Predator Wait times, queues, estimates, alternate game mode, FIXES

#1

So, after countless hours waiting in queue to get into match as predator, then deciding F* it because after 45 minutes you load into an empty lobby or a lobby with one or two players who wont ready up(rightfully so, its not fair at all), so you just go ahead and select no preference, get into a game, and its over in 5 minutes most of the time, either the team rushes the pred or the pred rushes the team beserker and just crushes everyone in a few seconds before we can send him into second wind, so to combat that every single game, remove the ability to chooseā€¦make it so every 5 games youre the pred, unless you quit the game as a FT member, which would then reset your counter to 0 and you must play 4 more games to play as pred, this would give everyone the opportunity to play pred and also even things out a bitā€¦ill tell you whyā€¦

  1. more people will get experience as pred, so both good and bad players alike will get better and learn the game better, thus making every game more interactive and longer lasting

  2. longer lasting games result in more practice for all parties involved, thus more equal games as skills increase over time, then the stats will also reflect what needs buffed and nerfed based on the community as a whole and not a handful of always preds vs a handful of always fireteams, the stats from the games will more accurately reflect the community as a whole resulting in better patch results based on round stats and builds

  3. make playing the pred a reward, put in your time as FT and earn your turn to play pred on your fifth game, or make it percentage based, store the statistical data of times being pred over tim ebeing FT and the individual with the lowest ratio out of the lobby should be pred, this would result in a more equal experience for everyone, many people dont have hours to waste in queue to be pred once or twice a day, its also next to impossible to get good at if you only get to play it 2 times a day, now this wont resolve that issue because you still wont get to play it constantly, but this is better than sitting in queue not playing at allā€¦and wait theres more for a solution about only wanting to play predā€¦

  4. the solution, make a 5 player FFA where EVERYONE can be pred, and incorporate some of the FT mechanics like mudding up etc to protect yourself from other Preds, this would give the community a real chance to improve their skills as pred and get in some play time to figure out what works for themā€¦im not sure that play mode would be so difficult to incorporateā€¦also add missions for pred to complete like claiming the most AI whilst trying to avoid one another, make getting a pred extra points, but make winning the game possible by claiming enough AI and make them harder to killā€¦a kill race of sorts, obviously this idea isnt perfect and could use some refining, but im just trying to think of way to make the game more robust and more enjoyable while the bugs get ironed outā€¦

  5. please please please find a way to reduce queue times, its aweful, i play ft 99% of the time because i cant wait in queue for 40(estimated 10-20) minutes before loading into an empty lobby just to leave because no one gets placed into the lobby and start over againā€¦it sucksā€¦

this is unrelated but would be beneficial, please incorporate a hardware ban for cheaters, not enough game companies do this and just ban accounts at the expense of the honest gamers, account bans dont solve anything, yet game creation companies continue to do itā€¦because they hope to keep making subscription money on the cheaters at the expense of the honest players and it sucksā€¦

leave a reply below with your opinions on this and if you think it will help with some of the problems through the growing pains of the infancy of this what could be amazing game, or if you think it wonā€™t, but please also add why it wont help, bitching to bitch solves nothing, ive added what i think could be changed and HOW it would help, what it would impact

(edit) @BioTek responded to this post and suggested a pass button for those who donā€™t want to be Pred, thatā€™d be a nice addition.

(edit 2) please include weapon hotkeys for predā€¦thats bare minimum right thereā€¦

1 Like
#2

they need to remove team selection , just put 5 ppl in a game and ad ramdom one is selected pred. if the one selected doesnā€™t want it he can pass it to one of the other 4 players

1 Like
#3

thats solid, is random the best solution though? instead of random i think it should be statistically calculated to the person who has been pred fewest % of full games played

just a thought, but i do like the idea of passing the pred if you dont want to be it, maybe add that to the statistical choosing?

#4

Hahaha no.

#5

nope. because the selection is broken as fuck ā€¦ when i played no preference. i never got picked as a predator maybe once. it doesnt even work properly. and forcing people to play a mode they dont want to play and already sick of and bored. is a bad idea not a good one

#6

Yep if they do that we will have the same problem.as league of legend. People quitting the game for be the pred

#7

what do you think about a 5 player FFA of all preds hunting buffed (smarter) AI?

