Too many server regions?

[Charming Cthulhu]

I play on EU servers, there are usually around 2 active games and if I'm lucky, one of them is 50% filled. Last evening I wanted to join a friend who's playing on the US East servers and the situation was just as bad. However, my ping was low, we had a nice lag-free game.

Now, this game has 10 server regions. Some of them have even fewer players than EU, NA East and NA West. Given that the player count is already very low, I don't see this in anyhow beneficial for the game because everyone all over the world has to keep playing against bots. Nobody wants to spend his time hopping from region to region to finally find a game with many players. Tbh I think this is one of the reasons this game died so fast - finding servers was too difficult from the beginning because players world-wide are split apart way too much.

I suggest putting at least some of the regions together and introducing a matchmaking system that takes the player's ping more into account.

[s3q9g6]

? I think its way faster to just use the existing server browser where you can instantly tell how many players are in a session and join the game of your choice instead of a matchmaking system where you would have to wait for the game to put you in a high-ping lobby. It`s always going to be the same high ping when playing over large distances no matter which method you use to join a session: matchmaking (which you suggest) or server browser (which is already in game); so I dont understand the point in your suggestion of an auto-matchmaking system which sorts players after ping, or did I misunderstood something?

[Charming Cthulhu]

It doesn't matter whether you use auto-matchmaking or the lobby browser. In some regions there are 2 or 3 lobbies during prime time, in the other regions I've never seen any lobby at all.
The thing is, most people probably stop playing because there are no lobbies and they are only matched against bots - even though there are people playing in other regions.

I'm suggesting to fuse some server regions together so that players can actually find other players in this game - without hopping from server region to server region. Most players probably don't even know that they can do that and/or rely on auto-matchmaking.

I only threw in the improvement of the matchmaking system because fusing the regions might result in a higher ping for some lobbies. But a higher ping and therefore slightly worse gameplay experience is still better than a dead game because half of the players don't manage to find active lobbies.

[s3q9g6]

Originally posted by Charming Cthulhu:

It doesn't matter whether you use auto-matchmaking or the lobby browser. In some regions there are 2 or 3 lobbies during prime time, in the other regions I've never seen any lobby at all.
The thing is, most people probably stop playing because there are no lobbies and they are only matched against bots - even though there are people playing in other regions.

I'm suggesting to fuse some server regions together so that players can actually find other players in this game - without hopping from server region to server region. Most players probably don't even know that they can do that and/or rely on auto-matchmaking.

I only threw in the improvement of the matchmaking system because fusing the regions might result in a higher ping for some lobbies. But a higher ping and therefore slightly worse gameplay experience is still better than a dead game because half of the players don't manage to find active lobbies.

I think I got your point: you believe that a large fraction of the playerbase dont know they can change their matchmaking region in order to more easier find lobbies with players in them, am I correct?

[Charming Cthulhu]

Yes, that's exactly what I mean! And even if they know they can change their matchmaking region, they will rarely find more than 5 players in the same place.

[s3q9g6]

For a game like this (=with a very small active playerbase) it is impossible to tell how many of the players actually know how to change their matchmaking region

However, I still dont see any point in merging those "more dead" matchmaking regions together since like 90% of the playerbase consists of EU, Russia and NA-East/West, pretty much all other regions are "super dead". And I doubt those few players that remain anywhere else would even be able to successfully connect to servers in EU/NA.

[Charming Cthulhu]

Imaging starting the game in EU and there are only 5 active players. NA-West and NA-East are similar, let's just say that each of them has 5 active players, too. Common situation for me.

5 players don't even fill a single small lobby with a limit of 6 players.

Now we merge NA-West and NA-East. Maybe we even put them together with EU in this example - Elder Scrolls Online has a single server for NA and EU, I don't know how well this would work in a shooter.
Now we have 10 players (or 15) in 1 region. That's at least 1 full lobby, maybe even a large lobby with all 10 players in 1 game, or just a small lobby and another one that's almost filled.

Having people to play with is what keeps players coming back to multiplayer games. Nobody wants to buy a multiplayer game just to find out that he can never play in a full lobby.

[s3q9g6]

Yes, I think it would be possible to combine NA- east and west without causing significant connection problems. Merging EU and NA though would probably cause connection difficulties for many players. But to be honest; I dont think merging matchmaking regions together would do any use at this point since this game has a super small active playerbase. The only thing that could increase the playerbase is marketing and promoting ( done by both the developer and the existing playerbase ) this game to make more people aware of it.

[duckrotation]

You don't have to merge them, they just need a way to set the server browser to look across all regions by default. If people want to play a game with just their friends out in Australia they shouldn't be forced into using European or NA servers with their buds.