JTGuevara.9018

> @"Kuma.1503" said:

> If the devs caved to every forum circle-jerk, this game would have died ages ago.

Welcome to modern games. Players(I refuse the term 'gamers' ) like to pretend that they're soooo oppressed by the big bad devs!

That being said, revive is a problem as well as CC.

To answer the question, OP: it's because solo queuers exist to pretty much supply teams with matches so teams don't wait in the queues for 15+ minutes! Unfortunately, this comes at a cost! Match quality goes down. Neither teams or solo players are happy.

This is something I've said for years. Separate queues. One for solo, one for team. Any mode with both solo and premades is going to have lopsided matches, period. Full teams need to face the truth, they can have quality matches or more matches, _they cannot have both_. Still, teams made their bed and now they need to lie in it. They cried on the forums years ago around 2014 about how team queue was dead and solo queue had more players, so instead of taking it on the chin for the good of the game, they got ANet to merge the queues. They also added the league system with that. Really... it was _worse_ back then, around 2015 post-HoT. _That's_ around the time where pvp really started dwindling. Premades were just causing _havoc_ back then.

> @"Shiyo.3578" said:

> When a solo player meets a premade and gets stomped they get frustrated and eventually stop queueing. This current system just kills off the already dwindling player base.

This right here.

> @"Multicolorhipster.9751" said:

> > @"Shiyo.3578" said:

> > When a solo player meets a premade and gets stomped they get frustrated and eventually stop queueing. This current system just kills off the already dwindling player base.

>

> I'm in that boat and I don't doubt that for a second.

>

> It's boring. Just another RNG dice-roll for SoloQs where you have to pray you get lucky and get matched with the top players in the party or with none at all. Otherwise it's just another blowout loss. 10-15 minutes of wasted time or an entire mini-season worth if you think about it.

>

> It's even more messed up because most people who play Ranked do so SoloQ.

Also this. The matchmaking system is bad enough, but add the team queues on top and it just becomes a mess.

> @"Psycoprophet.8107" said:

> > @"JTGuevara.9018" said:

> > > @"Hirosama Nadasaki.6792" said:

> > > > @"JTGuevara.9018" said:

> > > > Oh hohoho!...I just can't with this community...

> > > >

> > > > How much _selfishness_ do you people on these forums even have? I'm soooo sorry that you people can't go on for one day without complaining that your precious build isn't as effective as you would like. Have some kitten patience! No no no...don't do this "muh corona" BS. It's called a _pandemic_. Have some kitten respect for people who got laid off from this or has loved ones to consider. Updates are going to take a while, no matter what happens.

> > >

> > > Imagine thinking the pandemic has anything to do with this when their update rhythm now is the same as it was for years, and other developers are doing just fine with the pandemic.

> > > The developers just don't care about PvP. They gave it a shot back when we had eSports, it didn't work out, so they gave up on it and keep only a skeleton crew around for it.

> >

> > Oh is it?

> >

> > You mean the update rhythm that allows for pvp patches every MONTH since february as opposed to every TWO OR THREE months as it was in the past? Yeah, I did my homework. Come on guys....the information is _right_ there in the patch notes! Stop lying!

>

> U think adjusting literally a couple of things or less on one or two classes each month after doing a huge lazy blanket power drop balance patch is enough and constitutes efficient and acceptable support of game modes such as pvp and wvw? That's good I guess to keep the bar very very low.

Yeah...I do.

It's called being _realistic_.

> @"Hirosama Nadasaki.6792" said:

> > @"JTGuevara.9018" said:

> > Oh hohoho!...I just can't with this community...

> >

> > How much _selfishness_ do you people on these forums even have? I'm soooo sorry that you people can't go on for one day without complaining that your precious build isn't as effective as you would like. Have some kitten patience! No no no...don't do this "muh corona" BS. It's called a _pandemic_. Have some kitten respect for people who got laid off from this or has loved ones to consider. Updates are going to take a while, no matter what happens.

>

> Imagine thinking the pandemic has anything to do with this when their update rhythm now is the same as it was for years, and other developers are doing just fine with the pandemic.

> The developers just don't care about PvP. They gave it a shot back when we had eSports, it didn't work out, so they gave up on it and keep only a skeleton crew around for it.

Oh is it?

