How does matchmaking work?

I will go on runs where my team is playing great and I will win 70%+ of my games. I usually get smacked in the playoffs at some point, but make it to the Legend division. Eventually I start getting destroyed by every team I play and get knocked down to rookie. Why is it that in the rookie division teams will often be better than the teams in the legendary division for days at a time?  But then suddenly something switches, the matchups seem reasonable, and I start winning again.   I also notice during my strings of losses that  my players seem ‘off’-  either a few steps slower than normal, awareness/play rec seems lower, etc, especially when losing at rookie level. 
 

Do divisions not make a difference in regular season matchmaking?

Only thing I can think of is DDA

Noticed that also but not in ranked. I was playing the house rules and I would go on winning streak then get stopped again and again. Then back to winning streak. I tested it several times and it's true.

This is the exact experience I have. I think part of it is randomness of the random number generator that they use to determine the outcome of each play. 

I also would have to consider they make it this way to frustrate players into making upgrades and spending coins. This is the "conspiracy theory" angle but if you study logic, they are incentivized to get you to grind and/or spend coins so they are "doing their job" by making the games super random and glitchy to frustrate people into spending more cash to get a little edge to get them over the hump. Similar to how people try to get an edge with golf or fishing or whatever and buy fancy equipment that probably doesn't help as much as more practice would.  But the problem is that even if you practice and do everything right, you can still get jobbed. I guess that's similar to other sports too i.e. bad bounce etc. 

But I also have noticed my wins are very streaky. I got to legend division with 2 super bowls along the way on Monday. Yesterday I was in rookie division after a 8 game stretch and my players could not do anything right. I was watching the other team open huge holes up for running backs and my rb was stuffed every play and all their defenders were like glue. It's weird and super frustrating. I have to have the right mindset to play anymore and try to laugh when I get the big screw job for 5 games in a row. 

It seems like the only people that can avoid this dynamic are the huge cheesers who run the same offensive and defensive plays every down and they find the exploit and just glitch out the code. Those are the most annoying people on the planet and likely also get a lot of wins from people who concede because they don't want to deal with the frustration.

Agree!

its based off ELO; they base it off of your most recent games. if you are winning a lot, your opponents will get harder. if they get too hard and you start losing, your opponents will get slightly worse until your winning multiple games in a row.

RavensFlockLetsFly said:

its based off ELO; they base it off of your most recent games. if you are winning a lot, your opponents will get harder. if they get too hard and you start losing, your opponents will get slightly worse until your winning multiple games in a row.

while they do base it off ELO, in things like playoffs or championship games, superbowls etc they purposely match you against a player with a higher ELO.

Josh121 said:

while they do base it off ELO, in things like playoffs or championship games, superbowls etc they purposely match you against a player with a higher ELO.

idk about that, ive played some really bad players in SBs

RavensFlockLetsFly said:

idk about that, ive played some really bad players in SBs

have you ever noticed match making take much longer than normal in playoffs or superbowls?

Josh121 said:

have you ever noticed match making take much longer than normal in playoffs or superbowls?

yes and no. ik what you are trying to get at but even when it was short times it was bad players