EASHL : matchmaking issues

[Virtual_Saku]

Good evening all !

I'm Yann, from France. I take a moment to write to you all on behalf of the french community (and probably more).

I'm here to know how many of you are facing the same problems than us from Switzerland, Germany and more coutries that are not Sweden or Finland, and if we can try to ask EA Sports to find a solution (sweet dream but who knows....).

Since a couple of months and still now with the new NHL20, we face very serious difficulties with the machmaking (mainly during 6v6 but also sometimes during 3v3). First we have to wait loooong minutes and minutes to find an opponent. Then, when we find it in local area we play very (very) often against the same teams (on NHL19 we played something like 50 times against Ice Aliens for instance). If we find a game in extended area, then we have to deal with very serious ping issues.
Ping issues are a huge problem during ECL for us in France, but we try to accept that.....

Well I don't like complaining, but too much is too much. Last week (don't remember what day) we stayed 25 minutes in the lobby without finding any opponent (local or extended search). Yesterday, 4 hours on the game, 4 games played ! ! We spend more time waiting in the lobby than playing, it can't be serious !

My objective is to know how many people are facing those problems and, trough NHLGamer, speak with EA Sports to find a solution. We can not stand dealing with those problems.....

Best regards fellas

[MartindalexC]

I can't speak for 6s (probably because the rest of the team is made up of people from Sweden / Finland), but when I was trying to find some draft champions games the other day the search was legit timing out, despite the person I was trying to play getting games after only 15 seconds tops. So there is definitely something weird going on with how the game is trying to matchup people in countries not named Sweden or Finland, almost seemingly refusing to 'widen' the search to teams / players outside of the immediate area. 

[PSchibra]

I had encountered this situation many a time in NHL 19 and did some extensive testing and what I found out is: since the introduction of the Stockholm server, the EU NHL player base is divided into 2 parts: Central Europe (those who are closer to the server in Ireland i.e. players from Germany, Switzerland France, UK, etc.) and Eastern/Northern Europe (those who are closer to the recently introduced Stockholm server i.e. players from Finland, Sweden Norway, Russia, Latvia, etc.) If you play on dedicated servers (HUT/3v3/6v6) then you will mostly get games connecting to the server that the majority of the team is closer to. From my experience, 3 Central EU players and 3 Northern EU players still got matched with Central EU opponents in 6v6. The problem for Central EU players is that there are way less teams from there in comparison to Northern EU so finding games is tough and you might spend the whole night playing the same opponent. For some reason switching the game location to relaxed isn't really a solution since you will match with North Americans more often than not. 

I submitted a question in the recent producer tour Q&A if we could get the ability to choose the server we connect to, and the producer replied with something along the lines of: yeah, sure, why not, let's do that. But that likely won't fix the ping issues @Virtual_Saku and others are having. 

Two (not all that likely) solutions I see for this are either to introduce a more central server somewhere in the north of Germany or Denmark, or to somehow grow the Central EU player base.

[izzo1706]

I have the impression that some German teams play on the Stockholm server, even if they have 6 players from central EU.

[Asche]

vor 33 Minuten schrieb izzo1706:

I have the impression that some German teams play on the Stockholm server, even if they have 6 players from central EU.

Irland Server = Centrel Europa ?

Schweden Server = Europa?

Is that right ?  pure intrest

 

We as German/ Swiss team we dont have this Problems , we play on the Central Servers ( EU server are Laggy  )

 

[Virtual_Saku]

3 minutes ago, Asche said:

We as German/ Swiss team we dont have this Problems , we play on the Central Servers ( EU server are Laggy  )

 

We try so buddy.... Nothing happens

Remaining in the lobby again and again and again. Yesterday night 30 minutes of matchmaking and not any game played

[Kenu]

1 hour ago, Asche said:

Irland Server = Centrel Europa ?

Schweden Server = Europa?

Is that right ?  pure intrest

 

We as German/ Swiss team we dont have this Problems , we play on the Central Servers ( EU server are Laggy  )

 

Central server is in Sweden as far as I understand and the Europe server is in Ireland.

[FlyerKungen]

1 tunti sitten, Kenu kirjoitti:

Central server is in Sweden as far as I understand and the Europe server is in Ireland.

This makes sence since I've been always wondering why Central Europe is recommended for me when doing club search...

[izzo1706]

it's a shame, we stayed 1 hour in the dressroom without finding a game... 🤬

[gzell60]

Bump. Any other teams still affected?

We've been limited to playing a handful of German and French teams in public matchmaking for roughly 2 months now. Basically when this thread started. The beta and ~ first two weeks were working fine.

[CzE Toni]

vor einer Stunde schrieb gzell60:

Bump. Any other teams still affected?

We've been limited to playing a handful of German and French teams in public matchmaking for roughly 2 months now. Basically when this thread started. The beta and ~ first two weeks were working fine.

same here...or we search hours to get opponent 😥

[Oicteppotulppu]

I assume you guys have that server in your configuration in Central?

[gzell60]

Changing the region doesn't help, we tried countless times. I assume it's not affecting matchmaking at all.

[Oicteppotulppu]

F..k. Then I have no Idea, how to fix that.

[izzo1706]

EA's answer :

 

[meiha]

Have you tried to block the IP address of Europe server (Ireland). I don´t know if it helps but maybe it will then force your best location to Central server in Stockholm.

If it works then you don´t have to use RELAXED as "use best location" and randomly match up against North American teams on their home ground.

It seems that your best location at the moment is Europe server and the game tries to search an opponent from that server first. I assume majority of finnish and swedish teams uses EXACT as "use best location"  in matchmaking criteria so they will always play on Central server and never on Europe server.

 

Edited December 10, 2019 by meiha

[Virtual_Saku]

12 hours ago, gzell60 said:

Bump. Any other teams still affected?

We've been limited to playing a handful of German and French teams in public matchmaking for roughly 2 months now. Basically when this thread started. The beta and ~ first two weeks were working fine.

We are facing this situation for almost a year here in France........ And it is worse since NHL20

[Naptown]

I would LOVE to be able to connect to ANY European server! People here upset because they can't connect to the European server close to them and I'm here unable to connect to a European server AT ALL! 😫

I'm in Germany and play exclusively drop ins and I am ALWAYS connected to North American servers! Imagine what my ping is like. On the RARE occasion I actually get a European server, the lobby never has more than 4 people and everyone always quits. 

If I do "best location" I only get "failed to find an opponent".

Is there a reason I can't connect to European servers?? Is it a setting on my XBox One somewhere that's fooling the game into thinking I'm in North America? My region is set to Germany....

[Kenu]

On 9/3/2020 at 2:01 PM, Naptown said:

I would LOVE to be able to connect to ANY European server! People here upset because they can't connect to the European server close to them and I'm here unable to connect to a European server AT ALL! 😫

I'm in Germany and play exclusively drop ins and I am ALWAYS connected to North American servers! Imagine what my ping is like. On the RARE occasion I actually get a European server, the lobby never has more than 4 people and everyone always quits. 

If I do "best location" I only get "failed to find an opponent".

Is there a reason I can't connect to European servers?? Is it a setting on my XBox One somewhere that's fooling the game into thinking I'm in North America? My region is set to Germany....

Hey @Naptown,

That sounds like an annoying problem to be suffering from!

If you go to search for a club, which region is recommended for you? Europe Central? North America East?
When did you first encounter this issue? NHL 20? Earlier? Did you use to connect to Europe Central or Europe West?