In the Division 1 and now the Division 2, the MatchMaker is a very flawed and often unpredictable tool to form groups.
While it is adequate for its job in most situations, a problem exists that you have absolutely no control over who gets put in your group.
I personally have had both good and utterly terrible experiences with relying on the MatchMaker. I have sometimes been joined with 3 man groups who knew what they were doing, and other times I have been joined with a group of people who didn't talk, children who screamed through the match, people who charged for most of the round only to end up on the floor, people who left at the first sign of trouble, people who had connection issues, or other less than ideal teammates. The problem is that with the MatchMaker, you are being joined with whoever is around. You have no idea who they are and no ability to screen people or profile them.
This problem of people not being able to screen other players or profile them doesn't seem that bad at first, but there is an issue that arises from this. If most of the playerbase is using MM, then the missions and experiences have to be designed around MatchMaker. This means that the harder difficulty that some want and the pinnacle of PvE experience that some are demanding can never exist in this game. In the Division 1, if a person wanted to challenge the server in a 4v16 manhunt, they would form a group of people that they knew and could trust. Using MatchMaker for such a task would be a fool's errand. In the Division 1, using MatchMaker for Stolen Signal was also an uncertain proposition.
Certain experiences in the game require that a person screen and bring on a very different group of players than the majority of the playerbase. If you are wanting to take on what is to be the Upper Tier of the PvE experience in the Division 2, then you should be wanting to use LFG, Friends, Clans, or other tools that allow you to screen people from your group. These types of experiences are not easy and are not meant to be.
If they allow the MM for this, then they will have to weaken the mission. There is no avoiding that. MatchMaker is great for helping you form a group to take on that one mission you may be struggling with or creating a pick-up group to take on a more casual challenge, but the Upper Difficulty Level experiences like large manhunts when they could be done or a Raid is a very different beast.
As players, we should be looking for other options to form groups for these experiences and even requesting that the devs help provide more of them with Apps or in-game options to help screen/profile players for these types of experiences. Granted this could cause some people to be excluded, especially newer and less connected players.
Still, there have been people on this forum wanting the Developers to up the difficulty level on some aspects in the game. That can happen, but people are going to have to give something up for those experiences. MatchMaking in the case of the upcoming raid is the sacrifice.
I think people need to accept that the MatchMaker is a decent tool for casual difficulty or pickup experiences, but it is a flawed tool to use for the harder more skill intensive aspects of the game to come.
I agree. Normally, I am a fan of matchmaking on non-pinnacle activities.
But this attitude of "we need matchmaking to experience this" is rather immature. People who seriously want to do the raid will find a means to get a group. Those who aren't as serious will not. And that's ok. Everyone is different.
Many of us are not part of a regular team of 8 or 12 to start with. The clans although a good idea are made up of people from different time zones, parts of the world and different stages of life, family no family, college. Getting one or two people together in a clan is doable but 8 is a different story. What is the difference if I matchmaker here or if I go to lfg, Reddit fireteams, discord or the 100.io and say looking for group pick me. I am still playing with randoms. The biggest difference is that it is not managed by Ubisoft. Even with the clan system in Destiny running three characters having different play times than my clan members I often raided with randoms and mostly had a good time. Was it always 100% of the time a completion no. But even with the incompletes it was still fun. But I spent close to $100 for the game to play with matchmaking for all activities, there words not mine. Most adults will interpret the raid as an activity in the game.
I feel they should just put it in, allow people to experience a pug raid team. They already stated in the past there would be matchmaking, and now the amount of heat they're getting and websites writing articles about it isn't helping their image either. The quality of a team put together from randoms coming together through LFG right now could be just as bad or good as matchmaking. I mean, it's still random people.
But if they put in matchmaking, then the LFG places for the raid would serve as a better place to build a proper and balanced team. They still might be random, but you'd get people asking more questions about builds and strategy going into the raid, since if they'd want the random experience they would just matchmake.
The whole problem is they said MM was there for everything. I had no interest in the Raids when they told us about them. BUT I take offense to being told I have to be a clan member to do raids if I want to do one. My take on it is simple the number of players in the game is so low at any one time that massive feels that MM wont be able to put together 8 person groups to do them. So this way they can blame the clans for not being able to find players to do the raids. This takes the focus off massive for producing a poorly thought out concept.
The difference is that with LFG, you can see a person's name and check them out before you form a group.Originally Posted by rugby49 Go to original post
I would strongly suggest people use Division Tracker or some other tool to screen people they Look For Group with. It may seem like snobbery, but really you are conducting an evaluation. Keep in mind that the pickier that you are, the less likely you are to find teammates...
These are the same developers who created Stolen Signal and the original DZ. They know how to create very difficult experiences when they want to.
I get that people feel like this was promised, but players have been demanding a more difficult and intense experience. They are creating that with the cost being the random MatchMaker feature.
If they included MatchMaker, I fear that they would have to change the mission to be completable by most random teams.Originally Posted by randmanqq Go to original post
I think the choice is between Pinnacle Experiences and MatchMaker. If you want to be and experience the highest skill tiers of the game, then it will require that you create teams and play in ways that are of the highest level. I don't think you can accomplish that with a MatchMaker.
Before too long people will complain that the Match Made teams were terrible and that the mission was too hard.
You can also form a team with your friends who are not in your clan. If I do the raid, I will probably be joining friends and people outside my clan.Originally Posted by Ground-Hugg2018 Go to original post
I think this would be one optimal solution. I would also like to see an app or some other series of features as well besides MatchMaker.Originally Posted by randmanqq Go to original post