Scenario Matchmaking Rework Megathread

[mekal]

4. was tried led to ridiculous que times due to low population

3. chain surrender should be punished play discordant if you dont like premades

2. player issue can not be solved with such low population

1. again low population issue

it all boils down to do you want 5 hour que times trying to balance scenarios with optimal teams or would you like to actually play the game with suboptimal and whatever the game gives you

with 100-1k people playing this server you dont really have much room to work with

Hey, I think you misunderstood my post a bit. 1-4 are cases where there is a problem - not my proposed solution.

I think its helpful to distinguish between degrees of fixes. For the reason you suggested - low pop - there are limits to how fluid and balanced the sc queue will be.

However, in a low pop situation there are still better and worse situations we could be in. The point is - can you have fast queue times and slightly better match ups? More pops later into the night - maybe an extra 2 hours of active SCs? Faster queue times while maintaining current level of match up quality.

These are the questions you should be asking - not "can things be perfect on low pop server? No - okay we can do nothing. Its best to think in terms of incremental gains or marginal improvements.

give suggestions then...

you are just typing for the sake of typing i have given mine and honestly i cant see a better solution make discordant cross faction so people can get a pop since as it stands people dont que for it but forum warriors think its still somehow biased against them

I know the server really tried to make this a 6v6 game. But at this point, it is clear that the 6 mans don't want that. During NA there's a guild 6 man that will swap to the winning side to 6 man against PUGs who are in an underpopulated realm that's losing. They make scenarios during NA toxic every single night.

So whatever is done here needs to be able to stop them from doing that. The vast majority of the people in scenarios are against 6 mans. We don't need to have an incredibly long discussion of 100 different solutions to try and make it so PUGs can fight 6 mans or PUGs will form 6 mans. The data is there that it won't work. Just like the data is there that 6 mans don't want a sweaty fight.

Allow only for a 2 person queue at max. Make it so guild duos won't be paired in the same scenario. Show class archetype in the queue so people know what is needed. 6 Mans can queue ranked, there's already a setting for them.

That's it. Then test it. Actually put that change out on the server and I assure you that scenarios will be far more popular.

everything you want is already in game...

[Dackjanielz]

Like i said b4.....merge skirmish into normal SC

Then change SC to be Solo / Duo only.

Test that for a while n see what happens - premades can go into ranked.

[Fey]

I think mirrored archetype numbers in scenarios are a bad idea. One side has five heals, one side has two. You're then forced to adapt to the situation and *gasp* change the way you play, or *scream* change one of your tactics. Even if you end up with zero heals, or seven tanks occasionally you'll win those. There can be some fun and novel scenarios out there, especially with the variety of them that this game enjoys.

There will always be a certain number of Stomp/be Stomped, and even the perfect match-making system can't assuage that entirely. What you need to do is reward the losers.

I don't want to write a text wall. Suffice it to say that scenario barriers are the worst decision made in the history of the server. Remove the barriers, add some appropriately positioned guards (one patrol) to punish spawn-camping which is very toxic to casuals. Give guard renown to the camped side, give a minimum of 4 crests per scenario if no surrender. Give a minimum of 1k renown if no surrender.

Also as a side note, there are actual entrances to scenarios out in the open world. Is there a way we can increase the renown or crest rewards for people who queue at the open world entrance? Particularly during weekends this would be a great way to tie oRvR and scenarios together.

This is an important discussion, a healthy scenario scene is crucial for the health of the server.

[trh382]

give suggestions then...

Maybe we are talking at cross purposes. I did give two suggestions: add solo ranked interface to the queueing interface and I agree that discordant should be cross faction.

[leftayparxoun]

Not sure how popular this opinion is, but adding cross faction matchmaking in regular scenarios would only further alienate me from them and, by extension, from the game itself.

I can somewhat tolerate its existence in Ranked mode due to the game-mode being mostly irrelevant, but bringing cross-faction collaboration into the main game is a huge No-Go for what WAR was originally about (and hopefully what ROR strives to be)

[Phantasm]

I got wild idea:

disable players list available via scenario scoreboard button,

hide it for entire scenario and only show at the end as a final score. To find out who you play against you need to go mid and fight them.
This could be also interesting mode of scenario. Or event. Or feature triggered by item...

[p00ky]

So, out of general curiosity, do Devs bother looking over this and acknowledge there is an issue here or is the que system "working as intended"?

System grants preference in pops to premades, no doubt about it and understandable to a certain degree, easier to fill an sc but where the system fails is the matchmaking vs the opposing faction.
- If your in a 6 man, 90% of the time your fighting pugs
- If you que as a pug, 90% of the time your fighting premades.
* Prime time - try hard time, as premades get the pops, its standard for 1 side to have 1 premade constantly vs other side with 2 premades, in some occasions, 2 premade vs 2 premade, same story. Rest of the player base can just wait in que for the night.

