2 replies to this topic

[Mawai]

Dear PGI,

I read through the patch notes for FW 4.1. There is now only one front between IS and Clans with the possibility of optional event driven inter-clan and inter-IS conflicts.

This sounds great in theory. HOWEVER, clan and IS players are NOT evenly distributed. They are NEVER evenly distributed. Random chance indicates that this will be the case.

However, unless you have side battles (clan vs clan or IS vs IS) to deal with the excess in queued players for whichever side (which only certain sub-factions appear to be eligible at the moment) ... you will get a massive and constantly growing player queue for factional warfare (assuming folks turn out to play). Needless to say this will likely cause a bad first impression for folks trying out FW4.1.

This is a FUNDAMENTAL design issue that has been pointed out many times in this community and on the forums ... first in regards to 3/3/3/3 matchmaking.

Example.

Lets say you have 1000 players dropping in FW every hour. Lets say 600 are IS and 400 are clans. After the game has been up for one hour, how long do you think an IS player will have to wait for a match? (NOTE: the results are exactly the same for 6000 vs 4000 ... it is the ratios that matter).

Each match needs 24 players ... 12 from each side. So in one hour you will launch 400/12 matches = 33.3 matches every hour since the number of matches in the example is limited by the number of clan players and you get 33.3 matches/hour.

After one hour there are 200 IS players waiting to get a match (600-400). At 33.3 matches every hour ... how long to get all of these folks into a match? 200/12 = 16.66 matches needed to get all of these folks into a match. It will take 16.66/33.3 hours = 1/2 hour or 30 minutes to get all of these players a match. After 1 HOUR of server uptime ... this discrepancy in player numbers on clan vs IS WILL generate a wait time of 30 minutes for a match for the side with more players.

This is for a 60/40 population split.

The additional problem is that EVERY hour of server uptime will add another 200 excess players to the queue on one side. So after 2 hours the wait time for a match with be an hour.

Eventually, any consistent imbalance in player numbers will generate a long queue AND an imbalance in player numbers on each side is unavoidable. So the new FW4.1 clan vs IS system is fundamentally BROKEN.

Please pass this along to the devs ... since long queue times will simply kill whatever interest remains in FW. In addition, you can't just drop excess folks into AI matches since if there is anything to be gained then the side with more players will always win.

[BWS2K]

Everything in me wants to dispute this math because I like crunchy numbers and find it hard to believe that someone would have missed that conclusion... but I don't know enough about FW to make that call. You've obviously put a lot of work into that post - well done. I'm curious if we'll see a direct response.

[Kmieciu]

And since the FW queue mechanism favors groups over solo players, when you drop solo you might never find a match.
If there is 1x 12-man and 11 solo players in the queue, the 11 people will never play a match.