Why does Abyssal Zone not have random match making system?

[Sporthand]

I asked my clan members and friends to join in the Abyssal Zone's mission, but not many people wanted to join in that mission together.

I even tried to recruit any players to join, but no luck.
It would be fun if I could join any random players on a public server.

[(PSN)Joylesstuna]

Very strange omission and I don't buy what DE said about them wanting the mission to be like the old void keys.

[16Bitman]

DE wants to see how well invite only based missions are doing in 2023.

[Numerounius]

What I gathered from their reasoning from the devstream is that it was supposed to be a "trial" for a future content implementation and seeing how players interact with it knowing the option to turn on public matchmaking for it exists. But they also go on in the patch notes to state that it is exactly like the old Void Key sharing system which was removed. Along with giving players a false sense that it can be done in public matchmaking turned on without providing a warning beforehand that it won't work which 90% of the players are going to do.

 

Can you really not recruit players for it already? It hasn't even been a month! I was expecting the recruiting to die down at about 3 months mark, not within the month.

[--F--NerevarCM]

4 minutes ago, XHADgaming said:

Can you really not recruit players for it already? It hasn't even been a month! I was expecting the recruiting to die down at about 3 months mark, not within the month.

The mission is not that difficult. And you don't need a lot of thorns to make Dagath and Dorrclave

[Aruquae]

1 hour ago, 16Bitman said:

DE wants to see how well invite only based missions are doing in 2023.

DE brining the memories of when I had friends that played

Everyone quit, I’m the last Tenno standing

Edit: quit not quite

Edited October 31, 2023 by Malikili
Spelling

[LittleLeoniePrime]

14 minutes ago, --F--NerevarCM said:

The mission is not that difficult. And you don't need a lot of thorns to make Dagath and Dorrclave

and to be fair it's more efficient solo.

[Karyst]

19 minutes ago, Malikili said:

DE brining the memories of when I had friends that played

Everyone quite, I’m the last Tenno standing

You play standing?

[Aruquae]

31 minutes ago, Karyst said:

You play standing?

Keeps the blood flowing 

[(XBOX)K1jker]

It's to test bringing self damage back. You know, bring something back they specifically removed with reasons to test the waters.

Honestly idk. 

[SDGDen]

1 hour ago, LittleLeoniePrime said:

and to be fair it's more efficient solo.

its most efficient with a premade squad, but solo is a lot faster than with rando's who dont know what they're doing. 

[Hobie-wan]

4 hours ago, Sporthand said:

I even tried to recruit any players to join, but no luck.

Four hours ago when you made this post would have been in the vicinity of 9 AM on a Tuesday morning for North American players, where the most people are. That's not the best time to be looking for a group. Every time I've looked in recruiting during NA weekday evenings and good chunks of the weekend there are been plenty of people forming SP Abyss groups at least. Just try again at a different time if you don't want to go solo.

3 hours ago, XHADgaming said:

Can you really not recruit players for it already? It hasn't even been a month! I was expecting the recruiting to die down at about 3 months mark, not within the month.

As above.

[(PSN)robotwars7]

it did originally have matchmaking, I remember most of the PUBs I ran had people walking straight past an obviously placed Defixio, as if they can't see it, when it glows bright red and ominous AF, as well as making a very audible sound. there was a problem though with getting matchmaking for the SP version specifically, it kept putting me in normal until it was hotfixed. I guess now they straight up ditched matchmaking for it entirely, strange.

DE also mentioned how they wanted to see what place mission keys had in warframe now, if any at all: personally I think they should just be discarded altogether, to streamline the process of going in and out of the mission, and to avoid players getting arbitrarily gated by not having a key when they are otherwise perfectly capable of doing the mission.

 

[Numerounius]

48 minutes ago, (PSN)robotwars7 said:

it did originally have matchmaking, I remember most of the PUBs I ran had people walking straight past an obviously placed Defixio, as if they can't see it, when it glows bright red and ominous AF, as well as making a very audible sound. there was a problem though with getting matchmaking for the SP version specifically, it kept putting me in normal until it was hotfixed. I guess now they straight up ditched matchmaking for it entirely, strange.

It was never originally supposed to have public matchmaking. If you read the wording carefully on the original patch note it didn't mention that public matchmaking was an option for it. The bug had to do with it not being enabled, or in this case disabled, for steel path allowing people to MM with others which lasted for less than 24 hours. And there is another bug, which is still not fixed to my knowledge, that you can select SP before doing the basic node first that leads to you doing the basic node the first time which confused everyone about what exactly was going on with the mode being SP or not before DE stepped in and removed PUBs altogether.

Those first hours with this bug definitely had a fair share of people that were confused with the mode. Since it isn't explained very well in-game combined with the mixture of bugs that it had.

[trst]

While likely not DE's intent I like to think of it as something we can use to point out how annoying of a system it is any time someone tries to claim the old Key system was better than Relics.

