The struggle is real

Most of the games I play are so niche that 'matchmaking' simply consists of whoever's available. Or sometimes it even requires pinging people on Discord.
- Yup, either this or the matchmaking is in find-the-most-toxic-people-available mode. I almost stopped playing online to be honest, I'd rather play couch co-op or even a good solo game.
  
  Personally, I think it's about how impresonal modern matchmaking is.
  You're only ever playing against "enemies" and "enemies" should be "hated with the hot passion of a burning sun". And if you lose, you're never at fault, because your teammates sabotaged you!
  People don't have to maintain cordial relationships, because they will never meet their teammates or opponents again.
  Compare that to stuff that works using servers, where each team is made up of the same pool of people from one round to the next. People actually make friends with each other, friend or foe, and have more fun as a result.
- Surprisingly, that somehow makes for far more enjoyable and friendly competition.
  Go figure.

Many games do this intentionally btw. Make you lose some rounds and then give you an easy one to keep you hooked
- I also think it's an impossible problem to solve.
  The same player isn't going to perform identically every session, and accounting for every possible weapon or character/class they might play, potential synergies with teammates, or potential advantages/disadvantages in matchups against any given opponents...
  It all makes for a literally infinite number of variables, all of which must be accounted for.
  The correct way to get interesting matches, imo, is to make it semi-random, and not try to have all the players on both teams be exactly the same skill level. Rather, put players on both teams from a range of estimated skill levels. This way both teams have weaker links for the other team to potentially exploit, and both teams have strong players which will try to stop that.
  Instead, the system should just enforce common sense stuff, like not pitting someone who is literally playing for the very first time, against a team with someone who is 2000 hours in, and hence might straight up deny the new guy a chance to play at all.
  I should know. I literally wrote THE team balancer for titanfall 2 community servers. For a time it even used the Tone online database of player stats, to know how to balance players that had never played on a given server before.
  I was genuinely shocked how good the resulting games were. All I did was take the completely random players that decide to join a server, and simply figured out a slightly smarter way than other balancer scripts at the time, to divide them into two teams that are close enough to equal.
- Call of duty does this too. Matches are rigged for or against you

Nothing better than finding a good community server but sadly not always possible nowadays.
- Yeah I still remember team fortress classic servers I would go back to all the time. It was nice to go into a server where everyone knew your name. It was like being a regular at a restaurant or bar.
  
  I have fond memories of TFC and TF2 too. Good community server and civilised people using their microphone are the dream.
- I swear, some of the best titanfall 2 matches I ever played were on northstar custom servers.
- The last time I had something like that was when BF3 was still the most revent entry in the franchise. I knew how the game would go by looking at which side had more names that I recognized lol, good times

League of Legends for the last several years now.
- Eh, I think that one's mostly on the community / players giving up games as soon as anything bad happens (making the 30-70 and 40-60 games where you still have decent odds of winning more like 5-95 games which become a self-fulfilling prophecy), plus regular players getting better over time (mistakes and misplays are more likely to be punished and leads are more likely to be capitalized on).
  The give-up culture wasn't as bad much earlier in the game's life, at least in my NA-centric exposure to solo queue.
  
  The game intentionally gives you a 33 percent chance to have a game you can't win. That alone is enough to destroy anyone's mental. The playerbase is so dwindling that most trying to play swiftplay anymore are just trying to eek out a quick win, it incentivizes cheese strats, making fair games even less likely. I could go on and on, but suffice it to say I really want to be done playing league forever -- my online mate recently became a fan after arcane season two so it's been tough.
- Anyone able to comment on Valorant?
  
  I've played about 100 games and it has been completely unable to get me interested. Attempted giving it the ol college try, but just found it vastly imbalanced for someone who doesn't play any mouse and keyboard games outside of league. Oh also, the monetization is even WORSE than modern league, so there's that too.

When Dead By Daylights matchmaking system prioritizes getting you into a match faster instead of getting you into a balanced match, and matches you with less than 100 hours of playtime as Killer into an "Unemployment Lobby" of a 4 goblin pre-made with 50k combined hours ready to bully you for 55 minutes:
(Ask me how I know this lol)

I don’t get it.
- If you play enough, pure random chance will eventually get you a game that feels like a fair fight.
  But quite often, video game matchmaking systems will fail to accurately estimate player skill correctly, creating teams where one will utterly demolish the other.
  
  Or, as a counter-point, perhaps they are nearly evenly matched, and the slight difference in skill between them is disproportionately reflected in the scoreboard. I've seen this happen in fighting games, but admittedly, I haven't really played a matchmade team game in a long, long time, because they kind of stopped making those games for me.
  
  Gotcha, all I could think of is the original gambling meme