Version 1.3.8 Hotfix Release Notes

[GeoRmr]

Most often? I don't think its been in the game long enough to say most often, but since its been in I've been using it to see how it fairs.

On the day of patch release most of the biggest GoI fans and best players played the heck out of the game more than usual - my initial experience with matchmaking, fucking A* went straight into good balanced lobbies had some awesome games. Over the next few days the activity from these players returned to normal and my match making experience became pretty consistently what I described in my previous post:

people who know how to play match-made and distributed between people who don't know how to play, and lots of frustration for everyone.

Since the hot-fix you've grouped the crewing classes engineer and gunner together for matchmaking. This has left me in a position where I am unable to matchmake for religious reasons, and I am missing the old match list dearly when my friends are offline.

[KitKatKitty]

For the time being when I play I will be playing (and recommend playing) with some rules:
Contain crew form to 1 ship max.
Don't leave a lobby you are matchmade in to.
Don't look at levels on the other team.
Don't rematch.
Don't swap slots or teams through any means.

I don't like these for many reasons:
Contain crew formto 1 ship max??? really what about clans or friends that may have 6 players on that all want to be in the same match with each other, even on the same side so their is cordination?
Don't leave to lobby you are matchmade into?? This is unrealistic. There are many reasons why someone may want to leave a lobby...a friend may invite them to a different match, something may happen in real life that a person would have to leave quickly, etc.
Don't look at levels on the other team. I can understand this BUT level are more usful than just to see if there will be a pup stomp. What if a "high" level player would like to teach the "low" level players in lobby? Many new players do not ask for help but the Veterans can offer help when they see a level 1 player.
Dont rematch? Why? what if you liked how the previous match went? maybe it was crazy intense and you want to rematch.
Dont swap? What if a friend or a co-pilot in a clan jumps in game and through match making gets put on the opposite team and you would like to get some clan practice in. The only option is to completely leave that lobby and start the whole match making process again. Losing time and potentially killing the lobby you are leaving.

[Hoja Lateralus]

Matchmaking would work just fine if we got real fixes to real problems and real new content so that the community can grow. It needs a large number of players for it to work. Advertising with steam sales can get warm bodies in the short term, but they inevitably will leave, because they buy it to realize that the game was not even worth the severely discounted rate that they payed. The last time we got fun new toys was closer to the initial release in 2012 than current day.

This system seems to be built on the assumption that GoIO is a huge community with enough pull to keep large numbers of players even through heavy handed and misguided updates. Not every experienced player wants to have to teach new players constantly.

This hotfix made most of my clan uninstall.

The worst thing is that matchmaking WAS SUPPOSED to be that new shiny cool thing (but also useful) to get new players. I fully understand your clan.

Also, invisible ships!

-Captain! It's no good.
-What is it?
-Our enemies are....
....wizards!

On friends list:
Actually it was a built in work around for some of our vet players who already had over 1000 friends.  Required no work on their part and gave them pretty much the match list they had before, cutting out any novice games or games without people they knew/liked.

So you tested a feature on like 0,5 - 1% of most elite game population (both skills and time playing) and recommend this to rest of the players as "bring-back-the-server-list-solution"? I shall not comment on that one.

[Wundsalz]

Actually it was a built in work around for some of our vet players who already had over 1000 friends.  Required no work on their part and gave them pretty much the match list they had before, cutting out any novice games or games without people they knew/liked.

I think this feature could even kept as is or the former match list could be reintroduced without hurting the matchmaking system as much as the friend join feature does right now. Just check a players glicko2-rating if he tries to join a team and deny his request if it would ruin the balance.

Another remark regarding crew form: please keep it! And also don't restrict the number of players in a pre-made crew-formation! I really like being able to fly with a co-captain of my choice and I think it's a feature which is necessary to keep our clan-scene vital. I think being able to play with a pre-made crew of 8 players is essential to get new clans started and established ones running At least SIR has been growing over several weeks, slowly expanding the player pool we've playing with on a regular basis - all in public matches. So please don't cut the crew form. Let match-making deal with 8-player pre-mades somehow, even at the cost of balance!

