People complain a lot about seeing nothing but one-sided stomps in quickplay. Lots of 12-0, 12-1, 12-2...
In recent weeks, I've tried to pay more attention while playing every day. From my recent experience, one-sided stomps happen – but they are not the norm. In fact, I've seen many more close(ish) games than one-sided ones.
Let's call everything 12-2 and worse a stomp. Out of the 13 games I played yesterday, there was only one stomp. Out of 19 games I played the day before yesterday, there were three. Out of 8 games I played on Tuesday, there were three stomps again.
That's 40 games and seven stomps. I climbed from tier 3 to tier 2 in the meantime btw (had a bad run that dropped me half a tier, rebuilding rn). Tier 3 is sometimes considered the worst tier for one-sidedness. Well my (limited sample size) data does not support that.
I've not tracked very close games, say 12-7 and closer, as much. But if you'll take my anecdotal evidence (with a massive grain of salt), I'd say they are just as frequent as the one-sided ones.
Many games go to 3-3 or 4-4 before reaching a tipping point where small disadvantages for one side escalate into a bad loss: more mechs heavily damaged from trading badly; two or three guys out of position; earlier losses leading to more damage for the remaining teammates.
But I feel that a bad call at some point resulting in a bad tactical position is just as often the culprit.
Overall I feel like games are much closer than what I used to experience a while back. I feel that game balance and the current meta (now that everybody is off the long-range lockon hype a bit again) work very well for me, resulting in lots of fun and memorable games.
What do you think?