I appreciate the update! I think this is the kind of thing that the players still here have been waiting weeks for. That being said, I understand that it's not just one dev waiting to publish this whenever they feel like and that it has to go through layers of approval, editing, etc.

There are a couple points I'd personally like to go into some depth over, it would be great to get some feedback here if possible:

@Ninja-Support said in Bleeding Edge Community Update: Mekko Patch next week & other upcoming updates:

We want to let you all know that Bleeding Edge is NOT region locked

I'm probably the biggest culprit of this. While I understand we're not back in the old days of PAL and NTSC region locked games, the reality is that people who were able to play just fine with each other now might be hit with the error message of not being able to find a suitable server. That isn't a region lock by regional boundaries, but the end result might as well be the same. What's more is that the latency restriction change didn't actually fix the various forms of rubber-banding and teleporting. Even playing solo and presumably with players in or very near my region, the issues still exist as they did when the game was fully global, but now I simply can't play with some of the friends I've made, or a I have to kick out one person from the group who lives too far from the other furthest person. While I'm not a dev at your studio, I can't look at the source code and I can't say definitively what kind of net code model and network infrastructure is in place, it seems to me based on plenty of experience in this area that given that some players appear to be significantly more laggy than others, this is probably the kind of issue you usually see from players with a poor network connection, often times on wifi and suffering from latency fluctuations and packet loss.

I know that the Xbox PC app can show packet loss, latency, and NAT type for Xbox networking (not sure if NAT is needed here as it seems to be a dedicated server hosted game unless some type of p2p hybrid model is being used), so my suggestion here would be to limit players based upon the quality of their connection rather than just a flat 160ms latency for all.

If someone is on wifi with a poor signal perhaps the game informs them that their connection quality is low and this will limit their ability to find matches online and give them a <100ms radius to work with. Someone with a fiber connection on wired LAN (and an open NAT type if necesary) might receive a green indicator expressing an excellent connection and allow a radius of 200+ms latency matchmaking. These numbers are just spitballing here, but the idea is that the system would extend or retract to the point where a player won't negatively impact a match, but allow for the best quality matchmaking the player's connection is capable of. Someone of a low quality connection is going to be a detriment to the match for other players so the system works to mitigate this and someone with great internet and networking hardware isn't likely to be a problem until latency hits extreme values such as 250-300+ms. This also ties in with what the post itself says about each players connection:

@Ninja-Support said in Bleeding Edge Community Update: Mekko Patch next week & other upcoming updates:

your ability to connect and play with others is based entirely on your connection strength and ping.

While it wouldn't be fun to be a player that receives the red warning indicating a poor connection, it's also possible that they are entirely unaware of this type of issue. Include a link to a basic networking support page about optimizing connection, using an Ethernet cable if possible or removing distance/obstruction from the wireless router as much as possible. This will be a problem in any game, but is always much more of a problem in a competitive game, especially one that has fighting game style elements to it.

I believe that a system like this would be a great thing for the game to embrace and would have a very positive effect on the community, bringing as close as possible to the openness of the launch week while minimizing any problems that occurred due to some of the more extreme situations (such as 300+ms latency wifi players with extreme packet loss).

The last point that caught my eye in an unfortunately shocking way was this:

@Ninja-Support said in Bleeding Edge Community Update: Mekko Patch next week & other upcoming updates:

We’re looking into custom and ranked game modes to see if they have a place in Bleeding Edge

I'm hoping this is just an issue of wording, i.e. not wanting to commit any specifics of exact date or implementation method, but I cannot stress enough the importance of ranked and custom match modes. Some gamers like to play casually, some in a very serious competitive nature. Bleeding Edge at its core is very clearly a competitive team based game. While launching ranked RIGHT NOW might be hasty, without a competitive ladder for players to climb and compete in the motivation to play game after game just won't be there for some people. Even if some players never set foot in ranked environments, many look to these matches to spectate for entertainment and they provide a great setting for YouTube and Twitch content which in turn helps keep a games community alive and thriving. I personally think that provided we get a balance pass with the Mekko release, and maybe another small fine-tuning balance pass a couple weeks later, we'd be ready to enter a pre-season style environment. This would be a much more safe "soft launch" for a competitive mode.

As for customs, I believe we need custom modes ASAP. Custom modes simply allow so much to happen with a game like this. It lets groups of players casually play against friends for fun and sometimes with goofy and innovative house rules that can lead to new ideas. This also lets the competitive side of the community practice against other pre-made teams and do activities such as host a tournament. Hosting a tournament is something I'd personally love to do and can be a great way for like minded and similar skilled players to interact and is a great way to get more players interested in a game. Lastly, custom games would also be a great area to deal with the issues of players not being able to play with anymore due to the latency changes. Regardless of whether my previous suggestions on a more elegant and advanced way to handle the latency restrictions were implemented, this would be the place to let people play together if ultimately it is necessary to prevent them from using the quickplay matchmaking for the sake of match integrity due to network issues. In the beginning, simply allowing the mode and map to be chosen would be fine. In the future allowing the adjustment of all kinds of variables (similar to Overwatch's extreme freedom in custom games) would also be a breath of fresh air for anyone burned out on the default mode of play. Also, given the current state of matchmaking, keeping the best of the 4 man pre-made teams playing against each other in a custom lobby would also prevent them from utterly crushing newer players in solo queue. Both the new or solo players will be happier getting matches more suited to them and most of us looking to play in organized 4 man teams simply want a quality match with good competition on both sides.

I cannot stress enough that my various criticisms stem purely from my extreme passion for this game! I've been hooked since the beta and I simply want this game to be the best possible game it can be! Thanks again for taking the time to make this post and I hope that even if it's not possible to reply to this message, the points expressed here get taken to heart. These are not just my personal sentiments and suggestions but those from my own community and the wider Bleeding Edge Twitch community!

Cheers,

Tyr808