Article help needed: Are you still having MM issues?

I'm in Expert 2 on iOS, and I'm still having issues with the MM.
I often have good battles and, to be fair, I rarely have to combat against MK2 hangars; Dash robots, instead, are everywhere and so are maxed Champions (I face them EVERY game I play). Anyway, even with a 9/9 hangar I still enjoy the game a lot so the main problem is not about who I have to face: the MM is not good in this thing, but it's not too bad.

The BAD, BAD thing is the fact that it forces you to have a 50% win rate: when you are in a losing streak, you feel like there's nothing you can do to win and that the outcome of the battle has been estabilished even before the start. When you are in a winning streak, it's like you are clubbing noobs. Balanced battles are not as frequent as they were before the introduction of Leagues.

It has no sense, IMHO: the strenght of your opponents should be determined ONLY by your league placement and your win rate shouldn't have any impact on this. If you are too good for your league and you have high win rate, you should just go up in leagues and then the stronger opponents you face will naturally make your win rate lower. There's no need to FORCE a loss in a league-based MM.

I'm sorry if something I wrote is not easy and clear to understand, but English is not my main tongue so I do my best.

There are, as far I can see, three main issues, but only two inherently due the MM design.

1) The first, and real, issue, is with team MMing. As it always been, when pairing for teams the MM looks for the highest level in a team and then for number of teammembers, and matches with a team with the same top level and members, or the closest. That means that a team with one champion and 3 experts will almost invariably end up against a full 6 champions hangar from a clan. That is, as I said, by design and nothing new, it was the same with the old MM. However, that now breaks "mixed level" (which are still the majority, by far) clans irremediably, as back then a stronger clanner could use a secondary, weaker, hangar to squad with the younger members, now that is impossible because any bots will be meaningless, as tier is what it is looked at. Only way a clanner has to squad with weaker members is tanking down to their level. Huge problem.

2) Worse, the second issue derives directly from the one above and something that happened after the Mm was introduced: with experts-legends being thrown in a single pool, also full expert squads (and also, my experience, a 3 experts-1 diamond squads) will always be matched with full champions, clan squads, meaning that for people with a non maxed hangar, being part of squads larger than 3 is suicidal. "Hugerer" problem still stemming from MM design.

3) And then there is the usual problem of the MM not being able to tell a 12/12 mk2 hangar in bronze (but, lately, I've posted on facebook an example of someone who managed to get to prvate tier) from a real bronze hangar and putting one against the other. That is, of course, due exploitation of the MM system, yet is a flaw that has been there since the beginning, has been pointed out over and over and over and over again, causes immense frustration to the playerbase, probably is detrimental to Pixonic long term bottom line (assuming they consider anything like that, any doubt about it is legit by now) by turning away new playes.. and yet it's still there.

Android here.

PS
addendum: maybe the generalized perception of a totally useless MM stems from a special consequnce of n. 3. Besides the bronze tanker, who is very obvious, there is the "intermediate" tanker, meaning a champion that drops to diamond-master. Now, the random MMer has found some kind of balance over time, meaning that, more or less, teams are balanced tier-wise in number of people coming from a specific tier... however, there is so much tier manipulation that often the experts and masters on both sides are, in fact, champions in disguise, hence the perception of a totally screwed MM when the end result is a damage ratio between the two team that goes from 1.5:1 to as high as 3:1

Mixed league squadding is broken. Gold + Expert gets treated as highest tier player.

Tankers. Not bad on iOS. Don't see any at the upper tiers. I'm in Master.

Cowards. Bigger problem. Leaving games when they see Kbots, when getting spawn raided, when campers abound, when getting bad map, when seeing Ember, etc. etc. etc.

Not big enough pool at top. I don't like playing with Experts. They are really bad and I have to carry my team. I enjoy all Champion/Master games more as everyone is equally skilled.

Unbalanced teams. I see 6 Champion reds with Kbots or top clans. On my side is 3 Champion/Master and 3 Experts. Match is over before it begins. Need a handicap if MM knows it can't balance teams.

Maybe 1 in 10 games is actually even and exciting. Other 9 games are decided by MM or by leavers.

This results in loss of faith in MM and people just giving up when battle just looks lost.

Only valid reason for uneven battle is disconnect. That's maybe 2/10 games. So 7/10 games, the MM algorithm fails.

I posted this on reddit when another player was petitioning for suggestions and comments to Pix Dredd. Hope this helps gives some material or different perspectives for your article. GL. 

