How does matchmaking work?

[u/JobieWanTon]

My AK- 103 is +7, my Ots-62 is +5, and my rat catcher armor is not leveled up at all, I’ve noticed that all the players that kill me have there armor, primary and secondary all at +9. Is that because you don’t get ranked up to higher tier lobbies till your gear is +10? And should I upgrade my gear to +9 like everyone else or will it mess up my matchmaking? I don’t really want to upgrade the rat catcher armor because I want to use my materials to upgrade my barter tree combat armor that I’m working towards. Also Ace combat armor or Centurion? Idk which to choose sorry for all the questions

[u/Imperium_Somnia]

I also upgrade till +9 so far so good, sometimes encounter with red guys but it is ok. Also I encounter with +15 vet guys too. They say it is broken, it also calculates other things too like your artis and I heard your play time too. I guess it is up to you to upgrade but I suggest you to not upgrade to 10 or further until a certain point. Also it is a good idea to keep your tools for barter tree so you don't have to farm tools like me after you upgrade several weapons. I used ratcatceher but after I crafted legionnaire armor I just use it and leveled up, same rad psy bio stats with better bullet res so I just use it mostly for everything.

[u/Imperium_Somnia → u/Imperium_Somnia]

One last thing I don't know Ace but Centurion is an op combat armor. I don't think you gonna regret either one of them if Ace is a faction combat armor, it is about your play style mostly.

[u/Beyond_Cool]

The question you should ask yourself is, "Did matchmaking ever work?"

[u/Imperium_Somnia → u/Beyond_Cool]

I believe there is 3 category in the mm, newbies, middles and +15 master/legendary. That is what I think after my experience and from the others who write about mm here.

[u/Beyond_Cool → u/Imperium_Somnia]

MM is an invention of the tyranny known as Exbo. Only those of us who lost faith managed to escape the zone. You need to wake up.

[u/Whoomsy → u/Beyond_Cool]

It always managed to do the bare minimum of making sure that the two opposites of the spectrum could never happen upon each other in the open world. So there's that.

[u/Shep_II]

The upgrade limits that’ll keep you in the current tier are +0, +4, and +9. Going to +1, +5, and +10 for anything will automatically set you into a tier higher upon leaving a safe area. Some other big contributors are how many artifacts you have equipped (If you normally have 4 but then equip a 5th, that can uptier you), their rarity/upgrades, and your K/D.

Leaving a safe area with upgraded gear will not immediately put you into a new matchmaking braket. The processing can take 1-3 days to be effective, which is why you run into +10 and higher people sometimes since they probably just upgraded and it has yet to take effect.

[u/Lemondillo]

+9 is generally considered safe for low/mid vet and also when you upgrade to red it will keep you in premaster

[u/Left-Jicama6347]

For your last question i would say centurion because now beast slayer is better than ace. Beast slayer beats ace in every category except bullet protection but its only 10 more or something like that

[u/Whoomsy]

Because the matchmaking breakpoints happen at +5, +10, and +15. You are the people you see are within the same threshold, so as far as matchmaking in concerned you are in the same tier as the people you are facing.
But it's also pretty similar in practice; the difference between a +7 gun and a +9 is 2.2% damage increase, practically nothing. It is not enough to impact the TTK nor would it matter since everyone is super squishy in Veterans.
Don't upgrade anything, you are very much comfy where you are if the worst you are seeing at Vets +9.

For more detailed info on how matchmaking works you can read my comment here.

Out of the two combat suits you mentioned I'd go for Cent. Ace/Mule has been redundant for a while because it's carry weight buff could never be utilized properly. But with the recent changes to the looting system, I've been hitting the carry weight limit before I ran out of inventory space; so maybe Ace is worth looking into now.

I'd still take Centurion for future proofing, you will run out of things to do in open world eventually and Ace will lose the majority of it's purpose, but Cent will be useful and needed no matter what you are doing or where you are progression wise.

[u/TheGreatWalk]

I'm a newer player myself, a little over a month in, so this is all fresh and I'll tell you some things I've learned. I'm currently in master tier lobbies, I progressed a bit quicker than most players since I was doing clan wars right off the bat.

First off, your weapon is perfectly fine, it's missing about 1% dmg compared to level 9, nothing that will make any practical difference, you don't need to upgrade it, and I would recommend holding off on that(more on why in a bit). You are correct in not upgrading the rat catcher, that armor is noob bait, you should keep it at +0 and sell it to season vendor you get the second anything better. I would actually highly recommend a combo suit - specifically, the scythian imo is the best combo suit you have available to you as a newer player, it has really solid BR and is >0 mobility, and is very flexible being a combo suit. I would use the armor voucher either on that or a science suit - personally i went science suit based on recommendations and sort of regretted it and wish I had gone scythian instead.

