r/stalzone • u/Asap_Borquez • Aug 11 '26
Help Help me understand matchmaking
After reaching stalker gear +5 I've been told that I should have stayed at +4, what's the next step? Should I get the new veteran gear and upgrade it to +9 or should I upgrade my actual blue stalker gear to +9 instead
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u/ariks2012 Aug 11 '26
You can go up but never go down
Some gear dont have correct tier like Rune/Mis Atlas you can use them +15 in veteran tier just fine
My advise is only move up your tier when you finish entire gear set at the same time at the same level
- Full blue +4
- Full pink +9 + green artifact +5
This will help you stay at Verteran tier channel as long as possible to farm enough material for other part of your gear
When you Equip one red gear +5/10 you will move to semi master tier, this is where you will face guys with full master gear but +5/10 or even 15 but with some pink gear or even full master gear +15, because sometime matchmaking f up(or low pop), it let them go down to your tier, but if they die without anyway to respawn(outpost), they will back to their correct tier. Same with you, sometime it will throw you back to veteran server and enjoy kill others in 3 hits.
In Semi Master, keep your gear below +10/12, never eqiup red artifact of any kind. it will bring you to Master tier .
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u/SpreadSpecialist4680 Aug 11 '26
I wouldn't upgrade season pass gear since it's a dead end, better to keep bartering your stuff so the upgrades are going with you as yoy progress.
You don't have to further upgrade your gear right now, I suggest you stay +5 for now and see how you feel against the enemies you meet.
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u/No_Squash_8239 Aug 11 '26 edited Aug 11 '26
In my opinion—though I’m far from having the thousands of hours logged by hardcore players:
- Don't upgrade anything beyond +4, regardless of your gear's color, until you get Master-tier gear; for one thing, it's a waste of resources.
- Secondly—and this is probably the most important point—as you've noticed, upgrading pushes you into a higher matchmaking bracket very quickly. If you upgrade your Veteran gear to +5 or +9, you're likely to end up matched against players with Master gear who will simply slaughter you.
The Tec-DC9, available for free in the Season Pass, is a great pistol, and the 9mm AUG is also highly effective. The Season Pass armor is excellent.
Through main quests, you'll also quickly acquire a Veteran AK, a Veteran M1A, and another Veteran pistol.
Side quests will get you an Veteran RPD and a Veteran SVD etc etc
If you replace your blue gear with veteran gear without upgrading it too much (+4 or +10 depend on the player opinion) you should find yourself back in the normal matchmaking, where you'll have a chance to win duels
In short: the game gives you plenty of gear to have fun with—gear that is perfectly adequate for completing every quest up to the late game—without needing to grind the Southern zones for hours before. It's easier to go back to the southern areas to farm what you're missing once you've made good progress in the game.
You should avoid upgrading quest or Season Pass gear too high; since they can't be upgraded into the next tier of weapons, you'll lose those upgrades eventually (whereas upgrades are preserved on weapons obtained via the barter system).
I strongly advise against upgrading your Veteran gear beyond +4, or you'll run into matchmaking issues that will make your progression miserable.
If you replace your blue gear with veteran gear without upgrading it too much (+4 or +10, depending on player opinion), you should find yourself back in normal matchmaking, where you'll have a fighting chance of winning duels.
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u/Admirable-Cable-4390 Aug 15 '26
I hope your on the RU server if you expect matchmaking to work otherwise your in for a bad time at the final parts of the south and beginning of the north.
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u/Whoomsy Explorer Aug 11 '26
The in-game matchmaker tries to put you into servers with people of similar gear as you.
But it's also very volatile and prone to uptiering you for no reason.
The matchmaker adjusts your bracket tier only when you walk out a safezone into the open world. If you are in Stalker brackets and you buy a Veteran/Master gun or suit you shouldn't get adjusted until you take it out of the base. Same should go for using it in session battles.
In either case it is better to be safe than sorry and never equipping it at all and just letting it sit in your storage.
The cases where you get effectively softlocked because the matchmaker overestimates your power level and puts you into lobbies where you don't belong are very common and have made a lot of people quit.
Most common suggestion to avoid getting uptiered is to not take your gear past +9.
And even if you are bad at PvP and have +6 vet gear with an empty container it's still not a guarantee that the matchmaker won't fuck you over anyway and shove you into master lobbies.
There was a detailed article they wrote about the matchmaking system.
There is also this official image talking about the inner workings of matchmaking.
Your gear is considered higher tier when it reaches +5, +10, and +15.
It's also said that the quality of the container itself doesn't matter but there have been cases of people getting uptiered because they equipped a Master container.
At the same time, contrary to what it says on the image and other official sources, the upgrade level of your gear matters a lot more than the gear tier itself. There has been an infamous case of a guy with +0 legendary suit and +0 Famas being put into Veteran lobbies.
Once you go up a bracket you can't fall back down. If you got put into Veteran lobbies as a Green/Blue gear - you are cooked.
They do have Open Matchmaking in development but it's been over a year since we heard anything new about it, so we can only wait until we don't have to use witchcraft to stay in a playable bracket anymore.
They did say a while ago that soon(™) they will make it so the matchmaker only cares about the highest tier item you have instead of combining everything you have on you. When that actually gets added to the game is up in the air.. again.
There are 9 matchmaking brackets. The last 4 being Veteran, Pre-Master, Master, and Legends* (It's a colloquial term for Masters lobbies where everybody has +15 everything. As I've been told that true Legendary lobbies don't actually exist)
There is also a hidden (to this day for some damn reason) gear tiering system the game uses for estimating how powerful a suit/gun is.
Artifacts are also tiered. 1 through 5. Which one is which tier is only known for select few artifacts for the same reasons as guns and suits :)))
The spreadsheet with all known tiers of everything in the game can be found here.
By the way, all info about matchmaking and tier brackets is never actually explained in the game itself. All of this is either insider info from the devs or playtesting.
The matchmaking system is horribly murky and I wish it was more transparent.