What is wrong with your matchmaking?

General Discussion
42

Quick match has rules it tries to use for shaping matches.

If one team has a tank, then the other team will have a tank.
If one team has a healer, than the other team will have a healer.
If either team do not have a tank then it may match a bruiser on each side instead
If either team do not have a healer, then it may match supports on each side instead.

If each side has a tank, then it won’t necessarily mirror the bruisers
If each side has a healer, then it won’t necessarily mirror the supports.

It will also match 1 ranged assassin on each side (if one side has one, the other will too, exception for partied teams)

Once the intended mirrors have been matched, then the remaining spots can be filled with flex picks.

Now if players are in parties, they can be allowed to get around some of those rules. Similarly, the system only matches one of a given role, so if one side has two tanks, the other side will only have two tanks if the matching partied queued that way, but that doesn’t guarantee both sides will have multiple tanks.

Due to the limitations placed on trying to match tanks and healers, and not enough players queued as tanks and healers to meet the demands, some games end up matching without any of those. Depending on how many players queue at one time, that may then force out ‘odd’ numbered of tanks into games that already have one. (games match 10 players, and even number, so if 3 tank players queue at the same time, there’s aren’t 4 tanks available to split into two games; some of that dependent on players partying together)

Since there’s an oversaturation of assassins queued, it’s not uncommon for games to end up without other roles, and since tanks can only match against other tanks, it’s not uncommon for two tanks to end up on one side.

In another topic, I posted the composition distribution of games submitted to Heroesprofile, and in another topic I posted the amount of players queueing as several roles, so If you want to see some of the reported effects of this rules, I could try looking those up again, but case and point being to your question: quick match has certain rules, and since there aren’t enough players that queue as tanks and healers, the system does what it can with what it gets. The best ‘fix’ would pretty much demand more players play as tank/healers, but if players are going to tank/heal anyway, they may just play draft modes instead of quick match, which further divides the available players to fill for qm to suit the rules of matching.

43

Dude, same here… I feel so relieved to read you, thank you for speaking my mind…

44

Have accountered the same on new accounts. After some matches you reach the point where you just have bad players in your team several times in a row to “fix” your win streaks.

I still think that the reporting system is primarily used for matchmaking. Meaning, Blizzard tracks who is reported for feeding, afking etc. and if along with winrates they then put those players into your team that will most likely make you lose if they want to cancel your win streak.

2 Likes
45

Honestly, good job man. I like testing the game and trying to understand the mechanics, just the way you did. I was aware of this MM issue, but you confirmed it.

46

Hi Xenterex,
thank you for your answer. I fully understand, that because of lack of tank/heal players, there are many matches without them.

I also can understand, there must be some exceptions for grouped players. For as I used to play gruped quiet often (in 3 or 4 players), I know that if non of us picked a tank, most probably the game would be without tanks.

But what I can´t comprehend is, why another tank is paired to a group which already has one. I am unwilling to accept the example with 10 people queueing, from which 3 tanks. I assume, this can happen once in a million of years in a global game like HotS. But even if it really was the case (the tradeoff between playing immediately and waiting for some more seconds), from my point of view, it really harms the game significantly, when one teams get an advantage of one more damager. Mainly while playing centered objectives (like on battlefield of eternity, garden of terror etc.) the difference is irreparable (assuming that all of the players are about the same level).

Btw. how can i search at heroesprofile? I tried to look at my profile, but found under Kenny a profile of somebody else.

Thank you!

47

If you want to track your personal stats on Heroesprofile, you’d want to upload what replays you have into their api. Their system can match a player ID based on their battlenet number, but if you post on one account, and play on another, that would obviously be two different ID’s so profile wouldn’t be able to pair them up.

However, if may actually be matching your forum/game id accordingly, and it only looks different because it’s missing information. Their system only has the games people upload, so if you didn’t upload all your matches, they won’t have all your matches as they’d just have games with you in when you were playing in a game with someone who did upload their games.

Regarding the tank queue.

