TC have literally stopped PC players from finding KOTH based on their new Matchmaking algorithm and top Xbox players in regions outside the US and in some cases, even in the US.
First off, playing in a 5 on PC is the fastest way to find games as you naturally need less players to find a game and perhaps some top Xbox players (again due to Diamond being a small proportion of players, some regions may not have enough top players even on Xbox)
The PC players that have stuck around are the more dedicated fans, especially when others face crashing issues and there was an already low population due to Crossplay toggle.
With this said, those players are normally higher in skill than the Xbox players as they have a bigger pool to draw from.
Put this together and it explains why after SIX HOURS of combined searching over just a few days, KOTH was impossible to find games on. Endless hours of searching.
Now we know why.
I have so far played 6 games of KOTH - this was by searching as a 2-3.
All 6 times, I was out on server much further away, with a ping of 120+.
My normal ping on my local server is 5ms and even on US East it’s just about playable at 60-80ms (I am Diamond ranked so higher ping can lead to a loss by itself).
Also, I did not notice and improvement on my teammates in regards to skill, it still feels like they are much lower skilled than me and my players and compared with the opposite team (we get far more kills and caps than the others on our team).
Now,
Extremely low PC population,
Being Highly Ranked (D3 S5, my team mates are normally D1-5)
Being in the EU
Crossplay Toggle
= no games whatsoever.
And the extremely long wait times means that other players searching then also abandon the mode too.
Now,
Your solution is to play 1-4 man - even this had extremely long wait times and even then, it’s always ridiculously high pings - IF YOU CAN GET A MATCH.
This is an issue for us aswell, if we want to play in a 5 then we have to wait for hours because our skill ratings are to high. So we split into 3s or 4s and then we have a random and we come up against a stack (even though 5 stacks are supposed to match 5 stacks apparently) that random either leaves or gets about 5 kills. Is that the coalitions fair matchmaking in play. The very thibg theae koth changes are trying to prevent (non stacks playing stacks) is exactly what it has caused and then it matches us with (usually a gold) random to try and balance teams who then struggles, that is not fair on us, it is not fair on the random and has removed the ability for us players in the highest tier of the ranking system to be able to play with friends we have been playing with for years.
don’t have much to add other than that I agree that this has made matchmaking worse for PC players and crossplay toggle[OFF] already making it difficult to find games before this matchmaking update.
maybe a weekly crossplay toggle reset? maybe 5 stacks of xbox are matched with any opponents(toggle not matter) or just allow matchmaking to search in any of the 1-4 best data centers for a player when searching, from the start and not later.
What was the change?
I’ve been noticing that matchmaking has been taking much longer in the past week. My Xbox friends are blaming it on me being in PC. They’re asking me to switch back to Xbox but I’m resisting because it’s going to take me a couple months to adapt back to using a controller only. I feel like I might have to though because finding games at night is getting ridiculous.
I have edited in the fact that some regions top Xbox players will also have the same issue as I know my Xbox friends shared the same view.
And agreed, playing 1-4 also doesn’t help because the playerbase is still not there.
And so far, out of 14 days I’ve only found 6 matches, all with 120+ ping.
So it’s search for hours on end and then MAYBE get a game with ridiculously high ping.
So in effect, TC has drove away everyone from the mode and essentially killed it on PC and possibly for some top ranked Xbox players.
Yeah, exactly, I’ve edited it to include Xbox players and I also know you had issues too, especial when you play with people with a high rank / skill level without the necessary playerbase to support the mode, it’s just not a well thought and good idea by TC.
Maybe in the USA it will work as the population is far greater there, but as evident by numerous reports, people are struggling to find games at all now.
And I agree with you, if you try Matchmaking in 1-4 you still come up agaisnt 5-Stacks and your teammates are still absolute potatoes.
Yeah, the Crossplay toggle makes it hard enough (especially in Core Ranked, where you can argue it’s more Casual-Ranked than Comp) but still, you could at least find games against other Xbox and PC players in the EU.
With this new Matchmaking system, it’s literally impossible.
Yeah, when that 4x XP boost came in just before the Season reset to 6, no games.
I remember queuing with you and I couldn’t believe that even with a US host - zero games.
Knew something was up straight away as I’ve never seen KOTH dead to the point where 2 hours of searching at peak times wouldn’t mean zero games.
There is no way currently I can play that mode - the players are there - or at least were as they are now driven away, but it’s just not working right and for TC to say that they are happy with how it’s working is just ridiculous.
I don’t mind if I tried to search this “new way” for the first 1-5 mins and then switched back to the old way but waiting hours and hours and then NOT even getting a game sucks.
Either that or you MIGHT get a game…on 120+ ping with low skilled players on your team against players with low ping making it unplayable.
TC revealed in today’s what up that KOTH has a stricter matchmaking algorithm and also pretty much stops 5 mans agaisnt non-5 mans. Even then, the teams have to be pretty much 50/50 on skill level.
Also, searching solo agaisnt squads of any size tries to balance out teammates harder and closer to skill level.
Basically, the game was pretty much dead on EU PC and they have decided to make matchmaking even stricter.
You queue with as a 5 with your 4 friends you’ve known for 2+ years.
You search for 3 hours to find a game, if lucky, you then get placed in a match against a 5 stack on a different Hemisphere where both parties are on 200 ping.
Scenario #2
You search as a 3.
