Well it’s quite simple, fair matchmaking between players by the same levels is non-existent.
Consequences
You won’t attract new players, some of our friends already quit for more fair matchmaking games ( I’m not talking about BattleCheat )
It’s up to you to decide if you want to get a larger player database or to favor your veterans and feed them with cannon fodder and easy endless leveling.
Also take into account some of your MAPS need a bit of a tweaked design. For example, Normandie beach is totally unbalanced. Logistic by Allies was far superior to Axis there and also an important feature is missing by Enlisted, if I’m not wrong, the total lack of paratroopers.
Don’t get it wrong, the game yet is quite good to me as long as fair and usefull updates are taken into account.
There’s been lots of suggestions about this - one relatively simple one would be the have campaigns progress along a pathways that has a certain set of maps and missions for players at lower levels, morphing into ones that require higher levels “at the end”.
Most of the campaigns have obvious pathways - Moscow could go Barbarossa-Smolensk-Moscow, Normandy D-Day, France-Ardennes, Berlin Seelowee-outskirts-Reichstag, Tunisia Mareth-Kasserine-Tunis.
There would be intermediate steps of course - not suggesting a hard and fast 3-stage situation at all - there might be a small chance that someone at say level 5 gets to an intermediate level map before htey reach the nominal level of (say) level 8 for example, so they have the occasional exposure to it… and so on.
Really it’s not something that should be difficult
Do agree on both matchmaking and Normandy - in a game that features gear and soldier progression (which is good) playing against higher level people and especially in that particular scenario is just not fair. I can’t do anything at all if I’m constantly wiped at spawn point by enemy bombardments.
Here is how I see it.
The game is marketed as F2P…but actually now it’s P2P (pay to progress)
If you didn’t join the game early, when the majority of players were still relatively all equally lower level….
you are in for a tough grind….unless you P2P.
It’s all part of the F2P business model.
Don’t expect matchmaking……doesn’t generate profits.
Pay or give up and move to another game….all part of the design.
To be very honest with you, Enlisted was a BIG surprise to me because of the gameplay and even the graphics / atmosphere. And I’m very pleased it has been made by Eastern people. But yes it needs a good & fair MatchMaker ASAP.
I did play a lot of games ( based on WWII ) here are a few examples :
Battlefield ones since 1942 ( from 2002 ) to 2042 :
Spawns mechanics are stupid and favors casual players to get a chance to kill you regarding their tactic skills. Movement speed is absurd, a way too fast.
Hell Let Lose :
It’s a good game but unortunatelyn those times servers are deserted almost all of the time and playing on US servers are not a way with more than 300 ms ping.
Arma :
A very good one even if the UI & HUD are still a bit clunky to me. It’s prob the most immersive one and reality close.
Heroes & Generals :
It’s a game I still like even if the graphic engine is quite old. That’s the one where I can perform a very good score no matter what is my level and it’s strange but I suspect it’s tied to the old way we played Quake / Doom games … Also close to Enlisted for the Shop thingy.
I know Enlisted devs need money to update their game and so on but to me, they are pushing the shop available upgrades a little bit to much. I remember people complaining about RDR2 / GTA5 shops, well … we are here by another level that needs to be lowered a little bit.
In WT you have ranks, when i joined Enlisted its 1-29, now its 1-32, and assume they will go higher, so you would have lvl 1s, playing against lvl 50? so much fun that will be, (not!), and higher maybe in theory, eventually.
So why not say have, tier 1-2, then tier 2-3, tier 3-4, tier4-5 etc etc, or something like, just a idea.
That is the nowdays game design way, every devs I know (almost) and for sure Editors are diving in …
But you know what ? It has been used for so many times it’s no more a valid way to make money to me and it’s useless taking into account clones existing on all genre nowdays … Batte Royale is the perfect example, everyone did do his own, to try to mimic profit generate by Fornite … in VAIN.
They are also thos days a lot of WWII games, tactical one.
So, taking into account those parameters and the expectations of the nowadays players ( and do trust me I’ve got a lot of feedback from those ), I think the good & only way to go is to make a game of quality with fair rules with decent shop offers to attract a lot of people who are lost into the infinte web of games plethora.
