Is this a Random Battle !!!!! Really !!!!

[rzimmer]

In the early morning, say 6 am with about 3,000 to 5,000 players logged on, I have been on teams that are NOT normal for a Random Battles. 8 vs 8 -- 4 vs 4 and today was the strangest 2 vs 2 -- each team was 1 DD and 1 BB. All the players posted WTF is this. I checked to make sure is was Random not Brawl. Is this going to happen more often or was Matchmaker malfunctioning. Has anyone else had this happen?

[Uncle64]

Yea had one 1 vs 1 CV match for about 6 months ago

[Banzai]

If you are playing at odd times then it certainly can happen, even to the point where you can get 1v1s in random. The amount of people online is less relevant than the amount of people queuing and if someone has been in the queue for a long time (4-5mins) then the matchmaker will just start a game with whoever is available in the right tier spread and ships.

At T10 you should get a full match most of the time but off peak (such as 6am) you wont have a lot of people available to be paired with in lower tiers or superships, so again that can cause the matchmaker to dump smaller numbers of players into a game rather than making them wait indefinitely.

[Hiei]

In addition to what Banzai said, one big problem is the tier system.
With it only going +2/-2 (Exception being fail divs) it depends on what tiers people are quing for since you cannot have Kongou with...Shimakaze for example.
Then there's things like the other game modes such as Asymmetric battles/ capital ship operations/ ranked/ coop regular operations ECT.

This is why they don't "Just make things permanent" or change around the match maker.
And with you playing at 6am it somewhat complicated that too.

[~T~D~]

This is 12 AM for Europe, guess your US and must have a low population RN in game.

[christof]

Mind that a player being online does not mean they're currently in the queue. Even if they are, they may not be in the same gamemode as you (particularily when temporary ones like Asyms right now are active). Even if they are, they may not be in the right tier spread to join a battle with you. Even if they are, they may not be in the right tier spread to join with other players that the mm tries to put in your match. Even if they are, their ship choice may cause problems with other ship choices of the other available players.

So the number of players that the mm can place together can quickly become very small, once all factors are considered. And that's just the ones we as the general user know to exist. There may or may not be more.

[AllahDiyenKirpi]

Originally posted by Uncle64:

Yea had one 1 vs 1 CV match for about 6 months ago

no way ahahahh

[Ace42]

Originally posted by christof:

Even if they are, they may not be in the same gamemode as you (particularily when temporary ones like Asyms right now are active)..

This.

Asyms are a massive drain on Randoms queue, because it's where most casual players will go for quick-and-easy rewards. Especially as the Dockyard event comes to a close and people are trying to squeak out the final stage(s).

There's also the Flagship Operations mode active at the same time - which is another PvE queue that can potentially give substantial rewards for relatively low skill requirements.

Combined with the usual queuing issues of "low population server and low-population times" and you run into the prospect of there just not being enough people queuing for that gamemode in those tier bands at exactly that time to populate even remotely full matches.

Oh, and sometimes queuing on-or-around patch-days / server maintenance / server downtime / whatever can mean you're just caught out with one rapidly emptying queue due to bad timing, before getting moved across to the fuller fresh queue.

As touched on by a few posters in this thread:
It's why whenever someone's arguing "why can't we just mess around with the matchmaker to suit my half-baked idea of what would make the game better" the answer's always "because that would create massive problems for the queueing system".

Whether it's opting out of +/-2 MM; whether it's opting out of playing with subs or CVs; whether it's trying to introduce skill based matchmaking; whether it's weird conspiracy theories about the MM being rigged against them; whether its making temporary game modes permanent; whether it's running more game modes concurrently, etc, etc - it's always someone who just hasn't given the bare minimum of thought to how badly it would exacerbate problems like the OP has hit upon.

[Jaynoble55]

Originally posted by Ace42:

Originally posted by christof:

Even if they are, they may not be in the same gamemode as you (particularily when temporary ones like Asyms right now are active)..

This.

Asyms are a massive drain on Randoms queue, because it's where most casual players will go for quick-and-easy rewards. Especially as the Dockyard event comes to a close and people are trying to squeak out the final stage(s).

There's also the Flagship Operations mode active at the same time - which is another PvE queue that can potentially give substantial rewards for relatively low skill requirements.

Combined with the usual queuing issues of "low population server and low-population times" and you run into the prospect of there just not being enough people queuing for that gamemode in those tier bands at exactly that time to populate even remotely full matches.

Oh, and sometimes queuing on-or-around patch-days / server maintenance / server downtime / whatever can mean you're just caught out with one rapidly emptying queue due to bad timing, before getting moved across to the fuller fresh queue.

As touched on by a few posters in this thread:
It's why whenever someone's arguing "why can't we just mess around with the matchmaker to suit my half-baked idea of what would make the game better" the answer's always "because that would create massive problems for the queueing system".

Whether it's opting out of +/-2 MM; whether it's opting out of playing with subs or CVs; whether it's trying to introduce skill based matchmaking; whether it's weird conspiracy theories about the MM being rigged against them; whether its making temporary game modes permanent; whether it's running more game modes concurrently, etc, etc - it's always someone who just hasn't given the bare minimum of thought to how badly it would exacerbate problems like the OP has hit upon.

