Great wall of text, defeated by the simple idea of adding a fucking optional LAN or Lobby based matchmaking based on IP can be for unranked and takes near 0 effort to add.
You want the main game mode with matchmaking? Official ranked server.
Wanna play 2 vs 30 AK-47 vs knives only?
Private lobby.
Also, the latter was how the original devs accidentally invented Left 4 Dead by figuring out that was a ton of fun.
I have no idea how any game client and server implementations work (outside of games I’ve actually worked on), and I’m pretty certain you don’t either, so saying something is “zero effort to add” is presumptuous and naive.
None of what you’ve said solves any of the issues that I pointed out, only “look at how much extra gameplay you might get!”, and that’s assuming the devs took the time to make their game easily moddable.
For a primarily PvP game, the biggest challenge a studio (especially a small or mid-sized one) faces is gaining a large enough population of players early on. Without critical mass, the player base will rapidly dwindle because people get tired of waiting in queues for their games to start (whether it’s by matchmaking or finding a custom server), or the quality of the games get worse because they’re constantly getting matched outside their skill level (stomping or being stomped).
Providing examples of games from Valve doesn’t prove anything because Valve is an extreme outlier. They can afford to put a game out with zero marketing on their part and achieve 170k player concurrency - what other studio has that?
I’m not disputing the potential advantages that you’ve brought up - I’m only trying to explain the rationale that devs without virtually infinite time, effort and money have to contend with when working on a PvP game.
Great wall of text, defeated by the simple idea of adding a fucking optional LAN or Lobby based matchmaking based on IP can be for unranked and takes near 0 effort to add.
You want the main game mode with matchmaking? Official ranked server.
Wanna play 2 vs 30 AK-47 vs knives only? Private lobby.
Also, the latter was how the original devs accidentally invented Left 4 Dead by figuring out that was a ton of fun.
I have no idea how any game client and server implementations work (outside of games I’ve actually worked on), and I’m pretty certain you don’t either, so saying something is “zero effort to add” is presumptuous and naive.
None of what you’ve said solves any of the issues that I pointed out, only “look at how much extra gameplay you might get!”, and that’s assuming the devs took the time to make their game easily moddable.
For a primarily PvP game, the biggest challenge a studio (especially a small or mid-sized one) faces is gaining a large enough population of players early on. Without critical mass, the player base will rapidly dwindle because people get tired of waiting in queues for their games to start (whether it’s by matchmaking or finding a custom server), or the quality of the games get worse because they’re constantly getting matched outside their skill level (stomping or being stomped).
Providing examples of games from Valve doesn’t prove anything because Valve is an extreme outlier. They can afford to put a game out with zero marketing on their part and achieve 170k player concurrency - what other studio has that?
I’m not disputing the potential advantages that you’ve brought up - I’m only trying to explain the rationale that devs without virtually infinite time, effort and money have to contend with when working on a PvP game.