Ladders in 1.0

Yeah nobody rages about a missing ladder. But people just leave over it.

This thread pretty much shows the issue, "I", "me and my friends", "competitive players" etc., lots of people claim to speak for or representate a vast majority of the player base, while in reality it more likely than not, isn't. Ultimatively UBER probably has more information and experience here, a and as such we should trust their decision, even if it doesn't fit the personal opinion or expectation of individual people.

What would help would certainly be some sort of post release roadmap. Can we expect a ladder 3 or 6 months past launch? Will it be the 1st, 2nd or 3rd big content patch? Does the unit cannon come earlier or later etc.. Handling expectations can help a great deal.

And finally a pro ladder argument I haven't seen here before. Matches from the top ladder players being cast. Casted matches or just replays being watched by people who don't play ladder themself but find it entertaining, educating or motivating to watch the Pro's playing. This certainly has a
potential snowball effect as well.

Would it be more important than fixing those dreaded coherent crashes? Probably not. Let UBER decide, I don't think they have any reasonable motivation to make their own baby fail right on release.

It seems to me a lot of people are interpreting ladders/matchmaking differently. You should be clear what you mean. Ladder doesn't mean the same thing for everyone. Every game seems to have there own way of doing it.

To me, a ladder that shows who's a better player isn't needed. It's a nice addition, but it's not necessary.

However, I feel some sort of skill based match making is needed because:

• Games were players have a large skill gap are rarely fun for both the bad player who get trounced, or the good player who faces no challenge.
• Games were players have a small skill gap are often fun. It's a challenge and you really feel like you have achieved something when you win.

This last part is much is something that most people may not agree with. I would much rather wait 10 minutes for a game if there was a 50% chance of finding an evenly skilled opponent than jump into a game with no wait and have a 20% chance of finding someone evenly skilled (also 20% is a bit high, but its an example).

This is the crucial thing for me. Fully competitive ladders with balanced maps can come later but a basic skill based matchmaker is going to be useful in making the games more fun for everyone.

Another useful thing would be the proper integration of something like Capconundrums' lobby ranks mod which I find very useful. https://forums.uberent.com/threads/wip-lobby-ranks.59307/

I believe that having high quality features is more important for the long term success than having as many features as possible at some point in time.
This leads me to two conclusions regarding this matter:

1.The basic user experience is more important than "additional" features like a ladder or matchmaking. If the basic game is not fun enough, nobody will care whether there is a ladder. So at the point of the 1.0 release, having a more polished UI that helps players to play the game smoothly might be more important than matchmaking.

2.Of course matchmaking is important, though. Many games are being played vs the ai (I play most of my games vs the ai, as well) and part of the reason for that might be that people know what they get into when they fight the ai. If everyone could be assured that he will be playing against similarily skilled opponents, people might be more likely to play multiplayer games.
It's also without question that for e-sports, competitive features are important and we can see from the rising players numbers of Dota 2 especially around the time of events like The International that e-sports serves to make more casual players interested in a game.
But for PA to develop a stable competitive scene, it is not only important to not lose players at release but also to provide them with high quality features in the long term. People could get pissed off by a potentially half-assed implementation at launch, as well and it might be harder to convince them that the situation has improved than to make them believe that such features will be available later on.
All that needs to happen at launch is that it is clear to anyone that's interested that competitive features are coming SOON™ and provide something to make them stay in the meantime. Making PAStats easily visible and accessible to provide some substitute and announcing that there will be a competitive feature update in the future seems like a good compromise to me.

Because another question would be: If you implemented these features in a few weeks' time, would they be that much better than what Cola_Colin already does with PAStats ?

Guys this is what i was talking about, we don't need a ladder for pro gamers at day one, we just need some kind of tool to sort players out in a match and balance teams for example. We just need a simple way to determine user skill so that we have more balanced multiplayer games, that should be on day one. This IMO is what the broader audience will want.The rest can come later.

Which would require a ranking method, I am afraid. Which then comes awfully close to having a ladder.

I agree with Uber's vision, I think taking more time after launch for a competitive update would be nice. For now everyone who wants to play competitive can just use PA Stats.

A polished and very smooth working game keeps more fans involved than a currently missing matchmaking button. And when you're new to a game you always play with friends or against the AI first before trying the multiplayer. I personally never used matchmaking in previous RTS games. Most of the time I invite my friends to a lobby and add some AI's when I play multiplayer. Only sometimes I play a game against other players.

I do suggest getting a better tutorial before launch however and good difficulty scaling for the AI so that new players won't get squished immediately.

One of the things a ladder / match making helps with is separating people in to groups of equal skill over time. A lot of people don't like playing ladder games because its too intense or makes them to anxious. Most of the skilled players don't like playing against randoms because they usually mop the floor with them. The ladder and match making is the typical way games solve this problem.

@neutrino I think there could be a NEW way to accomplish the same thing without putting all the competitive features in.

Perhaps when you create a game you have a scale (with different icons / pictures to represent them) of the skill level of players the game creator is looking for. Maybe there are 5 skill levels. When you set the match up you pick the skill level of players that you want to join the match. In the lobby people looking for games have a way to filter on this skill or see it in an unfiltered list and can pick one that will be right for them. At first the people creating the games and the people joining might not no where they fit. They would figure this out over time just like the matching making would. In this way you are your own skill rater.

