Since the Chapter 1 release in December 2020, we've been tweaking the Matchmaking system in an attempt to provide fairer and more satisfying matches to players of all skill levels.  That work continues with Chapter 2 and the release of both Leagues and Dominion! 

Below are some of the major tweaks we have made for this release:

Overall Changes:

• Players will now remain in the lobby screen for the duration of the queue timer.  Once a full match has been found, THEN players will be placed in a warmup lobby right before a game.
  • Time spent in queue will be displayed on the Play Button
  • Menu navigation is disabled while waiting in queue
  • Once the match is found, players and their party are brought to the warmup lobby, which should last < 30 seconds
• If a player is placed on a squad with a player they have blocked, the player will be booted back into the matchmaking queue
• Ranked Dominion and Unranked Dominion are separate queues.  While initially announced that these would be mixed, that decision has been reversed.  This may be re-activated in the future if queue health requires it.
  

You'll now see a Queue Timer on the Play button while the Matchmaking System finds you a match.

Matchmaking Criteria

Matchmaking takes multiple factors into consideration when trying to find an appropriate game for your skill level.  These factors include:

• League Rank - In ranked games, players' League Rank will play the largest part in finding matches of appropriate skill.  Matchmaking will always try to find matches with people of similar skill to you.  Note that some players may be several tiers higher or lower than you, but these are averaged out across both teams of 5.
• Party Size -  Matchmaking will try to find other teams consisting of premade parties to balance the advantage of premade coordination (for example, it would be unfair to have a 5-person premade team vs. five solos - this is to avoid that scenario).  Depending on the size of your pre-made party, Matchmaking will multiply your party's collective League rank by a certain percentage (with a 5-man party having the highest multiplier).  This concession is made assuming that larger parties are more likely to be coordinated in their play and using voice communications effectively.  The multiplier is applied to the highest-ranked member of your party.  This way, lower-ranked players in other parties should have a better chance of not going against super-high ranked players.  Additionally, this should reduce high-rank players "boosting" low-rank players.
• Preferred Region - Matchmaking will always begin by searching for games within your selected Preferred Region.  If it can't find suitable games, it will begin to expand it's search to the next-best region in terms of ping.  Note that if you queue as a party, this will consider the Party Leader's location for this search criteria.
• Ping - The ping the player has to all available regional servers upon beginning matchmaking.
• Cross-Play - Matchmaking will change based on whether players have Cross-Play enabled or not.  Note that if you have Cross-Play disabled, you may not be able to join a party of a friend on another platform.

The Matchmaking Process

The Matchmaking system uses the above criteria to find the best match for you.  However, as your Queue Time increases, the system will begin to loosen requirements for several of the criteria.  This process will continue until a maximum timer is hit after several minutes.  When this happens:

• In Battle Royale, the system will take the matched players and fill the rest of the slots with Bot opponents
• In Dominion, the system will boot queued players out and let them know that matchmaking has timed out

FAQ

Can I queue with my friend that is way higher/lower rank than I am?

You can, but it may not be the optimal experience for either you or your friend.  Matchmaking will always matchmake towards the higher skilled player, especially in larger parties.  It's likely that a low-ranked friend would NOT have a good time!

Unranked players will also accumulate a hidden MMR to ensure that their games are relatively fair also.  Unranked queues will have slightly more generous matchmaking when considering players' hidden Unranked MMR.

Is there still the Mage Rank 23+ matchmaking split?

Nope!  With the addition of Leagues and hidden MMR, this option is no longer needed.  Adding this was an interim solution to matchmaking for our Chapter 1 release, when the system was not as fleshed out as we would have liked.  Now, all games are matchmade without Mage Rank being taken into account.

Is there any way to see my hidden Matchmaking Rating (MMR) for Unranked Games?

Currently, no.  This may be revisited in the future, however.

For Ranked play, your MMR is essentially the same as your current League level.