No matchmaking is hurting this game bad

[elakelaset]

Trying to find games has been next to impossible unless you really commit. It's very hard to believe a game that's going on its 4th expansion hasn't been able to sink a little effort in a basic matchmaking platform.

I really like this game, but i'm ditching it because it's not gonna be possible get in a multiplayer game without planning for hours. You must be thinking, good riddance? For one person, like me, who leaves a thoughfull message about how disapointing it is, there's hundreds who just said "f this" and moved on without saying anything. That's hurting the community of an otherwise great game and precipitating its death.

TL;DR : no matchmaking, I'm probably not only one to find this shitty. bye.

[chemical_art]

With games so long, you gotta find players and set up a time for multiple game sessions ahead of gameplay. Pick up groups simply don't work with games lasting at least 10 hours (usually).

There are very few things that multiplayer does that single player cannot as well. Multiplayer games have the total caps (a very broad term in this case) for both humans and AI go up but otherwise things stay the same. You can get a similar single player response from multiple homeworlds and a resource boost. Losing multiplayer does not hinder this game.

[x4000]

Matchmaking services are neither simple nor inexpensive, nor would they be of particular help for this game. When games last 8-12 hours routinely, you don't need a matchmaking service -- you need a way for regular groups to form and meet. That's these forums, and we have a subforum dedicated to that. I'm sorry you're frustrated, but this isn't a typical RTS where matches last 15-60 minutes at most. That means that, even if we had a matchmaking service, there would be very few people on it because most people would be actively in game the majority of the time; the match time greatly exceeds the matchup time. The math of the situation means that no matchmaking system would behave like you expect with a game like this.

Also: given that this game is co-op only, it's something built around the idea of groups of friends playing together, rather than total strangers. That's another reason we decided not to port even the simple matchmaking that we built into Tidalis over to AI War. It had been singularly disused in tidalis, and suffering from all the "people are in game, not in lobby" problems mentioned before, and there was almost nobody asking for it. We might revisit this at some point in the future, but by and large it hasn't seemed to be too big an issue. I suspect that, if we had a matchmaking service, you'd be here complaining instead that nobody is sitting in the lobby waiting to play when you want to play; that's hardly any better, and has the added bonus of making it seem like nobody plays the game, which is not the case.

Anyway, that's our rationale for not doing it yet, if that helps.

[Cyborg]

An inexpensive way to do matchmaking is to set up a tracker and handle it much the way that bit torrent does. Instead of trading file slices, you're trading addresses. I don't know who owns the patent on that, but there are a ton of clones and minor improvements.

But yeah, this is not the kind of game for getting together quick groups. Is better if you set up games with folks that have similar schedules.

[keith.lamothe]

You must be thinking, good riddance?

No, not really, I'd prefer that you stuck around so that there was at least some opportunity for us to understand where you're coming from on this (exactly what you think a matchmaking system for AIW should look like and exactly what you think it would improve and how it could get around the various pitfalls we've envisioned in the past) and for you to understand where we're coming from (we _have_ thought of this before and considered it carefully, and why we haven't done it).

One thing to consider for future attempts at giving feedback is that the chance of a suggestion persuading a game developer is decreased when:
a) The individual giving the feedback appears to be struggling to maintain rational composure (profanity, focusing on frustration, etc).
b) The individual giving the feedback appears to not be interested in listening to a response or engaging in a follow-up discussion that might actually break past the same-old-arguments-that-have-been-trotted-out-every-other-time-we've-talked-about-this-and-don't-cut-it into some interesting new lateral-thinking solutions or whatever.

As far as specifics, well, Chris has already covered most of them.  I could go into it more but don't want to if I'm just talking to a wall.

Anyway, please oblige me by returning to complete this conversation

[Echo35]

What Chris said. You simply cannot get a multiplayer game going without a dedicated group of people. This isn't Starcraft or Sins of a Solar Empire or Dawn of War 2, this is a game that can last longer than those games' entire single player campaigns. There would be no possible way to get an effective matchmaking system together, beyond a simple server browser, and even that isn't terribly useful, as was said, it would make the game appear as though nobody is playing. Don't think of it as an RTS, think of it more as a co-op campaign.

[elakelaset]

Let me address all those arguments then

Game is not suited for matchmaking service; too long games:
I think this argument is weak because having a games with random people is way better than no game at all. From then, if you meet decent people you could be inclined to complete a campaign with them. Most games wouldn't work out in the end, but at least there would be a way to get games without committing hours to finding potential partners. Also this game just doesn't appeal to trolls and people who wants to ruin games, so i don't think that would be a problem in the end.

Matchmaking are complicated / cost a lot:
I find it hard to believe there is no revenue or expertise for supporting a simple web server to trade IP's. The solutions that are deployed right now are totally inadequate. One of the selling point of this game (which personally got me) was coop vs the AI, and there is a disapointing lack of population. You guys are losing real revenue and community when people finds out there's only a dead forum and a silent IRC.


