Ladders in 1.0

Perhaps I shouldn't be doing this at 3 in the morning.

Hopefully we all understand there will be an increase, but people like Brian (not picking on you, you're just the one I remember right now) keep saying that it will be HUGE. John here says it will be modest, so what percentage increase does he expect? Even if the game doubled, I'm not sure there would be enough active players to warrant the MMS, but then there's the issue of how to retain those players so that there will be enough.

Yea it's getting late for me too and tired = mistakes.

Bottom line I've been pretty transparent with how our thought process works on this. I don't think our position is that unreasonable.

Thankfully, I agree. And I'm glad that you've taken the time to let us argue with you about it, even if we don't change your mind. It's always good to feel as if we're achieving something! (Even if we are not ) Not to mention that it's pretty cool to get some insight on how you guys make some of your seemingly simple decisions.

Edit: I despise autocorrect.

Lol it is late. But I don't think he is saying that the increase won't be relatively HUGE, but if the release number is the largest the game ever will be then they are in actual trouble with the scope of the game. That is what that graph means. The increase will be huge, but the update after and update after should actually be increasing it substancially each time.

After release, many people will get the game. It should kick ***. After release people get the game, their friends should get the game. It will be an increasing slope. If the game has kick *** support, new stuff added all the time, the friends of regular players should keep on coming, increasing the ever spreading web of regular players.

And also discussed, to keep players, all you have to do, and it is difficult, is to keep the players from getting too annoyed or bored with the game, and continue to keep giving them fun things to do with the game.

Competitives are likely to stay longest. They will keep grinding to be strong players and will enjoy their close rivals and the up and down of games with those closely ranked players.

Modders are likely to stay longest, they keep finding new flavors of game to play. Horizontal tech, vertical tech, armor values for weapons and units, factions, ponies, whatever they want.

AI players and players who play coop or something for instance, if they keep getting updates they will stay, assuming nothing about the game displeases enough to push them away, and nothing external pulls them away from regular play.

THAT is why polish is so important. That would cause a push factor on the majority player, the singleplayer and coop player. That is also why post release support is important, it will keep freshening the game and what the coop and AI player would get on to do.

Don't worry about pull factors, Starcraft Protoss Expansion 3 whatever it's called, would only pull more players to the RTS GENRE, not pull players from PA, because there aren't VERY MANY games to overextend the time of the players to play the game. Lucky us.

I got home at midnight. I am suprised to get a response from you, let alone so many.

Yeah basically something like that

Would you ever share how many copies have been delivered (sold/given away, etc.) thus far? I'd be interested to know how many people own a copy of the game at this point.

It would also be interesting to know how many people are actively playing at this point too, but I understand why you might not want to share that kind of data.

My thinking, and not to derail the thread, is that a global chat could in fact be more important than a ladder. The community aspect of Gpgnet is what got me there and kept me there. Especially since I could find local players (not so much an issue with this due to the asynchronous nature) ladder came secondary to community aspect.

If someone has seen posts by the devs talking about global chat please feel free to point me there

How about a second lobby for those who want to play competitively? This could be similar to the "hardcore" lobbies of COD-like games. Perhaps there could also be limitations to cater to a competitive game style (no economy multiplier for example).

Doubling the userbase would make PA similar to FAF, and the matchmaker is working perfectly there.

Very cool of you to give the forum so much personal attention, and patience, I might add. Related question: since you seem to lean towards rankings being less essential to the average player (not a criticism, I've no dog in this fight and you're the experienced game publishers), how are you prioritizing the massive single-player carrot that is Galactic War? I'm all for matched competitive games, but I think you're right in that many, many people are interested in a single-player experience, and it may not seem that way here simply because those silent hoards might not populate this forum. So, any big plans for the GW? The first pass demonstrated its massive potential, but as I detailed in this thread...

https://forums.uberent.com/threads/how-to-prevent-a-galactic-bore.60359/

...personally, I find the current iteration intolerably repetitive. And I mean absolutely no offense by that - real talk. You guys have done an amazing job, and it's only a first pass, I understand. Given your reasoning about the ladder conundrum, it just occurred to me some release focus might be delegated towards GW. Thanks for your time, whether you get back to me or not!

