There is no secret that right now some players are sitting in queue for a long time across different levels of allegiance, W/L ratios, ship sizes, etc. This means that either the matchmaking is not working as intended (my current assumption) or it is working and if you have nobody to match with you are out of luck, need to wait, try a different side, size of ship, etc. I hope that it is not the latter, but if it is then I have a fair solution to ensure matches keep happening.
The game is large enough that people should be getting a match within 5-15 minutes consecutively without needing to switch sides, switch boat sizes, jump regions, etc. My crew and many crews I know across different skill levels have done all of this and still queues that last 20+ minutes or never puts them into a match. My crew has experienced this despite switching from xbox to PC, switching ship sizes, even switching regions.
My idea if it has not been discussed is to use expanding matchmaking to ensure a match occurs no matter what eventually.
For example, lets say that my "rating" is 100. I'm not going to explain why it is 100, it is just an example. If I queue up, I am supposed to be matched with 90-110 rated players. After a certain amount of time that rating expands if no opponent is found. I would eventually be in queue looking for 80-120, 70-130, so on and so forth. I would then say that after max 15 minutes (just a time I picked) the game automatically matches me with someone who is also waiting a long time for a match. Devs would pick an appropriate time for people to wait but as it currently stands "on demand" pvp feels more like "get in line and hopefully the ride works" pvp.
Thoughts?
