Multiplayer/PvP portal idea for the next game

As seen on Justin Wiebe’s Twitter feed and copied to the GW2 forums from there, splitting the playerbase up too much means some game modes and platforms lack players. He was asked questions about why the more popular mystery portal game modes didn’t make it into the regular multiplayer portal and he pointed out that adding too many lobby types dilutes the players too thin, and especially in some regions like Oceania, that’s a serious issue. On PC even in NA East, people focus on TT to the exclusion of other modes, and that’s a problem. When GW was at its height, you could easily play any mode, and I used to love Taco Bandits! Now on PC NA east at least, you have to play TT or jump into bot matches in GW2 and with Taco Bandits gone, we can’t play that mode anymore. Also, with no bots in GW, we can’t enjoy Chomp Town, Crash Couse, and so many other great maps anymore as they aren’t TT maps. BfN removed mixed mode before it lost support, which is also a shame. I feel mixed mode is the best for multiplayer matches as it has variety, and will outline my idea for the next shooter to address the issue.

In GW2, the portal has the following multiplayer options; Welcome Mat, Turf Takeover, Suburbination, Gnome Bomb, Team Vanquish, Vanquish Confirmed, and Mixed Mode. That’s 7 options! In the original Garden Warfare, you also have; Classic Team Vanquish, Classic Gardens & Graveyards (with regular Gardens & Graveyards as that games Turf Takeover option), and Taco Bandits, that’s 10! And when you add Ops to both sides, and then the mystery portals in GW2 and BfN, plus private matches, BfN free roam regions, Giddy Park and the Backyard Battleground, and Infinity Time, that really splits the players up! Now, giving us lots of options is great, as I remember one complaint from critics about GW’s launch was its lack of game modes (It didn’t have Vanquish Confirmed, Taco Bandits, Suburbination, or Gnome Bomb at launch), but we need a way to consolidate these and keep them heavily populated, while giving players options. I want to present my idea for this here.

Note that I would still like crossplay across all platforms, PC and all consoles, to be available. This requires strong anti-cheat that lacked in GW and GW2, and the issue of the disparity of KB+M vs. controller would have to be addressed, but being able to play with everybody would mean we’d have a lot of options and even with my idea to consolidate the modes, having more people playing together is just better for the health of the game and to keep matches full and lively, with multiple lobbies available even at off hours.

Multiplayer/PvP Portal: Will have 3 modes; Welcome Mat, Mixed Mode, and Private/Solo matches. All modes here will be 12v12. PvE activities, such as boss hunts, the mystery portal, Ops, and other possible modes will be separate and handled a bit differently and I will bring that up in a separate post.

• Welcome Mat will be for new players and would likely have just Team Vanquish and maybe Turf Takeover to teach them how things work and would have the normal welcome mat rules. To avoid ‘seal clubbing’, players of a certain amount of play time or account rank wouldn’t be able to use it.

• Private/Solo Matches will be much like GW2 now with the ability to select map (all appropriate maps, including night versions, would be available, and a random map button like Ops have in GW and GW2), skill level, and crazy modifiers. The following modes would be available: Team Vanquish, Vanquish Confirmed, Turf Takeover, Gnome Bomb, Suburbination, Soil Survivors, and Taco Bandits/Capture the Taco (having both taco modes would probably not work, and capture would probably be the most preferred, but I love taco bandits).

• Mixed Mode combines all the modes; Team Vanquish, Vanquish Confirmed, Turf Takeover, Gnome Bomb, Suburbination, Soil Survivors, and Taco Bandits/Capture the Taco into one playlist for all players. What happens here is that when a lobby is generated, it picks one of these modes and an appropriate map at random; once that match is complete one of two ideas occur: 1-the AI randomly chooses another mode not already played in its current rotation until all modes are played, then it does that again, and so on, for as long as the lobby exists, or 2-players will vote on the game type for the next match while in the scoreboard and waiting for the match to start; this has to be controller friendly (easy to just select and click with the mouse), but with 6 options max (you can’t vote for the same mode you just played, maybe not the last 2 or 3 even), that shouldn’t be a problem, if there’s a tie in votes, the AI randomly chooses among the most tied options, while players must get their votes in before the time expires to count, if you don’t vote, it won’t count for or against the vote totals. In either case; the map will be random among those it hasn’t played until all maps of the correct mode are gone through, then it repeats that procedure indefinitely.

The idea here is to keep all modes played in the normal portal so you don’t have to rely on private matches to get your favorite mode in. With the game hopefully having a ton of maps, including night versions of all/most of them, you can stay in the portal for a long time and have a lot of variety. I’m not going to pretend it’s a perfect solution, but it does mean that you won’t be stuck with just one mode all the time, even in the vote method, you can’t have 2 of the same type in a row. With the entire multiplayer base of all platforms in one huge pool, if you get into a lobby you aren’t a fan of, getting a new one shouldn’t be that hard if you leave and re-enter the portal (and having an automatic toggle to not put you back in the same one for the next 10-30 minutes would help here). This also means that if new multiplayer/PvP modes are added past the portal, it wouldn’t dilute the player base further as they could be added to the existing mixed mode.

I know that Soil Survivors was designed for 6v6 but making it 12v12 would allow it to be in this portal, and should still work, and is probably even more chaotic and crazy fun!

For matchmaking, the game would be set up to not allow for the issues we have in GW and GW2 where you end up with 6 vs. 2 which is awful to deal with. If you went in with a group of up to 4 like the current 3 games, it would try to keep you on the same team, but that obviously may not always be possible if there isn’t room to do so, at least for your first match when you join mid-game. I’d also allow you to swap sides when you first join a lobby but not once you start playing, and not to make the balance worse; so only when you first arrive at the character select screen, i.e., when a new match starts, or you first join a match in progress, and only if that move wouldn’t unbalance the teams. We should also not need bots to backfill lobbies with them all combined across all PvP modes and all platforms like this. I’d like to keep the bots out of the PvP matches as much as possible. I don’t mind them as much as many do as I play lots of private matches, but it would just be better off if we only had players for the multiplayer/PvP portal.

Conclusion: Again, I know that some folks only want to play a certain mode or dislike a particular mode, but I wanted to consolidate them as much as possible to keep them lively and populated. My method here is simply meant as an idea that could work to keep players together and to keep all modes played consistently, and I wanted to present it here.