Current map selection screen contains 16 random maps, with random modifiers and random diffculties.
At certain times people cannot find the difficulty and modifiers they would like to play, with the incrase of varriety of modifiers (great idea with new modes, btw!!!) and that puts them off from the game.
Modifiers randomly generated make hard content that developers were working on not visible for us. This problem will get worse once you add more modifiers.
The solution:
Introduce 5 tabs or a switch on top a screen that allows us to choose difficulty we want to play and make the maps on the main part of the screen contain 6 or more maps for that difficulty.
Make sure there is always a random map for each of the modifiers !!!
This solution will enable you to provide more modifiers in the future (there will be a lot of screen space available) and enable people elegant way of chosing them. Maps can be kept random on current time intervals to make lobby filling not a concern.
This solution should have negotiable effect on lobby creation because it will just add few more effective maps. It might actually have very positive effect on player count as is it will enable all content to be accessible all the time.
People donāt get it. It isnāt about server resources, itās about creating artificial scarcity. Youāre describing something that is 100% by-design.
The reason is that artificial scarcity creates a fomo effect that encourages you to log in and check if your favourites are available, while also extending their lifespan by limiting your playtime on specific maps/modes.
Cycling through the maps/modes also means it takes longer for the average player to get bored of them, which reduces pressure on the devs to continually introduce new content.
Itās straight from the GaaS template. Keep people logging in as consistently as possible while using assets as efficiently as possible.
If its truly FOMO by design, maybe designers should look at results of this design and rethink their design if not satisfactory. There is no shame in this. It is not too late
They could, but remember that the design of the element weāre talking about here is driven by the conscious decision to not let us play whatever we want, whenever we want.
Unless they decide that there is no amount of restriction that people will tolerate, map selection limits arenāt going anywhere. The best we can hope for is that they continue to improve their methods for deciding what options we get.
More people are not complaining and are continuing to play without all the gripes.
Here and Reddit are the minority in player numbers. We see the same 30 names or so here. 99% of the posts are by people who have absolutely no idea how programming works and think a magic wand makes all the changes happen.
Most people are happy with the variety in maps and the different difficulties. Just something to keep in mind.
while i agree that we (reddit plus this tiny forum) are just vocal minority, you fail to observe non-vocal majority of playerbase who jstopped playing since release. hence they are not fine with state of the game
Not as minor as some might think, apparently. Remember they have made a bunch of changes recently in response to peopleās criticisms, including changes to the map board.
Believe it or not, itād probably be even more noticeable if people could select their own map to play because thereād be a few select favourites that would just be played over and over.
I disagree, Just because people donāt post you cant say for sure they are happy with the current situation. All you can say for sure is they have not posted.
That is a very bold assumption. You think because a few people post that they are taking their ball and going home, that they actually have? Look at how many of those people continue to āreinstall just to check it outā or have threads dedicated to how many times they log in, just to be so sad that the game is accessible to all levels of skill. This thread included.
Far less people than you think have āleft the gameā . It is a bluff and bluster because the game continues to sell. Some people just donāt play because they do not enjoy the type of game. Maybe they got it because friends had it, then they found other interests or lost those friendsā¦ We have no idea why people stop playing. Assigning a reason that fits your agenda and bias is transparent and foolish.
Changes they have made come from constructive feedback sources. Not from temper tantrums and craptalk. just because your complaints happen to align with a change that came about does not mean they are related. Coincidence and causality are not the same boat, they just use the same waters.
Adding more mission options due to a larger player base that is now more max level than low, that is just smart game designā¦ almost like they have done this before.
Letās say that the suggestion might move the scarcity issue elsewhere. However, my comment was directed primarily at the fact that there are just a few maps and that when you regularly play just one or two maps because they are the only maps of the desired difficultyā¦ At the moment, I wish FS just used modifiers and secondary tasks, with a significant reward boost for motivation, to hide this, including strong potential for the mission failure if you miss/lose a grim or a script. But OK, this is just a quick idea.