You mean the update rhythm that allows for pvp patches every MONTH since february as opposed to every TWO OR THREE months as it was in the past? Yeah, I did my homework. Come on guys....the information is _right_ there in the patch notes! Stop lying!

Oh hohoho!...I just can't with this community...

How much _selfishness_ do you people on these forums even have? I'm soooo sorry that you people can't go on for one day without complaining that your precious build isn't as effective as you would like. Have some fucking patience! No no no...don't do this "muh corona" BS. It's called a _pandemic_. Have some fucking respect for people who got laid off from this or has loved ones to consider. Updates are going to take a while, no matter what happens.

> @"Zepoolpe.9217" said:

> > @"JTGuevara.9018" said:

> > ....sigh.....

> >

> > I used to be like most people on these forums, constantly blaming ANet for the state of gw2, but as time goes on I find that the _community_ is more at fault for the state of the game then they let on. I look at the situation like this: _the wvw community has made their bed, now they need to lie in it_. I've played since the release, the big ET, HoT, etc alliance, the tournaments. The community has done more to ruin wvw than ANet EVER did. The guild politics, the server stacking, the griefing, the culture, you name it. Looking back, I give ANet the benefit of the doubt because they at least made an attempt to keep it alive as opposed to say spvp. There they pretty much catered to the "elite" bunch who sucked off conquest for 8 years.

> >

> > There used to be roamers, who were the heart of this whole thing. Where are they? Here on DB, only a handful of us roam. The rest of us just stack on EB to ride the bag train. Instead, people just troll on both team/map chat all night where communication gets lost and just creates a bad atmosphere for everyone else.

> >

> > Now about this stream, I don't think it's that much different than previous ones. Balance is the usual conversation of these, I don't even see what the big fuss is.

>

> I was surprised to see this thread without at least one post going "Bad bad WvWers, you are the problem, no aNet which is sooo wonderful and did absolutly nothing wrong so now stop complaining".

> Pheeewww... we came close, but disaster averted: you can sleep safer tonight!

Nice try...but that is not what I said....you're more than welcome to keep pretending though!

An MMO lives and dies with its community, period. No ifs, ands or buts about it. ANet doesn't need my or _anyone's_ protection, they are a multi-billion dollar entity. I could care less.

....sigh.....

I used to be like most people on these forums, constantly blaming ANet for the state of gw2, but as time goes on I find that the _community_ is more at fault for the state of the game then they let on. I look at the situation like this: _the wvw community has made their bed, now they need to lie in it_. I've played since the release, the big ET, HoT, etc alliance, the tournaments. The community has done more to ruin wvw than ANet EVER did. The guild politics, the server stacking, the griefing, the culture, you name it. Looking back, I give ANet the benefit of the doubt because they at least made an attempt to keep it alive as opposed to say spvp. There they pretty much catered to the "elite" bunch who sucked off conquest for 8 years.

There used to be roamers, who were the heart of this whole thing. Where are they? Here on DB, only a handful of us roam. The rest of us just stack on EB to ride the bag train. Instead, people just troll on both team/map chat all night where communication gets lost and just creates a bad atmosphere for everyone else.

Now about this stream, I don't think it's that much different than previous ones. Balance is the usual conversation of these, I don't even see what the big fuss is.

> @"Shiyo.3578" said:

> Hi. Great job on the huge mega balance patch, this game is in the best state it's been in since pre-dhumfire.

>

> You guys have gone to great lengths to make sure tanky, sustainy, "invincible" builds do not exist in PvP by consistently removing any amulet that allows such a build to exist. However, in WvW, we have normal PvE gear stats, and some stat combos that make it very easy to become nigh-invincible in PvP. This makes unfun and frustrating, as someone being incredibly tanky is as unfun as someone one shotting you.

>

> Lower skilled players are always going to gravitate towards such builds, as you not punished for mistakes that hard and these builds are very forgiving which is great for new/lower skilled players which also make up the majority of the player base. So what happens is you run around and most of your fights are against people you can't even kill, and they cannot kill you, which ends up being an unfun experience of stalemates.

>

> Could something please be done to adjust the stats on WvW's PvE gear to ensure such builds are not in the game like you do for PvP? I feel this would make WvW a lot more enjoyable and a better experience. Thanks for reading!

Heh...heh....! As a "lower skilled" player of 8 _years_, I still find tank builds useful! Especially in squads. Of course, on this 5 year warrior of mine, I can play both full tank and full berserker build, it doesn't matter.

