The problem of stacked teams vs noob teams has always existed in enlisted as far as I can remember.
Side A gets a new toy which causes veterans to go into a frenzy trying to get and use the new toy which in return depletes side B.
The depleted side B gets a bad reputation as “Side B suffers” post go into overdrive causing even more people to avoid Side B. The cycle feeds into itself and is only broken once Side A got to complacent and gets too used to fighting bots or if the same vets that flocked to Side A abandon it in favor of Side C in anothere campaign (or faction post merge).
What could have been done pre-merge?
But the sad truth is that this issue could have been prevented entirely even before the merge had been announced.
Just copy every othere shooter on the market and just assign a player to the team and repeat until the server is full.
To ensure that people dont suffer from progression on one side lacking behind you would just need to unify the campain LVL for both sides into one. This would mean you would no longer be lvl 20 as berlin axis and lvl 10 for berlin allies but one unified rank 20 for the entire berlin campaign.
This system would largely mitigate the damage caused by the split playerbase as even low population campaigns would then just be 4 vs 4 instead of 10 vs 10 on high pop campaigns or 6vs 2 like how it is now. In addition the campaigns would still be equally filled with veteran on both sides (as they cant chose to stack a single side anymore and they will have tool for both sides unlocked equaly).
Would this solution be flawless? No but once incentives exist to discourage people from quitting instantly you could probably sustain a healthy envirorment to encourage balance across a large spectrum of matches.
But the gigantic but is the fact that you would need to remove the ability to chose the faction that you play. This change would be recieved terribly by the existing playerbase that is used to how it used to be and cause many of them to leave.
Losing players that instanly quit the moment they can no longer stack the winning team or torpedo matchmaking by instantly quitting would be sad but ultimitely might improve the matchmaking experiance in the long run.
But could this still apply to post merge?
Post-merge
With the abandoning of the campaigns and replacing them with factions everything gets a bit more complicated. You cant really unify progression for multiple factions like you could with the small scale campaigns before. This means the game can not expect you to have already unlocked the competing equipment for the opposing side aswell.
This means if DF ever did disable the faction selection to combat player stacking it would force veteran players to compete with STGs while only equiped with a ross rifle because they lost the coin toss deciding the faction. So in a way BR has locked DF into keeping faction selection alive or the MM would cease to funtion (even harder).
People on the forum like to bring up that the playerbase just need some more incestives in form of booster for the losing faction to bring balance to a matchup but I personaly got my doubts if it would help much if people hate losing this much that they would actively avoid playing a side unless the boost is big. Is the boost provided to big then too many people would flock to the faction which would quickly reverse the entire situation and once you have that faction maxed gets irrelevant entirely.
Trusting the playerbase to figure out how to ensure matches are balanced by themselfs seams overly optimistic to me.
solution: significant playerbase growth → enough population to implement elo system and matchmaking according to it → sweatstacks will only play against each other now. since most sweatstack players have inflated winrates and cant/dont want to compete against other stacks they either keep getting queued nonstop against them or will break up and play alone and drop in elo. therefore solving the whole issue.
only reason why there are no restrictive matchmaking systems in place atm (elo, map selection etc) is DFs inability to make the game attractive to more people.
If they implemented such function, it will most likely means that they would double the xp you need for each level since you are grinding 2 stuff at a time. Which would make the grind become more painful.
Just give booster when choosing random faction, it will prevent players from flocking one side for booster.
So you think you have a solution that consist of 2 parts, the first being playerbase growth, and the latter SBMM.
Would you mind telling me your plan to increase the playerbase? Stating what you want to happen and how to go about making it happen are two completely different things.
SBMM is a terrible idea for a game with 10v10 players consisting of 16 specialist classes, bots, weapon and vehicle in different tiers, artillery, bombs. How would the algorithm ranked the player? It is by kpm, K/D, win rate? Would the weapon and vehicle tiers be scrapped then since there are SBMM?
If the only way to play the game is to be competitive and sweat your balls off every single match then players will leave unless the dev create a different queue for rank mode.
There are so many variables that you didn’t consider, but I do admire how confident you are about your solution despite the logical gaps.
I don’t like matches with an unbalanced number of players as much as anybody, however SBMM is not the solution.
You said it right here. The factor that triggers it. The key is removing this factor.
Events are simple: Instead of making it Faction A gets at 10 days and Faction B gets at 18 days. Grant all 4 factions a reward and provide tickets to redeem for any of your choice. This would allow the community to filter itself into the 4 factions.
Tech Tree Additions are trickier, This means you need to add things with similar hype to all 4 factions simultaneously all the time. The issue here is Japan which is heavily lacking in several fields, being the newest of the factions, and historically, didn’t have a lot of these “super game OP weapons”.
When I first started playing this game, maybe a year and a half ago and was in my basic level one configuration, which means mostly bolt action rifles, it seemed to me that the vast majority of players I was playing against were using bolt action rifles so it seemed like it was mostly level 1 vs. level 1. Now, even if I go to all my squads using level one weapons, it is much more difficult as everyone is using submachine guns more so then rifles, which is smart, but I don’t remember it being that way, so my guess is that level one people were playing more level one people back then and now it’s level 1-3. Maybe it has always been that way, IDK. Granted, I didn’t know my head from my butt, but it seemed like everyone I was playing was the same. I also liked that back then you could choose which country to play for and choose the actual campaign. I imagine that was scrapped due to lack of players. Anyway, I will be 60 in may and play just for fun, although I do tend to yell at my computer a lot, usually “you gotta be f**king kidding me” when I get shot through a cement wall, on the other side of a hill or through a tank with a gun by someone on the other side of the tank. I guess my point is that I have no point which comes with age. I think people need to realize that this is just a game and free for most if they choose not to invest, but being a game is always going to have it;s flaws and will never be perfect. But hey, it beats an Atari everyday of the week.
I also liked that back then you could choose which country to play for and choose the actual campaign. I imagine that was scrapped due to lack of players. Anyway, I will be 60 in may and play just for fun, although I do tend to yell at my computer a lot, usually “you gotta be f**king kidding me” when I get shot through a cement wall, on the other side of a hill or through a tank with a gun by someone on the other side of the tank. I guess my point is that I have no point which comes with age. I think people need to realize that this is just a game and free for most if they choose not to invest, but being a game is always going to have it;s flaws and will never be perfect. But hey, it beats an Atari everyday of the week. 