Feedback, Playing with friends, Server Browser and Portal
Hello everyone,
I've been a long fan of the Franchise especially the earlier titles like 2, Vietnam, 2142, Bad Company.
I enjoy long battles that need teamwork and strategy to win. I'll try to be as unbiased as possible.
This game is NOT made for me and that's OKAY
I was planning on talking about things that I will only mention, I feel like there's people that dove already deep enough into these issues and made good points.
Things like:
Map sizes
Choke points
Less freedom (restrictive urban maps)
Too much freedom (everyone can do anything almost solo)
Setting navigation + naming scheme in these settings (default settings is not ideal)
User interface
Emplacements (questioning placements)
etc.
I'd like to also mention the positives.
The game is very fun and feels very solid.
Great optimization this should be new standard in gaming and we should not be happy with anything less than what EA has presented here. (I'm running 3080Ti, Ryzen 7 5800X3D, 32GB of DDR4)
The amount of customization you can do in your settings is good.
That out of the way I'd like to talk about the mythical Server Browser
I have played the Beta alone and upwards with 8-10 people.
The issues starts when you have more than 3 friends (unlikely but not impossible).
The 5th person (even another squad of 4 people) will be stuck in queue, because the servers are filled first before you can join on you friends. When you do manage to join together the round is OVER, well at least you made it on a server together, right? No. After the game ends it doesn't rotate the map or the sides, the game matchmakes you again to a new server and the cycle continues.
This brings me to another issue, we would matchmake even 10 times in a row to the SAME map on the SAME side.
Now you might be saying but "PORTAL will fix", "Portal will have Server Browser", "Portal is our only hope".
Yes you have a valid point. BUT
In my opinion people should not have to play portal to get basic features.
EA has been dismissing feedback about these things with the same word as above "portal", "but portal", "please stop complaining we made portal".
A little rant over, let's talk about possible solutions.
First the most obvious, they already made a Server Browser for Portal why not use it as a alternative to Matchmaking in the normal modes? The probable answer: Because they want to use skill based matchmaking.
Okay, let's keep with their vision. EA want's skill based matchmaking, squads that can fit only 4 people, and fast queues.
Ideas for Solutions:
Multi-squad matchmaking, you make mutiple squads and link them together to queue up together.
Or, instead you can join people that are playing, which is already a feature. At the end of a round ask the players "Would you like your squad to stay on the server or Queue again". Then fill the server with people that queued up and have similar MMR(skill based Matchmaking).
And to break the monotony of getting the same map and the same side all the time switch sides automatically and after both side were played you switch the map keeping all the players that want to stay, rinse and repeat. This would minimize the frustration people are having without having to implement a server browser.
Any solution to these problems by EA would be appreciated and I hope EA will do what's best for the players not their wallets.
Thank you for reading through! O7