Matchmaking - constantly against higher lvl opponent. Why?

What is it that I don´t understand.

Matchmaking is supposed to find you fair games. So sometimes you will get a opponent with equal rank, sometimes slightly higher, sometimes slightly lower.

My last 20 1on1 games have almost always been against higher ranking opponents. Played once against a player 7 ranks above me. I played twice against players 6 ranks above me. I played lots of games against players with +5 ranks. On average my opponents are easily 3 ranks above me. Of these 15 games only 3 have been against players one rank below me. Two have been against equal ranked player. I have never played against someone more than one rank below me in these 20 games.

I am getting tired of having to play these lop-sided games every time. I am a bit better than my rank suggests but I just don´t think it´s fair that my opponents always rank higher than me. If only rank is used by matchmaking why do I keep getting matched up with higher ranking players all the time?

I thought it was a conincidence that this keeps on happening so I played some more games but it is always the same.

Strangely in all other game-modes matchmaking works fine (including pre-made 2on2s etc).

So god damn frustrating.

1v1 player pool is very low since a few months now, it keeps getting lower. This will probably be the issue, since the Matchmaker will desperately try to find you a game, whilst failing to get anyone near your rank 90% of the time simply because there aren't enough players with your rank around.

Will probably get better once the patch hits and people return.

So you are trying to say that at my skill level (my ranks are between 9-11 in 1on1 and 2on2) there are just no active players? But ranks between 12-16 are more active and thus I always get matched up with them?

And that the ranks below me dont have active players either?

Is there a possibility to show my recent 1on1 matches in this forum? Like the player card but for recent games?

The Matchmaking system always aim higher than lower, because you lose a lot less points by getting someone way above your skill level and losing than the opposite, getting someone lower and losing hurts your ranking real bad.

So what about my opponents who have to fight me despite having lower rank?

Tightrope showed a trick where if your matchmaking takes too long then you can stop and then restart the matchmaking process - supposedly this resets the range to the pool of players closest in rank to you. Doesn't mean they'll be lower than you but it'll help assuming it works.

Other than that I guess you can try playing during "Peak" gameplay hours more often when the pool of players is bigger.

No one an answer how the match maker works other than Relic with out extensive testing.

Think about this logically, if you keep getting matched higher than others keep getting matched lower too.

But typically they work like this;

Looking for player around your level
....... Cannot find
Expanding search

Looking for player around your level
....... Cannot find
Expanding search


Keep repeating and expanding search until match found. One would imagine your inability to find players around your level is because there are none at the time or they are otherwise already in game.

Is there a possibility to show my recent 1on1 matches in this forum? Like the player card but for recent games?

Not exactly sure what you mean... Like, the "Recent matches" tab from the official leaderboards?

Otherwise, if you PM me your steam address I might be able to restore the list of your opponents and their ranks.

Thinking that MM would match me always equal ranks, is bad perspective. If MM would do that, you won't able to climb ladders. It must be more likely to match you slightly better rank rather than lower rank to give chance you to climb your correct rank. Remember that losing higher rank doesn't hurt your rating much. It is kind an expected situation.

Thinking that MM would match me always equal ranks, is bad perspective. If MM would do that, you won't able to climb ladders. It must be more likely to match you slightly better rank rather than lower rank to give chance you to climb your correct rank. Remember that losing higher rank doesn't hurt your rating much. It is kind an expected situation.

Yeah so everyone always plays against higher ranked players. Can´t you see the flaw in that logic?

Remember that the "rank" you are talking about is based only on your standing in the ladder, while the matchmaker uses your elo number. The elo number is what ladder is sorted by, but if a ladder of one faction is shorter than the other, or more tightly packed, you will be matched against people who have similar elo, but completely differend ladder standing and rank.

This has a lot to do with percived "ballance" of factions. If a faction is considered bad by community, less players will play it making the ladder shorter and cousing such effects. This will definitely change after the patch as people are going to try out all the factions then.

Remember that the "rank" you are talking about is based only on your standing in the ladder, while the matchmaker uses your elo number. The elo number is what ladder is sorted by, but if a ladder of one faction is shorter than the other, or more tightly packed, you can be matched against people who have same elo, but completely differend ladder standing and rank.

That might be the reason why my matches are always kind of unbalanced. So USF rank 10 = OKW/OH rank 12?

That might be the reason why my matches are always kind of unbalanced. So USF rank 10 = OKW/OH rank 12?

Possibly. Sadly, relic doesn't show us our elo, only the ladder standing... So we will never know for sure. What you can do is go to the last page of ladder and see how many players are ranked in it, that way you can get the ratio to multiply standings by. This is not perfect (it assumes linear dependence between elo and rank, while sorting is not linear dependance in any way), but better than what relic serves us.

The important thing is though that it doesn't mean that your matches are imballanced - it means that you judge a ballance of a match by flawed indicator (the "rank").

Last match was against PanzerGrenadierAngreifen who is currently 3rd in Wehrmacht while I am 600 in USF.

