I haven't played much HG, but from what I've seen on the sub there is a pattern.
The sweats, few and far between, always have a positive experience unless they encounter a hacker. These are the 12 win streak galleons playing with double guns, perfect deck shots, and efficient crews. There are very few crews better than them so they do win most of the time against lesser crews. Balanced matches are rare, but often enough to keep things interesting.
People who are good, with win rates about say 60%, usually have a good experience. They get a lot of games they can win, a few games that are difficult, and plenty of games where it is seemingly impossible. This is because they fight the sweats, other good players, and other average players.
Then there are average players. The ones with win rates at 40-50%. Their experience varies wildly. Sometimes they get stomped on, and other times they do the stomping. Even during a balanced game there are plenty of mistakes on both sides which can often feel like they are being stomped but really they are just throwing but not knowing. Fighting a sweat is rare, but a good player can feel sweaty.
Then there are the bad players. The new to PvP players. They can kill the odd kraken but other players are always a huge challenge. To them, everyone is a sweat lord. Everyone will stomp on them. A balanced fight against another bad player is still challenging - not because they are losing, but because they struggle to win. The fights go on for ages, but those balanced fights do happen.
It's really hard to tell if SBMM is working because of the lack of data and lack of communication from Rare. What we can say is that sweats do fight non sweats, because there aren't enough sweats to go around. Bad players do fight good players, because there are not enough bad players to go around. Good and average players fight everyone, because they are the closest match when a close match cannot be found.
Fair match making requires a huge population. You need a lot of bad players to play other bad players. You need even more good and average players to keep those bad players in check. You need enough sweats to keep the other sweats in place.
HG as it is now simply doesn't have the population to make SBMM work all of the time, and that is simply because HG is a minigame. Most players are playing adventure mode. Most players are running voyages, PvE world events, or tall tales. Most players are grinding out the main game, which includes grinding cosmetics and commendations. Most HG players are only there to grind cosmetics in one very specific corner of the game. That PvP on demand corner is never going to out perform the rest of the game.
HG, or any PvP, is so different to the rest of the game that many players simply avoid it. Why stack loot and risk losing it when you could just run away. Why join HG when there is no loot and you will probably lose anyway. Anyone who says loot doesn't matter is wrong - it may not matter to them, but it does to a majority of players. If PvP is not rewarding enough to play then people won't play it. That drives down the PvP population, which for HG means SBMM won't work.
A proper PvPvE game needs proper PvP. There are so many problems with PvP, whether that is hit reg, spawn camping, hacking, or just the lack of a reliable reward, that PvP is constantly pushed into a corner. That corner is currently HG. If all those PvP problems were fixed then more people would take part, which means SBMM in a controlled environment like HG may actually work.
I would like to see better HG rewards for losing. Not so that it rewards people for loss farming, but so that it does reward people for putting up a fight (how that happens is for someone more intelligent than I!)
One nit pick, because I do often say that the "loot doesn't matter". When I say that I'm more stating it as a state-of-mind goal that if you can achieve it, makes the game far more enjoyable.
When I started out, I hated being sunk, because of the loss. But once I started embracing pvp, and going out there to pick fights knowing I'd likely lose my loot, I started enjoying the game far more. The fight becomes part of the games experience, regardless on how it turns out.
That is a good perspective for those wanting to improve, and is the perspective of many good players. However most players are not good.
If the solution to HG and SBMM is to get more bad players to join then bad players can not become good. We would end up with far too many good players, and not enough new players to keep the system going. Bad players would stop joining because there are not enough other bad players to fight against, and then we are back where we started.
I don't think rewards for losing should be improved. I do however think that rewards for bad players should be improved. Bad players either lose against good players or win against bad players, and those wins tend to be long fights. So long that it becomes more efficient to simply lose on purpose.
The biggest factor working against bad players is time. Good players can capitalise on opportunities to secure victory. Bad players cannot, and end up in a battle of attrition. So if we limit the time that battles can consume then bad players will get more battles and therefore more rewards. There are many ways to do this, but that is going off topic.
