Why Ranked Cross-Play?
To begin, let’s talk about matchmaking. Generally, there are two tweaks we can do to make matchmaking more effective in Ranked.
First, we can increase the maximum time the matchmaker has to find a strong match & the maximum time it has to find a decent match so there are fewer instances of the matchmaker deciding after a long period to put a player into any match. Essentially, longer queue times, more even teams in the average match.
On the other hand, we can instead reduce the maximum time the matchmaker has to make strong and/or decent matches. That means shorter queue times, less even teams in the average match.
Whichever we do, shorter times mean lower quality matches, and longer times mean higher quality matches. There’s really only one way to improve match quality without hurting queue times, or vice versa, and that’s to get more players in the same queue.
So, Cross-Play means better Ranked matchmaking. What about the fairness of matches between KBM and Controller players?
When players state there would be unfair advantages for a specific input, the answer is Yes and No.
Using the current system, if we took a 1500 MMR KBM player and matched them against a 1500 MMR Gamepad player, you are correct. That probably wouldn’t be a fair match. Depending on how impactful Aim-Assist is, one of those players would have a competitive advantage over the other. But that’s not how this will work.
Once the queues are combined, you’ll be matched with other players who perform at your level. So if you opponent is on gamepad, they are a gamepad player that performs at roughly your MMR. If they are a KBM player, they’re one that performs at roughly your MMR.
Now it could well have been that if you’re at 1500 as a KBM player and that gamepad player was previously 1750 MMR for Gamepad, or vice versa under the old system; however, matchmaking implicitly takes the input method into account, because they’re winning/losing matches with whichever input they use to be assigned their MMR, if that makes sense. This ensures that players are placed into fair matches regardless of their input method at any given time.
To sum it up, Ranked wins/losses will be done with their input method and MMR will match players fairly regardless of their input method. We were hesitant about making this change, and there are some improvements we can make to improve things further, however community suggestions and specific feedback surrounding Ranked queue times & match fairness (and how Cross-Play could help alleviate that) led to us making this decision.
