Aight, here's my perspective as a newish vet (played since may, have about 700 games played, about 60-70% as captain).
1. I have played with a lot of novice crews, and I find that with novice crews some builds are unplayable - i.e. mobula. Now, I have actually taught completely new players how to crew a mobula in a 3v3 and been successful, but that takes substantial effort from me as a captain that I'm not ALWAYS willing to put in. So point one is that the matchmaking system is likely to increase the amount of explaining and teaching that I have to do by virtue of low playerbase as has been mentioned in this thread so far.
2. I am more willing to teach and talk to new players if
(1) they are responsive and listen, and
(2) I have someone else to help me with the process.
For example, last night KitKatKitty and I flew a Galleon with a newbie bot deck and kept the build the same through a number of games to give the new players some experience playing with the same build over and over - and it was far easier with two experienced players willing to guide than just me. I find that when I am alone as a vet on a ship with a new crew of which even one person is unresponsive, I am instantly uninclined to put time into guiding or playing cooperatively with the people on my ship.
3. I prefer transparency to misdirection. I totally understand about how player dynamics work with regard to seeing levels and feeling instantly dispirited, and I can see the perspective from the other side. The problem here is that the illusion is really hard to maintain with a low player-base like what we have. Thus, I prefer not to be treated like I'm an idiot and don't understand what's going on with regard to matchmaking. It's clearly the most conventionally fun to play with a perfectly oiled crew, and everyone loves winning, which leads me too...
4. I don't mind losing, as long as people are having a good time. When I'm losing and people are communicative, even if they're all novices, I don't mind nearly as much. We're having fun, we're shooting guns, we're crashing into things... it might be exasperating getting blown up, but we all know why that's happening. When no one communicates, I feel like the game is a chore. And the thing that glicko2 definitely doesn't measure is how communicative someone is feeling at any point in time. But I guess that's just a fact we're going to have to live with in terms of any matchmaking system for a team game.
So, am I disappointed with some of the changes? Yes - but I suppose I can chalk some of that up to conservatism. Still, I would highlight the points I've noted above as an indication that my experience with the game hasn't fundamentally changed from before the matchmaking system was introduced, with the exception that I'm being called upon to teach more often than I have previously. And that has been stressful, and difficult, and often frustrating to the point of not wanting to play any more that day.
Just my thoughts.
