This weekend I found TDM almost unplayable, from a balance standpoint. I think I had ONE match all weekend (Friday, Saturday, Sunday) that started with 12 players. This means Matchmaker can't do it's job, and I feel it shows. I really like matches where scores are within 5 kills of each other. I think most of us are this way. But certain players joining later, especially high MMR players or "smurfs", keep drastically affecting the outcome. For example, last night I started an 8 player match that was rated "3 Stars" for me. After another player quickly joined, the scores spread rapidly. Eventually we had a full 12 player match, but the score gap widened rather than narrowed. So I left the match in the last 30 seconds or so to check something. Sure enough, the "3 Star" match I had started was now showing on the list as a "1 Star" match! This is directly because of who joined later.
Here is why it becomes "unplayable", in my opinion. The team that is stomping the other team creates such a score gap and frustration level that one player on the losing team says "Forget it, I'm out" (often with more "colorful" language), and they leave. Now the stomping team is also a man up on the other team, so the score gap widens even more. This frustration causes another player on the losing team to leave the match, leaving the stomping team 2 men up. This will prompt a request that one of those winning players switch to the losing team. That sounds great, but most people are not eager to transfer to a team losing by 15 or more kills. Eventually it will auto-assign if no one volunteers, but by this point the damage is already done. Another player has probably left the losing team by now. New players may be logging in around while all this is going on too. They are assigned to the losing team of course, and when they see the massive score disparity they also promptly leave (I confess that I do this myself. Why bother?).
I'm going to start tracking my matches and their scores to see if I can find some correlation. I'll track 1) How many players were in the lobby when MM formed the teams, and then 2) How many players were in the game at the end of the match, and finally 3) Final scores. I may even write down some examples of unbalanced personal scores.
Anyway, my personal suspicion is that I will get better/closer matches based on how many players the match begins with. Of course I could be totally wrong. Having said all this, even if my fears are confirmed, then what? That's the dilemma that I don't have a good answer to :(
(One suggestion might be to prompt the team switch anytime one team is up by 5 or more kills and the winning team has only ONE more player than the enemy team? It seems that waiting for them to be up by 2 or more allows for too large a gap in scores to be formed.)
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