Can we get a new matchmaking option? Or at least fix it?

[TwilitAngel]

I have no idea how many people are frustrated when they join a lagging host, but what if there were two options instead of just clicking a mission and it automatically tries to force you into a party? Imagine two buttons when starting a mission [Host] or [Join]. Letting us choose to search for players, or start a session on our own. Instead of what we currently have which is waiting to possibly join someone already at wave 4 in a defense, or it didn't find a party and only then will it let us host. 

[MillbrookWest]

What's the solution when 4 people are all sitting on a node to start a mission, but they all selected "join"?

With the current implementation, at least it tries to get these 4 into a mission.

Current solution isn't ideal, but it does the best with what it's got - which is an infrastructure built around P2P networking. 

[(PSN)vidare]

Don't connect to hosts on wi-fi, would help a lot.

[Aeon94]

26 minutes ago, (PS4)vidare said:

Don't connect to hosts on wi-fi, would help a lot.

Or a " Never Host " option on launcher could work. :D

[theraot]

I usually go against these suggestions, because the current desing - as bad as the implementation seems at times, the current design... - makes sense. If everybody can be host, it ensures there are hosts available. If you give the option to join only, you may starve (that's a technical term) because you do not find a host to join because everybody is doing the same.

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However, I have realized something... Warframe is only taking ping (latency) into account. Picking by latency (ping) will give a host that minimizes... well, latency. That should mean less lag... if and only if, the host has enough "bandwidth". If the host does not have enough uplink to send updates to all the peers, the uplink becomes a bottleneck, it will start to lag, and eventually time out (connection lost).

So, perhaps Warframe should measure downlink and uplink transfer speed ("bandwidth"), and consider that when picking host.

And I should remind you that uplink is often smaller than downlink, and also the effective transfer speed will be affected by last mile technologies (that's another technical term), such as Wi-Fi.

DE has the means to make warframe to measure transfer speed (in fact, they could make the launcher do it, while it is checking for updates), and use that to determinite who is suitable to host at all. Then from those suitable it can use latency (ping) to pick who will be the host.

Edited May 2, 2018 by theraot