(edit)
And eachotherā€¦

#8

thats why i mentioned statistically based system, and the alternative game mode of 5 pred FFA, i think that solves both problems, if you only want to play pred, play 5 player FFA, if you want to hunt fireteam human players, wait your turn, it sucks but its better than this waiting game we have nowā€¦taking hours to get two full games in i think is far worse than the alternative game mode and actually taking turns at this pointā€¦the wait is unreal, it always says a few minutesā€¦

but thats why i also said if you quite a queue or game your counter resets to zero resulting in no benefit from quittingā€¦which should solve the LoL quitting pattern

(edit)
and instead of waiting to be pred getting nothing accomplished, youā€™d at the least be playing, time spent more fun that sitting in empty queues, and gaining experience towards unlocks etcā€¦it just seems better to me all around and you can guarantee after some time youll get to be pred but youll be busy while you do it, itll pass faster and result in a more robust experience i feelā€¦definitely need some better backend on this also, im not sure how they are matchmaking but given the fact its in epic store, and ps4, theres gotta be better existing deployment of matchmaking from almost any other game out right now, maybe they can work out a deal for that with epic(preferably not PlayStation, notoriously bad on that end no offense)?

#9

they need to fix the matchmaking somethings clearly broken ā€¦ the timers are all off. maybe it needs some backend work idk ā€¦

1 Like
#10

@IllFonic, I(maybe we as a community) am(are) curious to hear your thoughts on this? What do you think? Good/Bad Ideas? How quickly could this be implemented and incorporated? Are suggestions and requests like this reasonable? What kind of suggestions are you looking for? Im just trying to be beneficial to the community and the game and you(the devs). I understand this couldnt happen overnight, but maybe shoot out a message and reply saying hey, we hear you, we are looking into X, Y and Z and this is where we are at with A,B and C. We think this could be done by (insert date here) etcā€¦im just trying to make things more conversational, know that we appreciate the work youre doing and the time you put in!

#11

Thereā€™s nothing wrong with it other than selfish people refusing to play Fireteam and then complaining about queue times and that they hit 100 and canā€™t keep getting Veritanium. I fully support a cap on how many times you can queue for Pred relative to how much youā€™ve played Fireteam. Even if itā€™s just making you play Fireteam once after every two or three Pred games it would be an improvement now.

The only other thing you might claim is broken is the no preference option because it never gives you Pred. Thatā€™s just because of how many people are queuing for only Pred.

#12

Yea i play FT 90% of the time, but the hand full of times i want to play pred the queue is ridiculous. I think a statistical gate would be nice so everyone gets to play without waiting 30 min to get dropped into an empty queue or one half filled who then back out after a minute. Leaving you waiting in the queue multiple times before getting a full game. Have it auto select the person who has statistically played it the least of the lobby. Incorporate a pass button if you donā€™t want to be it, and call it a day. Lobby times will drop to near zero, and progression through the game will be significantly faster, wait times will diminish, and overall quality of life will improve, because some people choose to only play as pred, it kinda ruins the gameā€¦

Another cool addition might be getting bumped back to lobby with the same group and it auto rotate to the next player to be pred, so you donā€™t have to back out and re queue. If you wanted to leave you could, and thatd be great,you could leave, autofill would fill one spot instead of four and times lower again. I think the matchmaking is the worst part of the gameā€¦outside of that the game is great, but waiting all day to play pred sucks, specially when you keep getting dropped into empty lobbies or half filled and they leave, then you gotta requeue and wait again, and its always longer than advertised with their estimate wait time

1 Like
#13

Why is it that people who keep wanting to randomize predator turns never take into account that some of us bought the game to only play pred. That was the whole selling point of this game.

So my money has to go into something that I find random and boring cause yall cant think of a better solution?

Are you gonna refund all the people who only care about pred? If I wanted to play fps Iā€™d go play mw or any of the other 100ā€™s of the games in that genre.

The solution is not to make pred random. But to make fireteam feel fun and cool. I dont like ft because it feels so generic and boring. But theres the problem. How do you make humans more fun to play WITHOUT making them too strong?

Answer that and we will have a start towards finding a solution to people only wanting one side.
Because honestly I love playing pred, I rarely play ft. But, make ft fun, and il play both possibly an even amount.

Also giving human more rewards is not a solution. Cause i dont care about farming the ingame currency or leveling up. Iā€™m lv 63 and I feel I have all I need.