I wouldnt call Asyms and Flagship or OP's lower skill persay. Just different skills. A good player is going to dominate PvE to a greater extreme but PvE isnt always easy (outside of the joke co-op). You need to remember the average player is not going to be as good as you so the difficulty will be higher.

Regardless, I see "PvP'ers" come into OPs, lose their arse then complain about everyone else being "PvE'ers" and that they suck. When in fact the PvP'er has learned you cant play both modes the same way. Such as is even PvP modes require different skill sets. A random player that hard boiled into that meta is not going to do well in a Brawl for example.

PvE can have different highs and lows. Carrying a operation is a fun thing when you can pull it off and its not really possible on the same level in randoms that I have seen. PvP pays FAR more if you are even a competent player imho.

Bad players are still going to earn less than good ones in Op's but will earn more than being bad in randoms, so Ill agree with you there.

I myself find that when Asyms are out the greatest hit que is operations, not randoms. I still can get a random game just fine in about as much time. This is just my personal experience.

That being said I understand why Asyms are on a timer. And it makes sense. But I disagree its because of easier rewards, mostly. Ive seen low silver league ranked players come into Asyms and just face plant. Because they tried to play it like ranked. Which wont work. So its easier and more lucrative for people to play modes they do well in.

[christof]

There is one thing about Asyms (and Operations) though, that is the bots being very predictable. Despite being better than the Coop bots, that makes playing them easier than human opponents, since you don't really need contingency plans for enemy action. Just one concise plan for yourself.
It is definitely correct though that you see quite a lot of players completely faceplant in Asyms. Mostly them just rushing in, thinking it's just glorified Coop. Then quickly realising that being focused by four ships or more can actually be pretty deadly. Or quite often forgetting that these bots will actually hit offered broadsides fairly often. And will make use of their torpedoes, hydro, radar and such.

[Jaynoble55]

I agree. A Asym bot is not going to trick you and wont formulate a plan to open up crossfires but what they do can be effective. Just because the ships are two tiers down (mostly) does not mean they wont drill you a new hole if given the chance. The bot aim can be pretty damn accurate if you open yourself up. They SUCK with long/medium range torpedos and are miserable with air strikes. But they will dodge long/medium range torpedos pretty well if the space is open and they can and will disengage and run. They will also try not to offer broadsides but often fail to do so, but they will try. It seems they prioritize broadside players in their targeting. Overall they are competent for what the game mode offers.
Of course good players are going to crush them.
Your going to get games with 3 shliefs/libtards that just roll over the bots. You'll get games where a pro level sub player or CV player just shreds a flank. Just as often you get average folks.

For me, one thing I love about asyms is how I can bow tank. Its not something good to do in PvP modes as a tactic rather than a situational reaction. This opens up a new style of play for me which I have learned to be very effective. I cant get that in randoms or brawls. And on the same token I cant get cerebral planing that you need for randoms. Just different skill sets.

I will still maintain, and I think you mostly agreed with me Christof, that t6 Asyms are actually quite challenging for many players. If you div it, it wont be much of a problem. But newer players tend to do t6 asyms and they can be quite awful (understandably as they are new or just learning the mode).

I have had a great time with this rotation of Asyms but they could be better. Cruisers and to an extent DD's need a xp buff to get people off the battleship meta. I would also like to see bots focus on proximity and not just broadsides to knock down the secondary meta that the mode is now. Kinda sad ill have to go back to OPs to get a break from randoms but its unavoidable.

[Ace42]

Originally posted by Jaynoble55:

For me, one thing I love about asyms is how I can bow tank. Its not something good to do in PvP modes

Depends on the ship, the circumstances and match-ups, and what you're trying to do.

It is definitely something you can make use of in PvP - and it's often something you should be leveraging to create battle impact where applicable.

Most heavy / superheavy cruisers want to be using their ability to bow-tank to take up the aggressive crossfire positions that allow them to inflict maximum effective damage with their superior guns - but obviously that requires removing overmatch threats first, and pushing into a position that won't get them crossfired.

Even for ships that can't /pure/ bow-tank, a lot of them can comfortably wiggle their angles to bounce shells off main armour belt instead of eating them through an over-matchable nose, which requires pretty much identical skillsets and is one more way of squeezing performance out of your ships.

If you're starting to get a feel for it in Asyms, it is VERY MUCH something you can translate to randoms where the same factors apply:
Managing your exposure to farm, judging your ability to remove the threats that can farm you before they get a chance to eat a ton of your HP, finding positions that can eliminate enemy broadsides quickly while they're stuck trying to ineffectually farm your bow armour.

This is especially true for secondary-spec ships where you want to be breaking up the enemy team into a series of 1vs1s (or 1vs2s depending on your confidence and the match-up) where your bow-tanking while secondaries slowly farm away will out-trade the enemies trying to eat through your bow tanking.

Reading the map so you know when to commit to going bow in to maximise battle impact; or when you've got to hang back far enough to go dark, play defensively, maybe adopt a kiting position while waiting for an opportunity to open up is something you learn from doing, but Asyms are a good way of getting a sense of how close to the line you can push things and still win through every engagement.
And of course some ships have better pushing angles than kiting angles and vice versa.