I haven’t played multiplayer competitive FPSes since players ran their own servers, so I’m not really up to date.
But if my understanding of the situation is correct, it seems like there’s a pretty straightforward workaround.
Have skill-based matchmaking by default. List an estimate for how long it will take for the match to be made.
Have an option for people willing to maybe be placed into a lopsided game to skip this and go into a general pot, first-come-first-served regardless of skill.
That keeps people who want an even match happy and people who don’t care and want to jump into a match happy.
Turns out only the top players get long queues with this system, so they’re the only ones going into the not-skill-based queue and the wait times are still long; anyone not at the top then gets matched exclusively against top players and that’s no fun for them so they keep to the skill-based queue.
I haven’t played multiplayer competitive FPSes since players ran their own servers, so I’m not really up to date.
But if my understanding of the situation is correct, it seems like there’s a pretty straightforward workaround.
Have skill-based matchmaking by default. List an estimate for how long it will take for the match to be made.
Have an option for people willing to maybe be placed into a lopsided game to skip this and go into a general pot, first-come-first-served regardless of skill.
That keeps people who want an even match happy and people who don’t care and want to jump into a match happy.
Turns out only the top players get long queues with this system, so they’re the only ones going into the not-skill-based queue and the wait times are still long; anyone not at the top then gets matched exclusively against top players and that’s no fun for them so they keep to the skill-based queue.