Enlisted by its base is a good game, so less aggressive monetization can actually bring more people in and thus bring more profits with basic batlepass. Otherwise people just leave at early levels when they realize they need to pay for everything from the very start. And if people won’t leave, there will be enough players and on higher levels eventually.
Do the new lower tier players generally spend money….probably not.
If the lower tier players are matched with higher tier players (who have played longer and probably spent money) will they be farmed for easy XP…yes
Do the Devs want a “fair” game with players matched with players of the same level…where are the profits in that?
So many on this forum seem to think that the devs care, or should care, about making this game fair…it’s silly.
The goal is to generate the maximum amount of profits……that’s why they chose the F2P business model………Fish On!
You know the thing is a campaign level based matchmaking wouldn’t work because 1: people already like to complain about what is and isn’t balanced at the same tier
2: the game would be pretty boring only seeing the same stuff, like early on it’s bolt-actions and the more common smgs
3: there’d probably be a lot of people stuck waiting for matches at higher levels and
4: player skill has a HUGE impact on everything. For example, people have been complaining about the Jumbo basicly since day 1 because it can usually just mindlessly wipe the enemy teams. Buut thanks to that most Jumbo players have absolutely no idea how to play the thing other than “uuh gray zone good, me safe you die haha” but not only do they have 0 situational awareness, it also takes them a whole MINUTE to realize that when you shoot them in the side armor, maybe it’d be wise to turn the hull that way. Then they turn it right towards you so you can just aim for the weakspot. Even with a Pz. IV J I could snipe him from our grey zone to theirs (got tired of him just sitting there for minutes). Twice.
A skill based matchmaking system would have many many problems aswell. Not only is it way harder to make, it would take a lot longer aswell. We still have many matches that get filled up with bots so you don’t have to wait minutes to find a match, but while on the lower skill levels it wouldn’t be a problem, they’d still have the occasional smurf/troll who intentionally got a lower skill level and destroy everyone and there’d be chaos there for sure, on higher levels it would probably take way longer to find a match because of the current size of the active playerbase and then I haven’t really mentioned how any one player’s skill can be widely different than their average (way better on a good, way worse on a bad day). And just as a reminder, the World of [-] series games started out without a matchmaker aswell, two of them still got widely popular until they got a proper functioning matchmaker and people still hate their system because of how quickly one of the teams usually loses.
You did do good comments to me on both topics I did. Thank you for that and very interesting ones.
But once more, sure “Devs” and mostly Publishers want to generate money going through F2P method. But has you said it the right way it won’t work without new players database with something new to attract them and THAT something new is something Publishers need to consider carefully those days NOT relying on those nowadays stupid analytics which are the tools of lazy people who don’t want to generate much larger profits and don’t want to shine nowhere in a worldwide scene.
That’s my point of view and it seems to be the point of you of some new Devs & Publishers who did make the all surprise with very interesting games released that year and no one was suspecting with very large profits by the end …
And finally talking about game of quality, I think the best example I’ve got is RDR2. RDR2 solo campaign is with a true quality with features, physics (thanks Euphoria) and gameplay which were FAR above anything I’ve seen so far … and because of that 60 million units worldwide were sold. The title was far away ahead any type of medias at release.
@ LordTomiHUN, you’re forgetting at least one important point - learning curve. The game is not some kind of a click your LMB to win arcade, it has gameplay details players need to learn. Now how can I learn playing my tanks or engineers if I’m getting out-geared and out-skilled by veteran players? Level-based matchmaking will give players a chance to actually play with the new squads they’re getting, learn the mechanics, learn to appreciate the game better, stay for longer, buy those battle passes and so on and so forth. FredFromFra is right - those are the silent ones and never accounted for, but those are the bulk of the playerbase that could have stayed for those populated servers and shop purchases.
PS RDR2 is a game of quality that is made with passion. And people were saying it will not succeed, but it did. So analytics are not always right. What’s right is doing something new and different and doing it good and with passion, so the silent ones come and stay.
PPS Made a topic on the subject in the RU part of the forums:
JUST PROTECT THE NEW PLAYER, PLS
I have introduce many of my friend to this game and most of the rage quit after D-Day maps, this is a very good game, hope developer fix it !
and very interesting ones.
it was even a very constructive exchange , honestly