Matchmaking (Android) Changes?

I'm feeling something too. I was able to run a 3/7 med ag hanger with my 6/9 Stalker and only have to deal with a ceiling of 7-8/6-7 heavies (Au and WSP included) at worst, and still do well. Even hit my personal best at 84% win ratio while still being outgunned. Now it seems what was yesterdays max is todays minimum as I'm running into 8+/8+ heavies piloted by more skilled pilots. I dont know if it's due to being the weekend ornot.

What I have noticed which seems to be consistent is the avg. dmg. of the players around me is much closer to my own than before, mine being 270k vs 3-400k of my opponents. Mind you most if not all players around me have lower win% which can be anywhere between 38% (lowest noticed) and 68% (highest noticed), and only once did I see a player with a higher winrate AND better stuff at the same time. Multiple 10+ high end heavies. But that one battle could be put down to available playerbase/rubberbanding so I don't mind that.

My guess is MM is using winrate & damage average more than hangar stats to do its thing, as I'm finding myself against "He got better stuff" as opposed to "He's pro" more often than not.

This is what I'm feeling as well, and I can't say I like it much. The "stuff" should be the primary determining factor in matchmaking, then use pilot ability / reliability to balance the two sides.

As it stands, fighting an endless stream of enemy heavy mechs who couldn't cut it against similar opposition is getting old.

MM always changes right after an update.

So that means in some damage level hell, all the Gepards are fighting eachother, lol.

the stupid gold bonus of squad matching make it far worst than that. Like says when a clan team up with 4 members squads, all are almost full lvl 12 on everything, then match making bring in two members with lvl 10-12 everything. The opposite team... top member is everything lvl 12, second (me) have 5x lvl 10 bots with most lvl 12 weapon, follow by lower lvl members, the last two are only 4 bots with lvl 7-9. And the worst doesn't stop here, the bots are big different too! Because the lower lvl are rarely gold bots, but the high lvl team often are groups of Fury/Lancerlot.

The MM just bring in whoever available, if no same lvl then continue next lvl till full fill the match, and even more ridicule is MM adding new member via 1:1 on each team, which mean when the low lvl team add one new member, the 4 members squads add one at the same time! regardless the opposite team have how many members, that's why squads matching often starting with odd numbers.

In old days, MM mostly can balance the team even though mixing with different lvl, but now, I will just leave when match starting with odd numbers, because almost not possible to win.

I agree with the fact that something has changed. It seems that geps with high level guns are being pushed up which seems fair. My Gareth and my Galahad also seem to be not getting pushed up as high as long as I have low level guns.

Could it be that weapons levels are getting reevaluated?

I've been running a Light 4/6 farming team for some time now and did not notice anything significantly out of pattern recently. Then I bumped my weapons up a bit to make it a Light 4/7.5 hanger instead, and suddenly saw Yama for the first time, along with a marked increase in medium and heavy bots for team mates. Seeing that map is definitely a sign of a higher battle tier, for one thing, but being paired up with upside-down Griffins and the like is not happy-time making.

Pixonix has also recently stated on a few Facebook comment threads that they are actively working on a new Matchmaker system, so what we are seeing here may just be preliminary tweaking for testing needs before things really get changed up, hopefully for the better.

IMO, the biggest MM flaw is that given equal levels, a bot with 3 gun slots versus a bot with 1 gun slot counts as the same weight. How many guns you can field vs your opponent should count for something.

"given equal levels"

A level 1 Cossack with a level 1 Taran vs a level 1 Gepard with 3 level 1 Magnums. (Using plasma-guns for their similar DPS/DPM rates)
The matchmaker would rate both the same, but the reality is the Gepard will win every time unless the pilot can't pilot.

Things have seemed a decent amount tougher for me tonight (I'm somewhere around low/mid silver I think), although I did read this thread before firing War Robots up so it could be a placebo effect.

The thing I have noticed is the few matches I've played tonight have started off (and remained) unbalanced (some for, some against my team) player count wise for a lot longer (a LOT longer) than I've seen before, and my opponents have seemed much more coordinated than usual.

I'm wondering if some of the higher tier folks have either been pushed down or deliberately moved down, creating a ripple effect throughout the tiers.

A bit off subject, the squad vs lone wolf balance topic is an interesting one to me. I came from a (dead) online squad based console shooter (Dust 514), a game which used equipment strength (represented by XP) to attempt to create an even match between the opposing teams. As can be expected, the squad vs lone wolf dynamic made matchmaking a bit tricky.

A lot of the ingredients for the issues from Dust seem to be present here, though I'm definitely not complaining. Better competition makes for a better player, and the answer to issues like this is to squad up, so I'm starting to consider looking for a clan.

I see a lot of shield and wsp boys in low silver now, and more pwerful heavies. I don't think geps were penalized (I pilot Destriers) but the the MM penalties for heavies, britboys and wsp was reduced. Last Stand is a lot tougher then it used to be. I'm ok with that. Just wish it was hangar average and not just the highest bot so I could mix heavies, mediums and lights more.