[SUGGESTIONS] Too much pointless waiting between matches, details inside.

(MyPingIsHuge) #1

I’ll be reposting a thread that showed up on reddit, while also adding some small suggestions of my own.

My input: PLEASE let us choose the REGION for quick-match / ranked. I live in south america on work, but would much rather speak english and play on US EAST servers (which i can only do through server browser). This is so basic that i’m surprised it’s still not an option. Finding a server on server browser after every match is around 20% of my entire playtime, seriously.

Now, for the original post:

Source: http://www.reddit.com/r/Dirtybomb/comments/3al19r/please_remove_all_the_waiting_times_it_really/

"Join a server, wait 15 seconds before you can deploy.

Start a new match? Wait 20 seconds to lock in.

Wait 20 seconds for people to choose teams and choose loadouts.

Wait 20 seconds for the map to load.

Wait 25 seconds for warmup and people to ready up.

Wait 25 seconds for the intro you have seen for the millionth time (if player level average > level 6, do not show the intro).

Wait 10 seconds for match to start.

FINALLY you play.

When the game ends, you wait 10 seconds for the game to end (ok for people to say gg etc).

You wait 20 seconds for stats.

You wait 10 seconds for the next lobby to load while the current map quits.

You go to the lobby screen and wait 20 seconds for who knows what. During this period most people leave.

Do you see of this insane waiting has people quitting?"

You could easily reduce half of all this waiting time by spawning a new player into the next respawn wave, and showing stats on the lobby instead of in-game, on a “last match recap” window.

The intro movie needs to be either skipped past a certain level, or changed into something much shorter using the minimap (talking about minimap, can we PLEEEEASE have an option to stop it from rotating? At it’s current state its pretty much useless. “rhino locking down building by north!” “which way is north??”, you get the point).

Hopefully this gets some attention from the devs (a developer answer would be amazing. Summoning @MissMurder !)

(Backuplight) #2

I think the original post is a little over the top with how much waiting there is, but I understand the point. If people haven’t all locked in, I assume they’re actually changing mercs/loadouts - I’ve had to use that time before when missions switched etc. Almost every game I play, everyone hits ready up so the warmup is skipped, too. So, yeah, whilst I’d like to go from one game fluidly into the next, I don’t know how much this will be changed - some people don’t load in quite as fast, and with the way your squad is set up, the pre-game lobby is a necessity unless you make it so that squads can only be edited from the menus; of course, the moment you do that, even more people will leave after games.

As for the last comment about the mini-map rotating and not knowing which way is north, I’d say having better callouts for locations is the bigger issue there, though this is hard in pubs.

(Dirmagnos) #3

Yes, lack of region lock is extremely annoying.
But you can use filter in server browser and search by keyword. I for example have it set to “eu - obj”(or something like that) because i dont friggin need all those us, aus, asia, max lvl5, etc server to show up. I either cant or have no intention to play on them.

And wait times are really annoying. there should be an option like “start now” and “skip intro” for players who wannt to start playing asap, while rest just catch up in few seconds.
All those waits and lockin option crearly do not work, like at all. In my 21 levels i havent seen a single game starting prior to timer expiring since there is newer all players locked in and just one guy can stall every1 else.
Same with postgame screen - if i wannt to look thru it, then i should be able to do so, while rest could just hop into next game.
That whole timer-based system is an absolute and utter crap. You wait and you wait and you wait, or… you dont have time to properly configure loadout because theres not enough time.

(Backuplight) #4

[quote=“Dirmagnos;31595”]Yes, lack of region lock is extremely annoying.
[/quote]

Missed this in my other post - I do miss the ability to pick regions for quick joining. More options in general would be nice, such as being able to say you only want to quick join rank 10+ servers, and/or servers in specific regions (as suggested).

(MyPingIsHuge) #5

bump

(Aazhyd) #6

Yep, all the waiting is definitely annoying and unnecessary.

(ThatRandomGuy) #7

I can go with waiting…

You missed the most annoying crap in the game…

‘REFRESHING ACCOUNT’ … THAT BLOODY STUPID THING…

(Aazhyd) #8

That’s waiting too, isn’t it?

(Amerika) #9

Yup. I’ve brought up this point on the Warchest forums (the one the devs actually read) and they didn’t feel like the wait time for certain things was too long. Hell, mostly what I wanted them to change was the 15 second timer for deploy after you’ve joined a match in progress on a pub. They said it was so the player and everyone else could have enough time to load in but that takes less than a second in most cases and your character just sits there doing nothing while you wait for the timer to count down. Why they don’t just have you join the next wave is really really odd. And it would allow you to switch mercs in that case too which you can’t currently do.

It’s just really odd and I don’t think they have set aside much time to think about how odd the wait times truly are.