Edit: Apologies if too far off-topic.

I would even settle for a way to review the general stats of the players in a game lobby to see who I'm about to go up against. Something like a pop-up when I hover over the player that shows their win/loss ratio, total games played, hours spent playing the game, maybe even a breakdown of 1v1, 2v2 games played etc.

I also think that promoting tournaments, or a way to create, register, play, and track brackets for tournaments in game would be cool. Personally, I'm more interested in tournament play, and tracking performance in those over run of the mill ladder rankings. To my knowledge, no other game does this, and it would be a good way to inspire team and/or clan play as well.

I would hope, that modded games can be color coded and list alongside of normal games, that laddered can have a number and a fair game generation without being automated, and that a global chat could be implemented, maybe like the old SMNC lobbies and just mounted to the social bar in it's own tab to open like it's a friend chat. A list of lobbies, casual 1-10 and competitive 1-10 and modded 1-10 or something, and clicking one opens a box like a friends chat but shows and sends chat to all the clients in the lobby.

The global chat would be weight-intensive for large playerbases, as it has proven in the past. That is the only limiting factor of it. I think it is important enough though.

I like the idea of custom brackets. It is farfetched, but it would be awesome if clans could create brackets every week or so. You just, create one, people can join it, just your friends if you want, and play it until conclusion, then start another one next week. Heck, you can keep tabs on who won the most and who won how many times.

Exactly what I was thinking. Tracking performance in tournaments would be very interesting. How many wins, 2nd/3rd place finishes, etc. Could break those stats down by individual/team/clan performance as well. Let's get the clan wars started man! You could possibly even do something with Galactic War mode here when multiplayer is added to it.

That too would be interesting. Maybe PAStats should expand onto that, where anyone can build a bracket on their site and even open enroll for it for a set duration, and then everyone can just have fun playing random brackets.

That number was around 31 min before Galactic war was released. Galactic war games tend to be shorter than 20min, so they pushed down the number. Though if you look at the avg game length for known competitive players, you'll find that 25min isn't that far off for a competitive 1v1.

After reading this thread I actually completely accept your point, and I think you're right in your approach.

The following is gonna be a bit of a derail, sorry.

Now one question that started bugging me just now: will an official 1.0 release mean we actually get the server, and offline functionality? Is this something you're currently working on to include with the launch proper?

Even possibly joinable replays?

I'm only asking because someone brought up the non-competitive people, such as myself, to whom these features are very important.

Thank you for transparency Neutrino.

I´m multiplayer focused gamer and I stopped playing PA regularly for lack of polish, balance and official ladder. I´m still watching your progress. And I will jump in when the major speed bumps for me are removed. Ladder was The Hook for me in SupCom and FA, that draw me to it again and again.

I don´t mind if ladder and auto matchmaking don´t get included in the release, but they would be nice to have for us old players who have been waiting for it and know the game. If they don´t get included I hope that they will be a top priority after the release to get them started properly when we still have larger player base due to release.

Thanks for your time. I still want a ladder but am now less concerned about it. I hope the players who rejoin the game at launch (the ones who wait for some new features and polishing) read this as well or get some sort of timetable for the "missing" features to arrive.

To me the PA stats thing sounds like the best implementation to me. It's doubtful that people will rage over an exclusion of ladders. It's far more likely they'll rage over disconnects and crashes.

People expect the game to be smooth more than they expect to fight others in some ladder. Not that it shouldn't be there. My and my friends number 1 hate of Borderlands was the fact that sometimes, it would flat out refuse to connect to friends despite them being in my friends list. My number 1 hate for Dragon Age Origins is that occasionally it'll randomly crash.

If ladders are missing, then for the time being people will just anticipate it and give it a shot when it launches. People won't forgive you for having to push out 28 updates just to make the game playable (sword of the stars II, looking at you).