The Problem with low pop pub servers was obvious from the start

(RuleofBooKz) #1

We kno who is good and who isnt.

Join a game and good players want to play with other good players. So they do.

Games therefore are not balanced. Maybe 1 in 10 is a well fought enjoyable right down to the wire affair. No one swaps teams if its numbers unbalanced either.

The obvious problem with low pop Pub servers has and is obvious - no fat to the servers means a few good players on one team stacks it and as its low pop there is no room for slack.

Pub games are about who you kno not what you kno. No future.

(Ribero) #2

Well your “w” obviously isn’t broken, so that can’t be the reason. Hmm.

(Zenity) #3

I don’t get the “No future” part. Pubs will be fine once the playerbase is significantly large. And hopefully soon competitive matchmaking will be in a state where serious players can use it exclusively, so casuals become a bit more, well, casual.

(RuleofBooKz) #4

when not actually in a pug scrimming or actually in a camp where do u think good players hang out and play?

(Zenity) #5

If the game becomes sufficiently popular, I expect that top players will scrim almost non-stop like they do in other games, and play competitive matchmaking the few times they are not. The only exception is warmup, and this may be where the hinted at Extraction mode could come in useful.

No matter what though, once the player popularity becomes reasonably large (which it has to for the game not to be an abysmal failure, being F2P and all), it will be a rarity to run into well known top players on pubs, or even high skilled players in general.

(RuleofBooKz) #6

When do you expect this to happen? do you have any time frame at all in mind? for instance in your opinion - will this occur in a week, a month, by years end for example?

If u cant give a time frame then its just wishful thinking that “one day things will get better”. Atm there is an issue - its already happening = new players getting curb stomped on picking up the game isnt the best welcome or incentive to stay with it for the long haul or recommend it to a friend.

let me be clear - im ok with low pop “comp style” games but i hear a lot about how massive this game is going to be so its best we face a few facts as they arise rather then rely on wishful thinking

(Rimmorn) #7

There are lvl locked servers for new players and that’s where they should go or that’s where quick join should put them when possible.

(RuleofBooKz) #8

No one should be encouraged to use quick play or match making. But Yes good point, using server browser, the new player should go to the under level 6 servers. IF there is one that’s populated - not always the case.

Now how to communicate this to new players who will never come to this forum?

(Zenity) #9

Ah right, you are the person who is allergic to matchmaking. :slight_smile: To be honest your issues are self-made, because matchmaking is designed to fix exactly this problem. All a new player should do is press the play button, and the game will sort out the rest.

Of course it can only work reliably with a large player population, and the timeframe for that is easy to define: As soon as the game goes out of beta (or at least enters open beta).

(Szakalot) #10

Going into open beta should increase the population enough to make this problem less significant. And it will hopefully make matchmaking viable, I didn’t get into a single game yet, but then again I never have the patience to wait more than ~5min

(RuleofBooKz) #11

atm matchmaking is broken. so yes i am “against it”. You might also recall Im also against “one day it will be better logic” - if there is no set timetable or set plan in action :wink:

playing on AU servers literally every game we have people with 300 pings just popping into the server and lagging about the place and basically having a bad time - 100% of the time we tell them they are on the wrong server they say “quick connect match making brought me here”

if it gets better in the future then i will stop being against it - simple as that.

(Rimmorn) #12

Quick join =/= matchmaking

(RuleofBooKz) #13

My apologies. Should of been more direct. Anything except using the server browser to look thru servers and pick the best one is just being retarded (atm).

Better? ;p

(Rimmorn) #14

Yes :wink: And you’re right about Quick join not being very good atm. It uses much simpler algorithm then matchmaking and doesn’t limit the search area to EU/USA/AU instead it just puts you on the server with lowest ping with people playing and if there is no spot in your region then you’ll end up in a different one.

(Zenity) #15

[quote=“RuleofBooKz;11867”]atm matchmaking is broken. so yes i am “against it”. You might also recall Im also against “one day it will be better logic” - if there is no set timetable or set plan in action :wink:
[/quote]

I’m afraid my response to this will be predictable by now. :wink: This issue WILL be fixed by a large player population, which will happen earliest in open beta.

Balanced matchmaking is essentially impossible to achieve with such a small number of players, so all we can do is test the mechanics for now and try not to be dicks on public servers.

That said, I am not sure I understand what your actual issue/suggestion is. Are you suggesting that we increase the player limits on casual servers, so that uneven teams have less of an effect? Like 12v12 or something?

(god1) #16

I’ve played about 50 hours since the servers went online and I haven’t seen a single obvious teamstack anywhere.

(RuleofBooKz) #17

with even an 8v8 u get 3 or 4 good players, really good players, on one team (and no matter who else they have) and just good and average players on the other and its a slaughter.

in ET pub it was 20v20. same abouts in QW. Those large pops let the excellent and the few good players rise to the top of both teams but there was plenty of room for medium average players and a few noobs and new ones to still mix it up. Even then there were the odd shuffle as the game progressed if things looked too stacked.

unfortunately the size of maps in DB just dont allow that.

AND Yes yes once we are out of closed, bigger pop playing the game more diluted really good players, comp ranked servers filtering the maway from pubs yeah yeah yadda yadda yadda i hear ya.

Tho down the track if u made a few “battleship” sized big boy maps - specifically to allow large sized pop games ala retro ET maps like fuel dump, even MP beach (not a big map was heaps fun on high pop servers) that would be cool.