(LifeupOmega) #10

I really, really hate the waiting game in Dirty Bomb. I’d much rather have it work like other games with continuous games and no lobby outside of matchmaking/comp. You can switch around your roster at the start of a match, map votes are called when the game ends and the stats pop up, right then and there. Teams get scrambled every few games if there are balance issues.

(Dirmagnos) #11

Lock in option in pre-game lobby should be worth something.
So, idea. If in pre-game lobby at least 50% of players lock in, they start immediately(or their timer is reset to 3 seconds). But ratio of players between teams should be no less that 60/40.
Example: 8vs8 game, all players on one team are locked in and none or 1-2 on another. Game does not start, timer runs as normal.
8vs8 game, 6 players in one team and 4 players in another team locked in and for them, and only for them, game starts right away. Those who are not locked in just wait timer to run out, as it is now. But if those unlocked players decide to lock in, they get to start right away.
Considering that theres over 30 seconds of warmup and mission intro, unlocked players do not really lose anything.
Similar system with postgame. Those who wannt just press “next game” and move on. Rest can view their stats or whatever and timer runs as usual. They simply catch up later.
All that sitting in the lobby, waiting for one timer after another to expire is plain stupid. Considering that some games can last as little as 3.5 minutes(maybe even less, 3:47 is lowest ive seen), players can literally spend waiting almost same amount of time as playing.

(Anti) #12

[quote=“Amerika;32007”]Yup. I’ve brought up this point on the Warchest forums (the one the devs actually read) and they didn’t feel like the wait time for certain things was too long. Hell, mostly what I wanted them to change was the 15 second timer for deploy after you’ve joined a match in progress on a pub. They said it was so the player and everyone else could have enough time to load in but that takes less than a second in most cases and your character just sits there doing nothing while you wait for the timer to count down. Why they don’t just have you join the next wave is really really odd. And it would allow you to switch mercs in that case too which you can’t currently do.

It’s just really odd and I don’t think they have set aside much time to think about how odd the wait times truly are.[/quote]

The 15 seconds is to synchronize Loadouts. That is you send your Merc and Loadout info to all the other clients and they send all their Loadout and Merc info to you. If we allow you to play the moment you load in, but before you have this info, you’ll see lots of issues with Mercs missing skins, Merc holding wrong weapon models, missing skins and so on.

There are things we can do to improve the flow of into and between matches a bit, and we’re planning to look at them, but the syncing of content is one that is tough to do much else with.

(Ardez1) #13

[quote=“Anti;32032”][quote=“Amerika;32007”]Yup. I’ve brought up this point on the Warchest forums (the one the devs actually read) and they didn’t feel like the wait time for certain things was too long. Hell, mostly what I wanted them to change was the 15 second timer for deploy after you’ve joined a match in progress on a pub. They said it was so the player and everyone else could have enough time to load in but that takes less than a second in most cases and your character just sits there doing nothing while you wait for the timer to count down. Why they don’t just have you join the next wave is really really odd. And it would allow you to switch mercs in that case too which you can’t currently do.

It’s just really odd and I don’t think they have set aside much time to think about how odd the wait times truly are.[/quote]

The 15 seconds is to synchronize Loadouts. That is you send your Merc and Loadout info to all the other clients and they send all their Loadout and Merc info to you. If we allow you to play the moment you load in, but before you have this info, you’ll see lots of issues with Mercs missing skins, Merc holding wrong weapon models, missing skins and so on.

There are things we can do to improve the flow of into and between matches a bit, and we’re planning to look at them, but the syncing of content is one that is tough to do much else with.
[/quote]

Would it be possible to give them an invul shield then, or just not spawn them, during the deploy timer?

(Sagan on Roids) #14

Would it be possible to spectate teammates while waiting? It would be less frustrating if we could at least see what’s going on while we wait.

(Glot) #15

[quote=“Anti;32032”]The 15 seconds is to synchronize Loadouts. That is you send your Merc and Loadout info to all the other clients and they send all their Loadout and Merc info to you. If we allow you to play the moment you load in, but before you have this info, you’ll see lots of issues with Mercs missing skins, Merc holding wrong weapon models, missing skins and so on.

There are things we can do to improve the flow of into and between matches a bit, and we’re planning to look at them, but the syncing of content is one that is tough to do much else with.
[/quote]

map video before every round is 20+20 = 40 seconds

(misspo) #16

It’s true that the waiting time is HUGE. I think most of it can be reduce like by deleting some parts and puting them at the same time/place than other ones.

(Amerika) #17

[quote=“Anti;32032”][quote=“Amerika;32007”]Yup. I’ve brought up this point on the Warchest forums (the one the devs actually read) and they didn’t feel like the wait time for certain things was too long. Hell, mostly what I wanted them to change was the 15 second timer for deploy after you’ve joined a match in progress on a pub. They said it was so the player and everyone else could have enough time to load in but that takes less than a second in most cases and your character just sits there doing nothing while you wait for the timer to count down. Why they don’t just have you join the next wave is really really odd. And it would allow you to switch mercs in that case too which you can’t currently do.