[Sporthand]

13 hours ago, Hobie-wan said:

Four hours ago when you made this post would have been in the vicinity of 9 AM on a Tuesday morning for North American players, where the most people are. That's not the best time to be looking for a group. Every time I've looked in recruiting during NA weekday evenings and good chunks of the weekend there are been plenty of people forming SP Abyss groups at least. Just try again at a different time if you don't want to go solo.

As above.

I will also try in NA and EA players, and I might have more chances to have a party. I thought the recruiting messages would be seen by all regions.

[Hobie-wan]

13 hours ago, Sporthand said:

I will also try in NA and EA players, and I might have more chances to have a party. I thought the recruiting messages would be seen by all regions.

Nope, different regions are separate. But you bring up the point that I kinda assumed you were on NA. Anyway, hopefully you find groups with some region hopping or looking at time zones. NA is definitely the busiest region.

[(PSN)FirmBizkit]

On 2023-10-31 at 7:07 AM, XHADgaming said:

What I gathered from their reasoning from the devstream is that it was supposed to be a "trial" for a future content implementation and seeing how players interact with it knowing the option to turn on public matchmaking for it exists. But they also go on in the patch notes to state that it is exactly like the old Void Key sharing system which was removed. Along with giving players a false sense that it can be done in public matchmaking turned on without providing a warning beforehand that it won't work which 90% of the players are going to do.

 

Can you really not recruit players for it already? It hasn't even been a month! I was expecting the recruiting to die down at about 3 months mark, not within the month.

There’s no reason to do it in a group really is the thing due to how it’s designed it’s faster to do it solo. My guess why it doesn’t have MM is because of that it would be too easy to sabotage (either intentionally or unintentionally) because you can’t extract until everyone has gotten a thing to the extract point.

[(PSN)Unstar]

I don't understand not using automated matchmaking.  Making a pre-formed group takes time and effort that I don't want to waste; I just want to play the game.  Computers are amazing at automating that process, finishing it within seconds instead of minutes.  Automated matchmaking raises the quality of my life.

If we're going to regress towards inefficient systems, I want there to be an incredibly fulfilling reason for it.

[sly_squash]

1 hour ago, (PSN)Unstar said:

If we're going to regress towards inefficient systems, I want there to be an incredibly fulfilling reason for it.

They addressed this in the last dev stream.  It's because only one person per squad (the host) needs to spend a key, but in public matchmaking that's basically random because who gets to host is basically random so there's unfairness going forth with a public squad.

In premade matches, you can manipulate who is hosting the mission to rotate the key-donator around to ensure fairness.

In pub squads, you could just withdraw during matchmaking anytime you note that you're going to wind up hosting this round (and thus be the key spender) to manipulate other random public players into hosting the mission for you.  This creates the potential for abuse.

At the moment they're trying to sort out a solution for all this.  Perhaps in the end it makes sense for premade squads to only require the host to have a key, but for any public joiners to also have to contribute a key (so for a random squad of all matchmade pubs, each player needs to expend their own key).  This creates confusion over when and if a key is needed, but it's at least a fair way to do public matchmaking in this scenario.

[(PSN)Unstar]

6 minutes ago, sly_squash said:

They addressed this in the last dev stream.  It's because only one person per squad (the host) needs to spend a key, but in public matchmaking that's basically random because who gets to host is basically random so there's unfairness going forth with a public squad.

I'm aware of what they said, but that doesn't really approach the point I'm making.  To reiterate, if we're going to regress towards inefficient systems, I want there to be an incredibly fulfilling reason for it.  And there's nothing about sharing keys that feels cool or interesting or fun.  On the contrary, it's just a hassle I need to deal with before actually playing the game.

It's a bit wild to me because from a design perspective, there was no genuine need to make keys part of this; it would have worked just fine without them.  Click the mission, do the mission.

Beyond that, even with keys, there was never a need for this problem.  Make keys cost 25% of what they currently do, and require one from everyone in the mission.  Great, now we can use normal matchmaking.  And conveniently, in this same Devstream, this is exactly what they announced they were doing with Plague Star to prevent abuse/leeching.

Everyone makes mistakes, and to err is human; this isn't the end of the world.  But I will admit to being a bit shocked that this came out of the oven as clunky as it did.

[sly_squash]

5 minutes ago, (PSN)Unstar said:

Beyond that, even with keys, there was never a need for this problem.  Make keys cost 25% of what they currently do, and require one from everyone in the mission.  Great, now we can use normal matchmaking.  And conveniently, in this same Devstream, this is exactly what they announced they were doing with Plague Star to prevent abuse/leeching.

I suspect the key sharing mechanism is a part of their campaign to pander to newer players.  It's very clear from all the "Pay To Skip" bs and the constant dropping of requirements that goes on throughout the game that DE want to accelerate new players to the point of being able to play with their veteran friends.

If everyone needs to build their own keys, then even at their reduced costs the newer players would struggle since they have pitiful daily standing caps and actually need their standing for other things.
Under the current system, veteran players can take new players under their wing and essentially sponsor their Dagath farm with their own keys.

I agree with you that your vision that enables matchmaking is superior, but I do think this is the basic rationale behind their decision.  And sure they could always remove the key barrier altogether, but it's DE and they want some way to drag out the farm a bit.