1 Million Dollar Question!

[Lightweight!]

Hey, nobody could ever tell me how this f***ing battle.net search works. Im searching for 3 days for a game now and my search time was like 9 hours all together.
My ell is high, because i am close to level up. Here is my bnet account: http://classic.battle.net/war3/ladder/W3XP-player-profile.aspx?Gateway=Northrend&PlayerName=lightweight

It is just an example and since many years im questioning myself how the search works. So my question to you guys is; what's the best way to find games and not be stuck like i am now. And what is the way battle.net is choosing the players for a game. I would be very thankfull for serious answers and not those ones "you have too many wins lossbot some". thx 

[rygorych]

I think overall there are fewer FFA games on all realms. Where I used to find alot of games on North during any time of day, now I barely find any. Azeroth is dead, basically. I show up once in awhile to symbolically afk search for a bit, and my ELL is as low as it gets (loss botted around 100 games, I think + my normal losses). Northrend is preteam after preteam at high ELL - at least in my experience. Constant double rush at the start. I get maybe 1 out of 3 decent games lately. You basically have your usual russian hackers/preteamers at the top with nothing better to do but continue playing this dead/unsupported game.

Best bet: promote FML, promote fun play (I'd love a serious tournament with a few obvious imbalance changes, e.g. no masonry, no hexastomp combo allowed). There is a very skilled/dedicated core to FFA but alas there are too few good people playing outside FML, so this limits community alot.

I might host a cash tournament (I'm thinking something fun like 1 unit per game limit) soon, and hopefully that might attract a little more attention.

Poodles.

[DarKNeSSCaLLs]

Northrend is preteam after preteam at high ELL at least in my experience

Pretty poor experience or terrible luck. I've leveled Northrend three times and only face preteamers at low ELL, very rarely at high and it's usually a few people that I keep on my f list and avoid

@Lightweight

ELL is pretty tricky it's much easier to raise it then it is to lower it. When you started that account did you got 3-0, 4-0, etc? That can raise your ELL to a set level that's difficult to go below and it will only get worse as you level up, because ELL is mostly based on record and partly basd on your actual level.

Best method if you want to rank: Start off with 2 losses for every 1 win you do. Then even it out to 1 win for every 1 loss as you begin to get in the teens/twenties levels

[Lightweight!]

@darkness: thanks so far, but i still wonder about how the players for a bnet game are chosen. Example: Let's say there is only 6 people searching ffa on northrend which are:

Player 1: rank 2, 90-70, 2 wins in a row,
Player 2: rank 32, 250-400, 2 wins " " " "
Player 3: rank 100, 50-60, 2 loses " " " "
Player 4: rank 500, 15-25, 3 wins " " " "
Player 5: unranked, 1-0, 2 loses " " " "
Player 6: rank 940, 6-3, 1 lose " " " "

Will battle.net let 4 of them play or doesnt match anything, because i just cant understand how this shit works. And does it effect in any way if you search for a longer term? Or is the engine only searching for same ell, stats (% of won games), amount of games? Thats what i actually want to know but nobody can explain and i cant find anything on google.

[DarKNeSSCaLLs]

1-0 ELL is almost identical to 0-0 so they won't match any of those (except the 250-400 guy, usually those records are pretty equal to 0-0 ELL).

Alot of it is pretty complicated and add in the random BNet factor. Not only does ELL increase when you win, but how much it goes up (or goes down) is based on WHO you defeat (if you beat higher ELL players in your game, then your ELL will increase higher than normal). That said, there's no real way to answer your question since there's a lot of variation. I've leveled many accounts on both realms and in FFA + Rt, and still it's damn confusing :)

[rygorych]

The whole system is a giant joke when it comes to FFA. But then the previous one where you only matched anyone within 6 levels from you was even worse (although the good thing back then was that you actually cared to win.. every loss was a huge setback. I remember my record of 27-8 and I went batshit insane over a loss at that point).

[Walking.TrL]

Player 5: unranked, 1-0, 2 loses in a row



 

[FML|Renaud]

LOL! i din't even notice!

But i guess that by the winning/losing streak he meant for every game type

In that case just to help you, i'm 99.99% sure that you have a different ell for every game type.

[DarKNeSSCaLLs]

LOL! i din't even notice!

But i guess that by the winning/losing streak he meant for every game type

In that case just to help you, i'm 99.99% sure that you have a different ell for every game type.

Yes, every game type has separate ELL

When the new ELL system was first released it wasn't like this though. They all shared one ELL. There would be accounts with people who were 0-85 RT and 85-0 solo as a result. They fixed it shortly thereafter and separated ELL for RT/Solo/FFA/AT