[Suggestion] Quality of life improvements to matchmaking while playing alone

[mrhapps]

This is going to be a post about things I think would be improvements to general random matchmaking when playing alone that wouldn't be to hard to change. I'm going to have bold headers for the TLDR version and a description of why I think this would be a quality of life upgrade following the header.

1. Volunteer to be Host Drop Down Option: From what I have gathered so far when inviting a friend to a party it assigns the person who invited the host position and throughout the game they will remain the host as long as they do not leave the party or a better host is found. I think this works well, but when playing alone the first thing the game tries to do while you have Public matchmaking on is to join a mission currently in progress which is okay sometimes but it is a bit more rare to be a good experience than it should be (high ping even with low ping restrictions on, host migration as soon as you join, etc). I think there should be a dropdown option to volunteer to be host for a public game. This way you can go through an entire mission without an unexpected host migration from someone leaving prior to the mission ending and then having that fail for you to then have wasted the time in the mission abandoned by the host. This way you can still play public with a team but it is a bit more of a controlled experience. Host migration upon joining an in progress mission is incredibly common when joining an alert mission that happens to be an archwing one. People go into it thinking it is a normal exterminate but it is an archwing exterminate and they then abandon the second they load in even if it is while another player is already starting to load in.

2. Continue Endless Missions When Everyone Has Made a Vote to Battle or Leave. It is always a pain when people want to leave defense or interception missions when you aren't ready but the part that makes it even worse than having them leave is not knowing they will leave until the last second of the timer (having "Battle" previously selected as their vote and changing it last second). Having it force host migrate because the person who decided to leave at the last second was the host of the party is a bad side affect of the above issue. I am not asking for it to have it so that everyone has to agree, I just want it so that people cant keep changing their mind until the timer ends. When you are playing with your friends and everyone wants to battle we have to wait out the timer even though no one is going to change their mind, its just annoying. I think it should be that if everyone chooses the same thing then it should start the next wave immediately or leave the game immediately, and if not it will let the timer go as it does now.

3. Have The Index End When The Objective is Complete and Player Chooses to Leave. Now, I like doing the index with other people but sometimes I just want to do it alone, and it is INCREDIBLY annoying that when you have hit the completion of the objective and the bots on your own team continue to turn in points and increase the timer when all you want to do is leave. It eventually counts down once you have offered your life enough times to try to increase the speed of the countdown. I also assume that the reason it is like this is so that veterans can go for endurance runs here to see how far they can actually get and while that is an okay thing, I would also like to be able to leave when I want to, it is what makes other modes good.

4. Ability to leave survival, defection, and excavation missions similar to Defense/Interception missions. I know I have my annoyance about this vote system above in #2, but it is almost more annoying when you need to go somewhere and you cannot leave the mission unless there is a majority vote for the entire team to leave. Currently it is either wait while dead for the next undisclosed amount of time or abort the mission which both don't seem reasonable to me.

5. While in a party only take the people currently enrolled in the clan to the dojo upon selecting the dojo in the navigation. I was once in a party with 2 random people before where they decided they wanted to go to their dojo, upon having the host of the party select this I was automatically taken to their clan dojo with no warning, and no vote to go at all. I am all for letting new recruits being brought to a dojo for them to see it or inviting people for trading, but going there against my will and for no reason doesn't make much sense to me. I have also wanted to take my friend to the clan to turn in some color research but I didn't want to drag the person in our party there against his will so i waited for him to leave the party before we went to the dojo.

6. The Relic Selection Screen Closes if Someone Leaves the Party When Choosing a Relic for the Next Mission. Since I play by myself most of the time this is a constant frustration where I want to start the next fissure mission but I can't choose a new relic because the people in the party keep leaving one at a time. Every time its while i'm selecting a relic so it takes me back to the navigation screen again where I have to select the mission node again and then the relic again. 

7. Always Let The Host Cancel Missions. Currently it goes something like if the host selects a mission they can cancel it, and if someone else in the party selects a mission the only option is to first clear the vote (which is basically just a decline option). This option wont clear the vote started most of the time and if the start mission timer has begun the only option for the host to escape from going into the mission is to leave the party. My friend was once trying to radiant a relic while we had the vote for the next fissure mission started by an impatient person who started the timer before me or my friend had chosen a relic. We were dragged to this relic mission with no relic because as the host my only option was to leave the party during the rush countdown.

My Issues all revolve around host migration, mission selection, and extraction from missions which I think should all be addressed whether it is how I have suggested or another way. Sorry for run-on sentences and bad grammar, but i think I got my points across regardless.