Here's the fourth in our Dev Diary series by Lead Game Designer Alexandr Soloveyko:
Hi guys,
In our last diary we talked about rebalancing how equipment stats increase with character level. We said that making it smoother will allow players of different levels to be competitive, to play against each other and thus wait less for a battle get started. In this post we are going to tell you about another big improvement that should help create matches even faster. This is our new matchmaking system.
You guys asked us many times about making it possible to subscribe to several matches at the same time. This request is natural – many players like most of game mode / location combinations, so they would subscribe to any those matches – but they don’t know which specific match will start first. So we felt that this is the right time to look at what we can do here. The goal is simple –players should be able to subscribe to any number of available matches.
So here is what we found. You can subscribe to many matches, but you’ll enter only one of them. So you’ll be unsubscribed from all other matches at that moment. And this will happen frequently – can you guys imagine other players wouldn't use this cool feature – we can’t. We even made some experiments and it was madness seeing all those matches appearing and disappearing with the number of players constantly going up and down every next second. We tried to find how we can improve the existing UI to fix it but we ended up with the decision that we have to kill the ability to sign up for several instances. Sigh … or we have to kill the current Join Battle menu. The system itself works correctly – the conflict is between the new feature and the old UI. Thus it was an obvious choice for us. We decided to create a new Join Battle menu from the scratch.
One additional goal we had was to make this screen casual and easy to understand. First of all, all players should be able to subscribe to “play any PvP match” in one click – we believe that this is what most of players will use. Secondly, players should be able to specify their preferences fast – for example subscribe to “play any Robbery” or “play Isopach Oil Robbery” should be easy and obvious. Third, players should be able to customize anything they would like, for example if a player wants to play any PvP game type except Riot, and he likes playing it only on MacKenzie’s Sport Center or Sunrise Harbor – he should be able to do that. The possibilities sound great, but here is the problem – now players won’t have any idea about how many other players share their preferences – we killed the existing UI where you can see the list of matches. Some newbie player would think that Delosville CTZ is an awesome game mode and subscribe to it – but he will wait for a long time and it won’t be fun. Our solution is to show the number of players who share your customization preference no matter if they are in combat or waiting for a match to be created. After some experiments we found that such a system represents the popularity of different modes quite well and the data on the screen isn’t changing dramatically second to second.
The last thing we needed to determine was how a player could select custom combat options (like friendly fire). It appeared to be too complicated and not casual at all when we tried adding it onto the screen where players customize game types and locations.
On the other hand, we know that some custom combat options are much more popular, and many of them fit only a specific map or specific game mode. So here is what we ended up with. Players won’t be able to combine any game type, location and combat custom options like they do now. Instead, we will have a predefined list of custom combinations, like, for example, Olympia, Riot, Knives only or MacKenzie’s, Shootout, Double Damage. So the players will be able to select one of those options and jump into it. We are going to rotate the available combinations so it won’t get stale.
So, if we already have this system, we decided to make another improvement. All you guys like the Double XP (Cash, Loot) events that our GMs run. But what some of you dislike a lot is the fact that you need to jump into the Double XP instance very fast before other players would fill it up. So why don’t we use the existing system to support the Double XP events – all you guys will be able to subscribe into the Double XP instance the same way you’ll subscribe to any regular instances. The only difference is that such options will be available only when a GM would like to have them.
We understand that players will jump into battle quickly if most them select “play random PvP” option. On the other hand it will be dramatically longer if each player selects some specific combination of game type and location. So to reduce the waiting time we have decided to encourage players to use the “play random PvP” option. And we all agree that a good cop is much better than a bad cop, so here is what we implemented. Players will get +50% cash and experience bonus if they use the “play random PvP” option. They will also get smaller bonuses if they select, for example, “play any Robbery”.
But here is another problem. Players will like this bonus, but what if some of them hate Riot? He would join random battle and just quit it if it’s Riot. None of you guys like quitters, but it would be much worse in the case of this feature release. So we decided that we have to dicourage quitting. We needed to do it before, but now we know we won’t survive without it. If a player quits any PvP battle – he will get a “deserter” mark for some period of time and he won’t be able to join another match as long as this mark is active. The first time it’s going to be active for about 5 to 10 seconds just as a warning, but this duration will be increased every time a player quits a PvP battle. It will slowly degrade if the player plays the matches till the end so you guys don’t have to worry that after months of playing CrimeCraft you would accumulate an extreme “deserter” penalty just because of random disconnects from the server.
