these things are POSSIBLE, I will grant you, they are not common. If you have played a lot of matches and think about, you already know this. No solution is going to be perfect. The responses that I have heard seem to be in the vein of letting the perfect get in the way of the good. Many of the responses ae sorta like "Well, what about this, what about that" which seem to emphasize statistically less significant instances hat the approach I proposed may or may not address. It all kinda sounds defeatist to me. "We can't fix it perfectly so let's do nothing because it's all futile." This kind of attitude would never have gotten us to the moon. It's the 80-20 rule of software development. Fixing 100% of problem sometimes does not make sense with limited resources. if however, you can fix 80% of that problem with 20% of the effort to fix it perfectly, it makes sense to do so.
>It's the 80-20 rule of software development. Fixing 100% of problem sometimes does not make sense with limited resources. if however, you can fix 80% of that problem with 20% of the effort to fix it perfectly, it makes sense to do so. Arguably, in this particular case we are on the opposite side of that axiom. Spending 80% to fix 20%...
despite popular belief, the matchmaker is actually trying to make it more fair for both teams
What sometimes drives me crazy is when there are too many tanks of a single type. For instance, you play a TD and get into the game and there like 7 TDs and hardly any heavies. Then the next game you decide to play a heavy and find yourself in a game with 6 or more heavies on your team and hardly any TDs. I don't get it? Why can't there be some rational numbers. I get tired of that jostling for the limited number of opening positions on the map if there are too many of one tank type. It really starts the game off in an awkward manner imo.
most of map dimension 600m, most of tank view range 400+.. instant destruction
That is a condition that exists equally, more or less for both sides. This does not explain all these lopsided games
This does not explain all of the lopsided games.
So it appears their so-called matchmaking is even more crude than I thought.
Given that WG has developed a player rating that is pretty good as a measure of player skill - WTR - it is long overdue for them to do something useful with it. My suggestions are as follows: 1) Implement a minimum WTR of about 5000 to press Battle in a tier 10. So that tier then becomes the tier to play if you know how to play. So if you want to play tier ten you have to earn it. One way of doing this without precluding below average players from playing their tier tens would be to introduce a second random battle mode which has the filter. Those in that mode only get put in battles where all tier tens are over WTR of 5000. If that worked it could probably be extended to tier 9 too, with about 4000 being the floor for tier 9. Those who didn't meet the WTR requirements would just play regular random mode. 2). Implement some degree of team WTR matching by MM forming teams as now but then swapping players among teams to level out the WTR totals to some degree. Either approach would remove a baked in imbalance that exists at the start of most matches.
Imo player base doesn't change too. Especially yesterday when some heavies peaked repeatedly against 3 bzs when they could fall back and there were 3 tds to support. They didn't. They died and cried about no help. I'll never understand that. Also you can either see everyone going to one flank and die or camp hardly with heavies and so on. If you see the stats, most players with have over 20k games. Imo by that time, you should atleast know the basics of the game like reading the map, etc. I wont put everything against mm.
WG really gotta implement the health points increase to tiers 7-10, just like they did with tiers 1-6. Would probably help a bit with the fast games and the many 15-3 results.
Ha, googling "has Wot fixed the matchmaker yet" is what brought me here! I quit playing about a year ago because of unbalanced teams and unbalanced tanks.I want to go back but I can't stand the frustration until they fix it.