The Matchmaker

Hidden deep within a subterranean bunker in Seattle, behind two 16,000-pound blast doors, exists the permanent duty station of the elite Starform development team responsible for The Matchmaker.

It is The Matchmaker that leverages the latest advances in artificial intelligence combined with vast computational resources to best determine the other pilots you will face in matches.

⚠️ While the following content is accurate as of the time of publishing, Starform reserves the right to tune game mechanics at any time, without notice

Foundational Concepts

It is important to first understand a few foundational concepts in order to understand matchmaking. This article discloses increasing layers of detail as the reader progresses through the content.

Lobby

In Metalstorm pilots can queue up solo, invite other pilots to their lobby, or request to join another pilot's lobby. A lobby can have a maximum of five members, including the leader. Each member selects the aircraft from their hangar that they wish to use for the match, and this selection may be changed between matches.

While any member of the lobby can invite other players to the lobby, only the leader can send a notification inviting all the members of their squadron to their lobby. The leader can set their lobby to be open, which allows the leader’s friends and squadron members to join the lobby directly, without first needing to send a request to join.

Once all members of a lobby ready up, the lobby becomes a search party and enters The Matchmaker.

Trophy Disparity Warning

“Your party will be matched against other players based on the player in your party with the highest trophy score.”

— In-game description

This warning appears to all members of a lobby when there is a large difference in trophies between the aircraft with the highest number of trophies and the aircraft with the lowest number of trophies. This is a potential indicator of a significant difference in experience with the currently selected aircraft between members of the lobby.

If this warning is ignored, the match is likely to be more challenging than usual for members of the lobby with aircraft who have a lower number of trophies. Consequently, the outcome of the match may potentially be adversely affected.

The warning can be avoided by either the player with the aircraft that has the highest number of trophies selecting an aircraft with a lower number of trophies, or the player with the aircraft that has the lowest number of trophies selecting an aircraft with a higher number of trophies.

This warning is oriented more towards newer players, and can generally be less strictly adhered to by experienced players that are intimately familiar with gameplay mechanics.

Network Distance Warning

“Players in your party are geographically distant, and may experience network latency.”

— In-game description

Network latency (ping) is the amount of time that it takes your actions — from playing a match to chatting — to travel from the device that you’re playing Metalstorm on, to a Metalstorm game server, and back to your device. Network latency is measured in milliseconds (ms). During a match, pilots will see their current ping on the bottom left corner of their screen (‘Game Performance’ must be enabled under ‘Settings > Advanced’).

• A ping lower than 150ms is considered fast! (Ideally, you’d want a ping 50ms or lower).
• A ping between 150ms and 250ms is considered tolerable.
• A ping higher than 250ms is considered unacceptable.

Since a high ping causes debilitating lag, Metalstorm will display a red warning overlay on the tile of lobby members who have a ping of 250ms or higher:

In general, it is inadvisable for members of a lobby to invite a player from a part of the world that is geographically distant from them. If the “Network Distance” warning appears, the “View Regional Latency” feature can be used to get more information on the network conditions of lobby members:

This feature can be found under: Custom Match > Select Game Mode > Select Map > Custom Match Settings > View Regional Latency

Search Party

When your search party enters The Matchmaker — whether it has one member, five members, or somewhere in between — it is placed into a waiting room. This waiting room contains all the other search parties that entered the waiting room shortly before and shortly after your search party entered and is visible only to The Matchmaker.

The role of The Matchmaker is to look through the waiting room and form two teams that are well-suited for competing against one another in a match using the available search parties. It can take as few as two search parties or as many as ten search parties to fill both teams of a match.

If there aren’t enough well-suited search parties in the waiting room to immediately fill both teams of a match, The Matchmaker will, for a short period of time, keep an eye out for well-suited search parties that newly enter the waiting room.

Team

A team is comprised of five members.

Whereas a lobby and a search party are composed exclusively of human pilots; a team can either be composed exclusively of human pilots, exclusively of bots, or a mix of human pilots and bots.

If all five members of one team belong to the same squadron, the team will be given the same name as the squadron. Otherwise, the team will be named either Team Alpha or Team Bravo.

Match

A match is comprised of two teams.

The Matchmaker is given two minutes and thirty seconds to form the match’s two teams using the available search parties. If that time expires, The Matchmaker will, as a last resort, fill out the remainder of the two teams with bots.

The Matchmaker guarantees that a match will always have an equal number of human pilots on each team whenever both of the teams have two or more human pilots.

A particular Game Mode has no bearing on matchmaking; they are treated identically.

In order to decrease network latency, and to improve player experience, Metalstorm operates game servers out of ten server regions across the world. The Matchmaker will determine which one of these ten server regions a match will physically take place out of:

• South Korea
• Singapore
• Australia
• Canada
• Germany
• Italy
• Ireland
• Ohio
• California
• Oregon

The Matchmaker

Design Goals

The Matchmaker has several design goals. These include making a best effort to:

• Ensure that matches are intense and fun.
• Ensure that matches are neither unbalanced nor unfair.
• Prevent trophy farming of bots and lesser-experienced parties by more experienced pilots.
• Prevent gaming or manipulation of the Leaderboard.