In any case, I keep coming back to someoneās idea about progress bulletins. I think that would be a significant cosmetic improvement to the mission screen - just a few lines about the current situation and where we can contribute. It would even fit the progress model if suddenly there was a week where the only real action was a set progress to accomplish because of a major offensive.
And the missions could benefit from the intro and voicelines referring to the previous missions, e.g.:
The heretics have sabotaged the work of your predecessors who saved the communications arrayā¦
The previous teamās incompetence has left deeply rooted traces of demonic infestation inā¦ I hope you will do a more thorough job andā¦
well ill agree its by design , but i think simple numbers explain it pretty clearly. and to be clear i really like the current system , i can just login hit quickplay and i get a good spread of missions full of players.
how long do you want to que?
assuming perfectly even distribution if you dont want anyone to wait more than one minute you do want full lobies and a mission lasts say 20 mins on average.
then each map offered will require an absolute minimum of 80 people so if you have 16 maps on offer the minimum people you need is 1200 if you raise that to
well thats 30 , so were up to 3400 per area, and what would be the likely actual needed to cover the spread of distributions? 3?,4?,10? times that number
so on a practical front
it just requires too large a player base to offer this type of mission select and maintain full fast lobbies.
Meta- any other quickplay v2 vets out here will know this choice is an illusion you end up hitting the same half a dozen maps 99% of the time sometimes offering more options results in less variance the current version forces actual rotation. wether you like that or not.
Future proofing, a couple of years from now when we have the sister hive city the drukhari raiding stronghold or god knows what is coming and we have 2 more difficulties and 3X the maps.
i just dont see there being much hope in going for this full option board, the previous game did it and they moved from it for this game , there was clearly issues.
My recomendation would be to instead go for them implementing a way for 4 man pre made teams to pick thier map and then get the social tools to build groups
while your right, iāve seen many people say that they log in then walk to the mission board, and are faced with low intensity, and immediately close the game again, forcing this behavior canāt be healthy for the game.
generally i agree that funneling players into a select few missions is required (maybe not right now but perhaps in 2 years), but having a bunch of the same modifiers applied to missions,
results in people leaving if they are not interested in them,
and if that happens a couple of times, those players probably will get exhausted and start playing something else that doesnāt test their patience.
so from my point of view FS is absolutely required to give some variety in map modās each time they rotate, and not just swap one mod for another for couple of hours.
well theres always room for improvement , i dont think the current version is as inclusive as it could be, personally i really like it i can just hit quick play and get teh full spread of experience, but some observations with a healthy amount of awareness that these are coming from this forum which is never a good representation.
but a start point id use is something like this
Mod selection is a lot more important to the players than map selection
so have players pick a difficulty , then offer them 2 to 4 options first the quickplay button where they are just thrown into where needed now. a no mod button where they go into a modless random map game , then have one where you go with mod of the day into a random map. and finnaly random map with random mod.
the number of options could be dynamic adjustting to the players available and skewed to the difficulties where they are
Some mods like low intense dont fit with others like shock trooper gauntlet or difficulties like low intense and heresy , i dont have the metrics and would assume this is something that will be ongoing but trim out bad combos or unpopular mods so theres no fat in the system.
it seems the rotation of mods is too fast , unknown when it will be too long. but maybe mods should be there for a day at a time, the schedule should be visible in and out of game theres no reason we cant know a week or two ahead of time
old faithfull allow, 4 player pre mades to pick from everything but this will have to be limited to not being re inforced from random que pool. you go in with your team and thats your lot.
so you could pick your difficulty + one of - no mod- mod of the day-random mod and the busiest difficulty could have 2 mods of the day and that would take us up to 16 combos which is the same number as they use right now.
we would loose map selection but frankly i dont feel like theres much actual choice now , you tend to pick the only one with the right mod anyway.
A huge total number of combinations isnāt going to split the playerbase. Quite the opposite. Every game ever proves that people pick favourites and maps/conditions would be no exception.
That is, even if we did have full freedom of choice around maps/diff/conditions, certain combinations would make up the majority of runs and other combinations would be mostly ignored; The more combinations that are available, the more centralised the population would become and the fewer options there really are.