Scenario Matchmaking Rework Megathread

[HammerGuy]

I fear the devs are missing the mark with the rework. The main problem is not group composition. Not having enough healers, tanks, or DPS can cause wipeouts, but that's not the biggest problem. Balancing the composition is fine, but it doesn't address the ultimate problem of premades farming pugs. Pugs are constantly matched against premades, and those pugs have almost no chance to win nor even affect the progression of the battle.

Why does the weekend event scenario not have a discordant variant? Scenarios are most popular during the weekend event. Why can't a player get their event done solo? The players go into the event scenario and get farmed relentlessly. Even when the premades get their event done they keep farming because it's easy renown.

Why was the duo discordant queue removed? There was a problem with a 6-man breaking into 3 2-mans and queueing at the same time into discordant, to form a 6-man in the discordant scenario. So why weren't those players punished instead of putting every duo into the premade queue now? Three unrelated duos against a coordinated 6-man is at a much greater disadvantage than a pug without a duo against a pug with a duo. And even then, why not make it so that the duos are in the discordant queue, however each side has the same number of duos?

Why were barriers put up? Why were guards moved further away from the edge of the spawn area? Neither change helps the losing side. If anything it encourages .surrender after one or two wipeouts.

Revert the changes that made farming worse (moving guards back and putting up barriers). Put duos in the discordant queue but match the number on each side.

Then, balance each scenario with a mechanic that encourages the losing side to keep fighting. The mechanic would be an item or buff that provides extra damage/healing/wounds to the losing side, scaling for how much they are losing.

[Dackjanielz]

I fear the devs are missing the mark with the rework. The main problem is not group composition. Not having enough healers, tanks, or DPS can cause wipeouts, but that's not the biggest problem. Balancing the composition is fine, but it doesn't address the ultimate problem of premades farming pugs. Pugs are constantly matched against premades, and those pugs have almost no chance to win nor even affect the progression of the battle.

Why does the weekend event scenario not have a discordant variant? Scenarios are most popular during the weekend event. Why can't a player get their event done solo? The players go into the event scenario and get farmed relentlessly. Even when the premades get their event done they keep farming because it's easy renown.

Why was the duo discordant queue removed? There was a problem with a 6-man breaking into 3 2-mans and queueing at the same time into discordant, to form a 6-man in the discordant scenario. So why weren't those players punished instead of putting every duo into the premade queue now? Three unrelated duos against a coordinated 6-man is at a much greater disadvantage than a pug without a duo against a pug with a duo. And even then, why not make it so that the duos are in the discordant queue, however each side has the same number of duos?

Why were barriers put up? Why were guards moved further away from the edge of the spawn area? Neither change helps the losing side. If anything it encourages .surrender after one or two wipeouts.

Revert the changes that made farming worse (moving guards back and putting up barriers). Put duos in the discordant queue but match the number on each side.

Then, balance each scenario with a mechanic that encourages the losing side to keep fighting. The mechanic would be an item or buff that provides extra damage/healing/wounds to the losing side, scaling for how much they are losing.

Agreed, when we had duos things were much better.
Duos are not a premade before anyone gives a smart snarks reply to this, seriously its 2 people.
And having weekend events would seal the deal.

[Phantasm]

Spoiler:

I fear the devs are missing the mark with the rework. The main problem is not group composition. Not having enough healers, tanks, or DPS can cause wipeouts, but that's not the biggest problem. Balancing the composition is fine, but it doesn't address the ultimate problem of premades farming pugs. Pugs are constantly matched against premades, and those pugs have almost no chance to win nor even affect the progression of the battle.

Why does the weekend event scenario not have a discordant variant? Scenarios are most popular during the weekend event. Why can't a player get their event done solo? The players go into the event scenario and get farmed relentlessly. Even when the premades get their event done they keep farming because it's easy renown.

Why was the duo discordant queue removed? There was a problem with a 6-man breaking into 3 2-mans and queueing at the same time into discordant, to form a 6-man in the discordant scenario. So why weren't those players punished instead of putting every duo into the premade queue now? Three unrelated duos against a coordinated 6-man is at a much greater disadvantage than a pug without a duo against a pug with a duo. And even then, why not make it so that the duos are in the discordant queue, however each side has the same number of duos?

Why were barriers put up? Why were guards moved further away from the edge of the spawn area? Neither change helps the losing side. If anything it encourages .surrender after one or two wipeouts.

Revert the changes that made farming worse (moving guards back and putting up barriers). Put duos in the discordant queue but match the number on each side.

Then, balance each scenario with a mechanic that encourages the losing side to keep fighting. The mechanic would be an item or buff that provides extra damage/healing/wounds to the losing side, scaling for how much they are losing.

Not everything you can get solo, you cant attack keep, you cant finish dungeons. Same is with scenarios, Events are carrots for those who prefer run solo in rvr to do a little step and make /5 group, join /5 group or at least be social in a guild they are. Is it really so much to ask for 75 crests and talisman container?

Not every premade is equally good, there are bad, there are mediocre and there are tryhards KDA farmers, also there are real premades that make a fight no matter the odds.

And btw, premade is a great format to learn things for everyone. Bonus is that you get sifted players from trolls and wierdos joining scs only to leech and "play their big game".

[Rotgut]

It would be great if Scenarios only popped if perfectly balanced, maybe even with a MMR system in place. But Devs have their hands full atm and i have no idea if the game has the population necessary for that to work.

