MMORPG.com: How much will the individual parts -- skill level, party size, rating, rank -- contribute to matchmaking? In other words, which is "better": high-ranking players who are new at a class or relatively low-ranking experts? Not looking to have it all laid out -- that'll come in the wiki, I'm sure -- but I'd like to just have a general idea of how much the various elements are weighted.
Justin O’Dell: The lower ranked experts will almost always beat the higher ranked newbies. PvP rank and the new ladder system both have a strong time component, which means players with less skill can still do fairly well if they spend enough time playing.
MMORPG.com: Since you're trying to matchmake better, there will be a smaller pool of potential "fair" opponents. What will this do to queue times?
Justin O’Dell: The pool should be the same because the part of matchmaking that groups players by skill is largely the same.
With queue times, we’re introducing a change that should actually make matchmaking faster. Right now, the system grabs the closest players that fit. Starting December 2 we’ll compare them against all the other players in the pool through a scoring system. This will increase quality by taking the highest scoring players, while avoiding increasing wait times because there are no hard rules that would prevent a match.
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MMORPG.com: Looking at the Ladder point awards chart... If the matchmaking system does work properly, will there still be those 0-19% or 80-100% chance of victory matchups? Shouldn't those be eliminated?
Justin O’Dell: Even though match-ups with low chances of victory will be rare, they are still possible. For example, it’s possible for very skilled teams to be stuck in the queue for an extended period of time since they have so few equals, and because of that they often trigger the fail-safes we have in place. These fail-safes can affect match quality but they’re there to ensure that everyone can find a match in a timely fashion. It’s a balancing act.
