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Hey all,
We’re going to be rolling out server-side updates to matchmaking and bots, starting today and going through the weekend and into early next week, and I wanted to share some of the details of why we’re making the changes, what they are, and talk about bots and their role in this in a way we haven’t before.
tl;dr Matchmaking takes place from the main menu now instead of the lobby and is more flexible, better accounting for things like mage rank and region. Also in an update on early next week, bots will have the ability to be much smarter.
One quick, not matchmaking-related, note on Updraft
With an update early next week, we’re also going to be fixing the very unintended Updraft exploit where players can fling themselves exceedingly high into the air by using certain runes in combination with Tornadoes and Updraft. After this is live, there shouldn’t be any change to normal Updraft usage, but if you try to trigger the sky high launch, the server will correct your movement and you’ll “blip” back down to where you should be.
It’s unfortunate that the real fix for Updraft to make it bounce as high as before requires a client update and it can’t be included here too but it was important for us to close off this loophole rather than let it persist until we can truly fix things.
Okay, on to matchmaking!
Why we’re changing matchmaking
What goes into a good matchmaking experience? Generally speaking, the goal is to provide you with matches that have 1) fast queue times on 2) low latency servers against 3) other similarly-experienced (and real!) players.
Each of these has challenges associated with them and Spellbreak has, at times, been better and worse at different parts. Queue times traditionally have depended on the number of players who are queuing into a given “bucket.” Each combination of game mode, server region, cross-play ruleset, and mage rank (MR) grouping created a unique bucket for players to queue into. With just a few variations of each, you can quickly end up with a LOT of buckets (e.g. you want to play solos in South America on Switch at MR 10, there’s a good chance you’re going to be waiting for a LONG time). Prior to this set of changes, there are literally hundreds of buckets that can be used and to fill all of those with 42 person lobbies with low turnaround times, we’d need an exceptionally high number of users.
At various points to get players into matches faster, we’d sometimes bulk up queues that are slow to fill with bots. At other times, we’d allow players who are much higher level into games with very low level players. Both of these solutions lead to unsatisfying games, with them either being too easy for experienced players (farming low level players or bots) or games that are too challenging for new players (being paired up against people with far more playtime than them).
So what’s changing?
The biggest and most obvious change is that you now enter the queue by pressing the play button on the main menu. Instead of hopping into a lobby that fills up over time, the system is now matching you with other players with similar parameters based on game mode, region/ping, MR, platform, and more. Once it’s found a number of suitable players, you’ll all join the same lobby and a short countdown will begin.
While you’re waiting, you’re free to browse around the menus, customize your cosmetics (though the store is disabled to avoid some problems, see known issues below), and so on. When your match is ready, we’ll pop you into the lobby no matter where you are (Note that if you change your party by inviting new people or leaving your existing party, you’ll be removed from the queue and have to hit play again.). By not putting you in a lobby from the start and letting it fill, we can make better matches behind the scenes and prevent two people who should conceivably be in the same lobby from being in two separate ones just because they joined at the wrong time. This prioritizes getting compatible players together in a more seamless way.
The buckets now also no longer have hard limits and are flexible in a few ways. Previously, for example, everyone above MR 10 was thrown together, but now we band players plus or minus a few levels and gradually expand it over time as they’re waiting for matches. Similarly, if you were waiting for a game in a low pop region, you could just be waiting forever. Now we’ll look around for other regions with good pings and possibly match you with players from those regions. We’ll still prioritize your chosen region and won’t force you into a match where you have a high ping, but if it’s taking a long time, your bucket might “flex” to get you into a game faster.
On bots
Perhaps the worst kept secret in Spellbreak are the bots. The joys of that first match win followed up by the jokes of “should we tell them?...” It’s also no secret that they weren’t especially difficult. We’ve mentioned it before, but it’s actually harder to make a bot that feels fair and interesting than it is to make a bot that’s hard (they can have perfect aim, tracking, awareness, etc).
Our goal for bots is not that they be impossible kill-machines or complete target fodder, but instead that they should provide a challenging obstacle that can be used for practice and feels good to score exiles on. Furthermore, it shouldn’t be obvious if another Breaker is a bot or not.
We’ll be pushing out another update on Monday that will include many improvements to bots. Bots will behave more like players overall and in matches with a higher average MR, the bots will be more challenging as well.
Ironically, once this matchmaking change is live, you’ll see fewer bots, overall, in matches (except at low MR levels).
Known issues
Rather than wait to roll these changes out in 2.1, we made the decision to release as many of them as was possible with a server-only update. Unfortunately, this means there are some rough edges that will go live as well. The tradeoff seemed worth it, however.
- If you’re in the queue, please do NOT purchase gold with real money. It will likely not work correctly and you might not get what you paid for. A fix for this will be coming later today.
- If you’re in the queue for a match and don’t own a Chapter Pass, the Quests screen will look as if you do have it, including showing Honor Quests. These quests, however, will not progress in a match if you don’t own the Pass.
- If you’re in the queue and switch region or cross-play settings, they won’t take effect until your next match.
- While in the queue, your Chapter XP on the main menu displays as 1,000,000 regardless of your chapter progress.
- Certain tabs and buttons (Chapter, Store, Add Gold, etc) are disabled while in queue.
- If you attempt to access the Add Gold Screen while in the queue, the screen may be blank.
Going forward
This is going to be the first iteration of this new system. We’re very much aware that we’re going to want to make changes based on your feedback in the coming days and the metrics that we track (how long queues are lasting, how pings look, how players do in matches, what servers folks end up on and in what modes, and so on). Luckily, we’ve put a lot of effort into making the rules for how the matchmaking and bots work as well as allowing them to be configured on the server, so we can make updates to them both much more easily than normal features. So please, give us your feedback, let us know what your experiences are, and we’ll be listening and making changes accordingly.
Thanks!
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