What we could try in the mean time is a way to teach people how to play Scenarios, so they can achieve success with the system we have in place. All the issues Scenarios have is due to people reluctance to use /5. I don't think its good game design to blame the players, i do agree it would be better if this was automated, but we can't do that rn. For heaven's sake i couldn't fill the last DPS spot on a midtier SC group yesterday, and when we got a pop, there were goddamn Solo Q DPS players in there.

I think people that never played in a premade think that they have some unachievable special power, when 90% of it is just "Tanks Guard people and punt other Tanks away, DPS assist each other, Healers keep their minions alive". We could try some officially sanctioned and advertised effort to teach the community how to play, and i know that can work cuz Dota had something similar and the impact was noticeable.

[JohnnyWayne]

Not everything you can get solo, you cant attack keep, you cant finish dungeons. Same is with scenarios, Events are carrots for those who prefer run solo in rvr to do a little step and make /5 group, join /5 group or at least be social in a guild they are. Is it really so much to ask for 75 crests and talisman container?

Not every premade is equally good, there are bad, there are mediocre and there are tryhards KDA farmers, also there are real premades that make a fight no matter the odds.

And btw, premade is a great format to learn things for everyone. Bonus is that you get sifted players from trolls and wierdos joining scs only to leech and "play their big game".

You seem to miss the point. You queue solo for an SC but you are not solo in the SC. It is the match makers job to build a party for you in that case. People in general seem to not understand that. If you queue solo, you offer the game the best selection of options to build a good and well balanced party. It just doesnt do it. If you are in a premade you limit that choice with, hopefully, a resonable party setup.

And to Rotgut i have to say, no. Scs don't have to be perfect matches. They only have to be good enough. If you want what you describe, go play ranked.

A working match maker is not a "do as you like dude, everyone is special" card. You still gotta perform according to your role. People lack basic skill or decency to act accordingly, instead following rather their agenda or role playing phantasy instead of performing according to the games limitations. That is something the CoC should cover tbh, but thats highly subjective. Also, the game should probably come with configured addons like enemy and thether/guard pack.

[geezereur]

The big problem is premades vs pugs and soloers in even Disc sc. Spawn camping people or getting spawn camp in 9 out of 10 scs.

[Dackjanielz]

The big problem is premades vs pugs and soloers in even Disc sc. Spawn camping people or getting spawn camp in 9 out of 10 scs.

ironically i think we had less premade problems when the skirmish mode had duo's - because people didn't feel the need to exploit the system they simply paired up instead, it actually broke the premades up into small bites and this also encouraged the solo players to pair up too.

Most solo gamers hate premading i know i certainly do - but playing with a single other person is easy for ANYONE to achieve, including solo folks.

So what you end up with is lots of pairs all round which i think provided a much more balanced and fun system for everyone involved, i was quite dumb founded when they took it out, almost seemed deliberate tbh. Skirmish at the time was getting more attention than normal SC's.

[Rotgut]

And to Rotgut i have to say, no. Scs don't have to be perfect matches. They only have to be good enough. If you want what you describe, go play ranked.

A working match maker is not a "do as you like dude, everyone is special" card. You still gotta perform according to your role. People lack basic skill or decency to act accordingly, instead following rather their agenda or role playing phantasy instead of performing according to the games limitations. That is something the CoC should cover tbh, but thats highly subjective. Also, the game should probably come with configured addons like enemy and thether/guard pack.

I agree 100%, on both points. Game's base addons should come with a configured Enemy, Guard Pack and Buffhead. Those three hide SO MUCH essential information, imagine playing Tank without being able to see at a glance if ur target have Immunity or not?

I, and the Devs, agree that the match maker should be better. But their post about wishing to improve it was made back in August. At some point we gotta think of alternative, even if worse, options, but that can be done quicker.

"People lack basic skill or decency to act accordingly, instead following rather their agenda or role playing phantasy instead of performing according to the games limitations.". Some for sure are selfish like that, but it can't be everybody, its just not possible. Some players just don't know how to play Scenarios, and we can address those with some "Basics of Your Class in Scenarios" videos. We still need the Devs for that tho, cuz we already have guides and youtube videos out there, but people don't watch it. And i'll bring back Dota's case again. There always were "how to play" videos, but it wasn't until Purge (YouTuber) became an "Official Valve Caster" AND Valve added a tutorial in-game that the average skill of the player base started increasing.

So it can't hurt if Devs sanctioned, and advertised on the main website, a little series about how to play. Might not do anything man, but its free to do.

[shoelessHN]

A huge help to scenarios would be to remove kills/deaths in scenarios from the killboard. Surrenders and people not trying past the first fight is much higher today than it was 3-4 years ago before the killboard existed.

But it has to be concurrent with some better match making. It is not like pug vs. pug doesn't exist in the weekend sc but the compositions are usually so bad it mostly doesn't matter.

The current weekend queue consists of people that queue up, fight once, and if they die sit in spawn / run around map until 11min mark -> surrender, repeat.

Most of the scenarios need a good rework the objectives to reward renown so people want to cap them. And many of then could benefit from an increase the player caps in some of the bigger sc that are currently 12 or 18. And when the scenario finally fills out to 24v24 or whatever maybe reset the score so people are not joining something that is 400-100 before they can leave the spawn.

[Fey]

The scenario queue system really isn't that bad. Old School will still farm you during the weekend. Pug or premade doesn't matter much.

What I want to see is double renown if you join the scenario through the open world portal. Each zone has its own scenario after all.