Unless I’m overlooking something major or I’m for some other reason wrong (and knowing myself, that’s a possibility, please correct me if I am), ping is going to make it suck.
Not only will you have to manually search for players from your region looking for a game, but if you’re from anywhere else than the gameworlds port’s server’s physical location, you’ll also have to pray that no-one from the place its located in joins your group and becomes the host, messing up everyone’s ping in the process.
(That is still how the game picks the host, right? And if not, my first point still stands.)
Yeah this will be somewhat of an issue, for ballrace not as much since moving platforms are client side so ping won’t affect it too much, but it may suck for minigolf and the other games since they are not client side (cough cough, please make moving platforms in minigolf client side.)
When i think about gameworlds it was not used on lobby servers often, and so putting it into one big server allows people who want to use it (despite connection issues and stuff) to have a better chance of getting into a game, most players will use the normal menu to find games (especially since the games in the menu will display ping), so doing this allows those certain players to have more of a better experience i guess
The issue I have with the unified port is how it is “seamlessly” implemented and how much information it lacks.
We need a type of indicator how many are actually in that port. It looks like now it’s loading the Plaza and another small map. I could totally regularly check into the Port to see if some are in there, but not at the cost of loading up to two maps again. Sure, once Plaza gets loaded it wouldn’t as long like it did first time, but it’s still another loading.
It is quite seamlessly implemented, which is a good thing, but players unaware of it will try to assume everyone is connected to one Plaza. Different uninformed players will meet, socialize, and want to at one point go back to Plaza to do other activities. Little did they know they will all be sent to different Plazas, depending on where they are from. I like that it takes you back to your last visited Plaza, but I think there should be an option when you attempt to use the portal.
Like vtipoman said, ping is a horrible issue. Especially in minigolf, which is arguably the most played GameWorld right now, something that shoudln’t be affected by it much has a very poor netcode implementation. With the release of Kingdom, well timed shots are very important to get their desired scores, but when the long latency is introduced, the ball actually starts moving a good second after it is shot. Little Crusaders and Virus are naturally heavily affected by them, and this will bother a lot of players, leaving a pretty bad experience overall.
I really like the idea of the unified Port, but in order for it to work, I think it just needs more information so the players know what they are getting into. There are some people who wouldn’t care too much about ping and most will probably care, but if we want to push uniting them all we need is information on them so we can choose to play with a good ping or with more people (e.g. multiple queues with an option to select region).
I’m sorry, but it just seems to me as a too big of a change to implement without having it all figured out, especially if you include it in a huge update. Not only will it remove the existing option to start gameworlds from the various region-based plazas (which on itself isn’t a bad idea, but combined with the fact that the replacement we’ll get is a single server for the entirety of the game’s population without any changes to how it works, it, at least in my eyes, is), but it will also direct the huge influx of players the update will bring towards using a system that might very well leave a sour taste in their mouths, especially since it’s labelled with a huge “join matchmaking” button that implies there’s… well, actual matchmaking.
Also, similiar to global chat, I don’t think a single server will work that nicely with a huge amount of people.
It’s an Early Access game. Making these changes is what this is all about. We don’t actually know how well it will do. We could sit here all day and discuss, but there’s no way to truly know until we try it. It’s at a point where we’re personally happy with it and can see future updates improving on it.
The only things we haven’t entirely figured out is how people respond to the change.
Regions will be supported as we roll it out. Costs money to spin up servers on a feature that’s still in development.
But… will you actually find out how well the idea can work and how people respond to it, if what you initially release (with a big update that will bring lots of players who will experience and form opinions on the new system, no less) will be an uncomplete version that, while potentially being good as an overall concept, doesn’t necessarily have to work that well?
