Matchmaking - please condence the playerbase

[Sarin]

@Sarin
Solution concept for the current issues is not hard and EUG know what would be required they are not stupid:

So remove lobbies, remove 10v10, remove destruction.

I am not saying I disagree with you.

You do realise how many people that will piss off though ?

Personally I think if they wanted to go match maker they should have culled down all the options except match maker right from the start.

 

[CyberianK]

Said people since W:EE.

Well now they actually seem to have the intention to do something else we wouldn't have Quickplay.
Problem is they only started a couples of weeks ago so no chance to get this ready by release.
Since its the biggest problem of the game right now (which is otherwise a great and polished game yes balancing but thats always a thing) it should receive a high priority for the next release.

@Sarin what used to be lobby games and destruction and custom parameters would still be available as private custom games they just can't be listed anymore and joined by randoms so no playersplit
10v10 could in theory be integrated into the normal matchmaker search see picture above

 

[local-festival]

So remove lobbies, remove 10v10, remove destruction.

I am not saying I disagree with you.

You do realise how many people that will piss off though ?

Personally I think if they wanted to go match maker they should have culled down all the options except match maker right from the start.

They don't have to remove lobbies. Just make them for private games only, arranged team games and whatnot. You can get in game only via invite. And 10v10 serves can still be there for folks who enjoy them. The problem is that there are a lot of people sitting in 2v2\3v3 lobbies waiting for players when everyone would've been better off just queuing in quick play.

 

[local-festival]

Well now they actually seem to have the intention to do something else we wouldn't have Quickplay..

Hah, how is quick play different from Wargame ranked system? It's literally the exact same system.

 

[CyberianK]

Hah, how is quick play different from Wargame ranked system? It's literally the exact same system.

Yes its stupid in the current implementation I am just saying they seem to have the intent to change stuff. Else they wouldnt have made that Multiplayer Matchmaking video for examples on the PDX channel where they said they are working on improving this.

 

[Admiral_Awesome]

Custom game gets hidden - the players used to custom games will continue to use custom games to some extend, simply because they are used to it. Hilarity ensues when the players that are new to the game are going to use the matchmaker right from the start together with the players looking for competitive games while the low to medium skilled players (or the main body of the player base) are still stuck playing custom games. If one of the low to medium players mentioned before finds his way away from the custom games to the quick game ones he either gets paired with and or against either noobs or pro's. If you think it through that quick play thing will only work if you disable custom games. But then you are probalby going to face a shitstorm

Edit:

I'd also say that the biggest problem of the game right now are the roughly 48.000,00 owners of the game one day after release. I doubt thats enough for SD to be commercially viable.

 

[Sarin]

@Sarin what used to be lobby games and destruction and custom parameters would still be available as private custom games they just can't be listed anymore and joined by randoms so no playersplit
10v10 could in theory be integrated into the normal matchmaker search see picture above

Putting 10v10 and Destruction to only be able to be invited by someone would kill it.
It is pretty much as good as getting rid of it.
I mean, do you know 20 people online constantly, all waiting for an invite from you to play.

Not to mention if it didn't kill it, and just as many people played it still via invite, then there would be no point in hiding it behind invite only.

So your actual plan to increase matchmaking is to pretty much kill Destruction and 10v10 (again not saying you are wrong) and push 95% of players through match making.

You know that will infuriate Destruction and 10v10 players right ? (again not saying you are wrong).


@ Admiral_Awesome
SD has more users playing then the Wargames did at their launches and they were financially viable, enough to spawn 3 games and then pivot into SD.

The question is if its enough players to split into so many gametypes as SD currently does and have viable match making.

 

[Stoffen]

Edit:

I'd also say that the biggest problem of the game right now are the roughly 48.000,00 owners of the game one day after release. I doubt thats enough for SD to be commercially viable.

Thats a turnover of 1.92 million euro.
Depending on the size of the team, that could actually be ok if the sales figures are somewhat steady from here.

They really need to decide on a push/pull marketing strategy because I found out about this game proactively.

Jesus I hope they have a better marketing team than failing to release a really good game.

 

[Admiral_Awesome]

SD has more users playing then the Wargames did at their launches and they were financially viable, enough to spawn 3 games and then pivot into SD.

The question is if its enough players to split into so many gametypes as SD currently does and have viable match making.

Act of Agression would like to have a word with you in this. That one failed despite promising user numbers at launch and chances are high it has left some sort of hole in eugens finances.

All time peaks: W:RD 4,741 with 520,032 ± 21,456 owners
AoA 3,131 with 122,592 ± 10,422 owners
SD 4,678 with 47,971 ± 6,520 owners

If you judge it by the amount of users it is still a close call for SD. But nonetheless, I think that SD should make it profitwise, simply because it is quite enjoable - unlike AoA.