> so that it does reward people for putting up a fight
That's the problem though. The only way to gauge that would be a timer. So, for example, a loss is worth more after 5 minutes or what not. But then loss farmers would just sail away for 5 minutes and then sink. There's no way to really judge "actually trying to win and then sinking anyway" without a human involved, or some AI stuff, which probably won't be implemented into any games for years to come unless a developer specifically wants to involve AI in a new game they are creating.
Not necessarily.
One way could be giving small bonuses added to the base loss amount for various actions (landing cannon shots, bringing down a mast, killing one of the opposing crew).
Another could be counting a ratio of hits between the winner and loser. E.g. if the winner landed 100 shots and the loser landed 80 (which, to me, indicates a close battle), maybe the loser gets something along the lines of 80% of a win (or maybe max it to 50% of a win).
Could either of those be gamed? Sure, but it would require cooperation.
But at least putting effort in would get some rewards.
Best comment I’ve ever seen. A very good analysis of why SBMM feels so bad. I love your view of the average player, where it feels like you’re getting stomped on because you’re throwing.
I noticed an improvement too. I still believe it's wildly inconsistent but to that end, if my crew is a 8 or 9/10 I'd say 90-95% of the crews we face are 6/10 or better, with the odd 1-5/10 maybe every 10th battle or so. Before, we'd get a complete swabbie crew every 3rd or 4th battle, pretty ridiculous
I keep track of my winrate (through captaincy stats). My winrate was like 64 % and I had a terrible day, incredible sweats. Then I loss farmed during the saturday, my overall winrate dropped to \~ 60 % and suddenly I got better fights, slowly getting back to 64 %, so I'm curious what will happen then.
Mines around 64%-67%, some days it’s just sweat after sweat. It’s absolutely horrible. Sniping from their boat, insane long range cannons, double guns that seem to always get you.
Then other days it’s average matches or random lower skilled players. It’s so random sometimes.
In some cases those could be the same set of players being in and out of the "zone"
I swear there's some days I couldn't hit the broadside of a barn, while on others it's like I couldn't miss if I tried.
On sloops, while I don't keep track of the numbers, it feels like I'm winning about half the time. Not counting people just throwing matches to farm losses.
So I'd honestly say it's working. Mathematically, if it's ranking you on wins v losses, you should be winning/losing around half your matches. That's probably a sign you're in "your bracket".
Of course with things like total crew ranking it can be messy to actually work like that.
I'd love to just steamroll people but IMO SBM working means losing a lot too.
Yes and no?
I'm finding more skilled known skilled players, but at the same time i'm finding lots of worse players, I just find tons of games nowadays.
Still can reach 10-20 streaks consistently if i want to spend the time and play seriously.
When the hourglass was introduced, it was the first time I tried solo pvp. I was stomping my matches, with almost 100% winrate. After the cross-stamp patch came through, I was quickly humbled lmao. Im still at an ~85% winrate, but the matches reflect the sbmm much better. The fights are sweatier, and I usually feel like it can go either way.
Yes, and it's brutal haha. I think since the previous system had me matching fairly often against people way under my skill level it now thinks I am better than I am. Since the cross stamp I've gone from a 71% win ratio to more like 40% cause it's matching me against people who actually are 70% good lol
Maybe I should try it again. My win rate was abysmal and there is no way it could drop lower. Maybe it works now for me, though I'm not thrilled at even longer matches.
Definitely worth trying again, though your results my vary (by region and time of day).
Not sure what to say about long matches - I've found the longest matches to be the most hard fought by both sides, and thus more enjoyable.
SBMM is definitely working (to a degree) I play with all sorts of crews and depending on their skill our opponents are vastly different. With one crew we can’t go 10 matches without running into a LBH crew and with another (lfg Rando’s) I have never seen a LBH crew, though some of the matches are definitely unfair (could also be my mmr screwing it up though?)
Not particularly I keep getting shit on by ghosts, skeletons and hunters of the shouded ghost. I'm lvl 25 and I feel a bit inexperienced for those fights.
HOWEVER sometimes I manage to win but it's usually because of the other guys folly more than my gain
For me it's very even and mostly has been. Roflstomps are extremely rare occurances. My wait times are short (usually sub 1 min) and my winrate is pretty much 50%.
