2 days to launch; where is ladder and quickmatch button?

Somebody wasn't born in the 90s.

When you forget your cell phone at home, you must not function whatsoever. On a related note, I haven't had a cell phone for a few weeks now and it doesn't bother me much.

Just like a lack of a matchmaking button doesn't bother me.

Besides, there are a lot of games even on xbox let alone computer, indie style games, that have multiplayer and ranking but no matchmaking. Here is why. The following is a list of requirements for functioning matchmaking:

-ranking system
-centralized service
-enough players to confortably quickly find matches for all the other players


Now, I come from SMNC. It had matchmaking and one of those things weren't there, the "enough players using it". It didn't match even skill. People called it a massacre. It was then forced not to start games unless it could. It started taking minutes to matchmake. People called it boring.

Now, after release, if the backing for a matchmaker is there, I could see it. Meanwhile, best left as a mod (WHICH CURRENTLY EXISTS) to be honest. Anyone that wants it will download the mod, and it will actually be used and supported. Both those things work out in that environment. You even get better players because of the dedication in downloading the mod to use it.

Seems about right

nvm I see now

Its a big deal!
Uber is about to RELEASE their game...its going to come under a lot of scrutiny and reviews and opinions.
Many RTS games have a ranking system and ladder in place now...well just about every multiplayer game. Stronghold Crusader 2 has talk of a ladder as well, even for such an odd (and awesome) series as that

well although i agree that the lack of a ladder hurts a bit, all these people that want a ladder install PA stats already i rarely find a match using it ;(.

And its a decent alternative while we wait for uber to implement ranks and ladders.

SMNC had the issue to not match 2 people together but 2 teams. That's crazy more complicated and needs crazy more players. If the only argument against a matchmaker right now is "we do not have enough players" then I am pretty sad, because "release" is supposed to be the moment where we have enough players. If we do not have enough players right now, we never will have enough. So I really hope (and I guess that my hope is correct) the real reason is more like "we do not have enough time and just have to release now for stupid complicated contract with whoever reasons".

Also mods are fine, but a few things are very hard to get right with them, because a mod by definition is only found by those who search for it. Which is pretty hard on concepts like:

- matchmaking
- chat systems
Which just need the kind of "advertisement" that a "it's part of the game" feature has.

Now you can guess how unhappy I am with Uber not supporting either of those at launch. We'll lose a lot of online players for that. Yes those are a minority and hopefully it won't have much effect on sales, but for us online players that sucks nevertheless.

Not to mention that Uber's stance on ladders and the like has been pretty ... nebulous for like a year. Which has hold me back from actually going at it like "okay I'll make a fully featured ladder" because Uber throwing a ladder at us was a potential thing for quite a while and developing a mod that is replaced super fast just sucks as well.
Yes I know that game development is complicated and I am not making Uber out as the "bad guys" for this, they have a lot to do and things are like this, I am just stating why I am displeased. No idea what Uber could've done much better for this. I am on the edge of going "oh well **** it" and implementing an actual matchmaking service by now.

And that is exactly why a Uber implemented matchmaker has such a big advantage. It would actually give an easy to access matchmaker to the majority of players who never even read these forums. PA Stats cannot do that.

The fact is there is no time to add it in before release. It's coming and I think it would be a good idea for that to be communicated to everyone.

The main thing now is to ensure the game is running as well as possible, and ensure a good experience for all the new players. The point is the update will come. Also you should have watched the Destiny live stream, he was really enjoying the game and came over very positive. I think you'll find PA will be well received by reviewers.

Do you have work out tips to get huge muscles? I do tons of push ups and pull ups but my muscles just don't inflate like yours do.

I think our priority should be optimization of PA to make it easier for people whom don't have supercomputers to play.....




....and working out to look like Brad.

I play with HD 3000, 2.3GHz quad core CPU with a mere 4GB of RAM.

I get 60fps early game... So if you had specs a tad bit better than me you'd be fine, I say that because my rendering times for planets after the lobby is pretty bad.

Can we just address the elephant in the room and say that the tag system is a joke. Acting like that will fix or even do anything is tantamount to sticking fingers in ears and singing to ignore reality.

Also, adding more variables to the already cluttered options on the left.. By the time you've chosen your region, players, etc, you're lucky if there's even more than one game to choose from.

The Tag system will not work and is useless. It's great on paper but it doesn't help with the issues it's meant to address at all. You could even make the case it makes it worse.. (I always just forget about it and my games default to casual, but I'm a decent to higher skilled player, in addition to adding more barriers to entry. I think the amount of people that couldn't figure out how to skirmish shows just how powerful a single small barrier to entry can be..)

I am not even considering that it was supposed to be a solution to anything. If it was supposed to be a solution to something, it wasn't really very helpful. If we had 1000 game lobbies open to join tags would be helpful, but with less lobbies it isn't that hard to just read the lobby titles.

my render time is bad too, I have 8G ram with an integrated AMD graphics driver.

It's just a nice feature.

I still doubt matching players will end well. I mean, this game is very legacy and startup. I mean, there are some features yet to be made even after release, and we would have less if they had to try to make a matchmaker, and they could have pushed later other features to make a nonfunctional matchmaker and that would have made things worse.

If they are going to make a matchmaker, it needs to be soon after release, but not right at release. And most games with support actually have more players as some time progresses, both as it gains some inertia, and as new patches come in to keep drawing a crowd. A month or two after release might be better than right at release, it isn't like people will buy the game instantly the month of release, with or without certain features like matchmaking.

It sucks, because in my opinion, there are two kinds of features. Features we can't do, like serverside and savegames. Then, features we CAN do, like matchmaking and content-injecting. Personally, I would love for a PAStats matchmaker to get more involved in matchmaking and for all people seeking that to feed into it, just like I would love for a lot of features and mods be integrated into a single launching client like Raevn's working on.

this.

no. it's not "just" anything.

Besides a ladder allows you to improve constantly, what we have now its near hard to improve because you play with randoms.

And if only friends lists worked properly i could have had a nice group of people i enjoyed playing, but somehow steam and Uber account keeps switching my usernames, and my friend list is always empty, so i dont even care at this point.

Randoms i guess its the way to go.

omg uber pls implement skill based matchmaking

I just watch @aapl2 rek some scrublord on stream live in a 1v1, and the guy was like 'I hope you're not good lol' before they started, and he said he was tired of getting 'smashed'. Posidian's response was uncaring, cold, unfeeling, much like the caress of @k1s3l I felt when I first played PA stats automatches.
And now he just destroyed another scrub. w0w

As opposed to luck based matchmaking, yes?

You press a button, and you either get a potato, or a hacker.

I also think the problem with getting rolled over by an opponent is slightly alleviated by the replay function. Got your arse handed to you? No problem, watch the replay, see what your opponent did, and when, and even see what they saw to know how they reacted to particular situations. Learn from it. Improve. Enjoy