Making Better Matches

We’re seeing an increase in active players, which gives us an opportunity to change how the joiner matches games. This Saturday we plan to test an update for the joiner that will separate newer players from veteran players. This will mean longer wait times to get into a game.

The goal of this update is to keep new and old players happy. New players want to learn the basics of the game while veteran players expect a high-level understanding of gameplay. The joiner will attempt to separate these two groups.

It’s important to maintain a proper balance between long wait times and good games. Waiting a long time is not a good experience. For this reason, players won’t be exclusively in one group or another. If enough time has passed the joiner will expand the player’s search options to include both groups.

This isn’t proper matchmaking, and that isn’t the goal for this test. Proper matchmaking would use an indicator of skill. Since this is a quick attempt to solve a growing problem, we’re using degrees to indicate a player’s TagPro experience. We know degrees aren’t perfect, but to implement this quickly we need to use something we already have. A player is considered new if they are not logged in, or they have less than 30 degrees. We may adjust this criteria as we run the test.

In addition to this update, we are launching an ad-campaign soon, and we hope this will introduce TagPro to many new people. We want them to have the best experience possible. This update is a quick fix and we hope it will make more players stick around for longer.

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