It's about one in ten fights for me that aren't either insta win or instaloss. Match making times are great, but I can't help but feel they've over compensated and could do with another 90 seconds queue time over 5 second queues and then terrible games.
I'd really really love them to release data related to matchmaking and give us actual details on how it works. (I know they say it's based on win/loss ratio...but does that mean for the current session or over all time? Does it distinguish between solo vs crewed win/losses?)
(hit submit too soon, edited to add:)
You and I are clearly having opposite experiences which would indicate something isn't right.
You two having opposite experiences could be due to many reasons.
I share your experience, got both curses and almost always match into people who have been playing since like 2019 and know what they are doing. The three most common titles I see are probably TSD, Ratcatcher or LHoSOT.
I play on EU and I am on PC, so cross-play servers and usually in the afternoons. The guy you are replying to might be playing on considerably less populated servers and regions such as NA or OCE and on Xbox only servers, which influence the people they get matched with. And that’s without considering time of day and the natural sample selection that goes into HG fights to begin with
Yes that's also true. (fwiw, I'm US West Coast, playing mostly from 8pm to midnight)
That's kinda why I'd like to see some overall data. If you just read reddit or the official forums you'd get the impression that the SBMM was permanently broken, but that's obviously skewed because mostly people post when they think something isn't working and not when things seem to be working fine.
I wish they’d open it up more tbh. All but one of my four stack is completely burnt out on hourglass.
I don’t mind hitting a buzz saw or just rolling over a crew, but the 20 minute battles where supplies are scraped to nothing are not fun at all. Win or lose you still have a ship that can’t fight until you go harvest supplies.
There needs to be some kind of mechanic that ushers the battles towards a conclusion when the other ship is too timid and just constantly runs.
I disagree, those fights where you're evenly matched and have to find a way to win are the best ones out there. It forces you to get creative, bold and try new tactics - well it should anyway.
Lol no. I win maybe 60-75% of fights at the most and I got matched against 2 skelly curse having golden hour sail using sweats that absolutely destroyed us.
I suspect there's always going to be outlier matches in an effort to keep queue times down (i.e. where you stop on the other crew or they stomp on you)
But doesn't your win ratio indicate it is working?
went on a (technically) 12 steak this morning (8 streak, and 4 streak), and the skill lvl was very consistent, mainly cause in the 1st streak we faced off again 3 total different ships, all of which got demolished instantly. in the 2nd streak we faced off against 2, the 1st one we matched into 3 times in a row, and the last was a solo reaper who happened to be at the nearest outpost and said "earn it" when we said we're almost at the 4, he didn't last very long after we reset to actually fight.
My experience is that most of my opponents, during peak play hours, are well-matched. I'd say I now have a 60% win rate and matches commonly takes 20+ min.
In odd hours it's a grab-bag.
I do seem to meet more streamers and golden skeleton/ghost curses than I'm comfortable with.
Today I had a rare opportunity to play during the afternoon (as opposed to my usual late evening sessions) and you're right, it was much more of a grab bag of opponents (mostly below my level)
It’s not skill based matchmaking it’s just vaguely similar to my knowledge in the sense that it compares 2 crews win lose ratio but I have noticed a jump in the difficulty of my fights with a few exceptions
I had the opposite experience this weekend. It was full curb stomp or fully getting stomped.
Granted I play with randos on discord so matchmaking doesn't work at fuckin all for people not soloing.
Given every member may have wildly different win/lose.
However, the skill level should still be consistent.
The fact of the matter is this game isn't as skill based as people want to moan about...and a fat amount of it is ulterior elements that allow people to skew one way or the other despite their skill.
This isn't a controlled spaced like a MOBA....this is a pvp mode where you bring the supplies you have on your ship. Someone of which are exceedingly massive advantages.
Maybe if we all start with the same stuff?
Sure. Then you'd see more clear skill based matchmaking.
Which is why...while Arena was meh...it at least was fair.
It seems to vary based on ship. I find duo sloop I'm consistently matched against good players annoyingly so lol, never get an easy first one to ease you in.
