The new matchmaking continues to be a problem. The first two or three heats during 5v5 tournament seem fine, but thereafter I start facing opponents with hangars that are much more powerful than mine.

It's not just SP droppers. My opponents sometimes also have balanced hangars but with weapons and mechs that are out of my league.

Please revert the matchmaking. "Skill" (whatever that means) is useless if your firepower can be pretty much ignored by your opponent.

They are using the old broken system this week. Nothing but sp droppers dominating the leaderboards. The matchmaking has never been about skill...

so true......NOTHING on balance has changed since the inception of this game, give up guys, Plarium will never do anything for its players...period!  The sooner you realize this, the sooner you will start enjoying this game in the end

"They are using the old broken system this week. Nothing but sp droppers dominating the leaderboards." 

Depends on what you mean by the old broken system :-). 

• There's pre-August, which was dominated by SP droppers. 
• Then they put in a new match-making algo in August which was totally broken (huge SP against small SP), and didn't stop SP droppers. 
• It was so bad that within a couple of weeks they reverted it to the pre-August system.
• Then a few weeks ago (November) they tried a new matchmaking algo, which seemed fine initially but in later heats of tournaments it again pits people against others who have much higher (or much lower depending on POV) SP, similar to the August algo.

They're all broken, but the November patch is more broken than the pre-August algo. This is because it doesn't stop SP droppers but in addition it also has this huge SP disparity in matchups.

"The matchmaking has never been about skill"

I put "skill" in quotes because that is Plarium's stated justification for matching players with huge SP differences. 

You can enjoy the game and still try to nudge for improvements by giving feedback. The two are not mutually exclusive :-).

Thank you guys for having an honest and non-argumentative conversation about all this. I really dislike the Bots as well, I quit playing for a few months cuz I got tired of the overwhelming power from the Bots. I also have tried changing my hanger to no avail. I had a fun time playing today, but like someone previously said, I felt like it was luck of the draw. Also, I hate that I can't ever win any acoins, everytime I try really hard, i.e.(playing with my son's ps4 remote for an event or tournament), 80% of the time, some bot swoops in and gets waaay more points than anyone else could possibly get. I wish Devs would come out with a rolled back version of the game, like when killshot was new.

"80% of the time, some bot swoops in and gets waaay more points than anyone else could possibly get"

If I understand you correctly, those aren't bots. Those are people. And if you're talking about the tournament positions, yes, it's luck of the draw, but also (apart from sp droppers) there are many players that spend hours on the game per day. You can't hope to get top 3 positions with such players in the mix, but sometimes top 6 is possible :-).

That said, I think this is unfortunately true of many games. There's a word game I play which has tournaments, and it's impossible to get top ranking if you don't invest hours.

If there was a way to separate casual players from dedicated ones, that might help, but offhand I don't think there is an easy way to do that.

Another option is to add some acoins as rewards for some of the other positions as well, or add self play challenges with acoins as rewards. The word game I mentioned does this. You don't have to always be a podium finisher in that game to advance.

I keep coming across AI bots that don't have any implants installed on there pilots... I keep seeing the moderators and managers in here calling people abusers for doing this yet the developers program the bots as sp dropping abusers. When Drew says "shuffle your hanger around" "I've done it myself and it works until I add mods" sounds like a suggestion of "if you can't beat'm, join'm" without actually saying it. Why is it ok for the bots to sp drop but when your horrible matchmaking system pushes people to do so they are labeled abusers? I'm not for sp dropping or defending it at all, I'm just wondering why the developers can program the bots as sp droppers and it's not a big deal but players get called abusers for trying to get away from your abusive cheating not so "skill based matchmaking" system. The developers created the sp dropping problem and blames it on the players. I remember when they did discord challenges of using no implants and I do believe another one to not use pilots, basically giving people a challenge for a fun way to receive some rewards. They started it and now blame the community. That's awfully shady, but what isn't with this company?

I guess it depends partly on what you mean by SP dropping. I've seen two common definitions:

1. Put one very powerful mech in your squad (like Nomad) and four very weak ones. This puts your squad/hangar power in the same range as people who have natural low squad powers (because all five mechs are weak). Then have your strong mech totally wreak the opponents.
2. Have a smaller squad power than your inventory power, but keep it more or less balanced. This can be done by removing pilots and/or implants, using weaker mechs than your stronger mechs, etc.

The first one is the problematic one, because it creates an imbalance. To be honest, I don't think I've ever seen a bot do this. That said, I don't think Plarium have ever called such SP droppers abusers. In fact, Plarium has explicitly said that this kind of SP dropping is a valid "strategy". None of Plarium's match making algorithm changes in this last year have addressed such SP dropping.

The second one is totally acceptable in my opinion. Sometimes you just want to play with those mechs (e.g. to complete achievements, some of which take a really long time), without giving yourself a god-like advantage over beginner players.

I'm using the first definition, by the way.

