Why Match Making Systems (MMS) Fail On PC

[101459]

Summarly because MMS hosted games can not work without an enormous number of players looking for games concurrently. While that level of play-share may exist on consoles, it's rare on PC, and will always fail at what otherwise would not be a critical level of play-share to sustain a multi-player game on PC with a Sever Browser interface. The math that demonstrates this emprically is fairly complex and is part of what's know as combinatorics; unfortunately very few programmers that develop games have the math background for this -- they're typically just implementing MMS middle-ware and tweaking parameters to solve an unsolvable problem.

To explain all this in a general sense that can perhaps be understood by some intuitively; for an MMS to start a game it has to connect players that: are all looking (and waiting) for a game at the same time, meet fixed criterion of latency or ping, and a minimum number of players; every additional criterion (or variable of existing criterion) added; like a ping range, or region for language, or game type, or connection errors -- raises the number of players required to start a game exponentially. These criterion are inflexible to an MMS, any player outside a particular range of parameters will not be able to join what may be the only available games, and will have no way of knowing till the MMS times out, or an indefinite wait for more people that match his criterion to decide they want to fire up the game -- he has no information and no control over anything but how long he's willing to wait.

In addition to the challenges of an MMS in general; the Ubisoft MMS is confronted with the added 'features & benefits' of Ubisoft's Store/DRM/Network Layer interface that throws up a litany of connection issues and errors which adds another set of variables, further raising the complexity the MMS must filter -- raising the number of players required to be concurrently seeking games radically.

As well most MMS will try to find the player with the lowest common latency and make that player the host, adding still more time, issues (and instability), and as players grow impatient with nothing to do but wait -- many will leave; and then calculating the best host has to start over, which adds even more wait time, makes more people impatient -- in a vicious circle of time lost and wasted where there was more then enough players to start a game and the MSS not only fails to do so, it alienates players that leave in frustration.

There are other reasons that MMS hosted PC games almost instantly go dead at what would otherwise be sub-critical play-share that everyone can intuitively understand, player perception: no player looking for a game with an MSS has any idea how large the constellation of games and players looking for games is; it's a black box where his only knowable variable is his patience to wait for the MMS to assign him to a game or fail entirely to do so -- and there's nothing to indicate how long that will take or what the outcome will be. This is not what PC gamers are used to or like, and there are a litany of fun alternatives where they don't have to put up with this, shortening the patience curve even more.

Compare this to a Server Browser System where players are able to see instantly how many are playing and enjoying a game, the pings to the games that are starting or in progress, can choose what pings they're willing to tolerate and game types based on what's available rather then having it forced on them with a black box wait for an MMS to reveal if there's anything they can even join, and in some cases (Ubisoft) leave them dangling waiting indefinitely and clueless as to what's going on.

Server Browser supported games sustain and grow a much smaller play share then MMS served games on PC because players can look and see instantly if there's a game going, join smaller games with more subjective criterion just to play a game (game type that's not their favorite, higher ping, people they don't know etc.), or even start and host a game, and everyone doesn't have to be looking (and waiting) to start a game at the same time and join/connection time is a fraction of a percent of what's seen even with a large audience connecting with am MMS. Compare this to the alternative with an indefinite wait behind a wall of zero information where you'll have no idea if getting a game going is even possible -- and many run out of time and patience to even discover that.

The math of combinatorics shows what most would regard as shocking numbers for what's required to get games going under mathematically ideal conditions; and if you add real world variables like: jitter, networking issues, and very human and appropriate impatience of people that just want to play a game being forced to wait indefinitely for the MMS to reveal there's nothing to connect to, (or in the case of Ubisoft's horrible MMS implementation reconnecting and disconnecting) growing impatient and quitting -- and what all this adds to everyone's join time, it's surprising that MMS work on PC games even when they do.

Most PC gamers game on a PC to avoid exactly this sort of thing; I know I do...

Edited August 31, 2015 by 101459

[101459]

Anyone that has played both Siege betas has seen that the MSS under this game is little different then what rides on any other listen server Ubisoft game, and has seen no improvement -- it's still the same miserable affair. The parties involved may not want to talk about it, fans may not understand it, but it's something that really can't be 'fixed' -- the issues of an MMS can only be moved around, and regardless of what's tweaked the results will look the same to the user anyway: more waiting and lost connections...

One issue not made clear in the previous post that's an even larger problem for Siege where the game must connect 10 players to one player as the listen server, is player latency differential. While you may connect to 'player 7' who is elected by the MMS to be the server with a ping of 120 and another gamer that connects to 'player 7' with a ping of 140 -- that third player's latency to you may be outside the limit of the MMS, hits NAK limits of MMS reconciliation to connect other players, calculate host migration, and the MMS will just idle, drop players, attempt to migrate a hose again, and times out or even hang... Which is exactly what we always see in MMS hosted PC games.

There are an enormous number of Asian FPS, and FPS MMO games that use a listen server setup like Siege (it seems reasonable to assume Wildlands will as well) -- but these games use a Server Browser to make the game connecting experience more interactive, give the gamer more choice, and it obviously can keep more games going when there there are fewer playing. The there are over forty of these games on Steam that can be played for free, many are quite successful, the Server Browser clearly works better, host selection is totally opaque to those playing, and host migration can usually be reconciled before games even start because these games setup faster.

Edited September 23, 2015 by 101459

[twcrash]

it all started with Modern Warfare 2. How do you keep people from pirating a game? you take away the ability to host a dedicated server. That simple bit of software eliminates all those problems. One of the main reasons I stopped playing the COD series. It got to the point on PC I was connecting to someone and getting a 1xx+ ping and the game would take forever to connect to someone because 90% of the servers are overseas for U.S. players.

[101459]

That the Siege 'closed beta' MMS had identical issues to GURFUS, (even threw up some of the same error messages) and could not even connect 5 players to a coop game in a reasonable amount of time -- is a very bad sign for Wildlands. Coop networking with just 5 players on small maps is as easy as it gets in terms of mp game code, and should be easy to get literally perfect. That it will be more challenging for Wildlands due to level design size and likely content sync required, is, to put a polite face on it: an epic bummer.

We're into nearly a decade of Ubisoft in-house proprietary engine Clancy revisionist multi-player PC games where literally not one has shipped with net-code or multi-player server/MMS interface that works at a functional level that's sustainable even for pre-pubescent children with endless patience and boundless spare time.

The only explanation that makes any sense is that no one at a decision making level at Ubisoft actually knows how bad the problem is. This seems a plausible scenario when you consider the size of the company and the customer support and feedback mechanics in play at Ubisoft through their product support and forums.

When dozens of customers are reporting support issues being marked 'fixed' even when no support personal has had contact with a customer, or has and acknowledges there are no support steps to fix the problem, posts documenting this are made to the Ubisoft's forums and deleted en mass, and old fashioned snail mail is ignored, clearly, there is a problem -- and likely one of greater magnitude then has been publically visible but is not being acknowledged.

What's heart-breaking (and has to be for some Developers as well) is that these are some really good games; while Vegas, GURFUS and Siege may not follow Clancy, R6, or Ghost Recon design canon; there is brilliant design in all these games that's clearly a labor of love, insightful and clever, but is lost to a potentially much larger audience and more sustainable success due to these games being strapped to a multi-player platform of listen servers, crummy middle-ware net-code, and the most horrible MMS concept ever devised for PC gaming.

Edited October 6, 2015 by 101459

[Muddvain]

Dedicated Servers only way to go period no matter what console/PC system your running.