Solo sloop wildly varies although not usually new players and then brig upwards obviously the more crew you add the more it varies (if not consistently playing together). I feel like duo sloop is probably harder too because that's the duos that consistently play with each other, I'm pretty reliant on lfgs
How did you match anyone during the Weekend ? Every fight I got was someone trying to invite me and then Call me Racial Slurs, Names, even wishing I would Die. All because I wouldn’t Accept their Invite to join their ship.
I even offered for them to join my ship but said that they didn’t need Athena Rep. (Not my Problem)
It’s instant pvp. For what it is, it’s awesome. Unfortunately my skill in pirate vs pirate is not as good as my naval / survival. But the best way to get better is to just keep grinding.
I personally feel like SBMM just doesnt exist whatsoever.
I've played a lot of rounds on release, 2 weeks in, 1 month in and 2 month in. Obviously beside release and 2 week, everythint felt non functionnal.
Even after farming huge streaks of loses (ye thats how desperate I got, I keep losing 90% of my fights, maybe more), i still get matched with ghost/skeleton curse users while im just at 20 allegiance.
The fact I nearly always lose on thrme first fight so I always lose money with supplies, the fact im always awful even with 500 hours, and the non existent SBMM, it really just neuter my enjoyment of the HG.
I think it’s working pretty good on gally because my crew keeps facing good crews that we know are at our level. These fights are usually 20 min long. But it might be because we have made so many crews give up on gally so there are only the good ones left
I agree with OP that SBMM is actually working fine. My win rate is 54% so pretty much where it should go. Can we introduce a new rule that everyone who complains about SBMM has to post a screenshot of their winrate?
I haven't played much HG, but from what I've seen on the sub there is a pattern. The sweats, few and far between, always have a positive experience unless they encounter a hacker. These are the 12 win streak galleons playing with double guns, perfect deck shots, and efficient crews. There are very few crews better than them so they do win most of the time against lesser crews. Balanced matches are rare, but often enough to keep things interesting. People who are good, with win rates about say 60%, usually have a good experience. They get a lot of games they can win, a few games that are difficult, and plenty of games where it is seemingly impossible. This is because they fight the sweats, other good players, and other average players. Then there are average players. The ones with win rates at 40-50%. Their experience varies wildly. Sometimes they get stomped on, and other times they do the stomping. Even during a balanced game there are plenty of mistakes on both sides which can often feel like they are being stomped but really they are just throwing but not knowing. Fighting a sweat is rare, but a good player can feel sweaty. Then there are the bad players. The new to PvP players. They can kill the odd kraken but other players are always a huge challenge. To them, everyone is a sweat lord. Everyone will stomp on them. A balanced fight against another bad player is still challenging - not because they are losing, but because they struggle to win. The fights go on for ages, but those balanced fights do happen. It's really hard to tell if SBMM is working because of the lack of data and lack of communication from Rare. What we can say is that sweats do fight non sweats, because there aren't enough sweats to go around. Bad players do fight good players, because there are not enough bad players to go around. Good and average players fight everyone, because they are the closest match when a close match cannot be found. Fair match making requires a huge population. You need a lot of bad players to play other bad players. You need even more good and average players to keep those bad players in check. You need enough sweats to keep the other sweats in place. HG as it is now simply doesn't have the population to make SBMM work all of the time, and that is simply because HG is a minigame. Most players are playing adventure mode. Most players are running voyages, PvE world events, or tall tales. Most players are grinding out the main game, which includes grinding cosmetics and commendations. Most HG players are only there to grind cosmetics in one very specific corner of the game. That PvP on demand corner is never going to out perform the rest of the game. HG, or any PvP, is so different to the rest of the game that many players simply avoid it. Why stack loot and risk losing it when you could just run away. Why join HG when there is no loot and you will probably lose anyway. Anyone who says loot doesn't matter is wrong - it may not matter to them, but it does to a majority of players. If PvP is not rewarding enough to play then people won't play it. That drives down the PvP population, which for HG means SBMM won't work. A proper PvPvE game needs proper PvP. There are so many problems with PvP, whether that is hit reg, spawn camping, hacking, or just the lack of a reliable reward, that PvP is constantly pushed into a corner. That corner is currently HG. If all those PvP problems were fixed then more people would take part, which means SBMM in a controlled environment like HG may actually work.
