Not sure if this is just a thing on PTS or a bug that seriously needs to be addressed, but there was a matchmaking issue earlier in a solo ranked match. One team had a healer while the other team had a tank. Again, not sure if this is just something with how the PTS is set up to get as many pops as possible, but I definitely would not like to see this hitting live.

most likely the real issue is not enough people are anyways to form balanced teams.

For regular warzones they said in the roadmap that each team will match tank againsthealer if counterparts are not found, so I guess that somehow extended to the ranked queues, but yes, this is unfair.

Yeah, regs that's fine, certainly not optimal, but ok, what ever, gotta get that queue popping. But definitely not in yolos.

most likely the real issue is not enough people are anyways to form balanced teams.

Even if not enough people for ranked its a serious issue. Sure we have skank tanks so its 4d vs 3d with a healer, but that is also not entirely fair, the tank would have be guard swapping like crazy to keep the people alive long enough to kill the healer or at least one dps.....

Even now, if you don't have a proper match you don't get solo ranked with 1h vs 1t, the que rather does not pop.

Even if not enough people for ranked its a serious issue. Sure we have skank tanks so its 4d vs 3d with a healer, but that is also not entirely fair, the tank would have be guard swapping like crazy to keep the people alive long enough to kill the healer or at least one dps.....

 

Even now, if you don't have a proper match you don't get solo ranked with 1h vs 1t, the que rather does not pop.

you wouldnt be seeing that problem if a majority of the people getting on the pts were queued because 90% of them only get on to test the Rishi deal under proper settings like a live server pool you would be getting proper matches but since the server likely is only seeing 8 people it just makes the match because it has no other choices.

For regular warzones they said in the roadmap that each team will match tank againsthealer if counterparts are not found, so I guess that somehow extended to the ranked queues, but yes, this is unfair.

Would you rather the tank + healer to be on the same team?

I did a few games on my sorc healer. And apparently more than 2 heals on each side do get queued up.

See link:

https://gyazo.com/5a946886587805f128a789b68df33775

(We had 2 heals, they had 3)

- Somehow in a new Shae Vizla arena, the other team only got 2 people on their team (one of them was named Keith Kanneg)

- Kid Lee's character in Hypergates was invisible except for his gun (I couldn't see him either) and he was not on the ops group frame

Kid Lee's pts video: https://www.twitch.tv/kidlee/videos/all (PTS PVP Event /w Swtorista)

I've had games tonight against 4 healers and they just end up as pretty boring stalemates. The maximum of 2 healers per team is not working. I'm not sure of what the potential impact of players declining a queue pop is on the outcome of a team composition but that may impact it.

I also think the matchmaking may not be working properly; I had a game with 1 healer and 1 tank on my team against 3 healers and a tank.

I really like the cross-faction queue, both for warzones and for solo ranked, that makes for a much more balanced matchmaking.

It feels a little odd that general chat in warzones is not cross-faction, so e.g. someone from your team can write something in general chat but not everyone from your team will read it. Therefore, it would be great if you can make general chat in warzones cross-faction as well, not just group chat.

Restricting groups to 2 healers helps, but I have still seen a lot of zerging if the healers are good. One the other hand, if there's a bad healer in queue, it makes it harder for the group to win.

Like Aviriia, I've also seen some matches with three healers. Not sure if that's a bug or not.

Feedback from testing today

Matchmaking in reg arena doesn’t take into account back fill when people leave. It seems to just put in who ever is next in the queue.

Had teams with back fill that had multple healers and tanks vs 1 healer. This is probably the same for ranked, which leads it open to exploiting.

Not sure if this is just the low pop on the pts or not, but should premades be matched with pugs in normal arena matches? Especially ones that are trinity.

What bout ranged vs melee arena? Is there matchmaking in place to put one ranged and one melee on each team instead of all ranged vs all melee.

Matchmaking in 8 man seems to be off.

Multiple healers + tank vs 1 healer teams?

Is there stealth matchmaking? ie, a bunch of stealth on a team vs 1 stealth on the other team? Wouldn’t it be better to split the stealth up to balance both sides.

Also should the reg matches be limited to 2 healers per team in 8 man and 1 healer for arena. By not limiting them it won’t stop matches becoming healer tank stalemates because you will still have teams with 3+ healers and tanks.

Well, Trixie already brought up all my points, so I'll just use her post as a starter.

Matchmaking in reg arena doesn’t take into account back fill when people leave. It seems to just put in who ever is next in the queue.