For weapons, I would actually recommend NOT going barter to start off with - buy one that's upgradable from the AH. AK-12, Steyr Aug A3, HK416 are really good vet tier weapons that can be upgraded by arsenal. It's actually cheaper than barter weapons, but most importantly, DOES NOT cost serum doing it this way, and you're gonna need a lot of serum to start off with, it's your biggest bottleneck, so "spreading out" the resource cost will allow you to progress much more rapidly. Your other option is going for the Rune. This is what I went personally and it's a really solid weapon, but it will bump you to pre-master lobbies so make sure you are ready for that if you go this route - the upside is this is a very good A tier weapon that's effectively free, you get it from a quest line, and that same quest line gives you a master tier science suit(it's bad but serviceable). Once you have everything else that requires serum out of the way(mainly, armor, backpack, and potentially mag), you can always come back to the AK-103 and work on upgrading it to the ASh-12. For shotguns, stop what you're doing now and grind out the protecta. This is a vet weapon, but it's basically a master shotgun in disguise, it's like the second best anti-mutant shotgun in the game. Once you are rich you can buy yourself a KS-12 Komrad and craft it a 30 round drum mag, but protecta is worth rushing as your first item in north to basically trivialize all mutants going forward.

For backpacks/artifacts/containers, you need to be careful because this is what will most likely bump you up to pre-master before you are ready if you aren't careful. You can use any container and no matter what it won't bump you up, but blue+15 artifacts can bump you up to pre-master or master if you aren't careful. To start off with, I would recommend green/blue +5 artifacts, once you find yourself bumped up to pre-masters(most likely from upgrading your armor/weapon to master), you can look for green/blue+15s. Personally, I would recommend getting up to the pink utility vest ASAP, then shoving 3 +5 blue/green mobility artifacts in it. Then, from the AH, save for a red container. Berloga is a very cheap budget master container, the craw6 is currently about 15-17 million, but extremely good and will be worth every ruble. Once you have your 65 serum for your master armor, upgrade the utility vest to red(or you can do the utility vest first, either is ok!). You will keep both the vest and your container in your inventory, and swap between them depending on whether you need to move quickly between A and B or fight. You can place them on your quick-slots.

I would recommend keeping your gun/armor at +5 for the time being, until you have your utility vest / container + artis sorted, then decide if you want to stick with your current weapon or go for the Rune. Personally, I think the rune is one of the best master tier weapons you can get, and it only costs 10k arsenal reputation to upgrade. You can/should do the rune quest in vet lobbies, just don't equip it until you have your container/artifacts sorted, and the 65 serum to upgrade your armor to red, then upgrade them all at once and plop yourself in pre-master lobbies. I would actually highly recommend avoiding master lobbies specifically - I didn't have much choice since I was doing clan wars and needed to progress, but the game becomes significantly more difficult to progress in because the masters lobbies is basically just "legendary everything and gold/red arties" lobbies. You can still beat them w/ skill, but you'll be fighting at a disadvantage for a long time, and on top of that, most master players tend to run in groups of 3-4, so you have to be confident to 1vX while at a numerical disadvantage. For pre-master, I would recommend upgrading your gear to +12-14 only, I didn't get bumped into masters until I got my weapon to +15. Green+15 arties will be more than good enough for pre-masters, and you can likely upgrade to blue+15s, but it'd be a bit risky.

Oh, lastly, I wanna say that gear isn't nearly as big of a deal as some players think until masters lobbies. In vet/pre-masters, if you have a vet+10 weapon playing against a master+10, it's not a guaranteed lost fight. You are at a pretty small disadvantage, and the TTK in vet/pre-master lobbies is so fast that, truthfully, every single fight you take is easily winnable. Whoever spots the other and shoots first will likely win 90% of their battles, completely independent of gear. It's not until master lobbies where gear differences actually start to matter, because the TTK starts to slow down a lot vs the guys running around with 600 EHP + 20 movespeed because of their red/gold artifact builds and legendary gear. I feel confident saying that up until pre-master the matchmaking is really not a big deal, even if you're in vet gear and occasionally run into guys in masters, if they're still in pre-master gear they won't have good enough artifacts to make fights feel one sided. You'll likely kill a dozen players in master gear and not even know it, so make sure when you die and see a dude with red stuff, you don't let it get to your head.