Can we stop throwing the word "matchmaking" around Xserver sage problem?
First, the root of the problem is the size of the sage. Because regardless of "matchmaking", fact of the matter is that there will be only a small portion of each battle field that is likely to win, and the rest of the player, whoever them might be, will almost never get anything. This is a bigger problem especially when there is no fluidity between the battlefield so people do not move from one to another often enough to be the cream of the crop some of the time. Bigger field reduce fluidity because of law of large numbers, as sampling size increase, the % variance decrease. And for the "highest" grouping, there is even less as it is independent of other influence (whereas second grouping is influenced by the randomness of the first and so on)
Second, while the "matchmaking" as you people call it is badly thought out in that group 1 of each server cluster is hell, fact of the matter is that NO ONE have provided any actual EVIDENCE of there is a problem with it. And what sort of evidence you might ask? Well, simply enough, given 3 players that should be ordered 1,2,3, they are sorted into sage battles such that 1 and 3 are in the same sage while 2 is in another. For example, 3 lv 90s with power 80k, 70k and 60k, and the 80k and 60k are in one sage while the 70k is in another. As it stands, it is possible that the "matchmaking" is actually working as it is designed and that all our concerns gets dismissed as the result when people's point of complaint is that the "matchmaking" is not working right.
And finally, "working as intended" does not mean good. The current "matchmaking" scheme is flawed. Players should not be rewarded for not leveling, at least not as a sudden introduction of new mechanic. It should either be always that way or never that way, changing the rule of the game midway is not ok. Then, grouping 1 of each server cluster is hell. I understand that sacrificial lambs will be needed as the top ptws will always take up the winner slots. But the sacrificial lambs should not always be the same batch of people (or, more exactly, no one should always be stuck as a sacrificial lamb). Given the current "matchmaking", even reducing sage field size would not help, it would reduce the number of sacrificial lambs, but some players will still be stuck being one indefinitely. We need mechanics that "shake things up". For example, if a player won top 3 in the last sage that he entered, he is put into a special group (say 4 sage field in a server cluster means 36 winners total) and they fight in one sage. This would at least give the "next strongest" players of each original grouping some breathing room. With group size reduction, potentially the top 25 of say 45 will have a decent chance of winning eventually. It will also introduce more volatility to the groupings so there is more fluidity.