https://warlight.uservoice.com/forums/77051-warzone-features/suggestions/33371260-quickmatch-rating-prereq

Add a button where it allows you to set a minimum global rating that your opponent must have in order to be matched. Very often I get matched with players who are new to the game and this has several downsides.
- I am not enjoying beating someone who doesn't understand the game (yet)
- I can't imagine them enjoying the way they loose without having a clue what they are doing wrong.

A gliding scale where you slowly get better opponents as you are improving in the game should be the most pleasing learning experience.

I would rather wait a little longer to get a matchup where I get challenged then to farm a lot of newbie players where neither of us enjoys the game

In order not to have to much confusing stuff for the new players there could be a minimum rating requirement you need to have before you can set a rating prereq. Or

In order not to make people abuse the system just allow to set a minimum required rating and not a maximum required rating

If you agree this could be a useful feature give it a vote on uservoice

I like this and would use.

+1; this would be especially useful for real-time games.

I see you play 99.9% real time games, and I believe the problem you're having is specific to real-time. I suggest trying some multi-day ones, too, as those will get you better matches.

The problem with RT is that your pool of players is limited to those who are searching for a game at the exact same moment as you. The QM system already tries to give you a good match, but if there are none close to your rating, it gradually expands its willingness to give you a poorer match the longer you (or the other player) have been waiting.

It sounds like your request is to adjust the real-time QM matching algorithm to wait longer for a better match.

I suggest trying some multi-day ones, too, as those will get you better matches

You are right my games are only in realtime. I am not a big fan of multiday games at all but i would consider trying this if the games were not a 1d6h boot. I am, due to work, very often offline in the weekends so 1d6h is just a guarantee for me to get booted a lot.

It sounds like your request is to adjust the real-time QM matching algorithm to wait longer for a better match

Not entirely correct. I would like the to see players are given the option to wait longer for a match if they prefer that. Like with coins there is a slider that you can set to the amount of coins you want to play for. Why not add a slider which minimum rating you wish to play?
Some players don't mind at all and just want a game as soon as possible. Others, like me, rather wait 15 minutes on a good match then play for an hour and match 4 newbie players

Also a real-time QMer and I think neal's point is correct. I'd be willing to wait even 30-50 minutes (w/ Warzone in a background tab) if that guaranteed me a better opponent.

Same - I would happily wait 30 mins for a good match.

If you really want to play competitive games in a real-time setting with high-skilled players to give you that "competitive" feeling.. Then Real-Time ladder should be the place for this requirement for high-skilled players to fight with each other in a ladder type mode.

Why doesn't people move to real-time ladder for this desire of "competitive games"?

Because the ladder is not fit for purpose. > https://www.warzone.com/Forum/296792-realtime-ladder-dying

This game needs a boot time that is different in the weekend (1d m-f and 3d f-sun)

@Plat: also, QM gets way more activity than the RTL ever has. Casual players don't play on the RTL. A lot of casual players are actually really good, or at least decent enough to be worth waiting to play against.

Fixing the RTL won't solve this issue.

Edited 2/19/2018 02:59:03

well QM is everything that the RTL is not. Being able to veto templates, being able to vote on templates, not being able to see who is looking for a match so no matchfixing possible. Everything that has been asked for regarding the RTL is implemented in QM.

The fact that a 1500 rating is currently enough to rank top 10 says enough. It would be lower if not some people would have joined in the hope to get the golden trophy. I understand that you consider it a shame that something classic like the RTL has lost every attraction but why defending it when we got something much better? You try to make people come back to the RTL but you are not even playing it anymore yourself. Your last match was nearly 2 months ago

Regarding the ''competitive feeling''. I dont care so much for rankings, or winning. Ofc i do want to win when i play but i get more pleasure from a good match that i lost then a poor match that i won. The RTL being the competitive place is a joke, it was already dead before QM came.
The fact that i could take first place and ''break'' the longest win streak said enough over the average skill level. On QM i didnt even come close to a 38 game winstreak because QM is actually attracting the best of the best to play it.
And as knyte said, also the casual players can appreciate it. Nearly 5000 people played the RTL in almost 4 years. Nearly 17000 people have played QM in only a few months

@Knyte If most of casual players are decent to give a good game why is there calls for a suggestion of this type? This thread is essentially a talk of "How can we get better opponents instead of noobs to make it a "competitive game".

@Neal I don't advertise players to join the Real-Time ladder, It's shit. I'm saying the real-time ladder should have the same features as QM and it should be the place of "competitive" gaming since it is a ladder otherwise what's the point?

From: https://www.warzone.com/blog/index.php/2017/08/sneak-peek-quickmatch/

"Although you can think of quickmatch as a better real-time ladder," So of course, Fizzer would expect the best players to come here because it has the features the real-time ladder has been screaming out for. That's fine

But then..

". In fact, one of its goals is to make it easy for new WarLight players to start playing multi-player,"

If you have all the best players playing Quickmatch.. It makes playing Quickmatch difficult for a new player. Yes it's more accessible but it's more accessible to play against more experienced opponents that will kick your ass repetitively. I believe the newbie experience could be compared to playing Chess as a 1000 ELO to a 2000 ELO player. Yes there is a algorithm but I've matched with players with a significantly lower rating in under 10 seconds of me searching for a Quickmatch game. I play with my alt who was 650 rating at this stage.

