How To Improve BG Matchmaking

Decimus

Hello!

I figured I'd make this post since I feel there are still ways to improve the current BG matchmaking experience.

The MMR system was explained in the latest patch notes and explains why it doesn't exactly work that well on Live servers...

Battlegrounds
The Deathmatch medal “Killing Blow” can now be earned more often in Team Deathmatch Battlegrounds.
The help entry for Battlegrounds where MMR is noted now states: "Your MMR is derived from a combination of wins/losses and the rank of the opponents you've played against.”

There has been some misconception that MMR is derived from Medals, which is not the case. MMR is purely based on your Win/Loss/Tie from Battlegrounds. This calculation also takes into account your opponent’s MMR to determine the amount of gain or loss your MMR takes at the end of a Battleground.

The problem with the Win/Loss/Tie based MMR system is that you'll always have players of varying skill levels put into random teams... which means that you can have 3 extremely strong players in one team and a weaker player as 4th... and just due to the nature of RNG this 4th players cruises from win to win to the highest MMR, despite not having good individual performance.

And if there's more than a few players like this, it prevents a proper MMR based on skill level of each individual player from ever forming.


So here's how this can be fixed: MMR should be your average performance in the battleground - the amount of healing done, damage done and damage taken, as well as the KDR. It should also take into account whether you won or lost the battleground, and what your opponents' ratings were.

This is how most games do their MMR systems - a Win/Loss/Tie ratio is just too simplistic to generate a balanced and fun environment.

Another interesting point in the Patch Notes was this line:

MMR will no longer be displayed in the UI.

...it would've been nice to have a developer comment on why this was deemed necessary.

I think a lot of players would be interested in their MMR ratings, how much they go up/down after a game... instead of living in a constant state of just... wondering about it.

Furthermore, I think having different initial tiers with rewards on ranking up would be cool, much like with Tales of Tribute.


This would make it a lot more fun to "rank up" doing battleground and could help funnel people into different lobbies.


Just some thoughts.

CameraBeardThePirate

Just as a note - tying MMR to Damage Done, Healing Done, and Damage taken without adjusting the scoreboard metrics to account for Necromancers and Shielder builds will make those classes/builds have a hard time climbing MMR, just like they have a harder time climbing the leaderboard at the moment.

I'm not saying MMR shouldn't be tied to those things, but ZOS has still given no indication on whether they're even aware of that issue yet, despite all the posts over the years trying to get it changed.

ecru

i agree with this in principle, because solo queueing into an 8v8 with top 1% MMR can lead to very frustrating matches for that specific player. you end up facing good opponents on the opposing team, while having potatoes on your team, who you are expected to carry. there is certainly a power fantasy aspect to this and it's satisfying to carry a match, but in general these kinds of games can end up very unenjoyable, and having to tryhard every single match is exhausting.

some kind of cap on MMR when solo queueing (on a sliding scale so you don't have a large proportion of players at/near the cap) or loose matchmaking rules which will still place *solo queue* players with high MMR into matches quickly without it being strictly balanced out would help with this a lot. i don't think this would cause any issues, and would avoid a situation like i mentioned above.

i have some personal experience with this specific issue in another MMO. Rift, i had the highest solo queue MMR for my class, and nearly every match i queued into felt like me vs. the world. baseline MMR was 1500, while mine was 4k+. to win matches, i almost always had to give 110%, because a large group of very mediocre players is easily ran over by a large group of above average players, who were my opponents. this was 10v10 for reference.

even worse, i would run into a situation where my queue would be my team (of 10) vs the other team being half of a premade, since the group queue cap was 5. i would be facing a high mmr group + average-ish pugs, with no group on my side, and low mmr players i was expected to carry. frankly, this sucked. in 8v8 it will suck even more, because a lower number of players exacerbates balance issues like this, as losing just one or two of your teammates makes the odds worse as team sizes get smaller.

a good solution to this would be to only allow premades of 4 to queue against other premades of 4 in 8v8. this would mean premade + pugs vs premade + pugs. i would not subject duo queues to these rules though.