1 Like
#14

refusing to play fireteam the same old repetive mode or game where ive played 100 plus times and bored of the same old objective where ive nothing to gain by doing so and many others wont. im level 80 something and que times still suck. so you support a cap forcing people to play a mode they dont want too? yeah. no that isnt going to work it wont work. an improvement? in all my games getting me to level 80 whatever i am i must of got picked to be predator twice. i think the whole things botched or bugged but what do i know?

#15

Iā€™m not in favor of randomizing it so much but there should be a cap because obviously youā€™re not the only one that wants a break from Fireteam and other people want a chance. Itā€™s about trying to be fair so everyone can have a chance and obviously ā€œno preferenceā€ does jack shit while the Pred only option is so heavily saturated. It doesnā€™t need to dip into the ā€œno preferenceā€ pool when so many people have Pred only selected.

I donā€™t like forcing shit on anybody but at the same time itā€™s not fair that many people would love to have a mix and just donā€™t get shit because some are a bit selfish and always choose Pred only.

#16

Thatā€™s basically the point of this, everyone wants to play pred, and the rest of us just suck it up and play ft more often than not, because weā€™re tired of waiting in ridiculous queuesā€¦

@MagenZion thats exactly what Iā€™m saying, matchmaking mechanics need work, it seems everyone wants to be pred, obviously thats why we bought the game, no one bought this game to play FT. LITERALLY NO ONEā€¦if they did, theyā€™d play CS, COD, HALO, etc I mean the list goes on and on and on about FPSā€™s without a predā€¦but we all bought this game cus we wanna play predā€¦im not a fan of forcing anything on anyone either, but doing it statistically out of your last ten games or something should shake things up and even it out a bitā€¦that way you donā€™t have to rely on rng and keep getting shit on because your rng sucksā€¦but an actual mathematical theorem to evenly disperse the odds of playing pred would be niceā€¦no preference definitely doesnā€™t work, ive literally never been pred playing no preferenceā€¦not one timeā€¦

I understand we are in beta, but thats a relatively simple mechanic to incorporate into matchmakingā€¦when they store your account info in the DB and your stats(which they definitely do), why not use your pred/FT ratio to determine who should be ā€œItā€

Donā€™t you remember playing tag as a kidā€¦you had to take turns being it, cus your parents were tired of listening to you argue amongst siblings and friends about whoā€™s it? Same thing applies hereā€¦everyone is bitching, so remove the preference, give everyone a fair shot, move onā€¦sucks it come to this because if we wanna play pred we should be able to, but when the ratio is 1 to 4 pred to FT, there are literally 4 times as many players stuck being FT when they select no pref trying to play fairly to the handful of people who are only willing to play predā€¦which is literally why we all bought this game. Hence I mentioned the 5 pred FFA PVP game modeā€¦

#17

Thatā€™s an uncreative and lazy solution. The problem is ft is boring. Find a way to make them fun. Without them being too strong. Stop trying to randomize it.

Because making pred random will make a lot of ppl walk away. But if ft is made fun and cool then people wonā€™t mind as much playing both sides. I know I wouldnā€™t.

#18

I dont mind the queuā€™s, what i do hate that the estimate times are way off! And also that i join a empty or not a complete lobby so i have to cancel and enter another queu. I know i need to wait longer then a ft match as a predator but at least tell me how long i have to wait.
Why cant they fill a lobby when the lobby is not full yet??? Is it so hard when there are 2 empty spots to put 2 new players in??

#19

Hmmm, thatā€™s an interesting point. I havenā€™t really thought about how I feel about it so I might have to revisit that but my initial, gut reaction is to say I donā€™t think I got this game for just playing Pred. I like the atmosphere. The tension is great. Some games like Hunt: Showdown have too much (not that itā€™s a really comparable game to PHG in any other way) and I just canā€™t play them much but PHG feels like the matches are an okay enough length that it doesnā€™t keep my heart racing for 15 minutes and I can only play a match or two before I need to take a breather.

I suppose the overall stats of players in a lobby is one way but feels like it may result in what many have said: many people stopping playing. I feel like a simple per hour counter on how many times you can play Pred to how many times youā€™ve played Fireteam would be better because it doesnā€™t take such a huge swing to change it compared to using a playerā€™s overall stats. Like, you have to consider how itā€™d be if they added that in. The players that no-lifed Pred queue would be screwed for ā€˜xā€™ amount of time till their amount of games as FT increased in their stats.

Itā€™s definitely a tough nut to crack and I donā€™t know that thereā€™s any one right answer but something has to be done or people will really stop playing.

#20

Oh somebody more or less summed up what I put down XD Whoops