Change in PvP Queue matching

[Gráinne]

From the 8.1 patch notes today:

If you’d like to compete head-to-head with other players, the PvP pet battle matchmaker has been improved. Now, players who are new to the PvP battle pet system are more likely to be matched up against other new PvP pet battlers.

No, I'm not sure exactly what that means or what its effects will be either.

If they've changed the algorithm to hold off matching people with a big difference in number of wins, does that have other effects? have they changed the mysterious preferences or metas the queue had before? does it have an effect on queue times?

I find it interesting that they did this particular thing, because I don't quite see why it was a priority for PvP.

Anyone got ideas?

[Ranok]

PvP pet battling hasn't exactly taken off in popularity. There's a relatively small subset of the WoW community that do it regularly, some of whom are fanatic about it. But so many players who have tried it give up after first dozen or so times after repeatedly getting stomped by experienced hardcore battlers fielding the same meta teams over and over. Introducing some sort of matching system like there is in non-pet PvP arenas, where you're matched with opponents with roughly the same skill level as yours, is an attempt to get more people into pet PvP.

Downside to this, probably why it hasn't happened before, is that queue times are already sometimes depressingly long. Further reducing number of players you're eligible to be matched with means even longer waits. It's encouraging that Blizzard is recognizing the problem and trying to do something about it, I wish them luck.

[Gráinne]

Yes, I understand that trying to avoid new players getting stomped by the old hands that, like dinosaurs, rule the queue, is a good thing.

There are better options for new battlers, though, like changing the weekly quest to require 30 opponent pet kills rather than 10 wins. Of course, 10 wins is 30 kills, but at the moment, a newbie will typically get beaten maybe 0-10 or 1-10 or something, and feel no hope of ever succeeding. If every pet he defeated counted towards his quest, well, it would take him more than 10 wins to get there, but he would kill one or two per battle, and at least he would be making progress with each one. Many suggestions have been made over the years; I'm not sure why they chose this time to implement this particular one.

Incidentally, in the Discord today, Brawler, with a crazy number of wins, didn't get a match at all after half an hour, and GingerBeardMan, with 2.5K wins, reported being matched against a team with a Grey Vale Flitter. Gemllum suggested the possibility that there could be a hidden ELO system, where everyone starts at the same level and then in a few weeks we will notice better matchmaking. We just don't know yet. Perhaps a pattern will emerge.

[Rosqo]

I really wish the queuing systems were explained instead of being shrouded in mystery. If they are that worried about win trading why not prevent the same players from meeting more than a few times in a row every 3/6 hours.
So far I haven't really noticed too much different really in the quality of the teams or opponents. I was running a fun baby zandalari raptor team just to meme the queue and breezed through most of my opponents.

I did notice longer periods than usual of waiting and the usual trick of requeuing up didn't seem to work like before. That's pretty frustrating but I don't see why there isn't just one large meta other than for some technical problems that doesn't allow it