If trials is going to be the only thing that has connection based or that people think has what they think of as connection based then the trials population will shrink over time. People need to have the option to stay engaged with the game throughout the whole week regardless of their skill level or what kind of matchmaking allows them to have the kind of experience they're looking for.
As far as the whole of PvP feeling oppressive to New Lights its very hard to pretend like nothing over this last year was done to make PvP easier for newer or lower skilled players. Its fine if that's what it looks like to the people playing the game but its not going to help if 100% of everyone involved with PvP convince themselves that that's the case.
This game definitely needs a clearly identified SBMM playlist and if it can't be clearly identified as such then that's a problem. It should also have a clearly identified daily alternative to that because to not have one is to ignore the fact that some people get an unacceptable experience in terms of gameplay quality when its SBMM. Some of those people are actually people that think they want it (or things that are similarly stat influenced) and the game needs to be set up based more on what it actually does and not what people think it does.
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I think this is a very valid take. My only concern is that the Trials pool is already shrinking (even comparing the stats from this past weekend to the ones prior), partly for some of the same reasons you brought up. The other part is obviously normal attrition of people like me that hop in to snag one or two rolls of a new weapon and bail, being not quite good enough to particularly excel in endgame PVP to begin with lol But you also have a valid point about a SBMM playlist possibly being separate from what we already have. What are your thoughts on a hypothetical SBMM playlist as part of Crucible Labs? Also, you mentioned something about 'unacceptable gameplay experiences in SBMM, some by the people who think they want it' Can you elaborate on that? I'm trying to understand what those pitfalls might be.
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Trials probably has other things that contributed to last weeks population drop from the fact that its the end of the season and the middle of summer to the fact that the available weapon was one a lot of people already have. Not to mention that Javelin 4 is one of the highest skilled maps to try to play on in the game. Even with those things and some of the abilities that can be hard to counter when a coordinated team is using them something probably still needs to be done with the matchmaking although I'm not sure quite what that would be. Whatever it is its going to have to at least look like somewhat of a compromise or the people that don't think they're getting anything will complain a ton. [quote]What are your thoughts on a hypothetical SBMM playlist as part of Crucible Labs?[/quote] I'm probably a bad person to ask something like this because my answer to almost anything being tried or added to PvP is almost always automatically going to be yes. I would certainly like to see something like that and how the game handles it nowadays and how many people play it and how they react to it when they know that's what they're playing. Just knowing that its SBMM might cause enough people to say they like it because that's what they want. And that could be good enough to keep it in the game. [quote]Also, you mentioned something about 'unacceptable gameplay experiences in SBMM, some by the people who think they want it'[/quote] Its kind of hard to explain but some people just due to their skill profiles might not end up with high enough quality when it comes to things like shot registration and movement and stuff like that. Which is why SBMM tends to require more people playing it because when skill is taken into account like that there's going to be less people you can match up with to play so sometimes the gameplay quality can suffer or sometimes you might start to feel like every match is very similar in terms of what ends up taking place.