It would still not work imo. Probably the only solution here might be to implement a “Newcomer” kind of playlist where beginners can play with/against other beginners and even that should probably either consider base xp, the “first battles” achievements or the time spent in battle.
A good FPS player with a really good aim can perform well even against people with much higher level gear. If you gave someone who’s really bad with FPS games a max campaign level account and sent them against veterans with bolt actions they’d still lose to the veterans. If you put two similarly highly skilled players against eachother, one with bolt actions and the other with top-tier equipment the one who controls the range of engagements better would win. However there’s no matchmaking solution that would satisfy everyone in this game because there are many MANY players who blame their own faults on the equipment.
With a Newcomer section beginners would have some time to learn and adjust to the game without everyone else having to deal with all the problems each different type of matchmaking system would bring with itself into the game.
Or just haven’t had enough time to gather a big enough playerbase. Both War Thunder and the World of [-] series of games started out with a lack of players in them. One of the World of [-] games couldn’t even hold the few it had and another had to go without a proper matchmaking system for at least a year. Many other free to play titles started out with population issues until they eventually reached a healthy and stable size. Even then with some big AAA releases these games temporarily lose a chunk of their population while people play the newest big game they bought.
Some big AAA games spend years trying to develop a working MM and still get hate because people find it to be garbage. Even in War Thunder people complain about it all the time (because let’s face it, the whole br system is part of the mm and that includes the compression). Sometimes implementing what the end user would consider some easy and small thing could take MONTHS or even YEARS to design, code, test and debug and that is trying it out in a controlled environment by itself without adding it into a much bigger project. Then they’d have to check if it breaks anything in that project aswell (for example if in War Thunder they added 5 new ground vehicles and suddenly crashing in an A-4E made the game crash). And then I haven’t talked about how usually coding these things could be given to many different people to work on as a group. They code their own parts, try it out if they work together, then they try to make it more efficient so it won’t take 5 seconds just for the Battle button to register your request to look for a match etc…
These artificial examples have nothing in common with what happens in game. One does not become “a good FPS player” by sitting in a newbie zone for arbitrary period of time. One can only gain some in-game gear, which won’t mean anything agains top tier stuff. It’s a fake solution that does nothing to either of the two main problems.
Skill-based matchmaking (SBMM) would technically solve both sides because MMR reflects your performance and not just your skill. If you get high performance because of your gear you’ll get into the same battle as someone who plays on the same level because of skill and without the gear. Except that people usually only ask for SBMM until they actually get it. Then somehow it inevitably turns into a battle to remove it as it never does what they want and the way they want it.
The way I see it, what needs to happen is a dramatic reduction of vertical progression. Leave player skill and experience out of the equation entirely. Full LMG / automatic rifle squad with no recoil are cancer anyway, and vehicle progression isn’t handled any better. At the same time player effectiveness in a team game with random participants is difficult to calculate. Huge issues are inevitable no matter how they separate the players, especially with a small playerbase. Just make the vertical progression less pronounced and let players handle the rest however they can.
I still belive that adding even basic stop gap measure matchmaking wouldnt be that hard, it can be later always improved or reworked as game gets more polished, and people saying it takes time so no, is stupid to say the least. By this logic we go into: people dont want to stay with game beacause there is no MM (new players are getting seal clubed right and left and they dont wanna stay), solution is making somekind of MM, people say it takes too much time/devs are lazy (so what? not making one is better option? or might give up on game as well since devs dont have time or are lazy apprently and think only about short time gains?)
Why bother then even? And why then say this game need match making bad if devs dont care/dont have time?
And by f2p having struggles with population since they are unfun i meant those ones that have 2-3 years of developing after they were consider done and still people dont really play them, Enlisted isnt in this category its still beta isnt even done yet, i dont imagine this game looking like its is right now after for example 2 years, not to mention its not on most popular platforms like steam or epic.
I dissagree here on some occasion when devs of many games when they got pressed apparently could fix things in week or days some times, when before they were neglegted for years in some cases.
Also Gajin and Darkflow probobly dont do tests, since then things like this FW 20mm cannons bug exists and i doubt that testing it wouldnt show anything and it seems to be hard to miss.
I see where you comming from and i agree some things take much more time, some take less, but seeing how they have no issues making entire campaings, optimizing game for older gen consoles etc (those quickly showed up one after another) and not being able to fix simple bugs like FW 20 cannons makes me really doubt is it really that time consuming or is that just they dont feel need or presure to do so.
I agree with most of what you said. However most people who campaign for any kind of matchmaking say it’s for the beginners. A Newcomer playlist would solve their one issue, that being that newcomers find veterans in their first match, get absolutely destroyed and leave forever. It would give them some time to learn and adjust the basics of the game before being thrown into the real deal. I’ve seen a few games use this with only a few complaints.
Skill based matchmaking (MMR is jut one type of it) on paper would solve a lot of issues, but it has it’s own set of issues and as you’ve said it already, it usually still leaves people disappointed. However I don’t think gear makes that much of a difference in this game (except for the backpacks, those can make a huge difference) but this is probably a bit subjective.
