EvaUnit02 on 13/4/2010 at 17:21
Good lord, do I hate matchmaking. Never have I encountered an implementation in a game where it wasn't rubbish. (L4D's is almost borderline acceptable, but it still sucks.) Nothing turns me off playing a game faster than having to sit in a lobby for up to several minutes at a time, waiting for the bloody thing to fill up before I can see some actual action.
Even if a game uses listen server P2P hosting, I don't understand why they can't give you the option of a server browser that displays all of the games in progress - letting you filter for specific criteria, etc. There's no reason why a server browser and a matchmaking solution can't co-exist.
Kuuso on 13/4/2010 at 17:43
Heroes of Newerth have just now implemented Matchmaking alongside freeform server browsing and creating. Since it's a team game, through matchmaking you never end up playing against teams and vice versa. It's a great system.
smallfry on 13/4/2010 at 17:55
I'd love to play Dawn of War 2 but I'm tired of taking 5 minutes to find other players, then someone leaves during the countdown, so you have to start over 2 or 3 more times. When you finally get a game going, it's extremely laggy, people usually leave, and the teams were entirely uneven anyway.
I think the only game that had passable match-making was warcraft 3 before they changed how the levels worked (ie, back when level 13 was the absolute highest).
Aja on 13/4/2010 at 18:57
MAG has gotten worse in this regard; it seems every game I play there's several minutes of waiting for queues to fill. (PS if there were more people playing it might not be a problem, so would everyone kindly go buy this game and start playing it regularly? thanks)
SubJeff on 13/4/2010 at 19:39
If it wouldn't cost me £70 for the game and the headset I'd be there.
As to matchmaking - yeah, its almost always flaky. Company of Heroes is ok but sometimes it's clear you're playing a total noob, or you are the relative noob!
Aerothorn on 14/4/2010 at 02:14
Quote Posted by Aja
MAG has gotten worse in this regard; it seems every game I play there's several minutes of waiting for queues to fill. (PS if there were more people playing it might not be a problem, so would everyone kindly go buy this game and start playing it regularly? thanks)
Apparently MAG has sold 750,000 copies. Not exactly setting the charts on fire for a AAA game, but one would assume that would provide a good number of people to play with. Guess most didn't stick around.
Aja on 14/4/2010 at 03:59
Judging by the queues right now, I'd say there's between 6 and 7 thousand people playing MAG. I'm surprised at that sales figure--even in the first week I doubt there was ever more than 25,000 online at once.
CCCToad on 14/4/2010 at 05:22
MAG's actually been pretty smooth for me. Usually, the biggest waits are for the acquisition gametype. Sabotage usually puts me in a game in less than a minute, while I've never had to wait more than 3-4 for domination.
Course, my experience with Modern Warfare 2 on Steam's free weekend was anything but. Flaky netcode, and the matchmaking service invariably picks someone with a crappy connection to be the host. Took me all of about 10-20 minutes (somewhere in there) to decide I hated it.