How about _not_ engaging those builds in the first place and move to a camp or somewhere else? I don't know about you, but I think that's a much better idea.

> @"Sigmoid.7082" said:

> > @"Highlie.7641" said:

> > So they caved to the vocal minority again.....

> >

> >

> >

> >

>

> How?

I think Highlie means that ANet couldn't get the community to stop suckling the breast of conquest 5v5.

> @"Multicolorhipster.9751" said:

> These are probably meme threads, but...

>

> All I see are people saying Warrior is dead because of the lack of sustain and Damage. Damage, damage, damage.

>

> Modern Warrior is not meant to do damage. Just build maximum for maximum tank and CC and wait for the angry whispers to roll in.

> Love is the way. Namaste.

_Precisely_. If you want a bonafied damage dealer, go with something like elementalist. Warrior has good damage, but not great damage. It's generally better to make use of the native defensive stats that warrior has in some way. Other classes don't have the luxury of 19k HP with no vitality.

> @"youle.5824" said:

> > @"JTGuevara.9018" said:

> > I like this 3v3 idea! Still, I wonder if you all will keep catering to the 1 % of the community who's still obsessed with conquest and just take a risk and gives us a _full_ tdm season, whether 2v2 or 3v3. Something fresh!

> >

> > And also, when are you all going to blow up this matchmaking system? I'm sorry but it is _atrocious_. I take a break from ranked for a couple of years because of the then sorry state of pvp only to be placed in _silver_?....Even though I played for years and consistently and historically placed in gold2- gold3....I'm sorry but that's propostrous. I have to grind matches just to get to the point where I previously was, just because the system "thinks" I belong there? Yeah...no...that is not a good system. I don't care who tells me otherwise.

> >

> > Yeah, I don't believe in the ideology of "skill-based matchmaking". I have to constantly grind matches and not take breaks just to maintain rank? Yeah...no...

>

> Spoken like a true casual... you just took a break for a couple years of ranked and expect the same ranking lol..

Yeah...I do. It's called _experience_. If that makes me a "casual"(whatever that means) then so be it. Then again...I've been playing for 8 years, so how "casual" do you get?

Speaking of which, I see that my previous post touched a nerve.

I like this 3v3 idea! Still, I wonder if you all will keep catering to the 1 % of the community who's still obsessed with conquest and just take a risk and gives us a _full_ tdm season, whether 2v2 or 3v3. Something fresh!

And also, when are you all going to blow up this matchmaking system? I'm sorry but it is _atrocious_. I take a break from ranked for a couple of years because of the then sorry state of pvp only to be placed in _silver_?....Even though I played for years and consistently and historically placed in gold2- gold3....I'm sorry but that's propostrous. I have to grind matches just to get to the point where I previously was, just because the system "thinks" I belong there? Yeah...no...that is not a good system. I don't care who tells me otherwise.

Yeah, I don't believe in the ideology of "skill-based matchmaking". I have to constantly grind matches and not take breaks just to maintain rank? Yeah...no...

sighh......

Warrior....unlike popular belief _actually takes skill and awareness to play_! Shocking right? From personal experience, berserker, specifically condition berserker is an outlier that underperforms compared to core or SB. Let's not forget the change to the spec a few months back, the sustainability, including stability was gutted and so it became very prone to CC and damage. Berserker activation can actually get interrupted, which pretty much _kneecaps_ berserker warrior. Power berserker fairs a little better simply because of the extraordinary damage that it deals, you just need enough skill to land something like Arcing Slice, Decapitate or Gunflame for the build to be effective.

Source: 5 years of experience

> @"mrauls.6519" said:

> I wonder if anet will read this

I wonder if they read _anything_ on these forums, anything substantial that is. Half of forum suggestions are unrealistic, especially at this point of the game, and really just gigantic walls of text. I don't really blame em! I don't know about you all, but in this digital age and in college I have enough walls of text to worry about!

That being said:

1. It's ok

2. meh....

3. I support it along with the following: that condition damage be dealt with degeneration levels, as in gw1, instead of ticks per second

4. Nah...

5. Better yet, cut down on CC period

6. Nah...delete it...

7. Yeah and also cut down on AoEs, make more single-target skills

...are you serious...?

It's just a burn and immobilize. There are little things called condition cleanses and resistance, use them! Yeah....reeeeaal revolutionary...

