Although I don't play anymore I look at steamcharts from time to time and for now the 24-hour peak is 320 players online. So we're basically back to pre-1.3.8 lvl. The so sleek, so shiny (and other buzzwords) matchmaking system that was supposed to bring new players to goio failed and discouraged many experienced players from playing (including myself). Also GOIO is always on sale nowadays. On Steam, then on HumbleStore, now on Steam again. And the player count still drops.
macmacnickI pretty much fully agree with your post
Some time ago I used to be pretty active and talk with Devs alot. I suggested two remotely easy things to implement to make Crazy King more endurable:
1) Setting time limit for every match to 30 minutes (like in Hephaestus Challenge)
2) Changing point taking mechanic so that one ship can't block the whole point (but it slows down capturing it).
The Devs said those are interesting ideas and... nothing. For me and many friend-players Crazy King is unplayable because it's so long. This might be a solution. But nah.
Also something I've been mentioning a lot - better tutorials and a new tutorial especially for game modes.
The thing that made the match list system so great, was that a lobby may start with similar people as the mm generates, but it matures - the more experienced players tended to stick around, and the less-so would eventually filter out, leaving a lobby of high quality players. This meant there was usually one or two visible lobbies of very high quality players, where you could happily spend a few hours to a whole night. These lobbies would also often migrate to 3v3s and 4v4s. With the mm, the lobby is terminated after 3 matches, often just as it starts becoming mostly high-end players.
This is very true, but in both ways. The experienced players tend to leave low-player lobbies at instant or after one match. The lvls in lobbies seemed to be closer to the average every game.