The next major change we are going to introduce in the matchmaking is how different players will be grouped in tiers by their Power Rating. First of all, we reconsidered how the Power Rating are calculated – the equipment will progress with the character level slower after the Gang Wars release so it’s natural that the Power Rating will be affected by player performance in combat more and his actual level less. Moreover, we don’t think that kill/death ratio correctly represent player performance in combat. If you are an awesome bag-carrier you could have zero kills, but you are still a skilled player. So now the Power Rating will be calculated based on a player's score in an instance and character level. Yes, it will be character level instead of item power. We don’t want a player, who just bought the best equipment available for his level to enter a battle and eventually suck because now he is fighting against top players. On the other hand we don’t want some experienced player to remove some of his equipment, jump into a newbie battle and massacre them all just because his skill is much higher.
“But what if I want to lower my Power Rating because I want to play a match when there aren't any players of my level and my skill online! That sucks!” you would say. It makes perfect sense and here is what we will do. All players will be matched against players of about their Power Rating initially. But if they have to wait for a match for more than about 20 seconds – then we will start to widen the range of Power Ratings available for them. It’s better to play against someone of different skill or level instead of waiting for 5 minutes for the match to be created, isn’t it? But you’ll be guaranteed to play against the opponents of your skill if there will be enough players online at that moment. The best level 50 player still won’t have any chances to play against the newbie level 1 player. On the other hand, a great low level player will be able to compete against an average level 50 player; moreover the difference in their equipment won’t be that big as I discussed in my last diary.
Here is the end of the current topic. We believe that such features like reducing how fast the equipment will improve with character level and the new matchmaking system will help all you guys to jump in battles faster without spending so much time waiting for a match to be created for you.
Now, as has become our tradition, I would like to reveal a screenshot for you guys – it contains the view of our new Join Battle UI.
Also those of you guys who want some detailed information about new classes or who were asking us about adding some new custom clothing in the game can take a look at the left side of the screen.
Also you should note a “Lobby” button on the UI – just want to let you know that it really means “enter the lobby” – stay with us and we will tell you about what players can do when they aren’t in the lobby and why we implemented this feature.
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"Community Mgr."
Here's the fourth in our Dev Diary series by Lead Game Designer Alexandr Soloveyko:
Hi guys,
In our last diary we talked about rebalancing how equipment stats increase with character level. We said that making it smoother will allow players of different levels to be competitive, to play against each other and thus wait less for a battle get started. In this post we are going to tell you about another big improvement that should help create matches even faster. This is our new matchmaking system.
You guys asked us many times about making it possible to subscribe to several matches at the same time. This request is natural – many players like most of game mode / location combinations, so they would subscribe to any those matches – but they don’t know which specific match will start first. So we felt that this is the right time to look at what we can do here. The goal is simple –players should be able to subscribe to any number of available matches.
So here is what we found. You can subscribe to many matches, but you’ll enter only one of them. So you’ll be unsubscribed from all other matches at that moment. And this will happen frequently – can you guys imagine other players wouldn't use this cool feature – we can’t. We even made some experiments and it was madness seeing all those matches appearing and disappearing with the number of players constantly going up and down every next second. We tried to find how we can improve the existing UI to fix it but we ended up with the decision that we have to kill the ability to sign up for several instances. Sigh … or we have to kill the current Join Battle menu. The system itself works correctly – the conflict is between the new feature and the old UI. Thus it was an obvious choice for us. We decided to create a new Join Battle menu from the scratch.
One additional goal we had was to make this screen casual and easy to understand. First of all, all players should be able to subscribe to “play any PvP match” in one click – we believe that this is what most of players will use. Secondly, players should be able to specify their preferences fast – for example subscribe to “play any Robbery” or “play Isopach Oil Robbery” should be easy and obvious. Third, players should be able to customize anything they would like, for example if a player wants to play any PvP game type except Riot, and he likes playing it only on MacKenzie’s Sport Center or Sunrise Harbor – he should be able to do that. The possibilities sound great, but here is the problem – now players won’t have any idea about how many other players share their preferences – we killed the existing UI where you can see the list of matches. Some newbie player would think that Delosville CTZ is an awesome game mode and subscribe to it – but he will wait for a long time and it won’t be fun. Our solution is to show the number of players who share your customization preference no matter if they are in combat or waiting for a match to be created. After some experiments we found that such a system represents the popularity of different modes quite well and the data on the screen isn’t changing dramatically second to second.