[Michael Wittmann]

Wellp.....I know there is no reason to even log in and type anything. I learned my lesson with Devs+Money from the Red Orchestra's Devs (Trip Wire) so I will just make it short and sweet


This Mr. Disaster guy is 100% right. experience >

The feeble arguments you Devs are grasping on to are some of the silliest things I ever read in my life. Its clear why you are doing this money and making greenhorns feel "safer" is apparent. That's cool though this is a free world right?Soon coop will make in the biggin's.  Power To Ya' Brothers!

I had 12 friends buy this game and a couple other on the fence. I am now never to be trusted again due to the mass praises I gave your game before this update and the hot fix being the nail in my coffin. I even bought it for my cousins. No point in asking for money back for all of us as you will say "We do not deal with money, please contact steam" Even though you KNOW DAMN WELL steam won't give money back. YOU should own up to your failures like honorable men and women and give out of your OWN pockets and let steam keep what they keep because they deserve it for allowing your once great product on steam to the masses. After this massive destruction of core game play steam should keep the money as pay offs and apologies from you men and women. That is of course if you would own up and admit your mistakes. So far reading your "justification" no just no you won't.

With that said I still respect you all for the once flawless game you had and will no long preorder nor will my friends and we will uninstall and move on our way back to Insurgency until those Devs ruin it. Best wishes 

[Shaytan]

War Thunder has around 18,000 players according to steam. And many more who just download it through their website instead of steam. Even with such a big player base you will still be matched against people who are higher tier than you.

World of Tanks has around 80,000 players, you are still matched up against people who are higher tier than you.

This game has around 100 to 200 people playing on average. Even Farming Simulator 2013 has more players, it has 3,000 people playing it. I'm not sure why you thought match making would work in this game, maybe you thought the future youtube event will bring us thousands of players like always that this time will not drop the game in a week's time which is why you added match making. If that works then good job to you, Muse. If the youtube hype dies out and we go back to 100-200 players, then we can greet back our broken match making that doesn't have anywhere near enough people to properly use!

I wish only for the best to this game, but the future is looking grim.

[KitKatKitty]

Lets try to keep the forum constructive.

[Neithrantulre]

Lets try to keep the forum constructive.

For this specific release, being constructive means saying NO very loudly.

[KitKatKitty]

For this specific release, being constructive means saying NO very loudly.

There is a difference between saying NO loudly...and just being nonconstructive. Just trying to keep everything helpful here or nothing will get done.

[Yukiko]

NO!

I'd have never become a vet if this patch existed a year ago. The problems I see are:

• No lobby. How do people join undermanned matches? I joined a clan so I could get into those private games I saw.
• Removing ranks is really stupid. I like being able to tell at a glance how experienced players are. I used to keep my rank artificially low so I could surprise people.
• Maybe its just me, but I don't like my rank being next to my name in chat. I want to be judged based on my name, not the rank of a particular class.
• Pilot K/D is missing. Plus I don't have any ram kills. I rammed everything that moved!

[macmacnick]

As I said earlier in the feedback and suggestions matchmaking thread,

...I have been pushing for the idea that there should be two systems: Matchmaking (MM) and Match List (ML) for a long time. The community pushed to have quick join removed for a long time, and the idea of matchmaking was supported mainly as an alternative to quick join. Why should we, the veteran players, those who are part of the reason why this game has such a good community overall, have to suffer? Why are we, the veterans, having to deal with a system that degrades the community experience, strategy, general craziness, and overall fun and entertainment value of the game, why all of this just so that the shorter-term, pick-up, play the game, all of two or some-odd times, not giving half a damn about the community get a system designed with just them in mind, stripped down to provide just a glimpse at the depth of the game? Is it not us, the veterans, those who continually help, by giving assistance, feedback, sending in well-informed reports, self-policing and discouraging toxicity amongst the community. Is it not the veterans who are the ones teaching the newbies, pushing the limits on the depth of the game, and helping nurture the community who hold up the community standards, actually care, growing and sustaining the community with a passion, one that dwarfs any found in most of the largest, most popular games in existence? Why should we, the community as a whole, get off with the short end of the stick, with the social aspects of the games, such as the possibility of meeting someone in a random lobby, someone who could eventually become a new friend, a new acquaintance, or even a person who could become in the future a new clan member, reduced or removed entirely? What exactly was Muse's point when they removed one of the most integral portions of the community the match list, the social hub of the game, by basically ripping out its heart, and trying to replace it with a lesser alternative?

