Crossplay and player reporting will be available in 6-9 weeks, new ranked queue will be made available in a couple of months.
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Upcoming Patch
Short term, a patch will be delivered next week that will introduce a first basic version of gamepad input remapping, colorblindness options, and fix a number of bugs - these will be detailed in the upcoming patch notes, but don’t expect significant changes at this stage. Shortly after this patch, a hotfix will feature two other netcode improvements, mostly to fix an issue linked to goals sometimes being validated, even when the goalkeeper has caught the ball, and another where tackles don’t connect, especially when performed on the end of shooting animations - these issues were too complex to be added to the patch that is currently being tested, which is why they’ll be delivered a few days later. Overall, core gameplay netcode improvement will be a continuous effort in the coming months (and beyond!), but we should soon be in a position where we can actually start tweaking and refining core gameplay mechanics (goalkeeper, tackle, volleys…). We’ll post a core gameplay update in a few weeks giving more details, but for now, let’s cover some topics that see lots of discussions and requests!
First, we can confirm that crossplay will be introduced at the latest in September when we launch Season 1 - and hopefully earlier than that! We are currently implementing the different components of the feature, the backend is already functional, and if all goes well, we may be able to start rolling out the first version by the end of August.
Player Reporting
This feature will be delivered at the same time - it’s the unfortunate reality of online games that some players can be toxic, and seem to enjoy trolling, ruining games, insulting people… these behaviors are not acceptable, and players will have in-game tools to signal toxic actors.
M&KB improvements
Should be coming in a patch as soon as possible: notably to tap aiming, introducing mouse sensitivity settings for tap, and WASD as a tap aiming input method option. We couldn’t get this in for the patch coming next week, but we’re not forgetting M&KB players! We are also investigating a method to allow players to adjust their aiming slightly after having given a shoot input.
New ranked queues
We see a lot of requests for ranked 3v3 and 4v4 - we probably will not add two new competitive queues right away, since this can split the player base and have an impact on matchmaking queues, but we are currently estimating the work to be done to release a new one in a couple of months. This requires backend work, but also UX/UI updates to player profiles, end of match screens, etc. More news on this soon.
Ranking and matchmaking
We are also seeing a lot of discussion around the ranking system, and for good reason. It is the main way for players today to measure their skill progression in Rematch. To clarify the current system; we use Openskill to calculate a player’s Matchmaking Skill Rating - this allows us to then create balanced games by ensuring that the average skill level of both teams is close. Based on the data we’re observing, this is an aspect of the system that seems to be working well. On the other hand, as we were facing issues with our matchmaking queues at launch, we had to loosen the restrictions for the skill difference between players, within the same team. This means that while the average rating of the two teams will be balanced, players can be teamed up with other players of significantly different skill levels. The matches will be balanced, but it can be frustrating to have to carry a lower level player, so we are looking right now at how to improve this, in order to both have games as fair and balanced as possible, while still minimizing queue times.
The Ranking system uses a different logic. It is a representation of your skill, but also a progression system. It is not used directly to select the players and create the teams, and with stricter parameters on skill difference within teams, this restriction should not be necessary. On a similar note, we decided to allow players to queue up together, whatever their respective ranks. Rematch is a game about playing football with friends, and for instance if Master players want to team up with a couple of Gold friends, we think they should be able to. And after all, this is football - we often see young talented players get a chance to play in the big leagues, and perform amazingly well.
A final note on demotion protection. Currently in Rematch, you cannot rank down a whole league (from Gold to Silver for example). This has positive effects, notably diminishing anxiety and frustration around the ladder experience, but it comes with multiple drawbacks, which have been justly pointed out by the community. We’re looking at this closely, and will have updates on this topic soon.
As you can see, there are a lot of moving parts around these subjects. We will be doing minor tweaks to matchmaking parameters soon, and overall we have a number of changes to make in order for the Ranked experience to keep improving. We will work on another blog post on this topic very soon, to go into more details, and are actively listening to all your feedback on the subject.
Servers and regions
Just like football, Rematch is a game that is played all over the world, which creates significant challenges in server distribution and latency optimizations. We are currently looking into deploying a solution to optimize the routing of packets on networks to reduce latency, which will be deployed in South America first, which is one of the regions with recurrent latency issues, before being deployed to Middle East and other regions, once we confirm results. We are also reviewing our server locations, and total number of regions, to ensure best possible latency for the largest number of players. There are other improvements we are planning to do, and along with the gameplay netcode improvements mentioned above, the objective is to ensure that players have the smoothest possible online experience.
