Global matchmaking and matching Arranged Teams versus Random Teams HAVE NO PLACE IN A COMPETITIVE RTS. Either one of these alone kills any aspect of the game being competitive, both together is an abomination.
I have played this game since the original RoC release, with easily thousands of hours in this game and already have over 500 wins in Reforged. I love this game and to see the state it’s in now due to this ‘Reforge’ has me angry and dismayed. (My profile: http://profile.w3booster.com/#ShivAn#1232)
Why should people be forced into playing on servers with MORE LAG than the original built-in delay from pre-Reforged? Literally 75% of my 2v2s (both RT and AT) are either 1) on an Asian or Russian server where I, as a US player, get 300-350+ms consistently! or 2) Have partners that don’t even speak my language! In a TEAM game!! And obviously if you have #1, then #2 highly likely as well! I can’t tell you the numbers of matches I’ve had where I confirm in-game that there is only 1 (ONE!!) person that is Asian/Russian and we are all lagging, except them. How is 3 people having 300+ms with one at 30-60ms because it selected their server for the match randomly fair?? I would GLADLY take my long(er) queues to get FAIR matches where everyone speaks English and we’re all on decent and competitive latency. Is this too much to ask?
AT vs RT is also a huge issue, albeit not nearly as game breakingly frustrating as global matchmaking. Here I can more understand you want to not have insanely long queue times because we all know there will be way fewer Arranged Teams queuing at a time than Randoms. But for a competitive game these matches are almost always decided from the start. To pit two randoms together against a deliberate team (who likely are in voice chat on Discord or something) is just nonsensical. Again I would GLADLY welcome longer queue times as an AT for FAIR games. Almost every AT right now is just a noob stomp, where is the fun in that? I get MAYBE one AT vs AT a night and that’s with playing 15-20 games in a day. People are farming icons just from AT vs RT stomping all day. I’ve seen profiles with over 90% win rate and 1k icon already doing this (http://profile.w3booster.com/#Curt#1979). Where is the fun, for the stomper or the stompee? WE WANT FUN, FAIR, AND BALANCED MATCHES. You can’t have this with insane ping disparities and people who you can’t even communicate with! Maybe AT vs RT is necessary for 3v3/4v4 ATs to even find matches, I don’t know, but I’m sure you (Blizzard) have plenty of data already that could tell you.
All I can do is plead with you to consider these things for when you eventually release ladder. You had it right in Beta where it was the exact opposite of now. Global matchmaking was only for custom games and competitive (<see that word, it should mean something) matchmaking was limited to only your region. Why did this change? From a hardcore, longtime competitive player, please reconsider these decisions for the sake of this game being what it should be - balanced games. Not futilely fighting against ridiculous latency (Only for some, aka: IMBALANCED), people who you’re unable to communicate with, and waste of time un-fun pubstomps. Thanks
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You are absolutely right. That’s the reasons I stopped playing Reforged and just hope that every next patch fixes them. It’s really incomprehensible to my mind how it’s even possible to release a game with such issues =(
They had more than 10 years to learn why this was a mistake ever since they first implemented it for SC2 and HOTS. It’s a lost cause and if they ever decide to revisit the decision, there are bigger problems present they are more likely address to first. Considering what’s happening in the world right now, that might be sometime between 2 and 10 years from now.
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You are not actually forced to play on a server.
The game selects a host, said host then connects to a server which may or may not be closer to them. The rest of the players join said host on other servers which may or may not be close to them. The servers just acts as a proxy.
I do agree that it is a silly system for an RTS game which relies heavily on ping. It smells of trying to use the OverWatch server system which successfully utilize this setup. Albeit it has failed horribly as you can’t buffer in the same way that you can in an FPS (I suspect, I don’t have the actual code to confirm it, but seeing the ping issues people have that’s what it look like).
I would prefer regional matchmaking too. FYI, there are no Russian servers. There’s a Chinese, a Korean, a European (Amsterdam if I remember correctly) and a US server (either East Coast or Chicago). Not that it makes anything better.
Yeah… AT & RT should never have been mixed… It’s still mixed in OverWatch too… Damn shame that is. Don’t really see why they insist on this. It’s the number one complaint and they seem to disregard the issues it brings or it never gets brought to their attention.
Please, mind your tongue. I get you are frustrated, but that doesn’t give you the right to spew out profanity. They are human beings like you and you damn well can respect them as such. If not, please, wallow in your misery somewhere else where it can’t bother the rest of us trying to get the game in to a better state - because you are not helping.
Urgh, if you intend to lock my access to editing my post whilst removing the quote it was referring to as well as the original post, at least you could have removed my reply to said post too 
.
FYI I wasn’t targeting you OP…
Thanks for the info on how it selects the servers, your first three paragraphs were quite informative and constructive, but please point to where I’ve ‘spew out profanity’? I had to consciously hold my tongue, or in this case fingers, on the rage I feel for how much they’ve disappointed me and destroyed the experience of this game I love more than any other. And unless I’m mistaken I didn’t curse once in my post? I understand just rage venting does nothing, so I tried to only display my displeasure in question form only.
Edit: Ah okay, there was another reply at some point. I didn’t see it. That would make more sense haha, sorry.
I approve of constructive criticism which is well-founded and does not include profanity or degrading terms of other human beings.
That only drives progress towards a better game whereas profanity and degrading terms gets us nowhere.
No worries, I only know of it because a Community Manager (if I remember correctly - could have been an MVP) had a connection with one of the Devs and asked how it worked (he did admit he did not fully understand it though) and provided the information he got out of it in a post a few weeks back.
It does make an awful lot of sense though. I have seen a lot of EU vs EU or NA vs NA which gets 400+ pings. If it wasn’t the above setup it should not happen. I also suspect that it chooses servers on a few parameters and I bet one of them is the server load. I sure hope it’s not at random, because… that would just be… a horrible decision.