This is a fairly straight forward add as it is just a little extra meta data about the lobby / game instance. There isn't any math or logic to really worry about like in match making. It doesn't rely on a huge number of players to work correctly etc etc. This gives players a way to segment themselves into groups of fairly equal skill.

I found the AI to be quite scalable via its economy modifier in the lobby. Heck, even I managed to beat it after turning it down a notch. Or two. Or more. I won't tell you.
But it could be made more visible so that it is more easily recognized for what it is.

Neutrino said offline servers probably won't be a part of the 1.0 release, and they'll be working with more priority on polishing out server crashes and things to make servers more stable with fewer disconnects. http://www.reddit.com/r/planetaryan...anetary_annihilation_qa_with_neutrino/cj5m7rv

No, no he didn't.

I mean, come on people, you can copy & paste his very words, there's no need to go making a mess with personal interpretations passed off as facts.

That's not completely true, ranking isn't a ladder. If you're on a ladder you're in a division of a 100 players in a rank. If you win often, you move up the ladder. If you lose, you drop down. At the end of the ladder season, depending on where you landed you'll have a better chance of moving up or down a rank.

But if there's only matchmaking with ranks, no ladders, It works differently. If you want to play unranked, you'll still have to be ranked first so the game knows what skill level you have. It uses a method called placement matches. You'll probably have to play 3-5 matches and you'll get ranked based on the results.

If there's a ladder, you'll get placed in a division of the rank, if not, you'll just be in that rank and you have a high chance that you'll face opponents of the same rank. If you can beat enough opponents of a higher rank, you'll move.

That last part is the same principle as a ladder. But it isn't the same. Your not facing the same 100 players (who are all in the same rank) and there is no such thing as being on a ladder with places. You don't know if you're on place 98 or 12 or 2. You're just fighting anyone in the same rank and sometimes people with a higher or lower rank.

A ladder would be nice if there were lots of people playing the game. That should be after release, because we don't have enough people to fill a ladder perfectly. So there should be basic matchmaking at release, the ladder comes later when we have enough players who will play multiplayer often (that already excludes me) and want to compete for the top.


The players want to fight a balanced opponent. Matchmaking does that. Ladder isn't necessary for that.



PA isn't a (heavily) multiplayer focused game, unlike Starcraft that used to have really **** AI in the first 2 years after release. On purpose because Blizzard really wanted nothing but multiplayer. PA doesn't have **** AI. PA has an awesome AI that is going to annihilate all. So single and multiplayer is quite balanced in PA. That's one of my reasons why a ladder isn't directly necessary at release because you can have fun with the AI first, more than half of the players will play against AI first, before multiplayer, unlike Starcraft where the AI is useless and doesn't learn you anything.

(carefully raises shield and leaves)

He also said

Which makes no sense if it were planned for a 1.0 release.

I can beat the AI on hard, but new players will take a lot of time finding what to build. They won't raid their enemies and keep creating units until they can deathball over them. I think the normal AI should be just strong enough to kill new players. The game should also recommend using the chronocam after a loss for new players to see how other players build their bases and handle in different situations.

There's loads of ways for that to be interpreted, which is why you should provide what he actually said, not your single interpretation of it.

Not if it is something promised and actively being worked on for the next patch (or the one thereafter).

A ladder is only part of the whole picture, not the grand central feature. I relatively regularly play Supcom 2 with my friends. Yes, 2. Because it's better suited for something to boot up and play a couple of games with friends, have a good time and then play something else. Having a solid basis is more important than some ranking. Having AI games against an immersive AI is more important than multiplayer.

People keep coming back because it's fun, interesting, immersive, enjoyable. Only a hardcore group of people keeps coming back to get higher on a list. An for as long as there's at least a mod to make things possible, people will make a Ladder mod and have their own ranking. I've seen it happen plenty of times with old games. Hell, Minecraft's main population of mods exists because someone said "screw mojang i'll make my own modloader".

So in conclusion:

Its not a feature that needs to be there *on* release. How long you can wait is a question above my paygrade. However, if waiting a month is too long, then Uber better shut down now and cut their losses cause something must've gone horribly wrong.

The bit your missing is that (for some people (I would like to say most)) it isn't about getting a higher ranking, but about being placed with player of a comparable skill level.

I don't think there's much debate around the fact that games with similarly skilled players are often the most fun. That is why I want matchmaking.

True, now my impression all the way through was that 1.0 release will see the end of mandatory ubernet and internet connection, at the very least. Care to help me find quotes to back this up, or at least point me in the right direction?

This is really off topic for this thread. This isn't the what's in 1.0 thread. This is the ladders in 1.0 thread.

Dedicated servers are a feature like anything else and will be prioritized appropriately. Do not make any assumptions about when they are coming and please don't start telling me "the game will fail" if we don't have them at "launch" as I'm not spending another day explaining in great detail our thought process behind yet another feature.

This goes for any feature btw. Part of the reason we don't talk about when features are coming is because people constantly freak out about it if they don't arrive when expected. I don't like the drama or being called a liar because a date slipped or our priorities were different than what you would do. Game development is messy and hard choices often have to be made against tough deadlines.