There is a new matchmaking test underway. Unfortunately I will only be able to partially try out the 5v5 tournament starting today, and may not be able to try the following FFA tournament at all. All the best to the players; fingers crossed that things work better this time.

Moderators, can we get a high-level overview about what this test is doing differently? What aspects of previous matchmaking is it attempting to address? Thanks!

My 3rd game of the tournament and my 1130 power hangar faced a human player with a nearly 3000 power hangar. My main mech had a combined (mech + weapons) power of less than 400, whereas the human opponent had all mechs in the 550-700 range. And in this game unfortunately even that much of a difference in power is huge. E.g. compare a Nomad at rank 3 with a Slingshot at rank 3. It's a small difference in power (272 vs. 219), but in no way can the two be considered a good matchup.

This huge squad power mismatch is the exact same problem with matchmaking in all of the last three tests. So what exactly is Plarium changing?

I have some ideas for how you can fix matchmaking, Plarium. I know a lot of people have opinions, so I've been holding back with my own thoughts hoping these tests are actually aiming to achieve something positive, but I'm losing hope. Do you want to hear my ideas? After three failed tests, maybe it's about time :-). 

Seriously?!  I'm getting blasted by tier 5 and higher...I have 2 t1, 2 t2, and 1 t3...wtf?  I have 1 mech with 50k HP...compared this this clown:

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Wow I thought I was alone in this. I've been playing since 2022 and have a pretty well setup hangar for control point clash which is what I play 90% of the time. I went from winning let's say 6-7 games out of 10 to now barely winning 2-3. It seems like it all started around the time "Mods" were released which in all honesty felt like another money grab. The gameplay used to be enjoyable, but all the changes are replacing enjoyment with frustration. I've contemplated just deleting the game and moving on to something else. 

Here's a summary from my matchmaking experience of the first heat (other folks' experiences may vary). I used two hangars - one close to 1100 SP and one close to 2100 (the latter slightly more balanced than the former). Both hangars have only rare and below mechs, rank 3 and below. No epic or legendary mechs. Some epic weapons but no legendary weapons.

1. The bots were almost always cannon fodder. This is something that I think started with the previous matchmaking test. (That said, if the earlier test is anything to go by, this will quickly change in later games and the bots will become overpowered.)
2. Both hangars occasionally faced human opponents with much higher hangar powers, including with epic and legendary mechs and weapons. This is something that started with the first test earlier this year, and has been a problem with every test since including this one.
3. Both hangars occasionally faced human SP droppers, people with similar hangar power but one overly powerful mech. This is not new.. it existed before the tests, and it continues to exist in every new test. 

I don't remember this being such a problem before with the horrible matchmaking. Before this "tester tournament" where you only get 8 plays per day, I dont remember being matched up with 1 or 2 mechs in the match that are clearing the whole field in about 20 seconds. Never did I witness the match end because of All of my teams mechs are destroyed. This is absolutely absurd. I understand there's going to be loses. And there's going to be players and mechs that have an advantage, but this is way above that. It needs to be fixed asap.

My observations from heat 2 of the current 5v5 test tournament:

1. Bots were slightly stronger (not outright cannon fodder).
2. I got lucky in both my matches and my heat grouping, in that I faced noone much more overpowered than me, and my heat group had noone that scored ridiculously high scores. This in general is very rare, but also the limited number of matches per heat definitely helped (since a player's average score mattered more than the total score).
3. However I did face at least one human opponent that was underpowered compared to me (a 1400+ hangar vs. my 2100+ hangar). 

So the mismatch continues, and I was just extremely lucky to not get the bad end of it. 

Let's be honest. We all know why they made the changes. It's to squeeze a few more dollars out of us. If you want to beat the players that you are matched with, you gotta pay. Just like when they released mods. You HAD to get mods of your own, because you were going up against bots/other players with mods in place and the only way to survive was to also buy mods.

I do not get matchmaking for these tournaments. I have no chance to get a good amount of points playing against other members like this example here.

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Make it balanced please.

CrystalDrew or other mods, I'm repeating our request for more information: 

Can we get a sense of what aspects of previous matchmaking this new test is trying to address? As mentioned by GothIxkin, "If we knew the matchmaking rules better, we'd probably be able to be more intelligent (and hopefully less belligerent) in our comments about the tests ". 

Heat 3 was a disaster by the way. This new "test" feels exactly like the November "test", in terms of how the matchmaking progress. Give us some confidence please by telling us what you're trying that's different.

And there's one specific point that is worth including in your response please - what's the big idea with the huge SP disparity in matchups (small hangars facing huge hangars)? That at least was not a problem before the August 2024 test. The August test introduced that mess. Why is every test thereafter repeating the same mess? What's the goal? What exactly are these tests aiming to fix, if anything? 

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Моя мощь равна 3 тысячам...

Мой самый сильный мех "ARES" с 3* 

и "quantum gun 6" 4*

Против меня выходят противники с максимально прокачанными мехами и оружием. Что мне делать?

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