I play both factions and do premades in prime time (4+ group) and solo que the rest of the weekend and can tell you devs the current system is complete garbage, sorry.
A vast majority of people queing are doing it solo or in small groups of 2 or 3 with their friends and you just need to read the sc chat on both sides to know how disharted the new player base is. Form a premade people say, yes ofc, at prime time sure thing, easy to set up a /5. But the rest of the day with the current server population? Good luck at that. Also, make sure your char is 70+ for a premade invite, how do new players get there? Good luck as well

Why cant you adjust the matchmaking depending on server population to reflect prime times? (or make it a constant filter):
- Premade must always face premade (counting premade as min 4man party to make it easier to matchmake) in each SC if not....no pop, bad luck, wait, there is no one to fight, its time for the rest of the server player base to enjoy and complete the sc. Stop this 6 man farm other faction from 9am GMT onwards on weekends.
- Only 1 premade per faction per sc please. Prime time: what is this constant double premade running for 4 hours straight cos they get instant pop over the solo or small party ques?

I would love the devs to try and complete the weekend SC on a, say, RR60 char with a friend or two of theirs . Done 28 scs on Sat and Sun morning and counting, on a char on destro, im at 19/150 kills, so I should have it done in aprox 9 days....
Did it on order and as they were farming hard on sat morning with their double 6men, did it in under 18 minutes.
Did i enjoy either of them? no, completly one sided and poinless...

Fix the matchmaking system...oh and the discordant weekend sc NEVER pops so...ye...working as intended?

[Mossesman]

Slightly off-topic, but I see alot of complaints about how one side is not able to complete the weekend scenario objectives because they are just being farmed by premades on the other team or poor group comp.

I understand the frustration - this weekend I managed to complete the weekly on one of my toons in a couple of hours, winning almost every sc in a row. I logged onto my toon on the opposite faction and I am 30+ scens in and I still haven't finished the weekly. I don't think people should be blaming premades though or calling for solo only weekend sc's. At the end of the day this is a group game after all.

When the weekly influence reward for RvR was introduced, it required you to complete specific objectives (get a certain amount of kills, take x number of BO's / keeps). At some point it was changed to its current iteration, which IMO works much better, as it still lets you progress just by participating even if your side isn't doing too well.

So, why don't we do the same for the weekly scenarios? Instead of having specific objectives, each weekly gets its own influence bar. You gain influence just by participating in a scenario (none for surrendering), and you will get additional influence for winning the sc, kills and taking objectives.

Just my 2 cents.

[Rapzel]

Slightly off-topic, but I see alot of complaints about how one side is not able to complete the weekend scenario objectives because they are just being farmed by premades on the other team or poor group comp.

I understand the frustration - this weekend I managed to complete the weekly on one of my toons in a couple of hours, winning almost every sc in a row. I logged onto my toon on the opposite faction and I am 30+ scens in and I still haven't finished the weekly. I don't think people should be blaming premades though or calling for solo only weekend sc's. At the end of the day this is a group game after all.

When the weekly influence reward for RvR was introduced, it required you to complete specific objectives (get a certain amount of kills, take x number of BO's / keeps). At some point it was changed to its current iteration, which IMO works much better, as it still lets you progress just by participating even if your side isn't doing too well.

So, why don't we do the same for the weekly scenarios? Instead of having specific objectives, each weekly gets its own influence bar. You gain influence just by participating in a scenario (none for surrendering), and you will get additional influence for winning the sc, kills and taking objectives.

Just my 2 cents.

Overall I don't think it is a bad idea to give some sort of influence instead of "cap middle objective and hold it for the remainder of the SC".
With that said I would prefer to see that there were put certain requirements to gain inf, such as Battle Objectives (BO) not giving influence directly, but rather at the end of the SC depending on your obj score.

My reasoning is that a large number of the scs I play end in a surrender, if BOs give you inf I suspect quite a large number of players will just go for solo capping BOs instead of actually playing with their group and surrender at the 11 min mark to maximise their own rewards. This type of BO back capping becomes quite disruptive gameplay for your own team when they may be required to engage 9vs12.

Another issue is that the botting in mid tier is a major problem, where there's quite a large number of bots that run from objective to objective spam some AoE and continue to the next one. I suspect this may overflow into t4 or become a even larger issue if there are no countermeasures in place to prevent "cheese".

Group play should be promoted no matter if you queue "solo" or in a group.

[SadiStick]

I think a lot of the suggestions made in this thread will ultimately end up causing higher higher queue times for casual players and premades alike. No one wants to get farmed by premades over and over, and no one wants to wait 15min for a pop because you want to play with friends. I think the simplest solution in the short term, especially on event weekends is to make SCs a minimum 18v18, or ideally, 24v24.

More players in an SC helps lessen the impact of a 6 man premade, a greater chance of being met against another 6 man premade on the other side, and allows the potential of more tanks and healers to join the game for people that solo queue. It also has the added benefit of hitting the 150 kill threshold faster which tends to be the bottleneck for most weekend event players.

I also think that most weekend events end up being more toxic is because of the thresholds imposed to complete them. Often times small map SCs end up with one side getting wiped and sitting in spawn until they can surrender. This can result in having to play 20+ games to hit the 150 kill number which can be extremely painful if you're on a losing streak. Extra stipulations like holding X objective just adds to the stress of trying to complete the event especially if you're trying to do it on multiple characters. Lower the number of kills needed on small maps to 50-80 and keep the Kill/ 5 Wins/ 10 Games played the only requirements needed to complete the event.