  1. The game may be “global” but the servers are not. The player pool isn’t drawn from the entire globe and instead tries to match within a certain distance/ping of other players. Similarly, while players can select some specific Regions when they play, there are some automated sub-servers that divide up players to try to offset distance/ping extremes. I don’t know the specifics on that, I only know others have observed it when I watch some streams or replays and they comment on their region of play.

  2. Your assumption doesn’t really matter if you think it a million years because the processing of information and variations in computer terms is different than our own; If I do a search on a web engine it may tell me that it found 18,060,000,000 results in 0.60 seconds. My page loading those billions of results took far longer than 0.60 seconds, and it’d take me well over 2 seconds to check even just 100 out of those entries. “Time” is relative, so what may not be “1 million years” to you can vary well have lapsed duration that a matched was formed with the available players within an estimated acceptable ping to suit match limitations of role, party size, and so on.

  3. Some of the concerns people have with tank pairs tends to either neglect teams being grouped, or neglect that hero labels aren’t what people want to assume. For instance, Imperius is not a tank, but Tyrael is. When some complaints are voiced about generalizations on qm problems, people may toss out “tank” this or “bruiser” that, but their complaint stems from them losing a game, and not necessarily from what heroes were actually matched. If a player wins a game with tyrael as their maintank, they probably won’t reevaluate what they think of him, but if their next game is a loss, then suddenly the matching is broken cuz they didn’t get a “real” tank while the other side may have gotten 2.

Just about any topic that’s made with qm/tank complaints has a specific game in mind, and more often than not, their complain is an issue of the hero label – based on player performance – rather than intended role matching. To some players, having an ally that plays poorly is conflated with not having been matched with the right ‘role’. But since they post in generic terms, people have to fish for details (what were you matched against?) to find out that the complaint stems from a misunderstanding of matching that just wants to vent frustrations and blame something else instead. Of course, there are still some exceptions, but if details are fished out, those ‘exceptions’ may be queueing at low-population hours, sitting in a long queues or unusual party formations.
(a hefty chunk of qm stomp complaint threads may neglect that their own side was in a party, and just look to fault the other team for winning)

48

“but if you post on one account, and play on another, that would obviously be two different ID’s so profile wouldn’t be able to pair them up.”

I have one account only. The reluctance to create a new one was the reason, why I started asking about assigning points in B5. And I never uploaded any information to heroesprofile, so it could well be mine and simultaneously that´s the answer why there are 8 league games:-)

“The player pool isn’t drawn from the entire globe and instead tries to match within a certain distance/ping of other players”

This is, what I exactly thought as well (having US server, Asia server, EU server) until I repeatedly played league with guys from Latin America (am European)…

“our assumption doesn’t really matter…”

I´ve probably expressed myself uncorrectly /incomprehensibly. My assumption did not regard processing of information at all. I wanted to point out that as a global game with hundreds of thousands of players, I barely believe, that a situation of your example can occur, that there are just those 10 people queueing. I assume, there are thousands of people queueing on the same time, so there should always be an opportunity to pair tanks to groups lacking them. In particular when there is evidence of tanks lacking.

“For instance, Imperius is not a tank, but Tyrael is…”

Easy answer from my point of view, if I understood this remark correctly. I simply describe as a tank that char, which in game has a label of a tank. When I am paired with stitches I will complain. When I am paired with Hammer, I would not, even though many people calls it a tank…

“Just about any topic that’s made with qm/tank complaints has a specific game in mind, and more often than not, their complain is an issue of the hero label – based on player performance – rather than intended role matching.”

I found this part of your answer the most interesting and possibly explaining. Do I understand it correctly, that the system could pair to me (to my team) another tank, because it knows from my stats, that I am a poor tank in comparison to other players assigned for the game? (means excatly I am a poor tank paired to much better opponents). This could be a plasible explanation, but I can´t still get rid of the feeling, that having two tanks and one damager less harms the game more than having just one bad tank.

49

In quick match if u are a veteran player with high level (for example, diamond with level 2k acount like me) most of your matches will have at least one or two really really bad players to “balance” the stuff, like u have the only choice to carry hard cuz the sistem see u like an idiot that have the obligation to have 3x more dmg and ganks then everyone to have some chance of win.