Enable passive queueing in the liset

[MdzKnight]

Wall of text warning: I just kept typing everything that came to mind, with minimal formatting. I saw a similar post ask for pretty much the same thing, and I wanted to further elaborate on that.

Queueing up for Conclave stops you from doing anything else. When you open the Conclave window, it shows you the game modes available. You then select a particular game mode, get queued up for it and are taken to the screen where you have to wait for others to players to join in.

Issue: This is an incredibly grave offense in such a loot-centered, mostly time-gated online game. When you're asking the community to see "who's gonna start first?" before stuff actually gets started, and you're offering it alongside PvE missions that can be immediately started, then no one's actually going to waste time to bother waiting. Patient guys can probably wait 5-10 minutes, before realizing no one's around - this creates the sad cycle where a player comes in, waits, then comes out long before another player comes in and does the same: then the players who would like to fight in Conclave don't end up finding one another. Other games (WoW, for example) at least let you do your thing in the gameworld with the promise that after you start and finish the PvP session you're immediately returned to where you are in the PvE gameworld so you can resume what you were doing with no hassle. Even Dota and other MOBAs, purely competitive matchmaking games, were specifically designed to allow you to pre-occupy yourself while you wait.

 

Solution: Make a passive queueing system in the Liset.

Player downtime is generally spent in the Liset. In here you can spend time decorating your quarters, finalizing your loadouts, tracking market chat, talking to teammates, reading codex entries, reviewing your foundry, upgrading mods, resupplying gear items, or simply just looking out into space while listening to the quiet hum of the orbiter (if you're into that). Make it so that players can be queued up while still able to do all that, allow players to toggle their matchmaking status to "ready" without locking them out of these potential activities (automatically turned off when they suddenly go on PvE missions). You can then have a server that continually checks for all players with the "ready" status until a minimum count is reached (I'd say 10 - fullhouse, though personally I don't mind getting started with just 4 players, with the match still able to accept newcomers per round). This server then sends an invite to these players, if they all say "accept" (again, taking a page from the MOBAs) - the planet select panel on the liset is disabled (turn off PvE) and a countdown is started, declining puts PVP queue on cooldown for those who declined obviously.

This way, you can always be sure there's always enough players ready when you get the invite. And you can still do things while you're waiting. Parties should also be taken into consideration, as players in a party should ALL be in a ready status before they're counted for the matchmaking.

I would also like to add that the Conclave panel in the Liset should instead show the number of allplayers currently playing rather than the reputation collected. Also, move this panel to the room where the foundry, arsenal module is located - that way, it's not on the distant corner of your ship and anyone working on the mentioned modules can take a quick glance at it anytime (I'm also working on an extensive orbiter overhaul suggestion that also reflects this, but I'll leave this in here for now).

 

Thanks for reading.

Edited December 14, 2018 by MandzPH

[GnarlsDarkley]

tl;dr? pretty please?

[MdzKnight]

3 minutes ago, GnarlsDarkley said:

tl;dr? pretty please?

Copy the matchmaking system from MOBAs. And allow players to still move about the liset while queuing.

[CatboyPrincess]

Yeah I agree, this would be a pretty great change. Fashion frame and waiting on a queue? Nice

[MdzKnight]

Ikr!

Shoutouts to the  viewing conclave rewards straight from the liset idea, as it can be a good way to spend time waiting as well.