Admin > Dev App Testing
Goals and Ramifications of Matchmaking
awkm:
Now that it's in Dev App, people have been worried. I've spoken with many people individually and I feel like a broken record right now. So here's everything we have planned.
Not all the major features are currently in. We are only testing the ability of matchmaking itself and if can actually work.
Problems to Solve and Goals of Matchmaking:
Matchmaking, ultimately, is an to improve player retention and user experience flow. There are a variety of problems that matchmaking looks to solve, a small subset includes:
- Ease of finding a match
- Information overload (related to above)
- Time for match to Ready Up
- Teams being stacked
- Reduce performance overhead
Having a matchmaking system directly solves all those issues to some degree (we have more things to do with match readiness for the future).
That's the gist of it. All of these didn't happen overnight, if we could do it overnight that would be fantastic and Adventure Mode would be done tomorrow. We took a lot of time planning this out and thinking of all the issues that will arise with matchmaking. It took an equally long time to implement the basic fundamentals for matchmaking. So we need to test that first.
For now, matchmaking will try to make crews of 1 Captain/Pilot, 2 Engineers, and 1 Gunner. For other variations, you can use Crew Formation and join matchmaking with a custom crew composition.
Ramifications of Matchmaking
There are lot of things that will change or disappear. Here are some of those things (both what we thought of and concerns from you) :
- Finding people
- Match list
- Finding a game you like (map etc.)
- Socializing
We're hoping to remove Match List. This is probably the most controversial step and many of you have threatened to leave if we do it, but please believe us when we say that we have a plan to solve all the complaints coming out of this. The Match List, for us, is actually very cumbersome. It's a huge performance overhead and performance bottleneck so getting rid of it will help us a lot in tuning other aspects of the game/servers.
We want to make it easier for you to find a match. By using the various preference toggles, Crew Forming, or joining matchmaking on your own we hope that new and old players will be able to play the game faster (browsing a match list and waiting in lobbies is not playing) with people that will challenge them (no stomping or being stomped).
Here is what you can do:
- You can choose what map preference you have as well as size (the matchmaking system will do its best to respect your preferences but will begin relax if you've been waiting a long time. The flow is actually very similar to creating a match that no one is interested in, you end up waiting for a long time and end up giving up.)
- You can use Crew Formation to play with the people you want to and enter matchmaking together either as a single crew or a team and still have preferences too
- And if you still can't find what you're looking for or want to do a tournament... create a Custom Match (just like how you crate matches now) and invite your clan mates, friends, achievement farmers, etc... Custom Match will be there for you. Custom Match will completely bypass matchmaking so make sure to invite people and get full crews formed.
Things that aren't in yet
There are a few of these:
- Reducing time for match readiness. Currently, matchmaking will just dump you into a match lobby. In the future, we're going to streamline this so you can talk to discuss loadouts but are encouraged to focus a lot more. This system will also prevent players from last second changing their loadout/having people stop being ready.
- Displacing socializing. We're looking to displace social features in the pre-match lobby (when you do loadout) into a special post-match lobby. Even add some features too. In the post-match lobby you will be able to text and voice chat with the players, make friends by requesting to enter Crew Formation with your single crew or team and then enter matchmaking again, ask for a rematch, check out your achievements and stats (more fleshed out match-end screen), and just hang out to shoot the shit.
- Featured Matches/Events. Because of the lack of Match List, you won't be able to see things like Dev Matches or Tournaments going on. Don't worry, we will have a limited list of scheduled events that players can look at, be reminded of (through notification if they choose to be reminded), and ability to join. Because it is a very small match list, the performance overhead is significantly decreased. We will put things like dev matches as well as upcoming touraments and so worth with information on how to sign up (a part of the bigger new Community features that will also help displace a lot of other social features).
Again, not all of this stuff is in. We are aiming to just efficacy of matchmaking only. When we schedule tests, does it put you into a match relatively quickly is the main question.
As with all testing, we'd like you to try these new features before you speculate. Yes, this is a big change on how things happened before but we can't be afraid of mixing it up to take bigger steps forward. Many of you are skeptical, and we can't blame you. However, please give us the benefit of the doubt and help us test these features to the best of your abilities. We are always listening to feedback and believe that these features can make the game better overall.
More details on what feedback we're looking for when we begin testing matchmaking effectiveness will be posted later but to summarize is that we're looking for if it works and user flow issues.
Crafeksterty:
Basicaly, goio will no longer be Loio (Lobbies of Icarus Online) And i fully support this idea.
But we really need confirmation about a bunch of people joining the same specific game. That is a must for us clan and team folk who want to fight eachother.
It is pretty much that which worries us. If there is an obvious or easy, or a very solid way of joining a specific game without too much Friending of a friend and friend that guy and all other guys, then its ok.
awkm:
Yes, that is Custom Match. You will be able to invite your friends into it or have friends join on you (we will also offer password support if we really need to, the user flow for the specifics of join on friend is still being ironed out ). And yes, Custom Match bypasses matchmaking completely.
This is how tournaments will probably work.
For dev matches, we will create a Custom Match and then link it to the Featured Matches so people can join it publicly by just clicking. Again, the particular flow details are being worked on still.
Tropo:
Dear Muse i feel like you are going down a bad path of doing way too much uneed work and wasted time when you have real problems
paritan rumble looks like shit and has been broken for 3 or 4 months
frist you had Velcro
then it was the wrong map
wel now it have Velcro and flying buildings and invisible cranes or some shit along with floating trees WTF?
you still need to put root in and support the current player base with in game community features
support clans you might as well we are 60 to 70% of the retestus player base
all the coding problems and dc, di-sinking and the steam issue
im some time wounder if you guy even have a plan
start with pro's and con's before leaping in to matchmaking it doesn't fit in this game
other problem i see related to matchmaking that you haven't mentions is how will new player learn if they can't talk to the person that just beat them
so one day that player might beat all the other noobs and get to play in one of the big boys lobby's and they will get stomped
and i have to be honest im not a fav of stacking or stomping you can offern hear me tell people why there ship not going to work
i can also see a lot of other problems with ship load out and just being chucked in to a game i can't see my favorite part of this game staying or surviving which is strategy
im not going to threaten you "many of you have threatened to leave if we do it" but i would never buy or play a game that has match making and would view games in a bad way and any game that has them i come to this game with 16 friends from real life only 2 of them still playing
i have a clan of 15 and about 20 casual friends no one i have spoken to likes any of these idea and we really don't think matchmaking fits this game
tropo is pissed off and i don't speak for all of sacrilege im sure they will coment on there own time
Puppy Fur:
It's hard to put in words all the reasons I love lobby/server systems in games. I feel the same about my hate for matchmaking.
I do worry how much work is being put in to this. If the community dislikes the final product, that production time is a bit of a waste (which is ok since your trying to go for something to improve the game), but will that just go past dev app no matter what our opinions are? I've seen many other companies change/add things players don't want and ruin the game for many people even though the testers have stated the update shouldn't happen.
I worry a lot. But, that's good. Cuz I love the game :3
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