About the new rank system

[edU.Verz [Brainwash Gang]]

Hey all!

We have been working on a new approach to balance the matchamking, would be great if you let your feedback here, hopefully nothing explodes.

(sorry if we were a bit silence, vacation time is a bit messy for this kind of games)

[Simian]

Maybe take a vacation before launching a game next time. This desperately needed support post launch to maintain the playerbase . Now the reviews are what they are and it will take a miracle to catch lightning in a bottle twice to support this type of game

[edU.Verz [Brainwash Gang]]

Originally posted by Simian:

Maybe take a vacation before launching a game next time. This desperately needed support post launch to maintain the playerbase . Now the reviews are what they are and it will take a miracle to catch lightning in a bottle twice to support this type of game

I don't know if you have check the amount of updates that we released since the launch, but there are a lot of them.

[BigCatRob]

A bit late on the draw for this kind of update, eh?

Unfortunately, it'll take a miracle to bolster player numbers again. Even more popular content creators/streamers playing it isn't changing much. I know it's pretty much an indie title, but you need a good sizeable player base for things like SBMM and Ranked to matter, which this game no longer has.

[kittyhawkmeow]

bring back level based matchmaking pl0x

[BigCatRob]

Also I just realized that this update added just a ranking system instead of an actual Ranked gamemode. Looking at it now, this update to be 100% honest actually does nothing. It's just another layer to matchmaking that won't work because the playerbase is too low as is.

[TheActualWonton]

I've encountered a possible bug post-match. My game gets stuck on the EXP screen after a match when I hit spacebar or another key before the EXP animation is completely over. Pressing the spacebar again or clicking Continue just plays the EXP animation over and over. I need to close and re-launch the game to fix it, and then you don't get the EXP you earned for the matches you played. This has happened several times.

Originally posted by XUV8R:

Originally posted by edU.Verz Brainwash Gang:

I don't know if you have check the amount of updates that we released since the launch, but there are a lot of them. :mcpixel:

The AMOUNT of updates does not correlate to the QUALITY of them, and one need look no further than your playercount to deduce that.

What people have been asking for is balance changes. Since launch, balance has gotten significantly *worse* with some of the most broken cards being released post-launch.

New players are at extreme levels of disadvantage, and even players with significant playtime can be held back by terrible card pack luck.

I'm sorry to harp on you this much but if you don't want this game to die then you need to listen to your playerbase. This game is not going to attract any new players just from having a ranked mode. It needs a better new player and earlygame experience, better balancing, and more consistent reward incentives/more ways to acquire cards.

I want this game to succeed. The core idea of it is fun, the art style is great, there's clearly a lot of love and effort put into a lot of the overall design. But without significant changes it is not going to go anywhere.

I think that you've created a game that's a lot of fun. I love how the core concept is refreshing and the art style is so vibrant. When everything's going smoothly, FriendsVsFriends is one of the most fun and interesting FPS games out right now. However, like XUV8R said, there are some card and character balance that needs attention.

[edU.Verz [Brainwash Gang]]

Originally posted by XUV8R:

Originally posted by edU.Verz Brainwash Gang:

I don't know if you have check the amount of updates that we released since the launch, but there are a lot of them.

The AMOUNT of updates does not correlate to the QUALITY of them, and one need look no further than your playercount to deduce that.

What people have been asking for is balance changes. Since launch, balance has gotten significantly *worse* with some of the most broken cards being released post-launch.

New players are at extreme levels of disadvantage, and even players with significant playtime can be held back by terrible card pack luck.

I'm sorry to harp on you this much but if you don't want this game to die then you need to listen to your playerbase. This game is not going to attract any new players just from having a ranked mode. It needs a better new player and earlygame experience, better balancing, and more consistent reward incentives/more ways to acquire cards.

I want this game to succeed. The core idea of it is fun, the art style is great, there's clearly a lot of love and effort put into a lot of the overall design. But without significant changes it is not going to go anywhere.

We are listening to all of you that's why i started this thread. About balancing and improving the early experience we have some ideas that might improved the game (or at least we will try it)

There are few things that you are pointing that are in our radars so expect news soon.

I like to read this kind of stuff even if is a bit hard to swallow, so thank you so much and please keep doing it!

[AlsoIMainYoshi]

Originally posted by XUV8R:

Originally posted by edU.Verz Brainwash Gang:

I don't know if you have check the amount of updates that we released since the launch, but there are a lot of them. :mcpixel:

The AMOUNT of updates does not correlate to the QUALITY of them, and one need look no further than your playercount to deduce that.

What people have been asking for is balance changes. Since launch, balance has gotten significantly *worse* with some of the most broken cards being released post-launch.

New players are at extreme levels of disadvantage, and even players with significant playtime can be held back by terrible card pack luck.

I'm sorry to harp on you this much but if you don't want this game to die then you need to listen to your playerbase. This game is not going to attract any new players just from having a ranked mode. It needs a better new player and earlygame experience, better balancing, and more consistent reward incentives/more ways to acquire cards.

I want this game to succeed. The core idea of it is fun, the art style is great, there's clearly a lot of love and effort put into a lot of the overall design. But without significant changes it is not going to go anywhere.

I have to absolutely concur with this. Ranked play on its own isn't a terrible idea, but with the player numbers currently at their lowest, this really isn't the time to be focusing on that, ESPECIALLY when you make it standard for the entire game with no out for casual players.

Foundations need to be set before ranked can truly become a whole thing - the new player experience and card balance are two very important issues the community has been discussing for the past couple months that currently still need heavy improvement, and segregating absolutely everyone into ranks for another layer of matchmaking that'll make it even harder to find different people to play against may very well have made it that much more difficult for new players to climb in.

