The coming problem with cross play/save

[TheBlackAce21]

So I am a long time veteran player with over 8000 hours according to steam and I don't leave my game running unless I'm playing it so you can take that to the bank. I've run game servers of my own across multiple games over the years and I've got a certain amount of experience in general with the pulse of gamers. With my "probably inadequate for the internet's standards" credentials out of the way, I'm here to tell you that if you want Switch and Mobile players to be included in the cross save ecosystem going forward a HUGE discussion and overhaul NEEDS to happen to matchmaking and the background peer-to-peer decision making process.

Cross save is a wonderful feature with no lack of issues and problems, mostly rotating around trading right now and to be blunt, that's probably the biggest priority at the moment and I get that. However, I see a whole host of issues for players going forward in the crossplay side of life unless a lot of issues are addressed with how we connect with other people. Peer-to-peer has always been a shaky if economical schema but it has a host of built in problems that haven't been addressed in a long time. That wasn't a problem before cross play but it's becoming an increasingly bigger problem now.

This game allows for solo play but there are plenty of activities that are difficult on another level without having a team of other players with you and unfortunately opening the door to Switch and Mobile especially opens the door to lots of scenarios where a player on those platforms starts a mission, becomes the host of that mission, and gets connected to players also trying to do that mission and end up suffering a level of latency that makes the game literally unplayable. It's already happening now with wifi gapped console players who don't understand the importance of hard line connections on peer to peer games or just don't care. Plenty of others will care but don't have the capability to do anything about it. They're either kids with limited agency in their home internet situation, adults who are piggy backing internet in shared living spaces, or some variation of an imperfect internet solution they have no control over. I also worked for Xbox customer service once upon a lifetime ago so ask me how I know.

Mobile and Switch players are going to be WAY worse than all of that though. Switch is wifi by default and the only way to not be wifi requires a separate purchase because the docking station doesn't have an ethernet adapter.  Moreover, lots of switch players probably connect their devices to mobile hotspots or public internet wifi because that's the appeal of having an on the go gaming console. Mobile is going to be 20x worse for hosting games for obvious reasons, not least of which is the disparity between internet service speeds in third world countries much less the US where the wireless internet infrastructure is a f-ing joke....

Meanwhile we have players on PC, PS4, and Xbox who have all invested anywhere from $600-$5000 dollars USD or its equivalent on high end gaming setups with adapters, high speed routers and high speed internet who are going to be throttled to a level of unplayable any time they encounter someone on Switch or Mobile and it's already happening with Switch and other console players. The end result will either be no one will want to play on mobile at all, no one will want to play WITH mobile at all, or some combination of the 2 and for a game moving in the direction of universal cross play on a PEER TO PEER structure, that's a recipe for a lot of angry nights from a lot of players on all sides of this fenced in nonsense trying to get in their couple hours of gaming in a night before having to go to work/school/life the next day.

I say all this because I believe in what you (DE) are trying to do here by creating a cross play and cross save environment. Matchmaking has always been a little iffy on the decision making process when it comes to who gets to host and I get it's a complex problem with a lot of moving parts that can't be solved overnight but I think with cross save AND the addition of mobile to this ever escalating problem we need a solution and we need it yesterday.

 

Here's how I think it should happen and the reasons why:

I think the system needs to be changed from an instant que service to a timed matchmaking service whereby you can que up to start a mission and wait like 20 seconds to start up a mission. I think you should be able to force the que to start you anyway and in scenarios where that happens, the player forcing should automatically be considered the host. The ability to control whether or not you ARE host will give players agency and also solve a couple of problems the community currently has with railjack and might make it more popular (since whose RJ you are on is determined by the host). Assuming you DON'T force the que, a priority level decision matchmaking can happen in the background before anyone is assigned to a party where the system can sift through the list of currently qued up players/running hosts available for new connections and make decisions based on a couple of factors such as their geographical proximity to each other, ping, internet connection statistics etc etc.

This on the surface would solve a host of problems but still leaves up the problem of switch and mobile players landing themselves as host on nodes that aren't popular or just by virtue of timing. Which is why we also need a retroactive host migration process in situations where a PC player joins a mobile player (as an example). The system should promote players to host who meet a certain threshold and the handover needs to come with a nice functional countdown instead of a jarring instant handover. The handover also needs to be fluid and include the transfer of player buffs at a minimum because having to restack molt augmented every time there's a host migration is a huge pain in the ass.

Whether the end solution looks similar to my suggestion or does a completely different take entirely is a decision above my pay grade but as long as it addresses some of the madness with peer-to-peer issues I think everyone will go home happier. Thanks for reading this far and I hope to see more done on this issue.

 

Edited February 20 by TheBlackAce21
Edited title to be more inclusive to the subject matter.

[Darkskytzo_Prime]

i just hope that they allow us to turn off playing with mobile players " like a toggle"

[TheBlackAce21]

Just now, Darkskytzo_Prime said:

i just hope that they allow us to turn off playing with mobile players " like a toggle"

This is EXACTLY the feedback I was seeing on Reddit a second ago when I saw crossplay mobile was coming out this patch and panicked to the internet to see if I'd have to deal with mobile cross save hosts who are already MR30+ on mobile. Also, while this is an acceptable form of solution to this problem in my opinion, in a perfect world, we should be able to play with whoever and have it not be a problem. If a phone can handle Warframe, it could and should be able to handle online play otherwise it shouldn't exist at all because it's just not very responsible to "sell"(metaphorically) to players on mobile the idea of playing a top end game when it can't support online play with others. Mostly because again, Warframe has a LOT of areas where team play is almost a requirement. For the sake of all of us though, regardless of mobile's involvement, matchmaking NEEDS to be addressed.