Group Priority

The Matchmaker will make every possible effort to match groups of human pilots with other (well-suited) groups of human pilots.

For example, The Matchmaker will always match a search party of five members with another search party of five members.

• If the Matchmaker cannot find another search party of five members, it will match a search party of five members with a search party of four members plus one solo (a solo is a search party of one member).
• If the Matchmaker cannot find another search party of four members, it will match a search party of five members with a search party of three members plus a search party of two members.
• If the Matchmaker cannot find another search party of three members, it will match a search party of five members with two search parties of two members plus one solo.
• If the Matchmaker cannot find another search party of two members, it will match a search party of five members with five solos.
• If the Matchmaker cannot find five solos, it will fill the opposing team with five bots.

Matchmaking Factors

To determine how a search party will be matched against other search parties, The Matchmaker considers up to three of the following factors:

• Search Party Skill Rating: A search party’s skill rating is the number of trophies on the aircraft that has the highest number of trophies in the search party.
• Search Party Aircraft Level: A search party’s aircraft level is the level of the highest level aircraft in the search party.
• Search Party Eligible Server Regions: A search party’s eligible server regions are the server regions that all members of the search party have low-latency network connections to. For example, a search party whose members all reside in the United States might result in their search party’s eligible server regions being Ohio, California and Oregon.

Matchmaking

If the search party has any aircraft that has 1200+ trophies:

• The search party will match against other search parties whose search party skill rating are within several hundred trophies. Any search party — regardless of the level of its aircraft — that has even one aircraft with 1200+ trophies will result in the search party nearly always facing level 20 aircraft.

Otherwise, if the search party does not have any aircraft that has 1200+ trophies:

• The search party will match against other search parties whose search party skill rating are within several hundred trophies and whose search party aircraft level are close. The lower a search party's skill rating, the closer a matched search party's aircraft level will be.

Importantly, even if two search parties would otherwise match, if both search parties do not have at least one eligible server region in common, the search parties will not match.

Note: Since there are fewer pilots with higher-trophy aircraft than pilots with lower-trophy aircraft, matches with lower-trophy aircraft will generally exit The Matchmaker more quickly than matches with higher-trophy aircraft.

Factors that do not affect Matchmaking

The Matchmaker has long been the subject of speculation and guesswork. This section corrects a number of common misconceptions.

• Aircraft Rank: An aircraft’s rank is the number contained within the icon. This number represents the highest rank ever achieved with the given aircraft, irrespective of the aircraft’s current number of trophies. An aircraft’s rank has no effect on matchmaking.
• Pilot’s Profile Trophy Score: A pilot’s profile trophy score is the total number of trophies earned by a pilot across all of the aircraft in their hangar. A pilot’s profile trophy score has no effect on matchmaking.
• Special Abilities and Aircraft Mods: An aircraft lacking a special ability, or lacking aircraft mods, will not prevent it from matching against an aircraft that has them. In fact, it’s entirely possible for a level one aircraft to match against level twenty aircraft; However, this will occur only in scenarios where the level one aircraft has an especially high number of trophies. Special abilities and aircraft mods have no effect on matchmaking.

The best way to avoid unbalanced Matches

The best possible way to avoid unbalanced matches is to ready up as a full lobby of five pilots where all five pilots have selected aircraft that are at the same exact aircraft level.

If the aircraft cannot be at the same exact aircraft level, they should be as close as possible in aircraft level.

Why all at the same exact Aircraft level?

Imagine the following scenario:

• You’re in a lobby with four other pilots.
• All the aircraft in the lobby have a moderate and roughly similar number of trophies.
• You are in a level 12 aircraft, two of the other members are in level 11 aircraft, and the other two members are in level 10 aircraft.

Since matchmaking is based upon the aircraft level of the highest level aircraft in your lobby (level 12 in this scenario), and since a moderate aircraft level difference can be expected for a midrange match, your team could end up facing a team of five level 15 aircraft!

Since the level 10 aircraft have much less HP and DPS, and since the level 15 aircraft have much higher HP and DPS; the level 10 aircraft will be much easier for the level 15 aircraft to kill, and the level 15 aircraft will be much more difficult for the level 10 aircraft to kill.

While a five aircraft level span is quite significant, even a span of one aircraft level can make the difference between a victory and a defeat.

Mathematically, the greater the span in aircraft level, the greater the likelihood of a defeat; and the lower the span in aircraft level (ideally zero), the greater the likelihood of victory.

Pilots who keep this principle firmly in mind are laying the foundation for their squadrons and lobbies to have the highest likelihood of victory.

In summmary:

• When you are matched against higher level aircraft, you want to have minimized the aircraft level advantage that the other team has.
• When you are matched against lower level aircraft, you want to have maximized the aircraft level advantage that your team has.

Why a full Lobby of five?

If your lobby readies up as four members of the same exact aircraft level, The Matchmaker decides who your fifth team member will be.

The Matchmaker may also decide to pull in a fifth team member who is not at the same aircraft level as the other four members.