1) Separate farming resources from competitive gameplay
I've said this since 8-9 months ago and still saying it now. This is a broad BIG picture concept thing. They are closer with game modes so in my opinion you can achieve this. A huge problem is these two concepts are intertwined. I understand why high level champions want to seal club and make money fast cause upgrades are expensive and not everyone is a pay to play player. It happens in any game: farming for resources. As you level up everything is much more expensive, so what do you naturally have to do? GRIND. What's the problem is there's nothing in this game that separates farming from playing competitively. So you get an end result that hurts newer players and seen as bullying. Also to get down to the lower levels, you get players dropping out of games or not trying so disrupting proper games for them to get to the lower levels. Possible solution? Create one game mode for casual play that has a different reward system that maybe has better resource rewards. (gold, silver,etc) The setup can have games matched up with weapons/bot levels providing different tier's of matching which would be similar to the old MM days.THEN have a more competitive RANKING random play with rewards more league based. You can still provide gold/silver rewards but maybe less and you provide league points here. You'll be able to split who is looking for what type of gameplay SO MUCH BETTER. So once again, click on random battle, next prompt - CASUAL or RANK button. Then next prompt will be same for both your standard TDM or BR/DOM button for both casual/rank gameplay. Then you just need to setup the system and reward system for each type of Game Play. This will solve some of the problems we're having with regards to seal clubbing, MM (you'll at least have players with the same mentalities of what they want to play) as well as farming.
Yes, subdividing the player pool will need to be addressed but I think this is ONE way to tackle the club sealing and farming. 

2) Combine IOS and Android interfaces
I know this may be a long shot, but having a larger pool will give you more options on MM. I know it may be something technical or license issues, but IMO, it's worth the effort now. I dont know how other games like clash of clans and what not can combine, but if there's a way, you should pay the cost and do it imo. It's WORTH IT.


3) Re-invent the MKII system
I just read there will be a MKIII recent? OK fine, I'm fine with constantly increasing the cap, but you've also got to understand how you're going to deal with really poor MM AND clubbing. Also why make people re-start leveling their gear from 1-12 again. Just go straight to level 13 and higher as you've already set it up that way from levels 1-12. If you really don't want to seem greedy, this way people don't have to SPEED their upgrades back to level 10 MKII just to match or be slightly better in stats of the level 12 MKI. People will still spend money to get resources to increases those upgrades if you just make them not easily attainable. If you just go to  level 13 for example, at LEAST we can still use the weapon while upgrading in the background, and not shelfing it if we don't get it up to par. It's just damn greedy. The price can still be ridiculous to make it tough for any non-wallet warrior player to speed on through. This could have been done SO MUCH better Pix. I know you want to make money, but keeping player base happy both p2p and f2p is important for the longevity of the game imo.
A suggestions is after EACH level is acquired on a weapon, you give the option to go to MKII and not only until you hit level 12. So if I get to say level 5 on my thunder, I have a gold payment and ability to go to Thunder MKII 5 right then and there. I'm only suggesting this to help tweak the current setup you have implemented as I'm sure you can't just go back and re-invent the whole thing now that players have spent and committed to it. I think this can be done and help advance and evolve your solution imo. Even my suggestion needs refinement and I haven't thought out the whole solution, but it's a start. 

4) Tournaments
Hurry up and bring tournaments here HOSTED by YOU pix. Yes there are player hosted tournaments around, but nothing beats what the game developers can do and have on a larger scale. Have  rankings too. Having tournaments will always bring healthy competition to show skill not game activity. E-gaming always bring lots of positive aspects to the game IMO. Sponsors will come about and players want to show case to the world their skills. Look at how counterstrike sets up their tournaments. You can also have specialty tournaments where players can have all weapons/bots at the same level without players forcing to buy those things to setup those tournaments. I personally prefer an open tournament using dom so strategy is in play and you can have leagues like no restrictions, leagues like level 10 and lower everything, leagues with one champion only. Etc. Etc. This needs to get here faster.

He didn't say only MM. He also said articles on others coming soon. I voiced in as condensed as I could so I didn't have to repeat multiple thread locations as Dredd probably has a lot of media outlets and I rather not have my information in multiple places for him. I was only trying to help him out. 

This is my experience as well, I don't mind the wonky MM and I'm usually in expert 1 & 2... i'm outmatched by champions and dash hangers but I enjoy the challenge and I like to change up my hanger in attempts to maximize my damage against them.

Oh, skill is much more important. Skilled player in a Taran Cossack L9 will slaughter an unskilled player in any Haechi.

But in the end, it's mostly players of similar skill fighting each others. So in a way skill often means nothing, it cancels out. This is what makes the game really P2W, because only by paying you get the better gear.

(So not really disagreeing with you. I think.)

I’m iOS Expert 2 with a roughly 10/11 hangar of 3 Griffs, a Carnage and a Rhino. Here is my feedback and experience on the MM, because I believe fixing this will reinvigorate my interest in the game. Note: As a F2P pilot I now accept I will not be able to get new equipment (which had been one exciting element keeping my interest), so resolving the MM or expanding the custom match support to find/place pilots outside the MM is all that remains as a possibility to retain me as a player who is admittedly drifting away.

- Expert league is painful. I entered as a 9/9 hangar in May and have remained here until today. I do believe part of the pain is a steep learning curve (skill), but this is compounded by facing max hangars (gear). It is difficult to learn when you face gear you have no hope of overcoming (maxed pilots always lament “why do noobs use so much LR and MR?” - the answer is so we can survive longer than 3 minutes). It is also hard to identify in-game who has a higher hangar. In the all to common back and forth between E2 and E3 you can face anywhere from 8/8 to MKII 12/12 hangars in an Expert match. Different tactics are required for each with no clear way to identify which to use.

