I genuinely don't understand how Hi-Rez keeps making SMITE 2's ranked matchmaking worse and worse. At this point, it's getting really hard to believe this is accidental.
Today I played 5 ranked Conquest games. All 5 of them. In every single game, the majority of my teammates were console players, while the enemy team was almost entirely made up of PC players playing through Steam or Epic Games.
Like, what the hell kind of ranked matchmaking is this?
I've been playing SMITE for years. I've played every role. I reached Master in SMITE 1, and I reached Master in SMITE 2 as well. I've watched my MMR drop from around 6000 to 4000 and even lower. The skill distribution between teams is so ridiculous that sometimes it's hard to believe both teams were even created by the same matchmaking system.
And apparently Hi-Rez calls this "competitive matchmaking."
The funniest part is that Hi-Rez apparently thinks putting PC and console players into the same ranked lobbies doesn't create any problems.
It does. A serious one.
I'm not saying every console player is bad. Obviously there are good console players. That's not the point. The problem is that Conquest is a competitive 5v5 MOBA. The input method matters. Mechanical precision, camera control, reaction time, targeting, communication and overall mechanical execution are extremely important in Conquest.
If I were playing Joust, I wouldn't really care if I got a console teammate. I can compensate for one player.
But Conquest is different.
When I have 3–4 console players on my team while the enemy team has 4–5 PC players, I'm expected to somehow compensate for a disadvantage that the matchmaking system itself created.
Why?
Because apparently Hi-Rez's brilliant solution for ranked matchmaking is:
"Put everyone in the same lobby and let them figure it out."
Absolutely incredible design.
And then someone will inevitably say, "skill issue."
No.
If the platform distribution between the two teams is heavily different, that's a matchmaking problem. How can you seriously call a system competitive when one team consistently has a completely different input distribution from the other?
At this point, Hi-Rez's matchmaking system feels less like an actual competitive matchmaking system and more like a random number generator with a nice user interface.
MMR isn't enough.
Tracker Score isn't enough.
Individual player performance isn't enough.
Platform distribution clearly isn't being properly considered.
And then Hi-Rez looks at the resulting match and says:
"Yep, that's a ranked game."
No, it isn't.
It's five random players being thrown onto two teams, with the matchmaking system pretending it actually did something intelligent.
And the frustrating part is that this isn't even difficult to fix.
You could have PC-only ranked. You could have console-only ranked. At the very least, balance the PC/console distribution between both teams. Fix the MMR system. Actually take player performance into account instead of randomly filling lobbies just to get people into a game.
And yes, if that means PC players have to wait longer for a match, let them wait.
If a PC player normally finds a match in 2 minutes but a properly balanced matchmaking system requires 10 minutes, then wait 10 minutes. If it takes 15 minutes, wait 15 minutes.
Personally, I'd much rather wait 15 minutes for a balanced and genuinely competitive ranked game than wait 2 minutes and get thrown into a lobby that is already obviously unbalanced in terms of platform and player quality before the game even starts.
If better matchmaking requires longer queue times, so be it.
A matchmaking system that actually cares about ranked players should care less about "How quickly did we find a match?" and more about "How fair are these two teams?"
And if a console player can't accept waiting 10–15 minutes for a properly balanced ranked match, then they can play another game mode instead. There are already other modes available for console players. Hi-Rez's solution shouldn't be throwing PC players into consistently unbalanced lobbies just so console players can find a match within a few minutes.
Stop sacrificing matchmaking quality just to make queue times look good.
If Hi-Rez wants SMITE 2 to be taken seriously as a competitive game, maybe they should start by making ranked matchmaking actually competitive.
Because right now, the biggest opponent in ranked isn't the enemy team.
It's Hi-Rez's matchmaking algorithm.
And judging by these games:
The algorithm is undefeated.