IMPORTANT - Matchmaking drives off new players

[Eranok]

Just read the latest steam reviews.
Most negative ones complain about the time required to join a game.
Actually, the automatic matchmaking is extremely slow compared to  just listing matches and joining.
As a player,  I discovered the match list feature quite late. Actually the matchmaking features is more of less useless nowadays, and lure new players into endless waiting.
I suggest to remove it or at least put it AFTER match list (rename that "join a game") in the menu.

[MadKent]

The thing is that matchmaking system would be really useful if there was at least 500-1000~ players everyday playing the game. But for now we have nearly 50-100 players. So, yeah, it's better to use match list option.

[Schwalbe]

It drives off new players, it drove off lots of older players - nihil  novi, and Muse won't do jack shit about it. To be fair, they already did a lot, cause it was way, way worse.

[Daft Loon]

They have done the bare minimum recently - making the match list its own menu option rather than hidden under the custom game menu option. Other than that and some older changes they seem to be variously in denial/ hoping alliance will work better with the existing system. I brought up the problem of people not getting to spend more than 60% of their in game time actually playing during the last fireside dev stream, and got back a 10 minute explanation of why this is completely fine and not a problem at all.

[Schwalbe]

Like in case of any other problem we bring up to Muse, and then they wonder why...

About Alliance, I think it's more the case of their high hopes of bringing both new players and some of the old ones back, which proved to be semi-correct during the first days of open betas, only to (by my observation) fall flat on it's goddamn face.

[Eranok]

Who uses that matchmaking system nowadays ?
Only clueless new players.
Just take it out really.
Its like purposely scaring the newcomers.

[Schwalbe]

Well, email this feedback to Muse. And don't forget to share the answer, so we can all have a bitter laugh.

[ZnC]

Well, email this feedback to Muse. And don't forget to share the answer, so we can all have a bitter laugh.

Always love how accurately you point things out Schwalbe.

[Rareform K. Rozhkov]

First post for a change i've ever seen on this forum to which I can actually say "hey that's a logical idea".

[Kestril]

Agreed! Check the youtube comments on the recent alliance videos. There's plenty of "I tried but it took too long to find a match."

When in there are open slots in running and waiting matches.

At least add a button when searching that says "find match manually" and opens the match list when using the matchmaker.

[Schwalbe]

Meanwhile at Muse.

[Delorum]

Warning, I have no actual knowledge on how matchmaker actually works. But my guess is its set up for a larger player base. One of the issues it has is that it searches for a match and loosens settings for so long before giving up and making a new lobby. This (I think) can be solved by just making that all happen faster. Instead of waiting 2 minutes each time it loosens a setting, have it say, can't find deathmatch only game after 5 seconds, let's loosen that to include all game modes. Instead, that one decision happens after a couple minutes instead of a couple seconds. Once it goes through its checklist it should make a lobby that reflects the settings you began with. Say you set it to search for a VIP match on a Europe server 2v2. Have it make the lobby for you after it's given up searching. Idk I'm pretty bad at putting my thoughts on paper. If this makes any sense to any of you let me know, maybe expand with your own ideas. 

[Dev Bubbles]

Hi everyone,
Thanks a lot for the thread. 

So with this update, we made another change.  Right now if you queue for a couple of minutes, you will see a button to browse match list.  And it should be fairly obvious, the display is.  If this is too long, we can try to reduce it to say 1 min. 
Another thing we can do is say, if the concurrent number falls below a level, say 80? Then we default show the match list.  This way, when there are more people in the game, matchmaker can still help put people into matches, and when the population is lower, we can have people use the match list.  How do you guys think? 

@Daft, it's probably me who answered the question if the answer was a long and rambling one.  I definitely didn't intend to make excuses or say that everything is fine.  If I remember correctly, I was trying to point out the good and bad of everything in a more holistic way.  Cuz we had just match list before as you guys probably know, and we drove off a lot of new players.  With just match list, and with lower pop as we started in the beginning after our initial launch player traffic, it was also a big struggle, as lobbies were really fluid, with people hopping in and out, and people yelling at each other for not wanting someone in a lobby.  The wait times were exceptionally long because lobbies were hard to fill up and people would lobby hop and join and leave.  That's not mentioning any balance, and we had even more of a balance issue than we have now, even at lower populations.  So I was trying to say that it's not easy, as we've been there before. 

I wasn't trying to make excuses or just do the bare minimum.  I think if we really take a step back, I feel like I can honestly say that we're not the just do the bare minimum type.  We've poured everything we got over the last 5 years making and supporting the game.  And perhaps we're not good enough, but it's not for a lack of trying.  Anyways, not making an excuse, and thanks a ton for the comment. 

So with that said, please let me know if you guys think the solution I mentioned would be good, and we can make it happen. 

Thanks a lot!  Howard

[Nikola Brackman]

It's definitely a difficult situation, after all there's only so much a matchmaker can do when you only have 200 people online at a time at most.  Even more so for PvP, where at a minimum you need two ships (eight people! well, or two pilots and six bots) to start a match.

However, for Alliance in particular I do think the matchmaker should be more aggressive about forming new lobbies, especially on Novice or Normal difficulties.  Novice and Normal are reasonably doable in a solo ship with a bot or two, so there you can get away with throwing someone into a new lobby first and finding crew for them later.  For the same reason, it should prioritize pilots when forming a new lobby so that they can just go ahead and launch with a bot crew.  A gunner/engie finding himself in a new lobby, if he's not confident in his ability to fly, might end up sitting around waiting for a pilot or going back into queue.  Get ships in the air, then fill them up.

Of course, when forming a new lobby it should make an attempt to pull several multiple pilots from the queue at once when possible so that it can form two-to-four ship lobbies most of the time.  Partially because Alliance generally does seem to be balanced around having two or more ships most of the time, and also because doing that will give the matchmaker more open slots to stuff gunners/engies into.

I expect Alliance will give you guys a lot more wiggle room when it comes to the matchmaker, because strictly speaking you can start a new game with just one guy as long as that guy is bringing a ship with him.  Of course, that means Alliance and Skirmish will have to use different algorithms, because the latter has to actually find an opponent...

[Kestril]

Hi everyone,
Thanks a lot for the thread. 

So with this update, we made another change.  Right now if you queue for a couple of minutes, you will see a button to browse match list.  And it should be fairly obvious, the display is.  If this is too long, we can try to reduce it to say 1 min. 
Another thing we can do is say, if the concurrent number falls below a level, say 80? Then we default show the match list.  This way, when there are more people in the game, matchmaker can still help put people into matches, and when the population is lower, we can have people use the match list.  How do you guys think? 

I think the hybrid approach will work.

I'd say reduce the time to 1 min, after all, sometimes it does take a while to fill a lobby.  By getting people into lobbies faster, games will start faster.

I also like the idea of defaulting to browse the match list when the server has a lower population. (Under one-hundred).