So …putting things into perspective, who knows, maybe its just me and my personal experience.
From a Moscow campaign which is my favorite campaign by far i’ve seen 4 guys running around with mkb snipers around and shredding the whole team apart.
Or you have the opposite where some random dudes play as Soviets and shred with late campaign weapons
Don’t get me started on Normandy where my win rate as USA is significally lower than the one of Germany.
Damn i come to this game expecting to unwind after a busy day, i end up being annoyed how frustrating this game may be at times.
Its not about winning or losing, i just want to have fun. And i cant have fun, if i cant even spawn or certain point of the map gets filled with some high tier or paid squad dudes shredding the either team full of bots or clueless people
This needs to be solved somehow, the grind is already a lot for new players but balance is even worse and i dont think they’ll stay enough just ending up being frustrated.
Stacked squads are definitely a case for matchmaking.
As for the winrates, that’s what you get in any game where there are no safeguards to prevent a faction from getting overpopulated.
Not a shooter, I know, but look at New World’s PVP. Every server has (or had, they claim to have fixed it) one faction dominating all PVP across the map. Which faction that is differs from server to server.
Once a faction gets a losing streak its playerbase just rolls over and stops playing it.
Yeah balance has been quite bad for the last few weeks.
It seemed to have started when the new battlepass came out.
I used to have about 50% win ratio and it was always challenging.
Now it’s more like 25% win ratio, and those wins aren’t really wins at all - just a few sweatlords steamrolling the opponent while the rest of our team is just trying to keep up.
The other 75% - the defeats - is like being being bashed till there’s no tomorrow.
I’ve also made a thread about it:
The word “balance” doesn’t describe the full extent of problems. It’s more like there are times where you can’t do anything at all, you just get humiliated throughout the battle and then your reward is equally humiliating.
Full stacks of veterans fighting random newbies and / or mostly bots is only the tip of the iceberg here. Almost every moving part involved in this process is botched to some degree.
I could go into detail on what exactly is wrong and how to maybe fix it or at least make it less unbearale, and I did all that many times. Unfortunately, after seeing their progress over two years, I don’t think much can change at this point.
The quickest and easiest solution would be a MM that keeps the same number of actual players to bots equal per side.
It would immediately fix some of the issues this game has with team balance.
Normandy got a massive (and I guess persistent) influx of players when an event squad was a reward. I actually did a few Normandy matches and there was no contest from the Allies, we had 5 guys spawn at once in that squad still, months later, and all build a rally.
It was overwhelming.
Coupled with the existence of the StG44 in that camapign , and you have the recipe for Veteran players wanting to be there.
Ironically , a long time ago it was the reverse.
Jumbos were king. The best tank the Axis had was a PZ4 and the best AT was a Sturmpistole.
If you didn’t get an insanely good Ju188 pilot or such on your team, you were screwed.
It used to be my lowest win rate campaign, at only 67%. But lately its been nearly perfect and I’m back to I think 81 or 82.
Still doesn’t touch my Allied WR of 96% but thats only because I know the maps off by heart, so I can cause a lot of havoc for the unsuspecting Axis player.
This problem persists into Pacific now too. People are obsessed at times with KD , and perceived advantages so now we have tons of allied players and next to no Japanese. Which makes every battle im in a sweat fest trying to carry out the Emperors orders.
I think none of this would have been a problem if it was possible to experience rewarding gameplay without doing everything in your power to make sure that everyone around you suffers as much as possible. The extent to which you can make everyone around you miserable is almost unprecedented in this game, but the roots of this problem go even deeper than that.
God, remember back when it was just Moscow and artillery had a hard 2 minute cooldown, the heaviest tank was a Panzer (II)I, rifle-caliber automatics were rare, planes had smaller payloads and went down easily?
I remember not as many of my hopes and dreams being crushed by developers yet. I’m not sure I remember the game being particularly good even ignoring the predictable lack of polish.
The “it’s been all downhill from there” part sounds true, though. Despite some tiny qualitative improvements and fairly impressive amount of (mostly worthless) content (added onto the trash heap).