It’s just really odd and I don’t think they have set aside much time to think about how odd the wait times truly are.[/quote]

The 15 seconds is to synchronize Loadouts. That is you send your Merc and Loadout info to all the other clients and they send all their Loadout and Merc info to you. If we allow you to play the moment you load in, but before you have this info, you’ll see lots of issues with Mercs missing skins, Merc holding wrong weapon models, missing skins and so on.

There are things we can do to improve the flow of into and between matches a bit, and we’re planning to look at them, but the syncing of content is one that is tough to do much else with.
[/quote]

The issue with that explanation Anti is that mercs load in almost instantly when you hit deploy for the player and other connected clients. There are ways to show your merc actually in game before the deploy timer starts (spam your F keys) and you can view other players sitting “afk” in spawn who are waiting for the deploy timer to count down even though they are fully loaded. I understand a few seconds but not 15 seconds for this to complete.

Can the 15 second load time be changed to 5 and then simply having people join the next spawn wave? During that time people can finish the loading in for all server clients and give the player the option to switch Mercs after they have joined. Yes, it might mean they can’t instantly play as they join the server depending on where the spawn timer is at but at least they would get on server faster and get to pick mercs with less fussing about. Yes, you can slot around mercs before you hit deploy but that also takes time that could better be spent simply hitting and F key and waiting on a spawn wave.

Right now the 15 second window used to gracefully sync loadouts across all clients seems way too long. Especially when you load in and you are killed 1-2 times before you are allowed to control your character. Especially when you could mask the loading by putting a player into the next spawn wave that has enough time on it (one with at least 15 seconds if that is a hard and fast number).

I am in software R&D myself and we constantly raise questions like this in regards to our products UI and timings. Especially when things are customer facing. I might be way off base with my questions/suggestions due to my ignorance for how the unreal engine works and your own test results for average client load times so don’t take what I am saying as criticism. It’s just me being curious about how something works and what could be done to fix something as seen from the cheap seats.

(Takamura) #18

[quote=“universitySpace;12592”]I’ll be reposting a thread that showed up on reddit, while also adding some small suggestions of my own.

My input: PLEASE let us choose the REGION for quick-match / ranked. I live in south america on work, but would much rather speak english and play on US EAST servers (which i can only do through server browser). This is so basic that i’m surprised it’s still not an option. Finding a server on server browser after every match is around 20% of my entire playtime, seriously.

Now, for the original post:

Source: http://www.reddit.com/r/Dirtybomb/comments/3al19r/please_remove_all_the_waiting_times_it_really/

"Join a server, wait 15 seconds before you can deploy.

Start a new match? Wait 20 seconds to lock in.

Wait 20 seconds for people to choose teams and choose loadouts.

Wait 20 seconds for the map to load.

Wait 25 seconds for warmup and people to ready up.

Wait 25 seconds for the intro you have seen for the millionth time (if player level average > level 6, do not show the intro).

Wait 10 seconds for match to start.

FINALLY you play.

When the game ends, you wait 10 seconds for the game to end (ok for people to say gg etc).

You wait 20 seconds for stats.

You wait 10 seconds for the next lobby to load while the current map quits.

You go to the lobby screen and wait 20 seconds for who knows what. During this period most people leave.

Do you see of this insane waiting has people quitting?"

You could easily reduce half of all this waiting time by spawning a new player into the next respawn wave, and showing stats on the lobby instead of in-game, on a “last match recap” window.

The intro movie needs to be either skipped past a certain level, or changed into something much shorter using the minimap (talking about minimap, can we PLEEEEASE have an option to stop it from rotating? At it’s current state its pretty much useless. “rhino locking down building by north!” “which way is north??”, you get the point).

Hopefully this gets some attention from the devs (a developer answer would be amazing. Summoning @MissMurder !)[/quote]
Thenk you you post this with a good worlds this is 1st problem to much time to join in game just find a server choose your mercs and start ingame and wait another to joins

(ThatRandomGuy) #19

OP missed a few stuff…

searching for server

Goddamned server search looks for servers that are not in my region. It checks for servers in US, even though i get 300ms+ on US servers. Aka wasting my time.

When i finally joins a server

REFRESHING ACCOUNT <—This bloody thing is the most annoying crap i have ever seen in a game.

(Takamura) #20

And one more why this Loading progile every time i login to game is a way the comopany save all players profile so dont show us every time in login or before the game … (Is beta we know make them fix not just to tell us is ok ) is not ok … and imagine people who a fu cking pc how much time to join in game because of those waiting .