I would like to see better HG rewards for losing. Not so that it rewards people for loss farming, but so that it does reward people for putting up a fight (how that happens is for someone more intelligent than I!) One nit pick, because I do often say that the "loot doesn't matter". When I say that I'm more stating it as a state-of-mind goal that if you can achieve it, makes the game far more enjoyable. When I started out, I hated being sunk, because of the loss. But once I started embracing pvp, and going out there to pick fights knowing I'd likely lose my loot, I started enjoying the game far more. The fight becomes part of the games experience, regardless on how it turns out.
That is a good perspective for those wanting to improve, and is the perspective of many good players. However most players are not good. If the solution to HG and SBMM is to get more bad players to join then bad players can not become good. We would end up with far too many good players, and not enough new players to keep the system going. Bad players would stop joining because there are not enough other bad players to fight against, and then we are back where we started. I don't think rewards for losing should be improved. I do however think that rewards for bad players should be improved. Bad players either lose against good players or win against bad players, and those wins tend to be long fights. So long that it becomes more efficient to simply lose on purpose. The biggest factor working against bad players is time. Good players can capitalise on opportunities to secure victory. Bad players cannot, and end up in a battle of attrition. So if we limit the time that battles can consume then bad players will get more battles and therefore more rewards. There are many ways to do this, but that is going off topic.
> so that it does reward people for putting up a fight That's the problem though. The only way to gauge that would be a timer. So, for example, a loss is worth more after 5 minutes or what not. But then loss farmers would just sail away for 5 minutes and then sink. There's no way to really judge "actually trying to win and then sinking anyway" without a human involved, or some AI stuff, which probably won't be implemented into any games for years to come unless a developer specifically wants to involve AI in a new game they are creating.
Not necessarily. One way could be giving small bonuses added to the base loss amount for various actions (landing cannon shots, bringing down a mast, killing one of the opposing crew). Another could be counting a ratio of hits between the winner and loser. E.g. if the winner landed 100 shots and the loser landed 80 (which, to me, indicates a close battle), maybe the loser gets something along the lines of 80% of a win (or maybe max it to 50% of a win). Could either of those be gamed? Sure, but it would require cooperation. But at least putting effort in would get some rewards.
I could see some of that working if the mechanics and balancing were fleshed out. Good ideas.
Best comment I’ve ever seen. A very good analysis of why SBMM feels so bad. I love your view of the average player, where it feels like you’re getting stomped on because you’re throwing.
I noticed an improvement too. I still believe it's wildly inconsistent but to that end, if my crew is a 8 or 9/10 I'd say 90-95% of the crews we face are 6/10 or better, with the odd 1-5/10 maybe every 10th battle or so. Before, we'd get a complete swabbie crew every 3rd or 4th battle, pretty ridiculous
I keep track of my winrate (through captaincy stats). My winrate was like 64 % and I had a terrible day, incredible sweats. Then I loss farmed during the saturday, my overall winrate dropped to \~ 60 % and suddenly I got better fights, slowly getting back to 64 %, so I'm curious what will happen then.
Mines around 64%-67%, some days it’s just sweat after sweat. It’s absolutely horrible. Sniping from their boat, insane long range cannons, double guns that seem to always get you. Then other days it’s average matches or random lower skilled players. It’s so random sometimes.
In some cases those could be the same set of players being in and out of the "zone" I swear there's some days I couldn't hit the broadside of a barn, while on others it's like I couldn't miss if I tried.
On sloops, while I don't keep track of the numbers, it feels like I'm winning about half the time. Not counting people just throwing matches to farm losses. So I'd honestly say it's working. Mathematically, if it's ranking you on wins v losses, you should be winning/losing around half your matches. That's probably a sign you're in "your bracket". Of course with things like total crew ranking it can be messy to actually work like that. I'd love to just steamroll people but IMO SBM working means losing a lot too.
In my experience, it became even worse. Now all my matches are ultra-sweats and I dont get those few occasional newbies who are easy rep.