I saw this too. We started with 1 healer and 3 DPS each. After the quits and backfills on the other side, our final match was 1 healer and 3 DPS against 2 healers, a tank and a DPS. This was pretty late in the evening for me though, so it's possible that's all there was in the queue. If that happens, I guess the backfills are better than leaving a 4v2 match? I don't know about ranked. Doesn't seem like there really is a good solution there.

Not sure if this is just the low pop on the pts or not, but should premades be matched with pugs in normal arena matches? Especially ones that are trinity.

This doesn't bother me so much, because in theory they are now taking skill into account. I don't remember being in any arena match where I felt like it was a stomp-fest one way or the other (except that last one, with all the backfill). I have 5 arena matches total if I remember right. Four of them started and ended completely matched healer/tank/dps - wise. The fifth was the backfill one. So only five samples, granted.

In fact, in general, except for one Quesh match, I never felt like I was in a blow-out match. Win or lose, it always felt like both sides had a chance. I was, though, usually at a side node, so not in a position to necessarily know how the "battle for mid" was going. At least I never saw either side give up and go stand at "their node".

What bout ranged vs melee arena? Is there matchmaking in place to put one ranged and one melee on each team instead of all ranged vs all melee.

If they are going to go that far, they should almost do it by spec. Only one merc per side please.

Matchmaking in 8 man seems to be off.

 

Multiple healers + tank vs 1 healer teams?

Was it 2 healers v tank + healer? Because that is something that was listed as a possibility in the original "match making changes" post from Eric. Also, that post said they were not going to put more than 2 healers in a reg match, or 1 healer in an arena. I saw some reports where people said they got 3 (or more?) healers to a side. I don't remember ever seeing that except for the one backfill case already discussed.

Is there stealth matchmaking? ie, a bunch of stealth on a team vs 1 stealth on the other team? Wouldn’t it be better to split the stealth up to balance both sides.

I thought this same thing. Especially when I was trying to stop a couple operatives from stealing our node in ACW.

Also should the reg matches be limited to 2 healers per team in 8 man and 1 healer for arena. By not limiting them it won’t stop matches becoming healer tank stalemates because you will still have teams with 3+ healers and tanks.

That's already supposed to be happening. Eric says it here: http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=950111

Hey folks,

 

Matchmaking is another place that we wanted to make some pretty big improvements for Game Update 5.9.2. Below you will find our planned changes:

• 
  ...
  
• Role Balancing:
  
  • Matchmaking will never place more than 2 tanks or healers on the same team in a Warzone or 1 tank or healer for an Arena.
    

One last thing though... there is no way that "skill" matchmaking is working, because I was in a match against SNAVE! So unfair. :p

Here's my quick feedback:

Well, cross-faction queuing works great! Kudos for that!

As for role matchmaking... Uhhhh

I don't know if there were too many healers compared to DPS (seemed like the case for most of the night). But role matchmaking was a bit inconsistent when it came to healers at least (as others have also noted).

Matchmaking will never place more than 2 tanks or healers on the same team in a Warzone or 1 tank or healer for an Arena.

Umm well, this definitely didn't work... I had an ACW where I was solo healing and there were 3 healers on the other team. And I think there were possibly 2 tanks on my team too? I know there was 1 for sure...

But anyway seems role matchmaking needs a bit of tinkering with.

Ermm, I think a lot of people don't understand the update. Matchmaking will try to balance out the matches in a fair a way as possible. it doesn't not mean that if two healers are in queue and one tank that one of the healers will be blocked from the queue.

The matchmaking should ensure that if there is one healer and one tank in queue then they will be placed on opposite sides. What is unfair about that? Similarly, if there are two tanks and one healer in queue then the tanks will be on opposite teams. yes, one team will have a tank and heal but that is the fairest basis or apportionment base on the roles available.

Anyways, that being said. I don't think the new matching making thing was doing a good job. This could be because people were in pre-mades. if match-making doesn't sort pre-made them it's gonna be the same thing. If you have a pre-made of 2 tanks and 2 healers then they are guaranteed 4 DPS, while the other team might end up wth 8 DPs and thats an automatic loss

Anyways, that being said. I don't think the new matching making thing was doing a good job. This could be because people were in pre-mades. if match-making doesn't sort pre-made them it's gonna be the same thing. If you have a pre-made of 2 tanks and 2 healers then they are guaranteed 4 DPS, while the other team might end up wth 8 DPs and thats an automatic loss

In the original bioware post about matchmaking Eric clarified that "Great question! A pre-made (in Unranked) can only have a max of 1 tank and 1 healer in their group." So, in theory, unless it bugged on the PTS, a group with 2 tanks and 2 healers should never be able to enter the regs queue. I read someone posted about some bugs with queuing a group for regs, but I think that was a problem where it acted like they were trying to queue for group ranked (which I guess you can't do unless you have 4 in the group?).

