Recently, Musco revealed the specifics on upcoming changes to matchmaking in PvP coming in Game Update 5.9.2 (possibly launching July?).
- All Warzone queues are now cross-faction.
- The Unranked Warzone queue will now always prioritize Warzones over Arenas. An Arena match will only pop if there are not enough players to populate a full Warzone match at that time.
- Role Balancing –
- Matchmaking will never place more than 2 tanks or healers on the same team in a Warzone or 1 tank or healer for an Arena.
- Matchmaking will always do its best to balance the number of tanks and healers on each team. If there are 2 healers, each team will receive one if possible, the same is true of tanks.
- In situations where there is an odd number of tanks/healers, matchmaking will do its best to place the combined number of tanks and healers evenly (example: there are 3 healers and 1 tank, matchmaking will attempt to make the teams 2 healers vs 1 tank 1 healer.)
- Skill Balancing –
- Matchmaking will more strongly take player skill into account when making teams (see quote below).
- Premade groups queuing for Ranked and Unranked Warzones will now have their matchmaking skill based on the highest rated member, not the team’s average rating.
I am very happy with all the changes listed! I’m especially thrilled that I’ll be less likely get Arena pops. These matchmaking changes are exactly what we wanted! The role balancing changes all look good and all Warzones cross-faction? Hell yeah! What about Arenas though?
To expand further on matchmaking based on skill, Musco revealed that even for regular Warzones, players have always had a ‘rating’ behind the scenes.
Actually, since SWTOR launched players have always had a “rating” behind the scenes. I am hesitant to say rating since this isn’t the same thing as your Ranked score, but it’s the easiest way to explain it. This is more of a way that we approximate player skill solely for the purposes of matchmaking. This is also the reason we don’t expose this information, since it is not really a rating (like Elo, etc).
In 5.9.2 we are making optimizations in how we use this information along with things like role, spec, gear, and more to try to create the most balanced teams we can. – Musco
This is certainly an interesting revelation and I’m very curious to learn more about the specifics of it, honestly. It certainly gives my bleeding regstar heart some hope. I’ve always wanted more from Unranked PvP (I despise Arenas and small-scale combat). Perhaps a blind ‘ranked’ system of some kind? Where we don’t know our own or anyone else’s ‘rank’ and we just go all out and get mailed rewards based on how we did every couple of months? All they’d have to do is announce the reward tiers without revealing any numbers (make the rewards existing Gold and Platinum level Cartel Market stuff).
I can dream, right? But I don’t know, maybe that wouldn’t work. Just throwing stuff out there…
Musco also added that Premades will only be able to queue with 1 tank and 1 healer in the group.
A pre-made (in Unranked) can only have a max of 1 tank and 1 healer in their group. – Musco
Oh nice, no more troll two tanks, two healers Premades. What a yawn fest those were!
There’s certainly a lot to look forward to with this ‘Summer of PvP’. Certainly a lot of positive changes that were long overdue. I can’t wait to hear more about the Rishi Stronghold in particular! Fingers crossed they can get a PTS sorted for us to check all this stuff out!
If you missed it, you can read my article Warzones Changes Coming to SWTOR to learn more about upcoming changes coming to select Warzones this Summer!
Do you like these changes? What do you think of my blind ranked system idea for Regs?
