Or, what grabbing a few beers and hoping for the best will do for your love life.
(Practice is good – just watch out for chafing)
Since the dawn of BattleNet 2.0 lo those many months ago, there has been speculation about just how Blizzard does its matchmaking for Starcraft II games. Some are firmly convinced that an elaborate scientific formula is used, taking into account details such as how long you’ve been playing, what your win/loss ratio is, how many years its been since you’ve spoken to a human being and how often you touch yourself at night.
Others contend that the gurus at Blizzard are simply shotgunning large amounts of alcohol, randomly selecting two players and then hitting “match”.
Oh, and don’t get them started on how league placements work – it has something to do with a donkey and a crossbow, and believe us, you don’t want to know any more that that.
In effort to quell these fears and tone down the nerd-rage a bit (good luck with that), Blizzard added a number of matchmaking improvements just prior to the patch 1.1 release for Starcraft II. These included things like properly balancing placement matches for 2v2s, as it seems that “casual diamond teams” – you know, elite players that just decided to hook up for an afternoon of sexy fun with no strings attached – were getting matched with poor saps from the silver singles league. In matchmaking terms, these were the jocks getting hooked up with the A/V club. Sure, they might swing some USB cables in the faces of those pad-wearing morons, but when push comes to shove, our lovable A/V nerds are going down in a heap and not getting a call the next day.
Now, theoretically, newly-formed teams of elite players will be matched with those of their own skill set, as will those of lower levels. In addition, teams should be properly placed in their correct league more quickly, and should have shorter wait times until matches begin. The hope is to get gamers out there on as many “first dates” as possible, and replace uncomfortable dinner conversation with an attempt to destroy the other party.
Sounds about right for a first date to us.
And while this next bit hasn’t been officially confirmed by Blizzard, some clever forum fellow went ahead and ran a bunch of tests to determine just how exactly placements are done in 1v1.
According to the forum posts, a high ranking in 2v2 leagues would affect your placement matches in 1v1, your point value has no bearing on you getting promoted, and your APM and particular play style don’t matter if you want to go up a league.
Either win or lose – that’s all the game really cares about.
Sure, these aren’t “blue” stats, but they seem close enough to reality that we’re willing to believe that the random poster with too much time on his hands is telling the truth. His forum post is currently ranked as one of the highest in the United States, and we’re pretty certain that mob mentality has always been totally correct in the past.
So until Blizz says otherwise, we’re going to assume that the matchmaking issues that plagued the Starcraft II multiverse are cleared up, as will be this rash before our next date.
Ah, what does it matter – they’re only bronze.