> @"fumcheg.1936" said:

> > @"lare.5129" said:

> > it can depend from many factors ..

> > team lose 120-420 should we pressure and try do something? ofc no

> > 280 - 490 can we win ?

> > 5-270 ?

> > ofc u can run around and make vision, but if this spvp not first time u understand is any reason pressure , or not //

> > so, what to do, try do and test some skill combo, find someone to duel, be chill, or try do some "top stats" for dayli, is personal choose.

>

> Good question actually. If your team is losing 300:100 and your teammates show no sign of any improvement (like keep runing of far and die there - there are a lot of guardian-decappers nowdays for some reason), why would you support this any further? Just go afk and let it end the natural way.

And _this_ is the attitude I'm against. Yeah, game's lost...but you still play through! It's not seen on the surface, but when you go afk you implicitly communicate to everyone else that this is ok to do. Well....it's not! Before you know it, people left and right start to go afk and throw games just because they've seen others do it. (Monkey see, monkey do) It's a lack of _courtesy_. This community has gotten uglier and uglier overtime in their basic immaturity level and behavior over the years.

> @"Drennon.7190" said:

> Anet needs to take a hard stance on this behavior. Start at the top and start banning people like Naru and Nos who blatantly AFK and rage if they lose the first team fight.

>

> Set an example of what toxic behavior leads to.

Not going to happen. ANet caters to this crowd, this crowd of tryhard "elite" streamer types. If they get the hammer, they'll rage on social media that they've been unfairly persecuted by mean old ANet! This BS happens with all kinds of games these days.

I think every single one of you is missing the mark on matchmaking. The reason that pvp has low population, including plat division is because of the flawed matchmaking system. There is no "fixing" anything, this thing doesn't work. I see Glicko, and these ELO-based systems used in games all the time which were really meant for chess. These algorithms FAIL in team-based games like this one. Progression in this system always winds up being a grindfest and a chore for the sake of forcing a 50/50 winrate on everyone and keeping things "balanced". It pretty much just encourages addictive and tryhard behavior, not to mention burnout from playing so many games for so little gain. Progression is at a snail's pace. If you manage to get any sort of momentum in winning streaks, the system constantly stacks better opponents on you each match. With such slow progress, the way to really go up the ladder is hope for RNG to help you out. That being said, you all hit the nail on the head on plat players' incentive. _What_ incentive is there once you reach plat? Getting up there wasn't easy in the first place! You don't want to jeopardize that do you?! Is it any wonder that plats either stop playing, wintrade or engage in whatever desperate shenanigans just for the sake of maintaining rank?

You're all also not talking about the community. Like or not, _we_ as a community have done more to ruin this game than ANet ever did. Every _day_ that I play this game I see disgusting behavior from people in-game, veterans and new players alike. Especially veterans. Wintrading, throwing matches if you don't get your pony, immaturity, it's disgusting. We need to _stop_ looking the other way trying to sweep it under the rug and stop blaming ANet all the time for pvp. Like it or not, little things like behavior drive people away. It's going to take more than bans to fix that problem, it's going to take collective effort to call out shenanigans when you see them. Now I ask, how in this community are willing to DO that instead of protecting your rating...I'm guessing not many...

You're all also not being realistic. This game is EIGHT years old. It will never reach the heights it once did, that time is past. The whole "esports" push from this community helped kill it.

Now, suggestions. At this stage of the game, I don't think there's much to do other than blow up the matchmaking system and replace it with full random matchmaking along with the old win/loss-based system. Yes, it's full random but at least you're not restricted by the old algorithm. Now to prevent grinding, just cap the amount of ranked games that count toward the leaderboard each day. (We'll say 10 games, for example) That means that you get only 10 ranked matches a day to climb the leaderboard. Yeah, you can play more games...they just won't count! You don't like that, you can go pound sand! That is the fairest option that I can think of for all. Second, keep this balance path. The current balance is among the best that I've seen in a long time, though there are issues.

OP, sorry to see you go...although I don't blame ya...

Gatekeepers are rampant in games these days. You can't give any valid criticism of games without gatekeepers and forum warriors going for your throat. gw2 is no exception. You try to seriously analyze and criticize the matchmaking system in this game, the forum warriors will tell you "learn 2 play" or "you 'deserve' your rank". I will say as a veteran, I've been guilty of being toxic myself at times, although it is a habit I'm trying to break. I hear ya on the so-called "clever" chat posts trying to be cute. Meanwhile, I'm just shaking my head at their lame attempts at trying to be witty...

