Dev Blog 09 - Matchmaking

[NoFlavor]

Hello everyone!

I wanted to let you all know that you can expect to see some changes to the matchmaking system pretty soon in upcoming update(s).

Currently, when there are fewer people online, matchmaking can take longer even if you see enough people as ready and so we came up with some ideas that will hopefully make waiting times shorter.

The main goal is to make the time you wait in queue more constant. After this upcoming update, you will get into a game almost always within 10 seconds (unless there is a low amount of players online).

With the new system, we also hope to improve the quality of the matches. Currently, as soon as it finds a match for you, the game starts. After this update, it will wait a few seconds to start after a possible game is found, in case a better-suited match comes up in that time. It will also focus on matching players with high rank together and players with low rank together. For example, in most cases, GMs will not be split up as often when queueing at the same time.

We hope this will solve most of the issues we’ve noticed ourselves as well as the ones we’ve seen mentions in some of the topics and comments here on the forum. We’re aiming to release the update no later than today.

Let us know if your matchmaking experience improves (or not)!

[Owl]

Like the intentions behind faster queues, but I’d rather be in a higher rank room, than have this. Someone else in queue also said they got -1 for 1st too. And it took less than 10 seconds to get into this room.

It would be nice if we could have a list of ongoing quickplay matches that we could either spectate or even just see what arena level it is or the players inside. Then we could choose whether to wait 2 minutes so that we start getting matched up with people the same rank, or just go straight with people way lower.

[XCS]

We also like that the queue is faster and think most players enjoy that too. That being said, we did find some issues with the current matchmaking which leads sometimes to very imbalanced games (4 GMS, 2 Bronze), we have found a solution for it and will release a patch as soon as possible. The patch should improve the quality of matchmaking and reduce the amount of unbalanced matches, while still being as fast as the current one.

[stellan]

I believe it would be a perfect solution to provide user with a choice box to check in a settings menu:

• quick - I accept disbalanced match, I only need it to happen ASAP
• hard - I want to play in a more balanced match (at least +3 rank points)

Please give it some thorough thoughts

[R4W1L]

This reminds me of something I suggested a long time ago!

Rather wait in queue

I thought about something similar but not a button. Matchmaking should take in consideration how unique players played in like the past 1h. So for example in the evening when there are many players matchmaking doesn’t just match up players instantly because it’s “good enough” and instead waits just 20 seconds or so to make it as accurate as possible without prolonging the queue too much. And at night the matchmaking knows there aren’t many unique players so it demands less “similar” ship lev…

I still don’t believe a button is the right thing from a game design perspective so I think this update is a step in the right direction.

In my opinion CFP could really use a mini-game while matchmaking. Maybe something similar to Flappy Curve or something completely different maybe to test new potential game mechanics. This would also let players be more patient while searching for better match.

I don’t play any CFP but I always enjoy reading the dev blogs so keep them coming.

[Svo]

I would say matchmaking isn’t really working (yet). I’m queing and there are 2 diamond players and 3 gold players, along with silvers and bronzes waiting with me. Next, the game takes me in a room with 5 bronze players.

Result: 4 players leave after 2 rounds, +0 for winning the entire game.
It happens quite often that there is another GM waiting with me and the game just puts me in a room with silvers and golds. I was thinking that it could happen… but after a game with 5 bronzes I decided to go mention this on the forum. Hope you have a reason for this