Marvel Rivals QP Matchmaking is actually rigged.

[󠀡󠀡]

I'm not complaining about not being able to climb the ranks - I don't care about ranks. I'm a QP player, and this post is about engagement based matchmaking and how it does the OPPOSITE of making the game fun.

First of all, the bot matches that you're forced into after a couple of losses. You'll get put into matches where 4-6 of the players on the enemy team will have names that follow a particular pattern, they won't talk, and they'll be suspiciously easy to kill. Go to your history page, and try checking their profiles - ALL of them will give you the same error message. These bot matches are meant to make you feel better about yourself after going on a losing streak, and meant to keep you engaged with the game. They do the opposite. They're a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ waste of time and are depressing to be forced into. If I click quick play, I'm expecting to play with AND against real people - people around my skill level. Engagement matchmaking ONLY works if the player is 100% unaware of it, and I'm beyond aware of it.

Secondly, the FORCED 50% winrate ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. I don't care if my winrate IS 50%, I don't want it to FEEL like it's being forcefully held there. I'm noticing a distinct pattern in my matches because of the forced 50% win rate. I played OW for years before swapping over to Rivals and I'm pretty good at hero shooters at this point - almost always having the most kills least deaths in my matches (excluding times I play strategist) That being said, in Rivals:

1. I go off for a match, outplaying everybody on the enemy team while being backed up by decent and/or good teammates.

2. I go off for another match, but this time I lose because I get paired with bad teammates that seemingly have no intelligence at all and make the dumbest decisions I've ever witnessed.

3. I lose a match uncontrollably, nearing a neutral K/D with MAYBE 25% progress on the objective while everybody else on my team is completely negative K/D, making even worse than the teammates in #2 and seemingly unaware that there IS an objective.

4. Bot match and then loop back to #1. I NEVER have long win streaks, and I NEVER have long loss streaks. It's so artificial dude.

Again, I'm not here to complain about rank since I'm a QP player - I'm here to complain about how Rivals obstructs your enjoyment of the game with its engagement based matchmaking. I realize that I'm playing the more casual game mode, but part of the fun depends on actually being able to perform fairly, and you can't do that when you're on a team full of people getting absolutely slaughtered and incapable of having your back. People who are that bad at the game should be getting paired, fairly, with other people who are that bad at the game. Why are you queueing them with opponents that are going to demolish them, and with teammates that they're going to drag down?

I realize you can't win every match, and I'm not asking for the system to get changed so I can do so. What I am saying is that I had the ability to go on big win streaks in Overwatch if I was having a good week. I think my longest streak was 14 wins in a row with a buddy of mine crossplaying from console. But Rivals? My longest streak is probably 5, tops. I still think Rivals is great and has much better gameplay than Overwatch, but good lord this matchmaking needs to be fixed because my wife, my friends, and a few others I've talked to are having this issue with artificial match quality that's watering down the fun of the game.

[Lokaror]

i completely agree. It drains so much of the fun from the game. I also want to be able to opt out from playing with console players in QP like how they can do.

[SpiffyGonzales]

I think most people who play the game agree. It's like with Halo how people talk about the good old days of multiplayer. They're usually referring to like Halo 1 where you were legit jus thrown against random people.

I feel like a lot of these games do random stuff like that to try to keep player numbers up. Honestly I think most people would be fine with maybe having it bracketed to like 3 skill levels or something. Me personally I say just have it be truly random, but regardless this is artificial as heck.

[󠀡󠀡]

Yeah like Overwatch (for comparison) had great matchmaking in my experience. You could either go on long win streaks or long loss streaks because the game queued you with people around your skill level. The win streaks were amazing, the loss streaks were crushing, and it felt so much more real. The more I've been playing Rivals recently, the more I feel as if everything is staged and I'm in a gambling casino where the house is controlling when I win or lose.

[Tiziel]

Another whinner who thinks an algoritm can predict any variable. You pointed OW as better matchmaking. You know you can download for free OW2?

[BoomsticK]

just queue on different servers

[Nitro Toxico]

Originally posted by Jaden:

It is astounding how many people defend this, and/or lack basic human pattern recognition. As if a multi-billion dollar company would spend millions of dollars developing as manipulative of a matchmaking system as possible, and then just not use it?

This is why I play practice vs AI. Just circumvent the entire thing, and play in a more chill environment to boot.

Practice vs AI is actually partly what happens in QP too, with the game giving you bots to play against if you had a bad losing streak or uneven win/loss rate. Except in QP's case, its more your team against AI's and not where your team can have AI too.
Sure, there is cases where your team gets an ai as well, but happens rarely and mostly if the game is unable to fill in the blanks of players joining up the AI Quickplay mode.

[󠀡󠀡]

does queueing on different servers have an effect on the engagement based matchmaking?

[󠀡󠀡]

Originally posted by Tiziel:

Another whinner who thinks an algoritm can predict any variable. You pointed OW as better matchmaking. You know you can download for free OW2?

I know OW2 is free, but there's a reason I uninstalled it. The game is a shadow of its former self, no hero feels fun to play anymore, and Blizzard has completely trashed the game. It's just a skin and collab money farm now. Like I said at the end of my post Rivals definitely has the superior gameplay imo but bad matchmaking. I really want to stay with this game because it can be fun, but the matchmaking is a huge roadblock to that fun.

also, wait, why am I a whiner for making a valid criticism of one of the game's systems? I mean I certainly yapped in my post but the point still stands.