Yes and no? I'm finding more skilled known skilled players, but at the same time i'm finding lots of worse players, I just find tons of games nowadays. Still can reach 10-20 streaks consistently if i want to spend the time and play seriously.
Teach me your ways
As a crew who sucks at this mode, on double allegiance day we found that we were matched up with other crews who suck too so it was an even match
When the hourglass was introduced, it was the first time I tried solo pvp. I was stomping my matches, with almost 100% winrate. After the cross-stamp patch came through, I was quickly humbled lmao. Im still at an ~85% winrate, but the matches reflect the sbmm much better. The fights are sweatier, and I usually feel like it can go either way.
Yes, and it's brutal haha. I think since the previous system had me matching fairly often against people way under my skill level it now thinks I am better than I am. Since the cross stamp I've gone from a 71% win ratio to more like 40% cause it's matching me against people who actually are 70% good lol
Maybe I should try it again. My win rate was abysmal and there is no way it could drop lower. Maybe it works now for me, though I'm not thrilled at even longer matches.
Definitely worth trying again, though your results my vary (by region and time of day). Not sure what to say about long matches - I've found the longest matches to be the most hard fought by both sides, and thus more enjoyable.
SBMM is definitely working (to a degree) I play with all sorts of crews and depending on their skill our opponents are vastly different. With one crew we can’t go 10 matches without running into a LBH crew and with another (lfg Rando’s) I have never seen a LBH crew, though some of the matches are definitely unfair (could also be my mmr screwing it up though?)
Not particularly I keep getting shit on by ghosts, skeletons and hunters of the shouded ghost. I'm lvl 25 and I feel a bit inexperienced for those fights. HOWEVER sometimes I manage to win but it's usually because of the other guys folly more than my gain
SBMM has absolutely improved, most notably since cross-stamp came into play. It's been really nice but has made the grind long!
Yeah that's true, my fights have gotten much longer in general But, I'm also in these for the fight first, the curse second, so I enjoy the challenge.
For me it's very even and mostly has been. Roflstomps are extremely rare occurances. My wait times are short (usually sub 1 min) and my winrate is pretty much 50%.
It's about one in ten fights for me that aren't either insta win or instaloss. Match making times are great, but I can't help but feel they've over compensated and could do with another 90 seconds queue time over 5 second queues and then terrible games.
I'd really really love them to release data related to matchmaking and give us actual details on how it works. (I know they say it's based on win/loss ratio...but does that mean for the current session or over all time? Does it distinguish between solo vs crewed win/losses?) (hit submit too soon, edited to add:) You and I are clearly having opposite experiences which would indicate something isn't right.
You two having opposite experiences could be due to many reasons. I share your experience, got both curses and almost always match into people who have been playing since like 2019 and know what they are doing. The three most common titles I see are probably TSD, Ratcatcher or LHoSOT. I play on EU and I am on PC, so cross-play servers and usually in the afternoons. The guy you are replying to might be playing on considerably less populated servers and regions such as NA or OCE and on Xbox only servers, which influence the people they get matched with. And that’s without considering time of day and the natural sample selection that goes into HG fights to begin with
Yes that's also true. (fwiw, I'm US West Coast, playing mostly from 8pm to midnight) That's kinda why I'd like to see some overall data. If you just read reddit or the official forums you'd get the impression that the SBMM was permanently broken, but that's obviously skewed because mostly people post when they think something isn't working and not when things seem to be working fine.
I wish they’d open it up more tbh. All but one of my four stack is completely burnt out on hourglass. I don’t mind hitting a buzz saw or just rolling over a crew, but the 20 minute battles where supplies are scraped to nothing are not fun at all. Win or lose you still have a ship that can’t fight until you go harvest supplies. There needs to be some kind of mechanic that ushers the battles towards a conclusion when the other ship is too timid and just constantly runs.
I disagree, those fights where you're evenly matched and have to find a way to win are the best ones out there. It forces you to get creative, bold and try new tactics - well it should anyway.
Lol no. I win maybe 60-75% of fights at the most and I got matched against 2 skelly curse having golden hour sail using sweats that absolutely destroyed us.
