Hi guys,
I feel the need to post this now, while Inifite is under development because default server selection has very much been a somewhat overlooked feature in the past, and the feature’s inclusion at launch is CRUCIAL for the matchmaking quality of the game in this particular region.
Australia, in regards to online gaming, unfortunately suffers from being geographically isolated from other big sources of players. What this means is that it’s not fun to play Halo on US or even South East Asian servers from Australia. 150ms or more latency makes Halo sluggish and awkward. There’s simply no getting around the physics of this.
Australians/NZ need to play on the Australian Azure Data Centres with other Australians AT LAUNCH, by default, and no this won’t stop you playing with your overseas friends either, or even from playing overseas at all if you don’t really want.
Further down the line, as the population decays, compromises should be enabled if it’s even necessary, in order to keep Match Times and Skill Matching at acceptable levels.
That said, it is my firm belief, that if
- There are consolidated playlist offerings (the playerbase split over several sometimes unnecessary playlists), and,
- Aussies/Kiwis are by default placed onto low ping games, then
the population of Infinite WON’T fall off a cliff in Australia as it has done for Halo 5 and MCC and such compromises won’t be needed.
We really should be holding Halo to a higher standard. The new PC based players certainly will be expecting this, they simply won’t play the game if there’s any lag.
There’s precedent in this functionality:
Heroes of the Storm and Overwatch handle it brilliantly. You go into those games and you are guaranteed a low ping game, without ever being presented with a ‘balanced or focussed’ option. Sure the default server can be selected in the options if you like, AND you can search up with your overseas friends seamlessly (it will just choose a server either between you, or more likely for the majority of players).
Point - why not Options instead of defaulted server selection?
Options are great in theory, but all they do is split the playerbase in Australia. For every person that gives up searching and switches to expanded, the matchmaking quality drops for everyone else, as they quickly get sucked up into overseas games.
Point - it pretty much already works this way, it’s called ‘global distribution’.
Yes, but the subtle difference is in both having your default be to low ping games, with hard parameters to stop you going into US games, and also the option to opt-in to overseas games being in the settings menu rather than right there as you search.
Counterpoint - but I don’t care about ping, I just want search time to be low.
Nothing’s stopping you from switching your default server to America if you really want to. I just don’t think it should be right there tempting everyone, it should be within the network settings menu like in Heroes of the Storm, a game that has maintained an extremely healthy Aussie population since 2015.
Counterpoint - but I don’t care about ping, I just want fair games.
How can games be fair when one side has a 100-200ms ping discrepancy? You’re basically battling your ISP at that point rather than the enemy players. The incredible work Josh Menke has done for H5 will of course be used in Halo Infinite, a huge update to how the game determines your skill and the algorithms used to balance matches. This whole counterpoint is not as much as a consideration anymore I don’t feel - your ping being low and fair should trump it. Also, consolidating playlists would help as much with fair games AND with ping rather than joining a foreign player pool.
Legitimate Concern - what is there’s just not enough people playing to warrant such a system working? What if matchmaking quality suffers in other ways, I.e skill matching and matching times?
Simple, the compromises can be added in earlier. Only an employee could guess at the population levels for AU and judge whether this would work, however AT LAUNCH there will definitely be enough players to ensure good games. This whole post is designed to ensure that there are good games!
I’m hoping this post can get some traction from AU/NZ players who value low-ping games. And US players who are sick of having laggy Aussies in their games lol.