Because social playlist is ‘supposed to be’ about just having laughs instead of having even teams (The dream situation of the matchmaking), I have been thinking of different variations about social playlist. So, my idea is:
Instead of “Pick a playlist and wait until the matchmaking system gathers people”, social playlist would use server browser you can find in Gears of War 1, Perfect Dark Zero and from almost any PC-game, which has online multiplayer.
Players would be able to create their own matches and modify them as much as they can in private custom matches.
When player wants to search games from social playlist, he/she gets options to:
- Search for specific gametype and its variations (Selecting Infection for example, searches for Infection and variants of it created by players. If player modifies a default gametype without saving it as a new gametype, it would be have “Slayer (Modified)”, for example)
- Search matches from specific region
- Search for matches, which are (not) in progress
- Search matches with specific player limit
- Search matches, which have specific preferences (Chatty players, welcoming new players, serious matches and so on)
And of course, the player isin’t forced to specify what kind of match he/she wants to search. When player wants to start searching, the game starts listing matches and the updating can be stopped anytime the player wants.
From the list, the player can see:
- Host’s name and rank
- Gametype
- Map (Forge will be displayed to its name, if it’s forge map)
- Ping
- Player limit
- Preference (Chatty players, welcoming new players, serious matches and so on. Isin’t shown, if the host hasn’t selected a preference)
The player also has “modifications” option, which can be selected by pressing specific button. This brings up a list of modifications of the match, showing the amount of health and shield, regeneration, radar type, what kind of weapon set has been selected and so on.
If there’s enough players in the lobby (Half of the lobby’s max player limit?), they can veto to start the map by having more than 50% ready. The waiting players can also customize their loadouts normally and so on while waiting. To prevent the match starting before the host has finished creating a new gametype variant, the host can modify the gametype, map and such before the lobby is created.
Players can save the maps and gametypes of the lobbies to their Xbox 360’s hard drive. They can also ignore specific users’ matches or favourite them. Both would have their own specific tabs in the server browser.
The matches wouldn’t give Spartan points or EXP.
Do you like this idea? Could it be improved? Remember that I may have forgotten some ideas or things while writing this.