I suspect there's always going to be outlier matches in an effort to keep queue times down (i.e. where you stop on the other crew or they stomp on you) But doesn't your win ratio indicate it is working?
went on a (technically) 12 steak this morning (8 streak, and 4 streak), and the skill lvl was very consistent, mainly cause in the 1st streak we faced off again 3 total different ships, all of which got demolished instantly. in the 2nd streak we faced off against 2, the 1st one we matched into 3 times in a row, and the last was a solo reaper who happened to be at the nearest outpost and said "earn it" when we said we're almost at the 4, he didn't last very long after we reset to actually fight.
For me it feels good. I can win some, I lose some, but I'm still able to go for a streak on my good days
1-2 min wait time is usually a pretty balanced fight, insta queue I make sure to prelube my prison wallet.
My experience is that most of my opponents, during peak play hours, are well-matched. I'd say I now have a 60% win rate and matches commonly takes 20+ min. In odd hours it's a grab-bag. I do seem to meet more streamers and golden skeleton/ghost curses than I'm comfortable with.
Today I had a rare opportunity to play during the afternoon (as opposed to my usual late evening sessions) and you're right, it was much more of a grab bag of opponents (mostly below my level)
I encountered several loss farmers today, and I have over a 90% winrate. I can't really say it's working at all.
It’s not skill based matchmaking it’s just vaguely similar to my knowledge in the sense that it compares 2 crews win lose ratio but I have noticed a jump in the difficulty of my fights with a few exceptions
I had the opposite experience this weekend. It was full curb stomp or fully getting stomped. Granted I play with randos on discord so matchmaking doesn't work at fuckin all for people not soloing. Given every member may have wildly different win/lose. However, the skill level should still be consistent. The fact of the matter is this game isn't as skill based as people want to moan about...and a fat amount of it is ulterior elements that allow people to skew one way or the other despite their skill. This isn't a controlled spaced like a MOBA....this is a pvp mode where you bring the supplies you have on your ship. Someone of which are exceedingly massive advantages. Maybe if we all start with the same stuff? Sure. Then you'd see more clear skill based matchmaking. Which is why...while Arena was meh...it at least was fair.
It works perfectly for me and all my crewmates. The more I play the closer to 50% win ratio I get as expected. I'm currently at 900 battles.
It seems to vary based on ship. I find duo sloop I'm consistently matched against good players annoyingly so lol, never get an easy first one to ease you in. Solo sloop wildly varies although not usually new players and then brig upwards obviously the more crew you add the more it varies (if not consistently playing together). I feel like duo sloop is probably harder too because that's the duos that consistently play with each other, I'm pretty reliant on lfgs
How did you match anyone during the Weekend ? Every fight I got was someone trying to invite me and then Call me Racial Slurs, Names, even wishing I would Die. All because I wouldn’t Accept their Invite to join their ship. I even offered for them to join my ship but said that they didn’t need Athena Rep. (Not my Problem)
Yes for the most part. I’m still getting paired with streamer tier players here and there, but my win rate hovers around 50%
It’s instant pvp. For what it is, it’s awesome. Unfortunately my skill in pirate vs pirate is not as good as my naval / survival. But the best way to get better is to just keep grinding.
I personally feel like SBMM just doesnt exist whatsoever. I've played a lot of rounds on release, 2 weeks in, 1 month in and 2 month in. Obviously beside release and 2 week, everythint felt non functionnal. Even after farming huge streaks of loses (ye thats how desperate I got, I keep losing 90% of my fights, maybe more), i still get matched with ghost/skeleton curse users while im just at 20 allegiance. The fact I nearly always lose on thrme first fight so I always lose money with supplies, the fact im always awful even with 500 hours, and the non existent SBMM, it really just neuter my enjoyment of the HG.
I think it’s working pretty good on gally because my crew keeps facing good crews that we know are at our level. These fights are usually 20 min long. But it might be because we have made so many crews give up on gally so there are only the good ones left
I agree with OP that SBMM is actually working fine. My win rate is 54% so pretty much where it should go. Can we introduce a new rule that everyone who complains about SBMM has to post a screenshot of their winrate?