I guess you could get a mis-matched match if there was a premade with a tank & healer, and that was the only tank or healer in the queue. Then they would both end up on the same team (because Eric also clarified that they will not split up groups).

In the original bioware post about matchmaking Eric clarified that "Great question! A pre-made (in Unranked) can only have a max of 1 tank and 1 healer in their group." So, in theory, unless it bugged on the PTS, a group with 2 tanks and 2 healers should never be able to enter the regs queue. I read someone posted about some bugs with queuing a group for regs, but I think that was a problem where it acted like they were trying to queue for group ranked (which I guess you can't do unless you have 4 in the group?).

 

I guess you could get a mis-matched match if there was a premade with a tank & healer, and that was the only tank or healer in the queue. Then they would both end up on the same team (because Eric also clarified that they will not split up groups).

Its possible he meant per premade. There can be 2 premades in an 8 man side. That could be one reason for the 2 healers and tanks,

It would be good to get a Bioware clarification on this because even 2 healers is too much most of the time and if you give them a tank each, then it’s not that different to having 3 healers, which is cancer.

On SF yesterday, there was a 4 man healer premade every match and it was boring cause there were always 2-3 healers on the other team too, as well as tanks. The whole thing turned into dummy parsing and the only people that died were people I could seperate from the herd and kill them like a lion would.

I really hope matches will be limited to one healer per side. You could even have 2 tanks then and it not be that bad.

Well got a Voidstar which was again a Stale Mate as before with multiple healers on both sides.

Got an Arena with 3d 1h against 2h 2d, just like typical regs

It feels as if there is no new matchmaking, still many healers and many tanks on both sides.

3-4 healers per team??

What happened to 1 healer 1 tank per team? Every match has been a parsing exercise and it’s boring. Whoever caps first wins and that’s it for the whole match, you may as well leave because you know whose going to win or it’s a stalemate.

8 objective matches, not one had less than 5 healers and some had 7 healers.

This isn’t match making and it’s clearly broken if we are only supposed to have 1 healer and 1 tank per team,

I’ve got plenty of screen shots if you need them

Also had one arena with 2 healers on one team and one on the other. No tanks on either side.

There was also no match making based on gear.

Team 1:

2 sins (248 gear)

1 Sorc healer (248 gear)

1 Merc (248 gear)

(All had 236-240 Augments)

Team 2:

1 Jugg (245 gear)

1 Op healer (238 gear)

1 Sage healer (231 gear)

1 Merc (244 gear)

(No one had all 236 augs, they were mostly 228)

Edit: if you look at Eric’s below post and compare it to what I experienced above, you can see this isn’t working as well when you consider the gear lvls of both teams.

In 5.9.2 we are making optimizations in how we use this information along with things like role, spec, gear, and more to try to create the most balanced teams we can.

 

-eric

I really liked the idea of limiting the warzones to a maximum of 2 healers and 2 tanks per side- that's how I thought matchmaking was supposed to be when I read the patch notes, but it's still not working. I kept getting into matches where I was the 3rd or 4th heal on a team. The matches were balanced yes, but 4 h on each side is very boring to me.

If this is bugged, please fix it.

If this is intended, then please change it. I don't want faster pops, I want proper games where I don't have to play node guard on my heals because it's better than boring number-farming stalemates in mid where my healer just ends up damage dealing in a futile attempt to actually do something.

Cross-faction is working fine, but matchmaking needs more than just evenly distributing (way too many) heals and tanks between the teams to make the games fun for anyone but the number-farmers.

Greetings from the playtest, here's my feelings on the changes!

- I think the matchmaking when it comes to skill level is either working, or the people in the PTS are all very close to each other's skill levels. I had matches where it was clear we would lose or win, but I didn't have any where we (or the enemy team) got farmed. Closest thing we had was some huttball matches, and that was usually because the enemy team had some strong dps who were...deathmatching I guess? No idea where they were, not anywhere near the ball.

- 2 healers per team, though... Not working. I was in that match Merovejec linked, and it really was a parsing practice, and it was not the only one of those I had.