It’d be cool to have a different kind of progression than the one we have currently, but I say let’s give the devs some time to figure it out. If they add all the 40 or however many levels/campaign they wanted they could start making a plan about how they could rearrange progression in case they change from this current system where you unlock stuff in the order they were introduced to the game. War Thunder used to have an account level based progression aswell where you unlocked different tiers when you reached certain milestones and then we got the current research mechanics.
Let’s have a Newcomer mode for the beginners then. That’s the easiest, fastest and least controversial option here.
This is what leads to spaghetti code issues like many of the big and old free to play games have. They want to change something they did years ago, but it’s such a big mess it’s impossible to know what it would break and how they could fix it up as those who wrote the code are probably gone by now. A matchmaker is not just something they can add and remove whenever they want to since it’d be a core part of finding any matches.
They keyword is fix. Introducing a whole new core mechanic from scratch is different as it’s not something you can just simply start coding the day they decide to add one. They have to come up with how they want to implement it and design it and stuff like that. If they rush it, they could probably make one in 1-2 months by working a few people to exhaustion.
Testing if the code works and testing if the plane works 100% properly is again, different. Have you ever had issues where you tried to start the game and it said “stack overflow at line 98457”? I don’t think so. No excuses for them not fixing the bug though, unless they are too ashamed to admit they have no idea why it’s not working (quite possible, happened to Rockstar with GTA Online’s loading times aswell, some random dude fixed it for them and then they decided to use that knowledge to fix it lol).
They’ve probably had a team working on it for quite a while now. Usually there are many different teams working on different parts of the project.
The big issue, long run, is that the campaigns are dividing player base. each campaign has Lone Fighter and Squads modes. That is 8 different queues already. Each new campaign would add 2 more. Put, matchmaking on the top of that and we will be playing with the bots mostly.
The whole progress system would need to be reworked to fix growing division, but I cant really see how that could be done without resetting the progress, which would not happen. I’m honestly curious how Gaijin/DF will overcome that long-term.
Game is great on its own, but with current massive, mobile-like monetisation implemented and P2W feel, I can’t see the game to become much more popular then it is now. If anything may become less popular as it gets older and wow-effect will pass.
I try but they are all so fucking stupid, all that stare at the point, get stuck in trenches with tanks, die in Grey zones bc of the damage, don’t stay on the point to do number preventing the enemy from capturing it.
A point is the thing on the end of the Bayonet. When I see a PC player spamming Attack Point. They mean throw themselves at the enemy bayonet and give them XP right?!
Calling new players stupid is beyond rude. Performing depends on learning curve and progression curve. Enlisted has quite a few mechanics to learn, but once you’re past it, it’s the progression gap that keeps all the new players in low scores.
We’re playing together with a friend and it’s not our first game of this genre. Once we learned the basics, we were quite able to stay at least by the middle of the score table, reaching the first five and sometimes being first on the ladder. We’re about level 9 in the Invasion of Normandy campaign playing as Allies vs Axis.
Way too often we’re placed against higher level opponents and it’s very much visible. When I’m killed at a spawn point by a tank across the whole map or killed “through a wall” by the same tank because it has crazy explosives and doesn’t even need to aim precisely, what can I do in this situation? I’ve been spotting tanks for my fried who was piloting a plane, but what can we do if his starting plane does zero damage to those tanks and he’s being one-shot from the sky? While high level pilots are able to kill the tanks and up to 10-20 people in one row reliably. And it’s not about luck - it’s about equipment. My friend was first in the score table as the best pilot and he had around 2000 points in his score while his opponent on the other side had more than 10000 score points. And it was a battle we won!
So clearly progression curve has a problem here - it favors high level players and leaves no chances for low level players to catch up. And catching up is essential because of the big disparity between low level and high level equipment and soldiers. So no, it’s not a skill that allows those veteran players win - it’s just numbers being bigger.
Here again: don’t expect new players with this approach. They will be frustrated and will just quit. Yes, it’s F2P and yes, we’re not naive and we did buy the battle pas, but the difference is so small and your experience gain is still so limited, it’s almost useless.
Gaijin People, be extremely carefull here with that and don’t get it wrong, Enlisted is to me a very good game by the basis but as said here, monetization and level progression are something you need to look at.
EU, for example, can easily force you to remove your game from “Freemium” list, Google was forced to several times …
"The issue isn’t simply the type of game monetization you decide on – the freemium model can still be used without serious repercussions. Instead, the danger is in how your game merges your business model with gameplay. Does your game show the player a set of results that could have been achieved had the player paid real-world money? This is fine. Does your game give the player a different set of results, based on entirely different coding, when the player actually does pay real-world money? This is not.
The offenses of fraud, false advertising and misrepresentation can be coded into your game, and if they are, you as the game creator can be held liable for these offenses." (Nick Hall / Digital Entertainment Law)