However, the majority of the toxicity comes from ranked. I simultaneously blame both the matchmaking system and the community for the state of pvp. You have people willingly and rampantly throwing matches, afking, farming for loot and being absolute immature brats during games. I'm _sick_ of it. I am in my 30s, I have NO patience for any of this garbage.

I mostly keep my mouth shut in games and draw on the pvp minimap for coordination, but when I post on chat I try to get people to get back into the game so we don't lose points on every tick.

OP, I wish you luck

The balance is really the only saving grace of pvp. It's nice to play without all the one-shot, two-shot builds running around. Sure there is condi and CC to worry about, but the situation is much more manageable. The community and the matchmaking, on the other hand, is a dumpster fire.

> @"JusticeRetroHunter.7684" said:

> See this is the issue with the matchmaker. Placing you in gold means your being put waaaaaay higher, and likewise some of the best players who should be in plat are in waaaaay lower than they should be and you get matches where it’s completely unbalanced. It’s a failure of the matchmaker that people refuse to acknowledge

Yeah, this is why I will call out not only the stupid RNG-based matchmaking system, but the _community_ itself for looking the other way as they benefit from it. You want to cry about bots? There are no bots! There are just ragers, afkers, quitters and so-called "elites" and forum warriors that want to deny that there's a problem or want to BS you.

> @"Multicolorhipster.9751" said:

> I personally think Ranked should be rebuilt from the ground up with more options for everyone to play their own way, and with more of an emphasis on rewarding actual effort and competitiveness rather than just showing up and getting rewarded for it.

> Right now everything about it is RNG. Matchmaking is practically RNG, Rating gain/loss is completely RNG, whether you get a Duo on your team or not; RNG.

>

> It doesn't feel very skill-based at all. Especially with all the rampant metagaming that rewards gaming the matchmaker more than it does playing the actual gamemode. So long as you understand how it works, it can be easily exploited. That's how people whom used to win about 50-60% of their Ranked games are suddenly winning 80, 90, or even 100% of them.

>

> Then there's freebie rewards and PvE grinds in Ranked for some odd reason. I could understand them being there if you actually had to win and compete to get them, but the fact that you can AFK for and bot these rewards efficiently is a total joke. It isn't right that someone who quits on their team after the first midfight is lost, and just AFKs the rest of the game still gets rewarded for it.

>

> Unranked and Balance Patch shakeups are fun and all, but there isn't much reason to get invested into a solely casual game for very long. I already feel satisfied moving to something else after i've gotten dailies done personally. I don't think balance is nearly as important as everyone says it is either. Things change, the meta shifts, and somebody is not happy about it. I mean; go figure, welcome to every PvP game with more than one option ever.

>

> I think the emphasis should be on what reasonably can be fixed, and on what could make players return and stay rather than just a week to see which class bit the metaphorical bullet and what options have been removed from play before putting PvP or the game entirely down for another 2-3 months.

This. Exactly this.

Multi nailed it right on the head. Everything is RNG. Especially matchmaking. Matchmaking is the same sort of 50/50 RNG-based system used in all modern team pvp games and I'm SICK of it. All it does it encourage shenanigans, whether it's throwing games, going afk, exploiting it by smurfing, you name it. It PUNISHES people who actually play by the rules. I know the popular stance in these forums to blame ANet for everything, but this _community_ does more to damage the game than it lets on.

Frankly, I'm not as enthusiastic about pvp about it as I was in the past. I could care less if it's "esports" worthy or "competitive"... I just want it to be fun and playable for all.

The only positive aspect about pvp really, is the recent balance updates. That alone is really why I still even play.

> @"Shagie.7612" said:

> It's partly in what they're working on, but honestly MMO PvP just isn't a popular subset of the genre. Heck, MMOs in general are pretty stagnant, let alone their PvP.

> They're all decreasing in PvP participation.

>

> MMO players by and large aren't interested in PvP and never will be. That's just not why they play them.

> New blood doesn't come in because younger people don't really play them either. At least not in any significant enough number to matter.

> All you've got is an aging playerbase that isn't interested in PvP, and starts dropping games anyways as they get older.

