The second test server has gone live, and while on paper it sounded good, in practice the matchmaker is totally ass. Everything revolves around “prefered maps”, with several questionable decisions like putting the Jumbo on The Pacific while the LVT(A)(1) is redtricted to Normandy (wtf), having the MP3008 time-travel to Moscow, the T-34 STZ being “prefered” to Berlin, the sniper Carcano being prefered in Moscow and Normandy but not Tunisia or Stalingrad, and many more. It really feels like it was either done by an AI or by a bunch of uncommunicated devs in a couple hours before the test went live.
After discussing and thinking I reached the conclusion that the “prefered maps” system not only is way too awkward (as restricting the maps a weapon can appear on, which is needed, would lead to making loadouts very difficult), but also rather bad on the long term (as more “Campaigns” get added).
The solution? I think they need to add Battle Ratings, but in a different way from what everyone thinks of when BR is mentioned, I’ll try to explain it in steps:
1-Battle Rating is introduced, but NOT in a purely strength sense (the stronger the weapon the higher BR), but on a MIXED historical and strength sense (kind of what we have in the Campaign system, no big time-travel (weapons being off by a few months is fine for balance purposes, like the Panzer IV F2 in Moscow)). Some weapons could get buffed, others nerfed, to bring them closer not only to the time they were used, but sometimes even making them realistic (for example, the Federov is massively overtuned in Enlisted while in reality it was way worse).
2-Assign Battle Ratings to weapons, calculate a squad loadout’s Battle Rating by looking at the highest BR weapon, which determines the BR of the entire loadout. This way you can’t “meta” your way through to run a higher-BR weapon by filling up the loadout with low-BR weapons, and instead you are encouraged to keep the BR of your weapons in a loadout close to each other.
3-Assign Battle Ratings to MAPS, not “Campaigns” (otherwise as more “Campaigns” get added, calling them by their initial letter (“M” for Moscow, “N” for Normandy…) would become impossible). This allows for way more flexibility, the problem of “Jumbos in D-Day” wouldn’t happen if the Power Plant and Le bre map were separated from the D-Day and Ver-Sur-Mer maps, and similar problems could be tackled that way. Also allows to introduce a way smoother curve between “Campaigns”, effectively deleting “Campaigns” within the merged factions and leaving individual maps themed around historical battles.
4-Weapons only show their Battle Rating, not the maps they can appear in. There could be an option to check the whole map list and see their BR, but on a diferent tab from the weapon’s description: for example, clicking into the faction you’re currently playing on the top bar would display some info about the faction and give the list of maps you can appear into, with its respective BR.
5-When queueing, you’ll get put with similar Battle Rating players. Once the lobby is ready, the matchmaker will choose a map that fits the lobby’s BR (be it an average BR of all players, the highest BR in the room, or at random between all BRs in the room). If the matchmaker can’t find enough players within a BR gap within a reasonable time, it fills the lobby with bots of the right BR as usual (so low-BR players aren’t put with high-BR players).
This way there is no issue when making a squad loadout, your BR gets set to your highest-BR weapon so you are incentivized to not bring some particularly-OP weapon by dumping everything else. And since the BR gets set to the highest-BR weapon there is no problem of “weapons time-traveling several years into the future” since all that can happen is decommissioned weapons being used in later theatres, not the opposite (remember, BR would be a mix between power and date).
Immediately after the merge, the main goal for Darkflow should be making maps, lots of them, to fill the BR gaps in maps. Soviets lack maps between Stalingrad and Berlin? Add Kursk and Tannenberg. USA lacks late-war maps? Put Battle of the Bulge in. Japan lacks late-war maps (that would actually have medium BR due to balance issues)? Add Philippines and Okinawa. The list goes on. Most work could be moved into creating new maps to accomodate the new system, and the variety within the game would skyrocket as players make squad loadouts with varying BRs and see many different, mostly historically-authentic maps.
I don’t mind if the Merge is delayed until Christmas, it is the final step towards outlining the Merge Major Update (apart from bug fixing), and it needs to have an stellar launch not only to not create bad press, but also to attract unactive and new players alike.