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So... about that matchmaking thing. (concerns and an alternative suggestion)

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obliviondoll:
I've gone digging after a very lobby-themed discussion between myself and BlackenedSkies in his thread about crew joining during a match.

Imagine has, of course, emphasised the "the problem will magically disappear when we have matchmaking" argument.

That argument is, of course, pure fallacy. This game NEEDS lobbies - even if they're time-limited. You can't NOT have them. Matchmaking will make sure the lobby fills up fast, but it WON'T solve many of the underlying problems that cause the "Lobbies of Icarus" problem.

So, I decided to find out what I can about this fabled "matchmaking" that's going to be coming to the game sometime. I looked everywhere, and there's precious little in the way of solid information except that it will match lone players into crews with one pilot, one gunner and two engineers. As the standard "works for everything" crew, that's fine. But there's still a whole of unanswered. That said, lets work with what we've got, and try to avoid any unreasonable assumptions. Even some of the reasonable ones like the game trying to balance crews and/or teams based on level.

People will be tossed together into a lobby. Great. You get 16 people all showing up at once. You queued as an engineer, so you're locked into the role. What if your captain decides on the fly that maybe an extra gunner would work better? He can ask, but will you be able to swap if you agree to the suggestion? What if you end up getting lucky joining a crew for someone you met the other day, and you decide you want to reshuffle things, but you can't because you've been matchmade into your current positions? Does the system have any allowance for players to trade places? Or for crew members to switch roles (maybe with captain approval)?

So you get the lobby full, and maybe there's a time limit before the game starts. What if a captain abandons the lobby before the match starts? Maybe they got disconnected. Maybe they got an urgent phonecall and had to rush off. Maybe the house is on fire. Do you get the first captain to come available? What if there is none? And what if you want to be captain of your flamethrower Squid, but none of the gunners you get thrown in with want to equip your suggestion of Lochnagar, Greased Rounds and Heavy Clip? You're the captain, so you're in charge? Oh, you can LEAVE, sure. But what happens to that no-longer-filled lobby? Will the match start with a missing captain? Will there be pilot AI by this point? Will we have a random non-pilot given a temporary promotion to captain? Or will the lobby turn into a "waiting for captain" lobby like the ones we currently see all the time anyway? If the latter, what's the difference?

So, other than matchmaking, which is a massive and complex undertaking with plenty of potential flaws and only dubious benefits, what can be done?

Why not let CREW ready up, instead of putting it all on the captains. A captain can ready up, and the ship is sorted. Fine. But why not allow a crew to ready their ship up when the captain is stalling? "No, you have to load the Gatlings with Burst, or I'm not readying up" - fine then, do the rest of you guys on the ship agree that the Engineer who will be manning Gatling Guns to bring Lesmok? Ready up.

Quite often, you get a 2 vs. 2 match where everyone in the lobby is ready and wants to play, except for 2 captains who are complaining at their crew. The crew just want the match to start too. If they could start the timer themselves, they would. Sure, maybe the captain would ditch them, and they'd end up waiting anyway for a new captain. But maybe one of the crew could take over. Or maybe more captains will start sucking it up and putting up with those silent players you sometimes get. Maybe more people would be willing to just get on with it and play instead of demanding that everything be perfect because "it's MY ship, not yours" - your ship is your crew's ship as well.

Imagine:
The problem being addressed was gunners/pilots joining mid-game. That will not happen through matchmaking system.

I hesitate to talk about any of the specifics as dev app talks are left to those in the dev app group, all I can really say that about 99% of the questions you've put forth here won't be an issue. Not to say it's a perfect system, yet, but a lot of the questions being asked here is being dealt with.

Milevan Faent:
If you want to get info on this kind of stuff, join the Dev App and be a tester. We can actually share this info there, but it's not really allowed out here, mainly because it IS still a work in progress. That said, yeah, basically all of your concerns aren't a problem with the matchmaker. While some people seem to have a problem simply because it's a matchmaker, I love what I've seen, and eagerly await it's implementation, as it solves pretty much every problem I have with the game.

obliviondoll:

--- Quote from: Imagine on August 08, 2014, 06:33:23 pm ---The problem being addressed was gunners/pilots joining mid-game. That will not happen through matchmaking system.
--- End quote ---

That's cool. Good to know. But it also leaves questions unanswered. Will you be able to invite friends if you get a troll crew that fill out your ship then leave after the match starts? Or are you stuck with AI? And will the AI somehow be scaled for the skill rating of the match, randomised, or just standardised AI the game always uses?

Also, this thread ISN'T about that same topic anyway. It's more related to the tangential discussion of a captain's right (or lack thereof) to define their crew's loadouts. I was more involved and interested in that aspect of the discussion than the core focus of the other thread. And it was that aspect of the discussion which prompted me to make this thread on a topic more related to THAT point of discussion than the initial topic of the other thread.


--- Quote ---I hesitate to talk about any of the specifics as dev app talks are left to those in the dev app group,
--- End quote ---

I totally understand that. It would be great to have more information, but while we don't have solid answers, guesses and questions are all the players without dev app access can manage.


--- Quote ---all I can really say that about 99% of the questions you've put forth here won't be an issue. Not to say it's a perfect system, yet, but a lot of the questions being asked here is being dealt with.
--- End quote ---

Considering that the method by which the questions are "dealt with" brings about its own series of potential problems along with the benefits, I find that very hard to believe. It also doesn't acknowledge my suggestion for an alternative method to try and improve the "Lobbies of Icarus" situation.

For every possible solution I can see to each question I'm posing, I can see ways in which that solution will fail to have the desired effect. Fixing "Lobbies of Icarus" with matchmaking will work to a certain point, but will either introduce other problems, or will occasionally stall games more than the current system. I've tried to think of a way that allowing crew to ready up would hurt the situation instead of helping, and I simply CAN'T THINK OF ONE. If the ship having a leadership crisis is full, then either the match starts faster and the captain deals with it, or the captain quits sooner than they would using the current system and that speeds up the process of finding a new captain. If it isn't full, the situation is no worse than where we are now.

Adding the feature I'm proposing wouldn't have to be mutually exclusive with matchmaking either. For Guns of Icarus to work in a reasonable manner, there would still need to be a lobby. Sure, you get 2 engineers and a gunner, but the loadouts each player will want to take are going to vary significantly from one ship to the next, depending on the ship itself, the captain, and the weapons loadout. Each of those can (and often will) require different loadouts.

There is no viable way to have a matchmaking system that works for this game AND removes the entire lobby system. As far as I'm concerned, it can't work. There NEEDS to be that window for planning - even moreso with randoms than with premade teams.

So there has to be a lobby, and that means there has to be an option for captains to ready up. There will almost certainly be an option for captains to ready up and start the match. Even if there's a 3 - 5 minute timer for preparation, people will want to be able to cut the timer short. And that means that allowing crews to ready up and push their captain to make a decision that much faster will still be something worth considering.

Milevan Faent:
Okay, I don't really have time to read through your full posts right now (and didn't when I first responded tbh, though I did glance through them), but something I think I can sort of get away with saying: the new matchmaking system still has "lobbies", in that you will still get into a room just like we do now. You can still use pretty much every feature that comes with that as well, even bringing friends in at the start. Matchmaking itself is literally just helping rooms fill up. Then there is a timer to get that match started. About the only real change to how the game is played will probably be matches start in less than 5 minutes at the longest (and I don't think it can even get that long), and both teams SHOULD be roughly equal in skill level. Just about every feature we have in the game right now that you can name is still working just fine. I haven't seen a single feature someone has mentioned that ISN'T already covered.

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