My group has to turn off matchmaking with pc to even have a chance. Any time it’s on it’s pure elite squads and cheaters. (Again, this is our experience)
a handful of elite players on console dominate with what we can only assume is wallhacks and we are hunted down no matter what route we take, even trenching on the very border of the map to prove a point.
when we do manage to get into “legitimate games” our allies seem incapable of understanding core mechanics such as the use of engineers.
in regards to BALANCING of weaponry, I’ve noticed MOST of the Axis equipment is obtained early on equals that of mid tier allied equipment.
trying to aquire gear to balance it out is extremely time consuming or expensive.
a handful of equipment is nearly impossible to use (such as AT mines) because defenders don’t get the opportunity to set up an actual DEFENSE. They have to guess where they are going to fall back to and hope their teammates can keep the enemies busy long enough to set something up. ON TOP OF THAT, many teammates have a tendency to break down those structures for various reasons, once again leaving a gaping hole in defenses.
How is it even solution if we have 75% of players on one side of campaign?
Make them wait for 30 min?
This doesn’t even begin to make sense. Most players still wont change side even with 50% booster to weaker side.
It all comes down to worst problem of this game that will never be fixed - grind.
What sane being that plays 3-4 hours a week will suddenly change side to play with bolt all over again for months, after which balance shifts again.
And if they get stomped over and over they either change side or eventually game
Remember Soul, the “current” MM tries to put together even games but ultimately it’s the player base that decides which side is stacked and which side has more players leave at the start. Everyone demands a mythical MM but players bail when they see either a map or matchup they don’t like allowing the other side an easier ride. The best solution I think is to allow players to decide what game modes to play in but this may lead to longer queue times but even then it will not fix the player base issue. Pacific is its own conversation
If losing was still fun and everyone had opportunities to consistently progress based predominantly on their own skill / efforts, the grind wouldn’t be nearly as unpleasant. As it is, it only adds insult to injury.
That’s an arbitrary number. We don’t actually know what the population dispersion is per side.
And waiting a bit longer for a match is not a problem if you have a little patience. Sadly that is lacking in a lot of people , which instead creates the problems we see today.
And a good enough booster or bonus for playing either side (which many people have clamored for) might be a good enough start to balance things out and make things work better.
I’ve yet to see a better approach from anyone else to be honest.
You can bitxh about the grind, but its not bad in comparison to other titles of similar ilk.
Grind is how you make money in a F2P game. Unless you have a massive population and can suffice on cosmetic microtransactions.
Thats how you sell things to us, make the grind just enough that we spend the money to ease the burden. It’s a tried and true method. And won’t change unless they completely overhaul and adopt a new model, which is doubtful.
It well and truly behaves more like an MF than a MM from what I’ve personally seen.
If it was to make even teams it should be distributing them in a better way. Not 2 v 10.
There are many ways to help with queue management and population shifts. Bonuses, actual population numbers on campaigns that artificially increase queue times for over populated sides. It creates a bit of a psychological effect that makes people with limited time choose the side where they can get in a game faster.
Pacific population shift though is a product of not enough QC however. Lack of SuperTesters and Test Servers means we get all the mistakes that filter through.
And after 130 battles now, they are legion when it comes not only to map design but weapon type and ability.
I have many times suggested they adopt the map and mode voting that MWO has. Of all systems, its the best one I’ve experienced thus far. But I have no idea if we have the population patience to support that.
Been having similar issues and it is making the game not that fun to play, like at all.
I don’t care about a lost.
However, there is a difference between losing and just getting steamrolled in no time.
I literally been in games and when I look at the match making I see recruits and other silver badges verses a team with several members with gold badge. This hasn’t happen once, twice, or thrice. This has happened multiple times and only one time I managed to get on team with GOLD BADGE roster which(no brainer) won against a team with lesser time in the game.
The game actually needs some type of ‘MATCHMAKING’ system to pit players against similar rank players. I don’t even mind if it is something the devs just throw in to randomize you into a proper ‘matchmade’ game with balance teams. Just not this one team has more experience and just dominates the other team BS that keeps happening on here.
It is even getting to the point where I will tab to look at the ‘team matchup’ and just ‘nope/desert’ out when I see an obvious higher rank team pitted against low ranks.
