Unlucky or matchmaking threshold screwing me?

Hi everyone.

As I have mentioned in here before I am a casual middle-of-the-road player who usually manage to fit in a few matches every week between a busy workday, a two-year old son and a a wife who also occationally needs some attention

In the last year and a half I’ve have started to focus a lot on 1v1s and quite quickly moved from rank 7-8 to rank 12-13 where I seemed to find a pretty good balance with other players.

However, In the last month or so my ranks have been plummeting, mainly due to being matched with opponent who are ridiculously higher rank than me. We are talking nothing below rank 16 at least for the last ten matches (as checked on the recent matches screen) and I believe it has been happening for probably another ten matches before that. Once I was matched with Ace as whermacht where he is currently #6 in the world.

I figured that it might be due to a diminishing player base, but I have a friend who is still messing around rank 7-8 and he does not have this problem at all. The threshold seems to be somewhere around lvl 11-12 and when I drop lower than that which is starting to happen, then I start meeting more balanced matches again (around rank 12, which is balanced for my skill, but technically higher than the rank I’ve been dumped down to).

Does anybody have an idea if this is just bad luck, confirmation bias on my behalf or some hidden thresholds in the game that makes some pretty punishing leaps as soon as I hit a certain rank?

Probably a mixture of both.

Probably a mixture of both.

Just my luck

Oh well, then guess I'll be seeing you on the battlefield real soon wuff

Up you skill man
+Wuff

Up you skill man
+Wuff

Fair point! Will you babysit my kid while I go to boot camp?

Having said that I've so far found these high level players to be quite poite, so maybe I should use the chance to squeeze out some advice from them on what I should have done differently in the match.

Fair point! Will you babysit my kid while I go to boot camp?

Having said that I've so far found these high level players to be quite poite, so maybe I should use the chance to squeeze out some advice from them on what I should have done differently in the match.

Easy, i like kids , but live in Ukraine .
I have same situations like you i was better then another players, but same bad vs good players.

I guess it is to be expected with the comparatively low player base compared to some other online games. Still the best RTS game I've ever played

I feel your pain, though I got to admit it must be more fun to have unbalanced matchups when it is in your favor. It's always more fun to beat up the kid in the wheelchair than being the kid in the wheelchair amirite?

I guess it is to be expected with the comparatively low player base compared to some other online games. Still the best RTS game I've ever played

+1

It´s a shame that devs stepped away from this awesome game

+1

It´s a shame that devs stepped away from this awesome game

Hopefully the rumors of a third installment is true and they keep what works from the previous ones, fix what didn't and add a little extra. That's not too much to ask for is it?

Hopefully the rumors of a third installment is true and they keep what works from the previous ones, fix what didn't and add a little extra. That's not too much to ask for is it?

Totally worked that way for DoWIII amirite.

I feel your pain, though I got to admit it must be more fun to have unbalanced matchups when it is in your favor. It's always more fun to beat up the kid in the wheelchair than being the kid in the wheelchair amirite?

Honestly, it isn't. Trust me, waiting 10 minutes for a match that lasts 7 minutes really isn't that fun, especially when it happens for most games unless you deliberately only queue at certain times. Even then, most matches still end up being severely mismatched and it gets really old really quickly :/