So... looking at my random pvp experience like at a "field study", I came to the conclusion, that it's really improbable that they are actually random. There seem to be mostly 2 sorts of teams:
1) "going to loose 100:600 and there's nothing I can do about it"
2) "going to win 600:100 no matter how bad I play"
I see 2 possible explanations:
a) There's some build in "optimization" in how teams are put together. And it sucks. Something like: "players that have less weapon slots are put together with high score players which should me neat in theory but actually most of those 'weak' players are really just 'bored PROs' that don't want to spend the ce". Just an example. Something like that.
b) There's some sort of unintended self-organizing system in how teams are being put together. Like p.E.: "players that stay get put together with a higher likelihood because they are first in the list... bad players quit, random players join, super-teams and suck-teams are slowly born". Or something ;)
Thats how it looks to me. "Random" teams feel really broken, it doesn't give you "random PvP", more like a "random chance for being slaughtered or slaughtering a team that's no match for yours". Can someone confirm this bug or do you see it differently?
Lock down has the capability of keeping a team together into the next match if the players choose to play again, and fills the empty slots with random players. Other then that, it doesn't look to do any type of matching making based on rank or performance of players.
The only reason it looks so one sided is because the team make up on either side needs at least 3 people who understand how lockdown works to have a chance at winning. You'll notice that the winning teams often has a group of 2 or 3 circling the map, doing nothing but trying to keep points capped. The losing team will usually have its players spread around, and are never concentrated enough on a point to successfully take it back. And since the winning team has a chance to stick together, it betters their odds in the next round.
In games were one side dominates, you'll also notice players know how to work the classes to support each other, and tend to be more aggressive. Once all the points are capped, its hard to break out of the situation since both sides will cluster at the gates. It would take a well timed rush attack of losing side to wipe out the guys camping the gate or a slippery recon to cap a point to pull the campers away.