The last thing we needed to determine was how a player could select custom combat options (like friendly fire). It appeared to be too complicated and not casual at all when we tried adding it onto the screen where players customize game types and locations.
On the other hand, we know that some custom combat options are much more popular, and many of them fit only a specific map or specific game mode. So here is what we ended up with. Players won’t be able to combine any game type, location and combat custom options like they do now. Instead, we will have a predefined list of custom combinations, like, for example, Olympia, Riot, Knives only or MacKenzie’s, Shootout, Double Damage. So the players will be able to select one of those options and jump into it. We are going to rotate the available combinations so it won’t get stale.
So, if we already have this system, we decided to make another improvement. All you guys like the Double XP (Cash, Loot) events that our GMs run. But what some of you dislike a lot is the fact that you need to jump into the Double XP instance very fast before other players would fill it up. So why don’t we use the existing system to support the Double XP events – all you guys will be able to subscribe into the Double XP instance the same way you’ll subscribe to any regular instances. The only difference is that such options will be available only when a GM would like to have them.
We understand that players will jump into battle quickly if most them select “play random PvP” option. On the other hand it will be dramatically longer if each player selects some specific combination of game type and location. So to reduce the waiting time we have decided to encourage players to use the “play random PvP” option. And we all agree that a good cop is much better than a bad cop, so here is what we implemented. Players will get +50% cash and experience bonus if they use the “play random PvP” option. They will also get smaller bonuses if they select, for example, “play any Robbery”.
But here is another problem. Players will like this bonus, but what if some of them hate Riot? He would join random battle and just quit it if it’s Riot. None of you guys like quitters, but it would be much worse in the case of this feature release. So we decided that we have to dicourage quitting. We needed to do it before, but now we know we won’t survive without it. If a player quits any PvP battle – he will get a “deserter” mark for some period of time and he won’t be able to join another match as long as this mark is active. The first time it’s going to be active for about 5 to 10 seconds just as a warning, but this duration will be increased every time a player quits a PvP battle. It will slowly degrade if the player plays the matches till the end so you guys don’t have to worry that after months of playing CrimeCraft you would accumulate an extreme “deserter” penalty just because of random disconnects from the server.
The next major change we are going to introduce in the matchmaking is how different players will be grouped in tiers by their Power Rating. First of all, we reconsidered how the Power Rating are calculated – the equipment will progress with the character level slower after the Gang Wars release so it’s natural that the Power Rating will be affected by player performance in combat more and his actual level less. Moreover, we don’t think that kill/death ratio correctly represent player performance in combat. If you are an awesome bag-carrier you could have zero kills, but you are still a skilled player. So now the Power Rating will be calculated based on a player's score in an instance and character level. Yes, it will be character level instead of item power. We don’t want a player, who just bought the best equipment available for his level to enter a battle and eventually suck because now he is fighting against top players. On the other hand we don’t want some experienced player to remove some of his equipment, jump into a newbie battle and massacre them all just because his skill is much higher.
“But what if I want to lower my Power Rating because I want to play a match when there aren't any players of my level and my skill online! That sucks!” you would say. It makes perfect sense and here is what we will do. All players will be matched against players of about their Power Rating initially. But if they have to wait for a match for more than about 20 seconds – then we will start to widen the range of Power Ratings available for them. It’s better to play against someone of different skill or level instead of waiting for 5 minutes for the match to be created, isn’t it? But you’ll be guaranteed to play against the opponents of your skill if there will be enough players online at that moment. The best level 50 player still won’t have any chances to play against the newbie level 1 player. On the other hand, a great low level player will be able to compete against an average level 50 player; moreover the difference in their equipment won’t be that big as I discussed in my last diary.
Here is the end of the current topic. We believe that such features like reducing how fast the equipment will improve with character level and the new matchmaking system will help all you guys to jump in battles faster without spending so much time waiting for a match to be created for you.
Now, as has become our tradition, I would like to reveal a screenshot for you guys – it contains the view of our new Join Battle UI.
Also those of you guys who want some detailed information about new classes or who were asking us about adding some new custom clothing in the game can take a look at the left side of the screen.
Also you should note a “Lobby” button on the UI – just want to let you know that it really means “enter the lobby” – stay with us and we will tell you about what players can do when they aren’t in the lobby and why we implemented this feature.