
I am level 24 with over 900 reputation. I am flirting around with the likes of Alpha Killer, who routinely appears on my scan list...and, unsurprisingly, I have no chance in hell of getting through his network with the level of programs I have.
Now, I used to be somewhat aggressive about reputation. I picked targets for resources but I would always try for a perfect hack. These days, I don't even try for a perfect hack, and I actually usually AVOID a perfect hack. I mean that I will ignore the last random node next to a forgotten net connection on purpose and quit the hack without taking it so that I get LESS reputation than I could get. I once skipped taking the core and just got out with resources only (keeping in mind that I had plenty of programs and could have taken the core, but chose not to because there was no point).
This is apparently not good enough because I continue to climb in reputation. Due to the programming of the scan system, I get very advanced players, some 10-20 levels above me. Come on! These are not valid targets for a player of my current development. I'm not going to take on level 8-10 defenses with my little level 4-5 programs. I should not be getting the top USA Hacker who is level 42 on my list! I would be an idiot to attack him, and it would be a total waste of my time and resources. Now if he very occasionally appeared in the style of "hey here is a tough target, want to try him?" then it wouldn't be so bad. However, he now appears in about 40 percent of my scans, over and over and over. He will routinely be mixed in with level 32-37 players. Almost never are these players valid targets or even possible to consider for a successful hack.
I have griped quite a bit about the matchmaking system used in game, and unfortunately my gripes continue to develop as I progress. I continue to love the game and have fun, but I am seriously, seriously irked by how poor the matchmaking design is. I guess it is more noticable simply because the rest of the game is quite well designed.
I no longer accept the "it will improve as more players join the game". According to your own post you have 1 million downloads. Now, I accept this is actually not that many in the grand scheme, but if there are even a tiny fraction of that, say 2,000 players, for me to choose from how the hell do I get not only the same players over and over and over again, but also players that are so unbelievably inappropriate for my level?
Bottom line, in the next update, I will be a very, very disappointed hacker, if major adjustments are not made to the matchmaking system. I think this week I am going to actively dump all of my reputation by intentionally failing 10 or 20 hacks in a row. Maybe I will get targets when I am at 300 reputation points that actually allow me to advance in the game. This problem is massively compounded by the fact that reputation is worthless. It is not worth getting and it sure as hell is not worth keeping. If the devs have read even half of the novels I have written on this forum, they know how much time I have invested in communicating improvement to the game. Some of my comments were noob (and appropriately shot down by advanced players), and some were, I think, very valid. I feel this is one such comment, and I will be a very, very happy hacker to see that maybe my investment in time here is not going to waste.