So my anecdotal experience is that a lot (maybe not the majority, but a huge percentage nonetheless) of matches are blowouts, which I consider to mean one team can’t even muster 350 points. I think this is a fixable problem.
I also think the “population is low” argument that a lot of people spout is incorrect. In the christmas test season, I played a few matches almost every day, desperately trying to break into the top 1000. I think I got in the 980’s on the last day and then promptly pushed off again. This means that, on NA at least, there is a population of over 1000 very active people grinding for competitive matches. And keep in mind that this has probably been the bleakest period in PvP’s history, with the test leaderboard only representing the grind, and the broken solo vs. team matchmaking. And yet 1000+ were devoted enough to keep me off the leaderboard (and I consider myself “quite active”). So we don’t know the size of the pvp population, but it’s there, certainly.
Anyway, let’s talk about queue times. Currently, as a mostly solo player, I wait usually 1-2 minutes for a match. Rarely do I wait 5 minutes. For a game where the pvp population is supposedly “low”, these queue times are amazingly short. While the solos vs. team situations do seem to be uncommon now (yay!!!), match quality with solos vs. solos is still not what it used to be (boo!!!); many of my matches are blowouts.
Presumably, the “net” that the matchmaking puts out on the queuing players is initially small. As time increases, and if good matches are not found, then the “net” increases by relaxing its restrictions.
If my average queue time seems to be 2 minutes, then can we assume the “net” is relaxing its restrictions after only 1 minute? And by 5 minutes we’re at “screw it, let anyone play against anyone”? Personally, I am willing to wait 5-15 minutes for a good match in competitive mode.
So I would suggest a few small changes, to increase the quality of matches:
Ingame and easily viewable leaderboard, to get players to care about their play
Commensurate with the above, make it clear to players that you can avoid losing LB points, despite losing a match. (I’m an active player and don’t know the conditions for this, so it’s definitely not clear to players right now)
Lock professions, or get rid of the profession metric in matchmaking algorithm, or make enemy team names/classes hidden until match begins. Since people can and do switch during the warmup period, the profession metric in matchmaking is currently useless IMO.
Matching low MMR players with high MMR is OK, as long as they’re evenly distributed on both teams (this may already be how the game makes teams, but if not I figure it is worth noting)
And last but not least, increase the time before the matchmaking net starts widening.
tl;dr How long would you wait for a better quality competitive matchup?