Info > Feedback and Suggestions
Team Stacking - Match Balance
Kriegson:
--- Quote from: Byron Cavendish on October 26, 2013, 08:06:54 am ----snip-
--- End quote ---
Simply put (And not speaking for myself. I see a lobby with 2 filled ships on one side, empty on my side, I turn around and leave)many people do not want to go browsing through to find a match with no pre-mades, checking teams to ensure they are the same skill level as they are and communicate with their crew to establish roles, sections, gear and a battle plan, and then coordinate that with the other ship.
No, the majority of first time players or people just hoppin on for a few probably want to hit quick match and hope for the best.
That said though, the playerbase isn't large enough for an algorithm that splits up the playerbase into chunks for matchmaking and is invariably far more complex in regards to cooperation than virtually any other game I can think of off the top of my head.
zlater75@hotmail.com:
So we change tutorial and quick join button places but leave the names. problem solved. :D
N-Sunderland:
Make sure to keep this thread friendly, guys. Posts attacking certain clans or players are not acceptable.
Dev Bubbles:
Making an appearance in another spirited thread! Greetings everyone.
Let's deal with some of the thoughts and ideas that I've read in the last 2 pages.
1. Is "team stacking" an issue? I believe that it is. And, after thinking through it for quite a while, we are implementing 2 things for next sprint. A scrambling system and a slot and ship switch request system. Let me not go into the details right now (we'll start talking about it more as soon as next week), as we are still working out the details of design. But it is aiming to be a balanced approach that takes both sides (the people who want to hang out and play together, and the people who face consistent superior combat prowess) into account. This system is also designed to make organizing clan, competitive, and dev matches a bit easier as well.
2. Should we implement a full on match making system? Or an "advanced" player only match like the novice match? This one is trickier given the way we currently set up matches and the way we do leveling. With advanced players, the way to categorize this is very arbitrary given that our game is essentially skilled based, and even a dedicated crew and team can have players with wide ranges of levels. And because a team can comprise of different roles, each with its own rank, and the entire team composition can have players with wide range of levels, this makes match making use cases more difficult to satisfy. For co-op though, we are thinking to incorporate a more full on match-making system, with crew formation and party systems to complement for people who wanted dedicated crews and teams. This is in part because the crew composition requirements are not as stringent for co-op, and also because this gives player quicker access to matches and shorter wait time. But obviously this is something that we've been thinking about a lot, and are still thinking hard about.
3. How is the game doing in general. I think we are doing pretty good all things considered. Our concurrent base has gone up slowly over time, in the absence of dedicated and constant promotional pushes. We've looked at attrition post events, and within 1-2 weeks, a comparable game generally has over 50% attribution or more. Meaning that the spikes in the graph that Thomas pulled do occur and are not unusual. In the long run, people have a ton of game choices to make, and games that take up people's time. And we are actually really fortunate that we have a pretty awesome community and core group(s) of players that would want to spend time in our game over a thousand other games. Can't tell you how much of an honor that is. Most games launched last year don't get to sit here and chat with a still active and vibrant community. Over the past year, looking back at some of the alpha screenshots we took, the game is quite different now for the better, and the biggest reason why I think is that we are at least a bit smart enough to listen to you guys. :D
So while attrition has a lot of factors, some beyond our control, we do still have an obligation to keep improving, because some of it is because of the game itself, and are issues we need to overcome to make the overall game experience better.
I think ultimately, the best way to grow our game is still for you guys to keep giving us great feedback, and for us to keep improving, and for you guys to keep helping us getting the word out.
With co-op and Adventure Mode, there are in a lot of ways new games within the umbrella of GoIO, and I think that they will add more variety. Right now, we are obviously still working on all kinds of stuff to improve Skirmish, but work on co-op has begun in earnest for a while now. Hopefully we'll have stuff for people to try pretty soon.
I hope that this covered a lot of the concerns and points raised here.
I just want to say that, I take everyone's comments as constructive criticism and feedback. Everyone here cares about the game and is passionate, and for me that's awesome to see. When you guys are debating the points, just keep in mind that at the end of the day, everyone cares, so let's please respect each others' opinions.
Have a great weekend! Thanks! Howard
RearAdmiralZill:
Well as silly as this post has gotten (hence why I avoid it like the plague) I will say the Bounty system, as is, doesn't help things in it's current state.
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