Ladders in 1.0

I think that they'd be more likely to start against the AI if you had a skirmish button.

An enjoyable multiplayer community? What game has this?

We already have a ton of systems for this. Playing with friends, playing gw, playing the AI skirmish. I'm just not buying the "stomp" theory as something that's as important as everyone (who are hardcore competitive players) seems to think.

This is something we've been toying with for sure.

That'd be great, a bunch of players have no idea that ai games other than gw exist.

Yeah, I tend to be a bit idealistic like that.

I'll put it this way: After a few random mp games I stopped because I'm lame, and I don't have friends to play against

At least the AI loves (to nuke) me!

But what about the player who doesn't have any friends, has just progressed from beating the AI, and is looking for a challenge against intelligent foes? Once the more talented post-release players have beaten the AI a few times, there will be quite a few people falling into this category, and without a matchmaking system, their multiplayer experience would involve quite a bit of wasted time stomping clueless beginners or getting stomped by much more skilled veterans.

Meanwhile, beginners who want to jump straight into multiplayer would also rather avoid a succession of defeats at the hands of people far more skilled than themselves.

A decent matchmaking system solves problems like this, which is why nearly every well-known multiplayer title has one at launch.

Thanks Uber! I realise that it's not a definite yes but I'm really happy that you're pushing for it. Sadly a ton of features get cut in most games as they near the deadline but if we're going to have it soon after 1.0, or even before, I'll be chuffed.

I'm not saying all, i'm saying some, because I've seen people do it, unfortunately.

From my own experience that's not necessarily true. Age of Empires 3 is a game where you can still find a match with relative ease in the server browser but, due to low player counts, matchmaking is completely dead.

For me it's not a ladder it's skill-based matchmaking, and it's not for competitive purposes, it's because that's the best way to get some kind of balanced game. The more balanced the match up the more fun the game.

This is one of our primary concerns about matchmaking. One of our guys did some math and the number of people int the queue is likely low enough that the matchmaking won't have enough players to make good matches with. This is actually a real concern as adding it doesn't help if there aren't enough players. You could look at it as splitting the community into matchmade vs server browswer vs single player.

So then a couple of months post launch seems about the right time to hit the community up with this, no?

Everyone is trained up and ready to fight! Then we drop a new ladder and it gets instance action and lots of players.

Remember, the argument here is about whether we need this day one of 1.0 or not, not about whether we will have it at all.

Fair point, even a game with a massive budget and background like Titanfall has a lot of trouble getting games together quite a lot.

I'm not sure either, but I do know that during the days after the steam sales, the multiplayer games I played were filled with people that got stomped badly. ( by me )
A few weeks later, the number of people in the lobby seems to have dropped back to pre-sales levels, and the people remaining are constantly kicking my a**. Could be I'm just getting worse tho...

People fail to realize that we have a lotof experience in matchmaking. Basically it's super hard to do right. It's almost impossible to do right unless you have a huge playerbase to make it work.

I encourage the community to do a little bit of math on game length, number of players online etc. so see how many players you need to make skill based matching work correctly.

What is this evidence of though? Connect the dots for me because your chain of logic isn't obvious. There are lots of explanations as to why people move on to other games or don't play games they buy.

Again I'm not sure, but I feel like it must be pretty disheartening to join in a multiplayer game and play against someone with hundreds of hours under their belt.

The thing is, the people who jump straight into multiplayer will be doing so on day 1, not day 60. And a former TA or Supcom player who picked up the game on release can certainly get the hang of things in a week or so, at which point some of them will start looking for human competition. I get that a good matchmaking system is hard to make, especially when you don't have a playerbase the size of LoL or SC2, but even something simpler like PAStats will at least help people find games with similarly-skilled foes.

This is definitely an issue airmech has. As someone who prefers to join lobbies rather than use matchmaking in games where I'm only mid level, it can be hard to find games in Airmech without using MM. Not something that'll bother me here as I can take on a majority of the playerbase and put up a good fight against the top tier folks, but others who prefer to use server browser if they're mid level may have issues finding a game. Or perhaps the opposite will happen and it's those who prefer MM that will have trouble finding games.

In any case, as long as the ladder is in when we have the most players (IE at launch) then this won't be an issue for a couple of months at least.

Some of the best games I've had were during a swiss tournament where, towards the end, I was fighting people about my level. I've thought about looking up nearby people on the PAStats ladder, but I just haven't been playing enough in general. Other than that, I haven't played a game with a ladder, so I've been staying out of this.

I am, however, data driven. I looked back through the Steam forums during the summer sale (sadly general discussion seems to get cut off right as this starts) Now this is tricky because a player who is frustrated may just leave instead of posting, but there are enough people saying the AI is too hard to suggest that not all of them would be silent. I saw one person saying that most people rushed. A couple looking for tutors or people to play with, one looking for better 2v2 people to play with (that would be a valid use for a ladder). But overall, going by the Steam discussions (and the Uber forums feel about the same to me), if Uber really wanted to avoid driving away new players, their number one priority should be making an easier AI, a good tutorial, and maybe a strong single player campaign to provide a more gradual introduction.

I don't frequent all of the various PA communities, if people know of players who have left because of unfair multiplayer matches, please cite your evidence.