You - D5
Friend #1 - D3
Friend #2- D3
Random teammate - Onyx 3
Random Teammate - Silver 2
vs
Enemy Stack Member #1 - D4
Enemy Stack Member #2- D1
Enemy Stack Member #3 - D1
Enemy Stack Member #4 - Onyx 3
Enemy Stack Member #5 - Onyx 3
Matchmaking predicts you to win due to your TrueSkill being higher than everyone else on the enemy team. To offset that and make it balanced, a player with a fraction of your TrueSkill is put on your team, so severely negate your team’s overall TrueSkill to be aligned with the 5 stack. 10 minutes into the game, Random Teammate who is Silver 2 is not enjoying playing a high Diamond skilled match as they should have been placed into a Silver lobby as that is the logical place they would be, but this new Matchmaking system disregards the Random’s skill level and uses them as cannon fodder to decrease the teams TrueSkill, ruining his experience.
The QoS system that was introduced over a year ago, has that now been negated in the case of Scenario #1 ? As it does not prioritize Ping at all moving forward as being a 5 man team trumps literally every facet of the considerations.
Then in the case for Scenario #2 the update has literally gone against every logical rule of the Ranking System created, a Silver 2 should not be put into a Diamond game to offset that teams TrueSkill to make it “balanced”. Ruining the experience for that player, not even mentioning the high-skilled players on his team.
So this update was made to cater to the complaints of Solo players who lost in a game where playing as a Team is the foundation of the game itself? Or was it to break up groups of friends and force them to not play with each other after a day of work because they are in the same party together,essentially pushing people apart? Because for with the lower population this game has right now, segregating the players again is the best option isn’t it?
With the addition of Arms Race again, another mode which is unpopulated, PC players needing to set aside an hour to queue before even playing a game, it seems like everything is pushing the player away from the game does it not?
It’s beyond disrespectful at this point, you say its just an PC player issue? No this screws Europe as a region, its bad enough I have to get Americans in to find a game of nearly every game mode, now you’re telling me I’m going to struggle even more as it needs to find another 5 man, or I could 2-4 stack and get an awful random or better yet one that quits, hell, it will be hard enough to find people solo queuing if I have these smaller stacks, I feel so frustrated as an EU player
Exactly this. Only found ONE game with a 5-stack and it was 120-200 ping for us and the other team had 5-30ms. Wasn’t the strongest 5 we had so was frustrating to say the least.
But this isn’t a solution to have to play on ridiculous ping after HOURS of searching.
Exactly this, potatoes are put onto your team agaisnt high level stacks meaning that you are set up to fail - especially when they give up and quit because they just cannot play at that level.
It’s a bad move overall and by catering to Solo players - they’ve severely restricted 5-man teams, in a TEAM BASED GAME.
I’ve now qued for hours with no games and I feel like TC has pushed everyone away from KOTH and no one is bothering to search and you will most likely be searching for hours and then give up anyway…
This type of solo matchmaking should be for TDM where it’s only about killing and not dying.
Not KOTH where you need a team to play against top players.
I updated it a while ago to also say EU Xbox players. A lot of my Xbox friends say the same thing too.
And it does screw over EU players - but moreso PC players because of the tiny population to begin with. But overall, it’s the top EU players on both platforms that get affected - especially when they don’t need to be.
It should be on a timer and reset to default after 5 mins so that TC get their wish of breaking matchmaking and stopping people from playing for 5 mins and then reverting back to actually letting people play.
Imagine waiting 2 hours for a game, finding one (knowing it’s a high ping one due to flags in the game) and then people Dogding it and leaving you with another 2 hour wait.
Edit: I’m again going to add that US players are also experiencing the same issues too.
Don’t worry, when they roll this out to all modes as they stated they plan to do, literally every single player who wants to play with a friend(s) will be punished. All the way from TDM to Escalation.
Because promoting the esports circuit all being about teamwork and communication, apparently that does not apply to the actual game itself that they are promoting it for.
Oh ok, didn’t realise they would be expanding this to all modes.
That’s only a good thing because then it will get the whole community voicing their opinion as to why it’s one of the worst ideas TC have come up with in a long time and MAYBE they will reverse it.
Maybe they mis-read the population figures of their game after reading about other games with millions of players.
In reality - this cannot work for the EU region, let alone the EU PC region.
And when they said they had multiple reports of people finding it hard to get into games and they were “investigating” - I thought they may genuinely fix a matchmaking issue.
Turned out it was THEM all along who caused the problems!!!
And then, they have the audacity to say it’s “working as intended” ???
You can’t even make this up!!
Exactly this.
I don’t see eSports teams coming in with 1-3 players and allowing a random person two from the audience join in …
I believe it’s rooted in TC’s inability to get the quitting under control. Just about everyone I play with insists on going in as a 5 man because they don’t want quitters (personally, I don’t care how many ppl are in my squad, I play solo, stacked, whatever). By killing the chances of these die hard gears players finding a match, it’s essentially driving them to play other games. Very few of my friends will wait more than 3 min to find a match (including me) before giving up and none of them will wait more than 5min.
As much as I was hoping to play this until #5 comes out, I think the writing is on the wall.
I have been solo queuing KOTH now for 45 minutes without a game. Im so happy everything is finally “working as intended” it is about time the coalition sorted things out.
Well done coalition