It will add an extra step to join gameworlds from a plaza (and a rather complicated one at that- if you form a group in one of the plazas and decide to use the port to join a gameworld- perhaps because you want to hold a vote on the map, or you want the game to select a host, or you just don’t want to bother with manually setting up a server and getting everyone to join- you’ll have to regroup on the new server and purposefully avoid anyone that could potentially join and mess up your group’s ping, take up someone’s spot, etc), with said extra step also being the most apparent and noticeable way to start gameworlds from the menu. That wouldn’t have to be that much of a problem and I see what upsides it could have, but players using the single server (likely newer players who don’t even know how it works and use it because its button is such a prominent part of the menu) will also have harder time looking for people from their region to play games with and be at risk of someone from the central server’s region joining, becoming the host and messing up the entire group’s ping.
The thing is, creating and joining servers directly from the server browser is going to be much better thanks to global chat, there’s no doubt about that. And I get what upsides this system could eventually have (not having to load the entire plaza to get to the ports, having a single central area dedicated to grouping up for gameworlds) and how improvements to it, such as different regional servers, or some new, cheaper system to sort, match with, search for, or join up with players (hey, even the good old party system could help) could really help migitate its problems, but I think its initial version will have a lot of issues that will affect people’s opinions of it and I’m not sure if it’s worth removing the port from every plaza, like… overall. Then again, I get and agree that some experimenting and testing is often required to find the right way to do something and that it might be the case when it comes to this as well.
While I can certainly see the points in these counter-arguments to this idea, I would like to address that the developers made it so that the load times in the gamemode port is very quick, you can even see the envy in the chat during the livestream.
The fact that the plaza is smaller can somewhat be beneficial, actually. Now that the plaza has one less equation to load while you are entering, the load time can quite possibly be faster. Even then, there should be many people there so you can still lounge around and see the company.
So much hate. I was very intrigued when this feature was mentioned in the stream. Why join into a plaza to try and start up a game, have nobody interested because it’s only reaching to the other (maybe) 30 other people on the server. With this, it reaches EVERYBODY because if you’re interested in matching up, you’re joining a centralized server that EVERYONE interested will then see.
Personally, I love the idea of having the gameworld ports consolidated into one “server”. It creates a sort of physical spot where everyone interested can talk about what game to play, or what their opinions are on certain gameworlds or maps. The gameworld ports were already rarely used (at least from what I could see) and this could bring some new life into it.
There will be some issues, but there are issues with every feature in the game when it is first introduced. This is why Early Access exists, to flesh out the game with the community before it can be considered a final product. I completely agree with mac in the idea of pushing this system and improving it as the game evolves, with feedback from the community.
If it becomes an issue later on it can be revamped or reverted, but it sounds like a wonderful idea to me and I’m completely open to seeing this roll out. Especially to see the gameworld ports have some life put back into it.
I don’t hate the idea and I get what will be great about it. It’s just that I personally think it shouldn’t be released until the very obvious flaws it has get fixed.
I understand that launching it early would allow people to enjoy its good sides sooner and help with getting feedback before any future development is done, but it just seems weird to me to push it out in its current form.
but like no one uses the game worlds in plaza because there is never enough people in one server wanting to play using it
so everyone from all servers using 1 will have a better chance of it being used
Just throwing my opinion in here but the current Gameworlds port is completely useless to me as it stands. Its almost always empty. I used to que for virus then do other things while I waited but never once got a game going with this method, and most the time if I left the lobby and checked the server list I’d usually find a game halfway over that I missed because I was sitting in lobby.
While getting a bad host with the consolidated single gameworlds port is a potential issue, this is already an issue for me. The Virus games I find come from me checking the Virus server list over and over. The host is always a crap shoot. All this update will do for me personally is make the gameworlds port more viable. I still look forward to global chat much more than the matchmaking update because I can see gameworlds start from even the menu, and join from chat. No more having to check multiple lists/servers to see if a game started while I was looking in the wrong place.
The new matchmaking system is not an ideal solution, but definitely an improvement in my book and a welcome change. Now if we had a system that calculated who the best host would be, if that’s not already a thing, that would solve your issue.
Yea, but vtipoman’s point was saying it wouldn’t be as viable due to lack of regional separation, which is a valid concern. I just don’t think it keeps it from being a step forward overall.