- There is no (zero) incentive to climb leagues. In fact the incentive is to drop leagues so you can gain resources over lower players, giving you an advantage to leveling your hangar. But there is then incentive to remain low so as to acquire even more resources for the newest gear. Insta maxing new gear or going to MKII is only possible with stockpiles of AU and Ag or lots of cash.

- Damage focus for leagues encourages narrow leveling of meta gear to that which yields the most damage (and subsequently more resources and league progression). It also encourages damage focus in game at the expense of winning and teamwork - chasing damage vs trying to win.

- New bots have created a significant shift in player placement across leagues, as the significantly greater damage potential certain hangars provide has caused the rapid rise of newer players with specific gear and the drop of older players with older gear. Example: in the two weeks after Dash bots were available for direct purchase vs random BM spins I dropped from Expert 1 to Expert 3 without changing my hangar or play style. I have remained in E2 ever since.

- When exactly were they planning to remove rewards from the LQ? And what is the plan after that when the strategy then becomes to just take a little longer and Fade?

- I don’t squad and am not in a clan. I see no reason to do so anyway until I have a maxed hangar for reasons mentioned already in this thread. I am already thrown into squad matches as a random and can confirm that any non-full-Champ squads always face full champs and almost always lose badly.

- MKII: for all the long/time players with maxed hangars who do not spend a lot on this game - see my first post about the experience in Expert as a 9/9 hangar. This will be your world soon, as it’s clear MKII is part of the E-Champ MM and not excluded from lower pilots.

- Consistency: IMO one out of every 10 matches ends in under 3 minutes (route/spawn raid). I have not had a match that went down to the wire in weeks. My placement as a 9/9 hangar was consistently at the bottom of the damage table and I only maintained placement due to wins (which I often contributed little towards). Now as a 10/11 hangar I’m either top or bottom of damage table but no consistency for win/loss - often I see big streaks one way or the other (but always between 40% - 60%). You really can feel the tug to stay around 50%.

Final thought: I yearn for a “fair” fight so skill can determine outcome. I had previously accepted that I needed to wait a year or so to level a max hangar before that would happen, so I leveled a narrow “meta” hangar to get there. Now MKII doubled the mountain size and increased the challenges to climb. If I’m always at a disadvantage vs opponents there is little or no incentive to play except to grind so I can get better gear. Right now, grinding for new gear is no longer a reasonable proposition - so I have no more real incentive to keep playing.

I guess everything is relative to how the League System ahd MM is designed to work. There seems to be a certain relative vagueness when it comes to Pixonics definition of MM and how the leagues play into creation of a squad and how the myriad of players look at MM and how it should define MM. 

From person to person, a match may consist of several different leagues... which is regularly seen. However, taking individual pilots league ratings into consideration (rounding to the nearest thousands) with ratings over 5000 just being considered as 5000 then, as a squad, does there appear to be an even match-up considering squad vs. squad?

I have found, personally that on a person-to-person basis, many define successful MM as a match being between all similar leagues but it appears when considering the make-up of the whole squad, things are closer (within a margin) of being balanced.

Is this squad vs. squad MM actually how Pixonic view a balanced MM? Who knows? As transparent as the MM is said to be, still, there is speculation, doubt and calls for fixing.

After all, the squad vs, squad MM  would tend to favor players of higher leagues, with optimum equipment... like Dashes or Mk2 equipment to score higher, have a higher league rating and hence be at the top of the battle results. So pkayers without high level or optimum equipment will be forced to a lower league in match results.

If an Expert League player is consistantly matched in battles where one or more Champion and Master players are thrown in with them, despite whatever skill the Expert may have, they will probably not score above the Master or Champion except on rare occasions. So an individual Expert player see's this as bad matchmaking where as Pixonic see's it as matcmaking doing its job on a squad level.

Basically, everyobe isnt on the same page...

I'm fine with the MM for one reason...

I have a non meta hanger. 2 Leo's, 2 Rog's, and a Griffin. Thing is, all my bots are 11's and at last count 17 level 12 weapons. I may be in Expert League, but I end up fighting Champions, or being tossed in with them. Fair fight? I'd say so. I like what I play. If I constantly fought pilots in my league, I'd be labeled a tanker. Under the circumstances, I don't see me leaving Expert anytime soon. 

Android expert, similar situation, except there are lots of mk2 stuff. And dashes, embers.. all maxed.  Usually there are only one or two guys  from expert (or diamond), rest are 12/12 champs.

Looks like MM chooses one or two lucky winners per match, from lower leagues, with lower hangars, to be thrown to mk2 embers. I dont care, I still manage to get 4-5 kills in average, with 7/8/9 low gear, and to have fun , like @dreamweaver said. But without tanking, I can forget about event tasks.

tldr; what I dont like about MM - repeatedly being matched with players two leagues above me, and with maxed hangars, higher by one tier.  @dredd send my regards to pixo :-)