[Snaht]

I only have sweaty competitive games.

So when I queue up in quick play, The game gives me the weakest opponents possible to make me happy because it's an easy win. And boy is it fun killing so many bambies

[Tiziel]

Originally posted by 󠀡󠀡:

Originally posted by Tiziel:

Another whinner who thinks an algoritm can predict any variable. You pointed OW as better matchmaking. You know you can download for free OW2?

I know OW2 is free, but there's a reason I uninstalled it. The game is a shadow of its former self, no hero feels fun to play anymore, and Blizzard has completely trashed the game. It's just a skin and collab money farm now. Like I said at the end of my post Rivals definitely has the superior gameplay imo but bad matchmaking. I really want to stay with this game because it can be fun, but the matchmaking is a huge roadblock to that fun.

Well im agree with you in that, i played ow1 since day 1, and i acually hate ow2 and blizzard.
You have to know it will happen in every hero shooter( Im not playing another shooter genre for long), bad/good rows, trolls, boosted, smurfing, afk, toxic and so on.
No algoritm can fight this. Im not the better player and i got gm 3d already as solo q.
Half of my lost games are due team, some of them are by my bad performance, playing tilted, sleepy, etc.

[SpiffyGonzales]

Originally posted by Snaht:

I only have sweaty competitive games.

So when I queue up in quick play, The game gives me the weakest opponents possible to make me happy because it's an easy win. And boy is it fun killing so many bambies

weak players or low level bots? a lot of ppl have been saying its bots. wether its true or not... i dunno i just played a match with a punisher and he seemed like he was just preprogrammed to do stuff so... maybe?

but either way, i agree with the idea that the matchmaking should change.

[PropanePls]

Ranked isn't even tha tbad

Originally posted by SpiffyGonzales:

I think most people who play the game agree. It's like with Halo how people talk about the good old days of multiplayer. They're usually referring to like Halo 1 where you were legit jus thrown against random people.

I feel like a lot of these games do random stuff like that to try to keep player numbers up. Honestly I think most people would be fine with maybe having it bracketed to like 3 skill levels or something. Me personally I say just have it be truly random, but regardless this is artificial as heck.

I always say random would actually be a lot more balanced. Even back before that we had Quake and UT dedicated servers. No matchmaking, no ranks. If the teams were unbalanced you would switch with someone. Games always felt fair and balanced. People would still get diffed obviously, but you'd always have at least one good person on each team.

[SpiffyGonzales]

Originally posted by PropanePls:

Ranked isn't even tha tbad

Originally posted by SpiffyGonzales:

I think most people who play the game agree. It's like with Halo how people talk about the good old days of multiplayer. They're usually referring to like Halo 1 where you were legit jus thrown against random people.

I feel like a lot of these games do random stuff like that to try to keep player numbers up. Honestly I think most people would be fine with maybe having it bracketed to like 3 skill levels or something. Me personally I say just have it be truly random, but regardless this is artificial as heck.

I always say random would actually be a lot more balanced. Even back before that we had Quake and UT dedicated servers. No matchmaking, no ranks. If the teams were unbalanced you would switch with someone. Games always felt fair and balanced. People would still get diffed obviously, but you'd always have at least one good person on each team.

sir... im not even old and seeing the word quake and having played it just made me feel old. here's a heart.

[󠀡󠀡]

Originally posted by SpiffyGonzales:

Originally posted by Snaht:

I only have sweaty competitive games.

So when I queue up in quick play, The game gives me the weakest opponents possible to make me happy because it's an easy win. And boy is it fun killing so many bambies

weak players or low level bots? a lot of ppl have been saying its bots. wether its true or not... i dunno i just played a match with a punisher and he seemed like he was just preprogrammed to do stuff so... maybe?

but either way, i agree with the idea that the matchmaking should change.

I wish I could send screenshots here but yeah, it's real. I can at least go into detail on all the ways to sus it out:

Things I didn't mention before: They'll play in very odd ways, such as Jeffs who get entire teams in their ult, but then wander around aimlessly despite being next to a cliff. Adam Warlocks who ult with nobody to revive. Characters that, with no indication you're near them, suddenly snap 180 degrees and aim directly at your position without fail. They also swap heroes in very predictable patterns, usually a total of 2-3 times per match and they tend to swap to the same role they're already on.

Things I did mention before: The names almost always follow a recognizable pattern, such as a name followed by two letters. RubyCL, DonaldWr, or they'll sometimes follow other patterns and otherwise just have very odd (but altogether similar) names. You'll notice they never talk - whether you question if they're real or try starting a conversation. They're extremely easy to kill - usually they only get 1 or 2 kills when you fight them. When you try viewing their profile it gives you an error, or the option is grayed out.

[Steve]

Originally posted by 󠀡󠀡:

Originally posted by SpiffyGonzales:

weak players or low level bots? a lot of ppl have been saying its bots. wether its true or not... i dunno i just played a match with a punisher and he seemed like he was just preprogrammed to do stuff so... maybe?

but either way, i agree with the idea that the matchmaking should change.

I wish I could send screenshots here but yeah, it's real. I can at least go into detail on all the ways to sus it out:

You... don't have to do all that; a simple replay ID would suffice.

You DO have a replay ID of bots in a match, don't you?