Hi SD, I’ve been having a blast at your game but unfortunately a few things still keep ruining the experience for me.
First of all, I know this has been repeated many times before, but we need more servers although I really notice a lack of EU servers as I’m from europe and it’s constant, not just during peak hours. If I want to play during the day time I struggle to find some servers. I hope that the transition into open beta will bring forth a new wave of fresh servers. But currently, even using the quick join function doesn’t help, it comes out empty and tells me to use the server browser which I then have to patiently refresh every 5 seconds until I find that empty spot and am quick enough to join it. And don’t get me started about trying to join the same server with a friend!
Which leads me to the issue of competitive mode. I don’t know if it isn’t working or if it is just empty but everytime I want to join a game it takes ages and I finally give up as I can’t seem to find a game. Would be nice to get a counter of the total amount of current players trying to connect to a competitive game. Either that or just add a separate server browser for competitive play as well. Unless there is some reason why not that I haven’t seen yet.
Then there is the issue of under level 6 players joining regular servers. I guess it’s some form of overflow insurance in case all max level 5 servers are full, but I have repeatedly found empty spots in those servers while struggling to get one in regular servers and then finding some low level players occupying those spots. There is either a problem with optimization or again it originates from a lack of servers to begin with. I would like to suggest to restrict players under level 6 to not be allowed into any server other than max level 5 ones but I guess that would make it harder for newcomers to join a game. Anyway, when I was low level I was glad to keep away from the big players.
So both last issues mentioned form a problem to me that really bugs me. I can’t play competitive, where I’d hope to find skillful players, focussed around playing the objective and then when going into regular games I still get matched with complete newbies which makes it worse. Maybe including min leve 10 or min level 15 servers would be an idea to explore? But then again I don’t know the total player level distribution and that would maybe leave a dozen of players to play against themselves.
Another important issue to me is the ping. Last patchnotes said that people with more than 100ms wouldn’t be put in a server but they still do, probably through the server browser. And it sucks when one knows the shots are hitting the enemy but they don’t count… So my suggestion would be to verify people’s pings against all regions and only the region with lowest ping is the one the player is allowed to play in. Incidentally it will also remove some of the boosting that is easily made by entering an empty other side of the world server with a friend just to make the winning missions easier. (which I think are bad missions as they are dependent on the team and not a reflection of your own performance, but that’s another issue).
The last issue I really loathe is the fact that teamswitching completely destroys your thought out matchmaking system. No matchmaking system, be it as perfect as possible, can succeed if after its categorization, people can switch how they want. Mostly to play with friends, but that should be leaved to competitive only. Hence my suggestion: Lock the teams to follow the matchmaking decided by the game. Do not allow any switching. If people want to play in a party, then let them play competitive, which incidentally will populate those servers if their problem right now is the low population. With this system the game can readjust teams according to your criteria before every game begins and try to get the most fair game possible. Call of Duty’s system on it is really straightforward and efficient, it mixes players in order to obtain a similiar point average from the points obtained in the previous game. It requires most players to have been playing one game already but it works from there on out. And if the system fails, then add a reajustment based on KD between three and five minutes after the game has started, because that’s usually how long it takes to know if a team is being steamrolled by the other or if the teams are equal.
Also regarding matchmaking, I don’t know all the mathematics behind the scenes but I think that not just level or average match pointmaking should be taken into account. Also the loadout rarity and merc availability should be considered. Because having a team on one side with players owning many 50k mercs vs. another that only has all standard mercs sucks. Same goes for a team with none to a few bronze or higher vs all gold. You get my drift.
Anyway those are my five cents regarding the servers and matchmaking issues I’ve continuously experienced. My bad for the extremely long post and if you read this far thanks for reading you crazy person!