Casual Matchmaking Test Event #2

(RazielWarmonic) #1

It’s time for another Casual Matchmaking Test Event! Starting at 16:00 UTC on Thursday, June 23rd, the Server Browser will be temporarily disabled and Casual Matchmaking enabled. Join us in Dirty Bomb to help us put this new feature through its paces!

Test Event Duration

Casual Matchmaking will be enabled for the following times. The more you play during the test, the better the system will get at giving you a balanced match. As we’ll be focusing on Objective and Execution modes for this test, we’re disabling Casual Stopwatch matches and the Server Browser for its duration.

  • London (BST, UTC+1): 17:00 Thursday, June 23 - 17:00 Friday, June 24[/*]
  • Los Angeles (PDT, UTC-7): 9:00 AM Thursday, June 23 - 9:00 AM Friday, June 24[/*]
  • Sydney (AEST, UTC+10): 2:00 AM Friday, June 24 - 2:00 AM Saturday, June 25[/*]

What is Casual Matchmaking?

In a nutshell, Casual Matchmaking is the system that looks at your performance, amount of experience and skill level, and attempts to put you into matches that will give you the best possible experience.

Some of the most obvious changes will be:

  • You’ll be able to party up with friends and play on the same team[/*]
  • Your matches will become more balanced[/*]
  • Matches may take slightly longer to find, as it will no longer be a simple server query…[/*]
  • …but you’ll be able to move around the menu, open cases etc, while searching for them.[/*]

Casual Matchmaking will replace the Quick Join option - So ultimately the more players using Casual Matchmaking, the more balanced and easier to find your matches will be.

How Do I Use It?

While we have the Casual Matchmaking Alpha enabled, you’ll find it in the Play menu. From here, you can either Create a Party, or Find a Match by yourself.

After Creating a Party or joining one you’ve been invited to, you’ll see your Steam friends playing Dirty Bomb in the right-hand column. You can invite friends to your party, whether you’re hosting it or not and you can also filter maps and game mode by hitting the Change button. When satisfied with your Party, hit the Find Match button.

While finding a match or in the end-game lobby (which is still in its early stages and will be iterated upon), you can move around the menu freely. Check out the in-game news section, hunt for specials in the store, or open a case or two!

What’s the next step?

We want to be clear that this is very much a work in progress and we need to give the system an initial public test run to see if there are any unexpected issues, as overall scale is an essential component of a matchmaking system. We’re likely to do a few more of these tests before the system can stay live, but we also have some improvements that are already underway:

  • An option to automatically re-enter the matchmaking pool a bit after a match has completed[/*]
  • Visual and usability polish on getting into a match and the new Postgame Lobby[/*]
    [list]
  • Additionally to this, you will be able to review the last 10 Postgame reports from matches that you’ve played in the Profile section[/*]
    [/list]

The criteria that we use to balance matches will also be adjusted regularly based on our findings.

We’d like to thank you for your help, and happy fragging!

(EverythingElse) #2

[quote=“RazielWarmonic;30932”]http://nxcache.nexon.net/umbraco/5672/header_casualmatchmakingtest_new.jpg

[]Matches may take slightly longer to find, as it will no longer be a simple server query…[/]
[/quote]

As in longer than before? How is this possible?

(Orivar) #3

So I cant play Stopwatch for one day?

(ClemClem7) #4

I expect stopwatch missions to get disable during this test, just sayin’
@RazielWarmonic

(Brain_of_Britain) #5

Me and my friends will be maining this event so please try not to take it down early o:)

(Soxiecat) #6

How about the 500 credit bonus for playing stopwatch? Will we be compensated?

(ChaoticElf) #7

So with casual matchmaking in the future, the ability to join on a friend’s server (whether to play against or with them) isn’t going to be an option unless they use the server list choice? I understand the party system, but sometimes it’s just as fun for me to play against friends as well as with.

(blonk) #8

The server browser will be the way to do that I presume. I’m with you, I love being able to spar with my friends although it won’t be easy to keep the ability to do that with the new system and not give baddies the ability to fix/disrupt matches.

@RazielWarmonic So it’s OBJ 5 man and EXE 5 man, right? Apologies if this has been mentioned already, just interested :slight_smile:

(feigenstaub) #9

Yes, we will get a party join / casual matchmaking instead :wink:
Moreover, you can play now before it starts and get the bonus and play again after the test tomorrow to get the bonus for tomorrow. So there is no loss.

It’s 6v6 if you mean that.
The server browser will still offer 7v7 and 8v8.

(OmaGretel) #10

Great feature! Waiting in queue for almost 15 minutes now and still haven’t gotten into a match.

(joshstylegaming) #11

Once more, queue times are impossiblely high. I feel bad for you guys, you keep pumping out these features that seem good, but there’s always something seeming to be wrong.

EDIT: It seems the queue times have improved as I actually found a match! Good Job SD, it seems the system is improving!

(Jay_TBud) #12

Impossible to join a match, searching… again and again…

(BatFresco) #13

Love the idea, but if in a 20 min queue you cannot find a match, then it’s not really worth it.

(Equanimity) #14

Can we get some transparency on how you’re intending to calculate MMR @stayfreshshoe ? Perhaps the player base would know a better methodology?

To note, I really think games in progress should be added to matchmaking, and FUNCTIONAL auto-balance should be active within games in progress. Without that no matter the calculation method for MMR the queues will take unnecessarily long.

(ClemClem7) #15

One problem is that when a game is found (execution seems to run better than objective) if someone don’t join, it restart the search. Then we have no match because someone don’t join every time.
Finally got a game after 10mn with 20 times accepting.

Edit: After going to lobby, we waited for so long everyone left.
“No match servers are available”
Seriously ? Nobody can play and there is no server available ??

(expessiveMovie) #16

This alpha is bad. Need to wait more for a same match. I waited 5 min, then the game was totally unbalanced.I can understand, why dont balance ingame. Good day/bad day? Or the guys whos made this game are robots?
And after 1 match, back to the lobby, and wait again…i hope this 1 day is the last when we play with this version.

(cardinalCook) #17

can u guys (developer) tell, how far u are with the Matchmaking?? any date for release?? or a a timeperiod like “we need 1 or 2 weeks” …something like this??
kinda sad that mm is down for over 1 month now…
do u guys watch steamcharts?? this game is reaching 3k players on the peak…1 month ago we had 5-6.
if u dont fix this mm aka competetive stuff this game will die withing the next year.
this game has so much potential to be good but the background sucks cuz noone cares for the comp scene…which should be primary