Hence..

You could have a real-time ladder to suck all the top players from Quickmatch and have them in Real-time ladder. Increase the chances of newbies to play newbies.. Then when a newbie becomes good enough and becomes hungry for competition, They go Real-time ladder. Problem being the real-time ladder is shit hence why it should upgrade in transitioning quickmatch features to the ladder or it should not exist.

If Quickmatch was truly meant to be "as a better real-time ladder" the real-time ladder should be deleted or pursue this purpose above ^. If it did pursue this purpose above, This thread wouldn't be here. You have the choice of both worlds of less-stressed games or competitive as fuck games.

You can have a rating filter in chess, because the 'start' rating is typically 1500 and not 0. Hence you start approximately in the middleof the pack on all major websites.

Seeing as it is absolutely necessary for any game that new players get's a quick match(up) you can't have a rating filter that in practice blocks new players from playing the game. QM is more about active and quick game then an absolute skill competition. And based on the great number of players it's been an amazing success.

Don't mess with my QM please, right now it's perfect! Love the instant games. For the RTL do whatever you want.

Edit: Two things, wz doesn’t have the playerbase of chess, so matcups will always have a greater skill gap.

QM is also played on phones, where waiting is not acceptable.

Edited 2/19/2018 06:01:41

@Rick/Platinum: a lot != most. Most casual players are downright terrible and a waste of time to have to play against. There's some 30% win rate people you'll find even at a QM rating of 350+ especially now that QM is somewhat mature. QM is supposed to be the easy way of getting a good real-time game. This is hampered right now by the matchmaking. But at the same time retreating to the RTL to get good matchups won't work, because the strat community is still a relatively tiny portion of all good WZ players.

Fragmenting real-time players between QM and the RTL is a downright stupid idea imho. We should just let the RTL die at this point; it's been a shitshow from the start. QM also will never be a legit ladder- it can't be a competitive ranking mechanism when it's more focused on just being able to get a, well, quick match. Vetos and opponent selection easily compromise the validity of QM ratings, to say nothing of the rating system itself.

WZ is a casual game mostly populated by casual players. Unless that changes or the playerbase gets much larger, there's just never going to be enough room for the kind of RTL that you want. The best we can get right now is enhancing opponent selection in QM so you can at least have a good system of playing against players of your own caliber.

@TBest: this would be an opt-in thing. If you don't want to wait, don't wait. I'd just rather not get matched with another <L20 player who does the same stupid thing where they think Asia and North America are the best starts.

Edited 2/19/2018 06:11:56

I think the RTL could make a huge comeback if it had integration into unity. Up until this point the ladders have be pretty much pc only (some players use their mobile browser i know, but I'd bet most mobile players don't even know this site exists). Integrating the ladders into unity would definitely help increase all ladder participation.

That being said the RTL needs some work.
- New templates, preferably some that get cycled in every year. (I could see the voting system QM uses to work here very well)
- Rating degradation, whether it's resetting the ratings or implementing a MDL style activity bonus.
- Better alerts for when the game starts. I really love how QM just pops me into the game. The current system for the RTL just sucks.

Upvoted your suggestion.

MD QM is better in match-making, but yes 1d 6hr is too short at times.

MDL is right option if you are looking for highly competitive 3 day boot games-though it has limited vetoes.

@knyte

@TBest: this would be an opt-in thing. If you don't want to wait, don't wait. I'd just rather not get matched with another <L20 player who does the same stupid thing where they think Asia and North America are the best starts.

It's not opt-in, if you wait and I want to play. But I have to wait, since you are waiting. Sure, in theory there is enough non-waiters for that to never happen. But I don't know if that is true for WZ's playerbase. When it comes to #concurrent players, only Fizzer knows whether that would work.

The overall experience is better if you play 5 games, then get a good mach up - then if you wait ~45 min for the perfect match up. At least I would argue so. In practice this is what the RTL tried to compromise between with it's 5-min waiting time.

Clearly there is demand - at least on the forum - for a rework of the RTL. Just don't mess with my QM :P

My wishlist would be something like

1. Swiss (chess style) tournaments system.
2. New rating system for the ladders (maybe RTL to try it out) where you don't start at 0 in rating. GLICKO 2 or something. The current rating system and UI encourages rigging match ups.
3. Ladders added to unity
4. UJS all of unity

Edited 2/19/2018 17:35:25

RTL needed an overhaul but has now been overtaken by QM big time. And QM is really great and what WZ needed! Great work fizzer! Would be cool to knows some statistics how successful it really is.

I'd now rather make strategic RT and MD QM leaderboards of some kind -maybe just the ones we already have- and give these a prominent place and a trophy or so. And focus on improving QM with ideas from the community instead of fixing RTL. I'd even remove the RTL.

I'm sure there will be plenty of ideas coming to improve QM step by step to serve within one and the same system the new players, the majority of the players, and the strategic elite..

My solution to the RTL is that when you click to join a RT QM there's a check box asking if you want this to be a "ranked game". If both players want a ranked game the game counts for your RTL rating, otherwise it only counts for QM. That way you don't dilute the playerbase with 2 competing RT player pools.

This might help with neal and knyte's problems as well if you prioritize matching players who both want ranked games, since better players are more likely to want them.

Edited 2/21/2018 16:19:21

+1 Beren