>

> I think that's a lot bigger factor of PvP losing numbers, especially in an older game like GW2.

> You start adding on things like people getting tired of the game no matter how good it is and all the other reasons people stop playing and it's really not a surprise they all struggle to pull numbers into a competitive mode.

Yeah...MMOs are DONE. I think the magic has worn off for people in this post-WoW age. I know it has for me. It seemed like a good idea to stick massive amounts of players in a persistent world and hope that they can coexist, but now...not so much! You know!..The Internet and all...Even with a massive shakeup in MMOs, if even possible, the fundamental problem with MMOs will always be there: they don't end and they have to designed to get people to keep playing or else the game dies. Yeah, they won't die entirely, but let's not lie to ourselves...the good old days of MMOs aren't coming back.

As a primarily pvp/wvw player, the recent major balance update is the primarily reason why I still even play this thing. As a player in my 30s, some of us don't age out of games entirely, but go into different genres like RTSes, or single-player. I also find that the older I get, the less patience I have with people in general, especially in a pvp environment. This game's atrocious matchmaking system doesn't help either. If anything, the community did more to ruin pvp than ANet ever did. This whole push towards e-sports and league was the community's doing, not ANet. ANet just catered to that.

There's also the fact that gw2 is almost 8 years old. I don't know about you folks, but 8 years is a long time! I got other games to play and I'm not getting any younger! As with all of you!

Guild Wars 2, although a decent game, tried to please too many types of people at once and just ended up struggling through it all. You have the role-players, endgame pve chasers, pvp players, wvw players, open-world players, fashionistas, there's a _lot_ of people to manage. I used to be more vocal about gw2 as a whole, but these days since pvp is pretty much all I play, I pretty much only criticize that, and even then only certain things. However, I do hold the community as a whole accountable for the state of the game since they drive the life of it. I know it's popular to always blame the devs...I was guilty of it myself...but as time goes on you realize that the communities and the culture within them do more to ruin games than the business side themselves. This goes especially for MMOs. An MMO is basically just a persistent world that never ends unless the server pulls the plug on it. The experience doesn't have a clear end. As time goes on, either of two things happen: you get sucked in or you slowly become more and more bored with the game due to the time-consuming nature of it. A lot of MMOs have mechanics and aspects that are designed to siphon your time and life away and to keep you playing. And that's all that really matters in an MMO: to keep you playing in some way shape and form.

Then again, this is par for the course for MMOs, especially these days that try to live in WoW's shadow. I used to be into them, but the more I play them, the more that I find that they don't _matter_ in the scheme of things. There's too much infighting among communities (as with the real world!) and it just ends up collapsing! An MMO, as with the real world, basically then ends up as a massive political project to placate communities in order to financially maintain the game alive, hence you face the wrath of its more zealous "hardcore" players. gw2, from my experience, goes the mile in trying to maintain the community unlike other mmos. However, looking at Reddit, you'd think that ANet is the devil! Again, I'm not protecting the devs, I'm saying that the community has more pull that it gives out.

As for me, the pvp and wvw is ok, especially after the major update. That's my main reason for playing gw2 to this day. This will be my first and only MMO. (I don't consider gw1 an mmo) When you've played for 8 years, you've seen and done it all, overtime your zeal for the game never really matches that from your first days of it. After that what's left? Again...MMOs don't really end! Because overtime, the more dedicated, zealous portions of the community are the ones keeping it alive.

gw2 is just going what every MMO goes through, living in the shadow of WoW. That's the reality for MMOs, if you've played one you've played them all! Even if there was a shakeup in MMOs, the nature of them doesn't change. That's why I don't really play them.

> @"Meteor.3720" said:

> Query for ANet or anyone else who can answer.

>

> I understood that matchmaking parameters only widened after queuing for 5 minutes, so after that length of time you're more likely to get people outside your mmr.

> Why then can you be matched with people 300 rating below you when queue pops after 30 seconds - 2 minutes?

Yeah, the matchmaking system in this game is based off of ELO, which was and is used for chess. _Unfortunately, _ when applied to team games like this one, it just ends up being disastrous! It's not just gw2 either, ELO-based matchmaking just flat out fails in any team pvp game. I played them. CoD, Age of Empires, you name it.

As far as parameters go...yeah.....the system will default to try to find _somebody_ for you to play with, even if that person is leagues better or worse than you!