Edit: Don't forget Eugen had to make two paid dlcs for wargame to survive the financial drought after AoA.

 

[Admiral_Awesome]

Thats a turnover of 1.92 million euro.

Steam takes a share up to 30%. Paradox also wants his cut, same goes for the government.
Not all copies are sold to the highest (GBP) price - the range goes from $45.37 (GBP) to $23.95 (China) although its more or less safe to assume most pay the EUR or USD price. If you take all that into account your 1.92 million EUR is melting pretty fast...

 

[CyberianK]

@Sarin
Yes Destruction would only be playable via Invite in a special Custom Game.
But I don't think there will be many peoples if any at all missing that. I mean its almost publicly unplayable as of today as well its not really much of a change.

10v10 not... If 20+ peoples have 10v10 checked they could get paired. That said it would probably harder to find games than for the simpler modes and not that easy to program matching logic that makes sense for multiple modes and factors that have to be taken into account.

Sometimes bold decisions have to be made for the good of all players. If extensively explained and connected with additional features and giving real improvements as would be the case here players are usually forgiving and welcoming of these things. Its more causing a shitstorm when things get taken away without improvements like DLC drama and such.

 

[Sarin]

AoA was a different game. Different genre, an old genre in fact.

SD is basically Wargame in ww2 with a few new mechanics. Not AoA.

AoA had 779 peak players prior to release. 3,100 at release, dropped to about 600 average in the few months after that, then down to 200 where it stayed.

Wargame : Red Dragon had 4800 peak in month of launch, then averaged about 1600 average months with regular bounces to 2500 or 3000 peak users with sales and dlc for 3 years.

SD currently has 4600 peak on first day of launch.

A large chunk of that will be wargame fans, and it is FAR more likely it will follow wargames trend and not AoA's. Many players i know that played all 3 wargames, never purchased AoA because it was a different type of game. They are now in SD.

Up until RD launched, ALB had about the same numbers, they then moved into RD.

Wargame sold half a million copies during its 3 years.
Pretty sure SD will do fine, all the trends point to it being successful.

 

[Sarin]

@Sarin
Yes Destruction would only be playable via Invite in a special Custom Game.
But I don't think there will be many peoples if any at all missing that. I mean its almost publicly unplayable as of today as well its not really much of a change.

10v10 not... If 20+ peoples have 10v10 checked they could get paired. That said it would probably harder to find games than for the simpler modes and not that easy to program matching logic that makes sense for multiple modes and factors that have to be taken into account.

Sometimes bold decisions have to be made for the good of all players. If extensively explained and connected with additional features and giving real improvements as would be the case here players are usually forgiving and welcoming of these things. Its more causing a shitstorm when things get taken away without improvements like DLC drama and such.

Yea I didn't disagree with you mate.

As to your don't think there will be many peoples if any missing Destruction... that comment you made.

There are people in other threads that complain conquest exists, or that play destruction with no time limit and complain the game isn't balanced around that.
Taking away either 10v10 or Destruction is going to cause rage. Would have been easier just not to implement it this game.

I just don't see them removing 10v10 or Destruction now. I think it will be the matchmaking that just gets untouched.
I personally would prefer moving the entire game to matchmaking.

 

[Vyllis]

In my opinion they launched the game a bit too early.

I do hope its all going to be well for them, i appreciate WG, this game and Eugen System.

 

[Tank Girl]

So hopefully everyone and their next of kin will buy the game and this will not be an issue after release.
However, as it is right now, finding competetive games is very difficult.

I suspect that this will be an unpopular opinion, but I think the whole lobby setup needs to change UX-wise.
The game needs to funnel players into the same pool to make sure we get the most out of the collective playerbase.
What I suggest is the following:

• Every game counts towards ranking a player (barring custom games). Parametres to be whatever makes sense.
• Players enter a lobby where they can invite (multiple) teammates, choose decks, choose (multiple) gamemode and (multiple) game size.
• From here the process is automated as the game tries to match players by rank and search parametres.

Maybe a map veto function.

The custom game stuff needs to be somewhere /hidden/ where you go trough the "normal" matchmaking to find it.

If the player base is large enough, you can also sort people into leagues - but this is dreaming.


It not fun for anyone if you jump into your first game in a lobby game against a team on comms with 300 hours.
The game needs to segment the players. It is demoralizing for new players to just get stomped without knowing neither how nor why. Generally speaking, there is no need to re-invent the wheel here. Look at the Coh2 UX and do the exact same thing.

All ideas regarding changes to the current state are doomed to fail because nobody plays the game except for us nerds.
And the UX problems are only part of the problem... I had 5 friends playing wargame and trying steel division, they all love RTS and WWII settings, they all got disgusted.

But if the game is actually improved in a meaningfull way that attracts more players, we can talk about your desired changes maybe.

 

[Stoffen]

The game is awesome.
The matchmaking isnt.