[Dementio]

Regarding visible and invisible levels, I suggest:
- Remove levels from the chat again. Since every class can have a different level, this feature is very inaccurate.
- During matchmaking, show only the levels of your team and remove every way to look at other peoples levels while you are in a matchmade lobby and the person whose level you are looking at is in the same matchmade lobby. Which means you can still look at the levels of people that write in global chat or at peoples level on your friend list that are not in the same match as you. (Might wanna enable seeing friends level during matchmade levels, because they are friends.)
- During custom lobbies show levels of every person in the lobby, as long as it is not affected by matchmaking that is. Since MM is not active here, the reason to hide levels does not exist here. If it is joined through friend list, the level is known already and so on.

[GeoRmr]

@Daniel

What happens to levels in custom lobbies that are then opened to the MM queue? What happens to the levels of people who are match-made into a re-matching lobby? Would then not be able to see anyone else level where the majority of the lobby already knows their levels?

Also - so now we would have to click 5 times to see each persons level instead of just once? Or would you block the ability to add people as friends in pre-game lobbies?

All I can see is even more nonsensical frustration.

As far as I can tell there are 2 options:
Bring the lobby back to how it was pre hotfix and show the levels.
Remove the level system from public view EVERYWHERE including player Profiles.

The thing is, does Muse really want to do the second option after investing so much time, effort, and presumably money into developing the new progression system, while angering around 70% of the active player base? Seems like a waste to me.

What I've personally ascertained from the developers responses so far (on this forum and in-game) is that their decision to hide player levels is simply a motive to hide the failings of the new matchmaking system - unable to successfully create balanced matches under the low player load and rejection by around half of the community who "break balance" by using the social features. (Sorry for wanting to play with our friends and not random newbie strangers)

As an open question - Does anyone know a (successful) multi-player game where the players ranking is hidden from other players in some instances but not others? Personally I don't know any other than the current version of GoI. If you haven't gathered already - I really don't like it.

[GeoRmr]

Just check a players glicko2-rating if he tries to join a team and deny his request if it would ruin the balance.

Please no...

Please, just no.

[Wundsalz]

As an open question - Does anyone know a multi-player game where the players ranking is hidden from other players in some instances but not others? Personally I don't know any other than the current version of GoI.

The match-making-rating(mmr) is hidden or at least hard to access for the player in many games. Personally I know more games which hide it than games which spam it around. To name a few examples:
- Hawken provides no ingame UI or other tool to let players know their mmr. However there is a 3rd party program with a bot-bridge which allows the user to read ones own mmr and balance information about a lobby
- I've never seen my own mmr value LoL and afaik it's not possible to access it (ranked matches put aside). I haven't played LoL for a couple of years though, so my info might be outdated here
- Afaik Smite doesn't provide access to the mmr used for casual matches either (I haven't played smite for a while either so again this info might be outdated)
- Afaik Robocraft doesn't grant access to the mmr they use for match-making (if they use Glicko or a similar system to begin with - I've neither read anything confirming nor denying this)

Just check a players glicko2-rating if he tries to join a team and deny his request if it would ruin the balance.

Please no...

Please, just no.

Care to elaborate? Unrestricted joining of existing lobbies is one of the mayor "legacy elements" which inhibits match-making. It allows players to come along and stack a game which otherwise would have been balanced.
Sure playing with friends is a necessity, but I see no harm in having to setup a crew-formation to do so. That way the match-making system at least has got a chance to somehow deal with groups of good players.

That being said, I'd like to leave a note for muse here: I will be seriously pissed if you cut away the possibility to play with 8+ people pre-made-crews. I'm well aware that large parties are highly problematic for match-making systems, but I am not willing to cut away the possibility to play with an entire pre-made-fleet for the sake of having balanced matches. That's a red line. Don't cross it!