This is a very fun game y'all have, and we want to see it grow as it deserves to, but y'all have to set your priorities straight, we are begging

[camwithnofam]

In addition to what others have said here, I'd personally like to see a grace period to rematching the same people after leaving a game with them. It sucks to not want to rematch a team just to get into another game with them immediately afterwards.

[edU.Verz [Brainwash Gang]]

Just to be clear, we have added a visual layer of what we had and also we tuned some stuff in the matchmaking, so the step about this went into a more transparent system in stead of adding a lot of new filters.

[BigCatRob]

Originally posted by edU.Verz Brainwash Gang:

Just to be clear, we have added a visual layer of what we had and also we tuned some stuff in the matchmaking, so the step about this went into a more transparent system in stead of adding a lot of new filters.

So it's not even a new system? Just a visual element of what you already had in place before?

[edU.Verz [Brainwash Gang]]

Originally posted by BigCatRob:

Originally posted by edU.Verz Brainwash Gang:

Just to be clear, we have added a visual layer of what we had and also we tuned some stuff in the matchmaking, so the step about this went into a more transparent system in stead of adding a lot of new filters.

So it's not even a new system? Just a visual element of what you already had in place before?

Is a tweak and a visual iteration, as you may know all the games/devs work on the MM system over the time so we will be keep working on it for a while

[Leidran]

After some playtime I have noticed zero difference with the new ranking system, which I guess it's to expect since this kind of systems have a larger effect in the long run? At max I just noticed some people playing Little Lars a bit more often, probably because they are scared that people will try to abuse the meta more often (with cards like Hot Potato) due the Ranking system incentivising... Well, winning. But in general it honestly made no difference so far.

I just wish I could turn off the visuals where numbers go up and down, alongside the portrait showing your current rank, since I don't like interacting with these kind of things and showing it after every time I go back to my lobby feels like I am being judged despite trying to take the game casually.

To this day I still don't understand the point of the ranked update, although after seeing this post and realizing the team (or a part of it) were in vacations, I can understand why it feels the devs are not listening to the community or having a hard time explaining their intentions, stuff like this requires a lot of coordination and a decent amount of people.

Hopefully once the whole (or most of the) dev team is back from vacations things get better for the game, although I am now more worried about the dev team having too much weight on their shoulders due the community's demands/needs alongside their own ambitions.

[思想犯]

Look at me, my friend. I've been playing this game for 200 hours, and I don't claim to be a hardcore player, but I still think these issues need to be addressed in order for the game to be healthy

1. Optimize the team system, when I only have two friends and we want to play 2v2, we can only randomly match and hope that we can match together, I hope to add bots in private rooms, so that we can play 2v2 even if only two people
2. Optimize the matching mechanism, you know, after the implementation of the ranking system, players are forced to join a competitive matching environment, in fact, it is not friendly to most players, so I hope that players can turn off the ranking display, so as to reduce the frustration of failure
3. Expand the player base, it has to be admitted that the biggest crisis facing fvf now is the loss of the number of players and the imbalance between new players and old players, so you can consider attracting more new players to join through activities such as free weekends, only the influx of new players can make the game full of vitality
4. Improve the anti-cheating system, can you imagine the helplessness and frustration of more than 4 minutes of waiting, but being quickly defeated by cheaters? The existence of cheaters will only make the game environment worse, forming a vicious circle, so a relatively perfect anti-cheating system is necessary
5. Add new game modes, the current 1v1 and 2v2 are a little boring, we need more new game modes, such as 3v3 or 1v1v1v1. The new map is also very important, I don't like the island map, because it is too small and there is too little cover, resulting in constant shooting at each other throughout the whole time, it would be better if it was bigger

Finally, if you agree with me, please focus on attracting new players, I would love to see the game get better and better :D

[edU.Verz [Brainwash Gang]]

Originally posted by 祈風:

Look at me, my friend. I've been playing this game for 200 hours, and I don't claim to be a hardcore player, but I still think these issues need to be addressed in order for the game to be healthy

1. Optimize the team system, when I only have two friends and we want to play 2v2, we can only randomly match and hope that we can match together, I hope to add bots in private rooms, so that we can play 2v2 even if only two people
2. Optimize the matching mechanism, you know, after the implementation of the ranking system, players are forced to join a competitive matching environment, in fact, it is not friendly to most players, so I hope that players can turn off the ranking display, so as to reduce the frustration of failure
3. Expand the player base, it has to be admitted that the biggest crisis facing fvf now is the loss of the number of players and the imbalance between new players and old players, so you can consider attracting more new players to join through activities such as free weekends, only the influx of new players can make the game full of vitality
4. Improve the anti-cheating system, can you imagine the helplessness and frustration of more than 4 minutes of waiting, but being quickly defeated by cheaters? The existence of cheaters will only make the game environment worse, forming a vicious circle, so a relatively perfect anti-cheating system is necessary
5. Add new game modes, the current 1v1 and 2v2 are a little boring, we need more new game modes, such as 3v3 or 1v1v1v1. The new map is also very important, I don't like the island map, because it is too small and there is too little cover, resulting in constant shooting at each other throughout the whole time, it would be better if it was bigger

Finally, if you agree with me, please focus on attracting new players, I would love to see the game get better and better :D

1. That's something that we will adress after some other stuff coming.
2. We have few ideas about how to reduce the frustration and we will be iterating over this during these weeks.
3. Not easy BUT there is something that will help with that quite soon.
4. We are on it, our main fear is being very invasive so we are wondering where is the perfect balance.
5. The main issue about this is splitting the player base on different queues.

Thanks a lot for the feedback!