And to top it off, in close quarters he had incredible cards, including last line of defense, merc, aa hero, debuffs, airlift 2, evac ....

We already have a bucket system, the following was written by Chrism a while back in patch notes:

"Matchmaking explanation-- there are now 3 "buckets of players". Highly ranked (above 1850), Mid ranked (above 1700) and Lower ranked (below 1700). If possible, you will be matched with a player in your bucket. If there is not a player available in your bucket, you will be paired with a player above or below your bucket. You may be paired with a player above or below your bucket immediately if that player has been searching. You will never be paired with someone more than one bucket above or below.

Thus, if you are 2050 you will not play a newby, but you may play someone that is 1710. So, Witcher will not be playing total newby's, which is good since that is not fun (or should not be fun) for either player.

We will add more buckets or change the system as our player base grows."

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For the most part, I sympathize with Geral. But we have a bucket system in place which should help deal with this. If Geral faced Timebomb, Timebomb must have won enough games to get into the middle bucket, so its not a complete smurfing.

I think that the top bucket should begin at 1800, not 1850. Only ten players on the site are rated 1850 or higher. I certainly believe at 1827, I should not be playing beginners.

The focus of this thread is on the smurfing, but Geral also touched on the map Close Quarters. Can we please just remove that map from matchmaking and have it be custom only? There is a reason its not used in tournaments. Yet for some players, like Geral, who plan on making the pro circuit events based on their rating, every matchmaking game is in essence a tournament game for them.