Posted 25 April 2014 - 01:03 PM

Failed to find a match in Private Match

Team balancing of groups is not working as intended

Queue Times with 3/3/3/3

Thank you to everyone who participated in yesterday’s Public Test of Launch Module, overall the test went great and we saw lots of excitement particularly for private matches. It was fun watching some of the duels that we saw streamed throughout the day; as we suspected though some issues were raised so let’s take a moment to discuss the more notable issues.We noticed that at times when launching a private match users would receive the error “Failed to find an available server. Please try again” despite there being servers available. We have determined the cause of this issue and expect to have it addressed in time for the patch on Tuesday.We saw that the telemetry on groups was showing us that group balancing is not working as intended so there are some bugs to track down here, this will not delay release of Launch Module but we want you to be aware that this is a high priority fix after the release on Tuesday.We gathered a lot of data during the Public Test on wait times and as many of you saw during the Public Test 3/3/3/3 worked very well resulting in fairer matches overall. Wait times were increased as expected due to the additional constraint and we saw fluctuations where earlier in the test with higher population games kicked off smoother, later in the test as population declined wait times increased.As much data as we gathered we do need to see the behavior at our true population scales, we anticipate that wait times will be increased but should be manageable. We will be monitoring wait times closely during the Tuesday patch and we have the ability to temporarily disable the 3/3/3/3 constraint while we investigate additional changes if required.Part of the unknown here is user behavior as many have noted the 3/3/3/3 constraint means matches can launch at the rate of the smallest queue, so part of the unknown here is the variety of Mechs that players choose throughout their play sessions and how player behavior shifts with the 3/3/3/3 format.For some time we've seen the bias shifted to heavier Mechs as players anticipate finding themselves up against lots of heavier Mechs resulting in a vicious cycle. With the introduction of 3/3/3/3 we expect that behavior to moderate but we’ll need to monitor for a while to see what the true balance of the queues looks like.We did also note during the public test that certain users could end up waiting for long periods 10 or more minutes, this could relate to lower server population and not enough Elo ranges to match or it could be indicative of an unfairness in the match making algorithm.If you find yourself waiting longer than 10 minutes on Tuesday please let us know in the feedback threads and try cancelling and restarting match making. We will be monitoring this situation closely to determine if there is a genuine issue regarding fairness (with respect to wait times) in the match making algorithm come Tuesday.Overall we were very happy with how the test went and we thank you again for participating many of you earned a free day of premium time which will hopefully help you test out the private match functionality for yourselves and maybe settle some personal grudge matches (which we look forward to watching)We're excited to see some more balanced public matches and community run tournaments getting underway.Not to mention further SRM fixes in the Tuesday patch, as always thanks for your patience as we continue to work through the remaining issues for you.Please leave your feedback about this update in the Official Feedback Thread . Thank you!