My thoughts exactly.
I have no problem with rookies themselves; everyone is/was a rookie to the game at some point. But, as someone who’s far from a rookie, it shouldn’t be my job to, as you said, hawk over them. It shouldn’t fall all on my or my higher level teammates shoulders to carry you to victory against other high level players because you physically cant compete with them.
There’s no reason why low level players should be getting matched with high level players and vice versa. Bracketed matchmaking is an excellent idea, and why this wasn’t implemented out of the box at launch continues to baffle me. Gearbox saw the match statistics from the CTT. They saw the statistics from the open beta. Why they thought that this wasn’t something that needed to be immediately addressed is beyond me. And frankly I’d argue that it’s gotten worse.
I’ve played quite a bit of multiplayer since launch day. Compared to the CTT and the beta, there is definitely much more snowballing occurring on a regular basis. Out of ALL the matches I’ve played, I can probably count on my hands the total number of matches I’ve played where 1. Both teams are about evenly matched 2. The actual match itself was a close game; within 50-110 points. Easily more than 90% of the time the match snowballs heavily in favor of one team (regardless of forfeit or not). Christ, I got the reborn as badass title in a day or two because of it.
Brackets are just the way it should be, be it CR or ELO. 1-10, 11-15, 16-20, 21-30, etc.
Another thing I’ve taken notice of is the discrepancy with skill level and CR dramatically decreases as CR increases. As in, if a level 8 plays a level 25, the level 25 will absolutely butt blast the 8. If a 15 plays a 25, the 25 has just a decent advantage. if a 25, plays a 30, they aren’t too much different skill wise. And the higher this goes the more evenly matched people are and it’s more of a matter of time invested. Like a CR 55 on your team is probably just as ok as the level 65-70 on their team.