Pantheon - Can a new lobby solve the problems with matchmaking? » Forum Post by Colonel

Pantheon - Can a new lobby solve the problems with matchmaking?

By Colonel_Jessep on July 25, 2009 2:48:00 AM from

What are the main problems in Pantheon, why do players drop or leave the matchmaking queue early:

- Connetivity: I hate to say it but some players still can't connect to others sometimes despite proxies. It works for 95% but sometimes it won't work for some reason no matter how long you wait.

- Friend not on the team: Well, you are obviously in the wrong multiplayer mode then. Off you go to Custom!

- Not the right map and game mode: Yes, it's supposed to be random but honestly: I'd rather stick red-hot needles under my fingernails than to play a Fortress match on Crucible (against two tower Rooks, thank you very much).

First let me quote Frogboy who said there should be no or little changes to the UI if possible. For the connectivity and friend issue I'd recommend to use the same lobby as for custom games and remove a few features:

I wish we could get this working without a host but well... So how does it work?

First the connectivity indicator (the green thingy): It doesn't display the ping but it should be green if all connections are established and all pings are below 330 ms. 330ms should work in most cases if the ping is stable. If a connectivity button changes fron green to red and back a few times you know it will most likely lag and the host can kick the player but it will solve all the problems with hosts who don't understand how p2p connectivity works.

Ready button: Yes, the choice of demigods on your team is visible. Frankly, I think it is not a good idea to pick your demigod before you even start the matchmaking. Good luck in your Domination match with 2 Reguli against a team of UBs or something. You should be able to form a team that allows for variety and give you the best possible chance. Why not display the opposing team, too? I think you don't need to know. Every team should try to work out a demigod combination that will work best no matter what is thrown at them.

If the host kicks a player all ready buttons should be set to 'not ready' to make abuse impossible!

Player name field: As you can see it is empty for all players but yourself to make it harder to play with premade teams. I'm sure some people will find a new way to get into the same match and stuff but at least it will help a little. The field can be used by the host to kick players with connection problems or players who can't be arsed to click ready within a reasonable amount of time. It should be only possible to kick a player 30 seconds after he joined the lobby to give players with proxied connections a chance to find a game.

As for maps and game mode, I'd recommend to display both in the lobby. The player should know what he can expect from the game IMHO. It's a game, it's about fun not about ranking - at least not for me. I think the largest group of players want to enjoy their game with little or no regards to 'comparable' rankings. Knowing on which map you will play and which game mode is important IMO. And seeing how many players will rather drop or cancede than to suffer through a game they don't want to play I'm not alone with that opinion. It's better to have a player leave in the lobby than during the loading screen IMO.

AIs: Please give the host the option to kick AIs in the lobby or remove them completely to begin with. I'd rather play a 1v1 than to have a Rook or Torchbearer AI in the game. Both are only good for one thing: to feed the other team.

+46 Karma | 5 Replies

Impulse chat. Just coordinate a DG switch, it would be extremely easy to identify your partners.

The ready check option would stall out the already long process of matchmaking. Players would get much less attentive on queues.

This seems unnecessary. I would wager AI or no AI is a matchmaking toggle, you're better off trying to get stardock to explain why they are putting AIs into games and then address that line of reasoning. I seriously doubt that they're in there for no reason at all, regardless of the merits or lack therof of those reasons.

Pre-game quitting would get way out of hand and the variety of game types and maps would plummet in the most frustrating way. I think the ideal solution would be to poll the playerbase on the popularity of the various game types and if my suspicions are correct, make all skirmish games conquest. If you're sick of the random pantheon game types there would be an option for you, and I think skirmish needs to become the primary automatch game type anyway.

Just coordinate a DG switch, it would be extremely easy to identify your partners.

It is nearly impossible to make team joining impossible without sacrificing stable connectivity or something else. If you remove the demigods they will start to Morse with the ready button or screw with something else. The idea was to make team joining harder and more of an effort.

I would wager AI or no AI is a matchmaking toggle, you're better off trying to get stardock to explain why they are putting AIs into games and then address that line of reasoning. I seriously doubt that they're in there for no reason at all, regardless of the merits or lack therof of those reasons.

AIs are most likely in Pantheon to fill empty spaces during times of less activity. I think it is a mistake to put AIs in ranked matches - or any online match at all for that matter. If I would want to stomp AIs I could always do that in custom games.

I think skirmish needs to become the primary automatch game type anyway.

Couldn't agree more. Skirmish can keep all the automatch stuff and would be the only ranked game type until we get team matchmaking. Most people play Pantheon to have fun when their friends are offline. Why not take the advantages from custom and combine them with stuff Pantheon does well?

Pre-game quitting would get way out of hand and the variety of game types and maps would plummet in the most frustrating way.

Honestly, I don't think so. Right now your chances are you get dropped into one of the less popular game modes and you will hear: 'A player has left the game'. So now his team will probably quit too. I don't see how that is better than one player leaving the lobby, somebody else joins instead and the game is actually played.

Besides, if the variety of game type would drop this means only one thing: something is wrong with the game types we have! Is it smarter to drop players into a game they dont like or to offer them the choice they deserve?

This is some hyperbole. Today wa san average day for me; I played a handful of pantheon games and the only time anyone quit was when I bailed on a game that gave me two AIs and pitted me against three people. I very rarely encounter players who quit out of these games before the three minute mark for reasons other than connection issues or AIs. Your mileage may vary.

Not necessarily. If you played Starcraft you'd have encountered Big Game Hunters syndrome, and I don't think you would agree that the cause of it was that BGH was the best map ever.

Also some game types are unpopular because of legitimate balance issues, like minion swarms and oak suicide runs on fortress mode and I think that some of the game modes could be salvaged with balance improvements.

I just don't know enough about what's going on behind the scenes to agree with this. The vast majority of pantheon games that I play have very reasonable connectivity if the game actually gets started.

Why do some games just never, ever get past the lobby stage? Why is there often just one guy on the list who can't connect to anyone whatsoever? Is it game crashes, a premade who didn't get his buddy, a legit connection issue? I really don't know, so I'm not willing to say that the current system is "sacrificing stable connectivity."

I played a few Pantheons and by a few I mean very few because I constantly ended up in games where a player had dropped, comp stomping matches, uneven pairings (2v1 Domination, YAY!) or really bad matchups (2 tower rooks on Crucible). The experience was so great that I decided to never, ever join the Pantheon queue again and only play custom. In custom you can at least be sure that you won't get teamed up in uneven teams, no AIs (if somebody drops early you can rehost), no stupid maps (Crucible)...

Oh and you can actually play 4v4 or 5v5 with all human players, no 2v2s on Leviathan or Zikurat anymore! 5v5s often require one rehosting because you get one nub with a dial-up modem joining but that's well worth it IMO.

A lot of Pantheon's problems could be solved if the players had more control over the matchmaking IMO.

Teams trying to game the automatcher aren't going to be dissuaded by changing the automatcher, they'll be dissuaded by added arranged team automatch imo.

I like the mockup

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Pantheon - Can a new lobby solve the problems with matchmaking?