Lobby Management/Merging

[Daft Loon]

Two lobbies, exactly half full, going nowhere fast. Matchmaker really needs some kind of way to deal with that situation.

[Schwalbe]

You are talking about merging. It's not always the best idea.

What you are looking at might seem to you as exactly half of the lobby, but you never know what is the placement of players inside, apportionment, whatever - we DON'T know the exact STATE of what is inside.

You have absolutely no guarantee that merging will not screw lobby bad and what's more - badly for individual players.

If I'd really have to suggest something it would be giving lobbies that are empty sort of priority, for example, based on fullfilment (like for example, we have a static value of priority, and it's multiplied by ( max_players - players_in_lobby ) / max_players, so such lobbies would be prioritized in matchfaker.

[Dementio]

This has already been suggested once a million years ago, where matchmaker wasn't even a word that could appear in anybody's dreams.

Matchmaker should avoid half empty lobbies like these when people are queueing up, but they may have made the custom lobby themselves or wanted to play a specific map, as the map is different or matchmaker just flat out failed. But maybe, there is a ridiculous gap in the total MMR between these two lobbies, so the players didn't get into the same lobby. Four veteran friends or clan members crew formationing is not that rare, after all.

Schwalbe already mentioned that you don't know what position they are all in, it could be two full ships in one lobby and in the other 4 pilots and the rest scattered around the lobby, who would keep their position?

But I wouldn't oppose the possibility of matchmaking giving the players in these lobbies a vote, wether they wanted to merge into a lobby with other players, giving them a warning that they may be on a different ship and would need to swap with other players to be back in their original position or if they wanted to stick to their current lobby and wait for it fill up naturally. Only opening up the vote if the lobby has been waiting for a significant amount of time.

[Solidusbucket]

The option to view all lobbies while in a lobby is another option. Same thing with the option to view the lobbies while in a crew formation.

I like my idea more because it is not automated. People can make their own decisions.

[Schwalbe]

And sounds actually like a good idea. ^^ I think?

[Hoja Lateralus]

Don't want to be a buzzkill but once I suggested some kind of merging or transforming of lobbies (2v2 into 3v3 and other way around) and I got a response that this is too complicated, so my bet is none of what you're talking about is going to happen.

The option to view lobbies seems nice, but then again, Muse often says they don't like doing interface work.

[Solidusbucket]

All it would have to be is a button and a popup.

However i hate doing any kind of work. So i def understand that mindset.

[Daft Loon]

Maybe offering a vote to one lobby, something like "There are too many open lobbies for the number of players available. Close this lobby and move to another Yes/no". With a majority yes resulting in the lobby being closed and the players in it moved to another existing lobby. The functionality for doing it that way is there already in the form of invites that take a player direct from one lobby to another. The delay before the vote could be modified by matchmaker differential, the status of the lobby as custom/automatic etc.