And yes maybe, my post is not the nicest but hopefully it drove a little shame that could push to action? I personally worked as a game designer / programmer. If I was lead designer of a coop game and I told my producer there would be no matchmaking and we'll be selling it 40$ with all expansions, let me tell you I'd be seriously ashamed. Also, it's very rare i personally come to a forum to comment about such things. I did only because it's a very good game and it is sad that the population and community is not what it deserves to be.

[x4000]

I don't think you read my post very carefully, if you think that "matchups with random people" is the result I was concerned about.  But rather than restate, I'll just point you back to the original post.

In terms of the complexities of matchmaking: you can do a crap matchmaking service easily.  Doing a good one is hard.  Time costs money; time is also finite.  If we had a perfect design for a matchmaking service that we felt would be something a significant portion of players would be happy with, we'd do that.  As it is, there has been very little demand and in fact players have clearly shown a preference for other features ahead of this one.  It's in mantis -- if you want to spur us to action, then vote up that item so that it gets near the top of the list.  As it stands, other issues have been voted by players to be much higher on the priority lists, and we listen to them.

Your barbs about lost revenue and the sense of shame we should feel really made me laugh, though.  We listen to players, we've done a ton of stuff for free, and this hasn't been something that was particularly asked for.  And, without going into revenue figures, the game has done enormously well and in fact has grown every year.  The fact that one item off your personal wishlist hasn't been a popular request is no reason to get nasty.

[keith.lamothe]

Basically the thought process is thus:

1) Should we have matchmaking?

2) Well, it'd have to be pretty robust, are there any good off-the-shelf ones we can use?
a) Steam?  Then it'd be Steamworks in every build, which we know closes other distribution channels.
b) GameSpy? ... ugh.  We looked, we really did, but no, not a good thing.
c) Impulse?  Didn't have the features we needed; looked like they were planned but doesn't seem to have ever happened.

3) Hmm, so what about building our own?
a) We did that with Tidalis, put quite a bit of effort into it, and all it got us was a few favorable comments in the rather stellar reviews... and the game did very poorly commercially.  Despite selling a fairly large load of copies (in a really steep discount in one of the special bundles on Steam during the holidays) the matchmaking service is next-to-unused.

4) So what's the gain if we did do it?
a) Occasionally someone fusses at us for not having it.  If we did it then that would stop and be replaced by people occasionally fussing at us for the specific way we did it.
b) It might help players find games easier.

5) Ok, how many players, how much would it help them?
a) Judging by feedback and the mantis votes and whatnot... not very much at all.

6) Ok, sounds like a cool thing to do sometime, particularly since we worked out a lot of the basics in the system we built for Tidalis... but definitely not a priority.


And no new information (facts, angles of thinking about it, etc) has been presented in this thread.  In fact, some of the claims and assertions being put forth are manifestly false (AIW not doing well or doing worse than before in revenue, etc).  Anyway, no changes to the inputs, therefore no changes to the premises of that thought process, and therefore no changes to the conclusion.

If the players really want this more than any other new feature and that is objectively demonstrated (rather than "proof by emphatic assertion", which is good for comedy value but not decision-support)... we'll do it.  We've got the basics of the framework and the hardware to back it, but it's just not a priority by any of the various measurements we use (personal interest, player interest, etc) and frankly we don't think it would really help all that much.

[Cyborg]

And yes maybe, my post is not the nicest but hopefully it drove a little shame that could push to action?

No doubt you are having trouble finding cooperative gamers to join you, but I think there is a different reason why that is. 

[Echo35]

And yes maybe, my post is not the nicest but hopefully it drove a little shame that could push to action?

No doubt you are having trouble finding cooperative gamers to join you, but I think there is a different reason why that is. 

Yeah, I mean, there IS that forum section for people to find other people to play with. Which is, in my opinion, far better than a match making service in terms of getting the community together.

[blastpop]

If the game were only one player against the AI, with expansions and virtually unlimited games randomly created, the game is a fabulous bargain.

If I want multi-player games I'll play WoW or World of Tanks.

Of course your mileage may vary. Needless to say I am very happy with AI War as currently constituted.

Good Gaming!

[NickAragua]

Matchmaking might be nice, but not a deal-maker/breaker for me. Remember that when you start up a game, you're committing yourself to at least 10-20 hours of campaign. Now, I don't know about others here, but I very rarely have more than a 2-3 hour contiguous block of time to play the game, so I have to stretch it out over weeks and even months (that's what happened to my last 2-player game of AI Wars). Coordinating multiple playtimes with my friends who want to play the game is hard enough, imagine having to do that with random internet dudes!

Sorry you're so pissed off, OP. But if you're pissed off enough to post here, then you're certainly capable of posting in the "Meeting Grounds".

[@B0FH]

Just to add another voice... Matchmaking would be pretty much worthless here, however one feature that *might* be of some benefit (If it can be implemented optionally as the Steam achievements are) is the ability to "join game" and "invite to game" from the Steam right-click menu. 

That way (for example) anyone who is on your friends list can be quickly invited to get a "pub" style game going, which is as close to playing with strangers as you'd really want to get.

[elakelaset]

This is a very nice echo chamber. No point in disturbing it, i guess.