Thanks...I don´t even want to play 1on1 anymore because of this.

Match was found after searching for about 10 seconds. So very short searching time too.

I don´t know what to say about this...

Remember that the "rank" you are talking about is based only on your standing in the ladder, while the matchmaker uses your elo number. The elo number is what ladder is sorted by, but if a ladder of one faction is shorter than the other, or more tightly packed, you will be matched against people who have similar elo, but completely differend ladder standing and rank.

That might be the reason why my matches are always kind of unbalanced. So USF rank 10 = OKW/OH rank 12?

I think you are actually talking about "level", not "rank". Seems like you are rank 1223 with SOV right now which translates to level 6. The levels are relative to the number of players playing on the ladder. Somebody that is smack in the middle of any given ladder, you will be level 7, regardless of how many players are on that specific ladder.

You might want to check out this article.

Now, it is correct that the matchmaking will not necessarily try to match people on the same level, but with the same ELO value which is not shown. And these might translate to different rankings and thus level depending on the faction.

The article mentioned above is about a year old, but I checked recently and found to my surprise that the numbers didn't change significantly. So, if we go by the old numbers:

You are SOV level 6; to get a reasonably balanced matchup, you'd have to play vs. an OKW level 5 or a OH level 7.

Your level with OKW is 8; with the diagrams from last summer you might expect a reasonably balanced matchup playing against an level 9 Soviet or a level 8 USF.

With USF you are level 9; again with the statistics from last summer, a balanced matchup would be an OH player at level 10-11 and an OKW player with level 9.

Now, when looking into the data for the article I found that matchmaking found those sweet spots only in about a third or so of matches. Given the lower number of players now, it is likely worse now.

Last match was against PanzerGrenadierAngreifen who is currently 3rd in Wehrmacht while I am 600 in USF.

Thanks...I don´t even want to play 1on1 anymore because of this.

Match was found after searching for about 10 seconds. So very short searching time too.

I don´t know what to say about this...

It may happen that you are up against someone away in elo if he is searching for a long time (not necesarily you have to wait that long). If it happens after 10 seconds it is actually a non issue - you won't loose any elo against 3rd player in the ladder - you can play him for a bit to learn some things and then just surrender - neither your elo nor ladder position will change significantly - just becouse of the elo gap between the two players.

If by some miracle you win such match though - you are going to advance massivly. Trust me - I happened to be totally unfairly matched against ihitto once and won that match - great feeling and elo/ladder boost.

I think you are actually talking about "level", not "rank". Seems like you are rank 1223 with SOV right now which translates to level 6. The levels are relative to the number of players playing on the ladder. Somebody that is smack in the middle of any given ladder, you will be level 7, regardless of how many players are on that specific ladder.

You might want to check out this article.

Now, it is correct that the matchmaking will not necessarily try to match people on the same level, but with the same ELO value which is not shown. And these might translate to different rankings and thus level depending on the faction.

The article mentioned above is about a year old, but I checked recently and found to my surprise that the numbers didn't change significantly. So, if we go by the old numbers:

You are SOV level 6; to get a reasonably balanced matchup, you'd have to play vs. an OKW level 5 or a OH level 7.

Your level with OKW is 8; with the diagrams from last summer you might expect a reasonably balanced matchup playing against an level 9 Soviet or a level 8 USF.

With USF you are level 9; again with the statistics from last summer, a balanced matchup would be an OH player at level 10-11 and an OKW player with level 9.

Now, when looking into the data for the article I found that matchmaking found those sweet spots only in about a third or so of matches. Given the lower number of players now, it is likely worse now.

Great. Thanks for the info.

Last match was against PanzerGrenadierAngreifen who is currently 3rd in Wehrmacht while I am 600 in USF.

Thanks...I don´t even want to play 1on1 anymore because of this.

Match was found after searching for about 10 seconds. So very short searching time too.

I don´t know what to say about this...

This can happen in the opposite direction too, you know?
Angreifen maybe was in queue for 5 minutes or more, then you queue up so he got you, it can happen.

The ideal situation is to play against people of higher rank. You will not climb the ladder otherwise. The player at #1 should not even play, as there is nothing to gain.

When there are 2-3 top players playing at once, there isn´t big chance that they will meet themselves (because when 1 is searching, 2 are matched).

Top players get then worse players, and because they are top players they will end match within 10 minutes. This means that ~ 3-4 worse players will have to meet someone 1 top player every hour. So that chance that you will get matched against 1-2 of them over time is rather high.


Also you can only improve by playing against top players, watching replays against them and trying to improve playing against them.

First time you will lose badly
Next time you will last more
Next time even more
After some time you will manage it to lategame
And after some more games played, you will eventually beat them.

For example, I´m not best player and I was learning like you some time before (started playing when pros were already pros) and this week I almost won against VonIvan. 12 VP´s left, if I didn´t lost firefly, I would have won.

#ADAPT