Matchmaking timezone differences - Skill disparity

Games Halo 5: Guardians
1

So I’m PST timezone (west coast) and I started playing early morning on the weekends like 6 AM, and I noticed matchmaking was incredibly lopsided. I’m a Platinum player and I started getting placed in games with 5 or 6 Onyx players and one Plat/gold player, or one Champ/Onyx and like 6 Plat/Gold players in Team Arena. In the second case, the final score was always the Champ or Onyx player getting 30+ kills and 3 deaths and everyone else just getting decimated.

Then I play at 7:00 PM my time and all of a sudden it’s back to normal, getting fair matches (with mostly guys with MEXI service tags and spanish names, lol)

Is there such a huge skill disparity between East and West coast timezones or is it just coincidence? I mean there’s no shortage of Plat/Gold players but I’m feeling that all the really good players are on Eastern timezone. I mean I’ve never matched so many Onyx/Champ players before when I woke up at 6 or 7 AM.

Thoughts?

2

Almost guaranteed that the population is higher at night so that there are more players at every level on the spectrum allowing for more even matches.

Hands will be more warmed up at night anyways so I’d recommend the nighttime gaming sessions :+1:

3

Playing at 6am is the early morning hours for everyone else in the U.S. so it’s likely the least populated time for the playlists which means you’re probably going to get more games with less than desirable match balancing.

4

Population counters in lists may help in this case (H3 FTW). I’m always curious about how may people are in FFA as I keep playing the same players for a number of matches in a row and if someone keeps beating me I’d like to avoid them occasionally!