I'm aware that Wiimm recently added a feature to ignore VR points for matchmaking during periods when not many people are online. However, I don't exactly know what counts as "not many people" at the moment.
There have been a number of people complaining that they're continually getting into rooms of people that are either too good for them, or not good enough. And having checked the status pages, in quite a number of circumstances, rooms were available with hosts that were significantly more matched to their abilities, (at least from a basic numerical standpoint, veterans on new licenses and hackers notwithstanding).
I do feel like this could be a bit of a problem. The unbalanced rooms don't really help encourage people to play, as the newer racers who aren't really familiar with the game get bored of losing and quit, and the veterans get bored of constant 100cc, "random" shocks, item usage and similar, due to the lower VR players and quit. Then they all search again and find each other again, rinse and repeat until everyone gets bored and leaves. Mario Kart Wii is a game with enough skill that no matter how powerful the items in this game may be, that if there is a skill gap, some players can legitimately stand no chance of winning, which is a shame. Of course, if there's only one room around, then there's not a whole lot that can be done about this, but when there are multiple rooms...
With CTGP, I developed a feature whereby the VR matchmaking is enabled for the first 100 seconds and then swapping to searching for anyone (pseudo anyone, I think I do like 2000 - 9999 VR to avoid low VR hackers), which gives enough time to for rooms to get off suspend if there is an appropriate room, or find another brand new player to start a new room with to keep a bit of balance, but if no valid player appears in that time, it can fall back and find anyone. (Incidentally, I count the requests to work out when 100 seconds have passed, since once request is made every 4 seconds, I wait for 25 of those before disabling the VR matchmaking, and it resets when they get put in a room). Maybe Wiimmfi could also implement a similar feature? Obey the user's VR range request for a given period and then ignore it if nobody useful becomes available? It worked pretty well for balancing things on CTGP at least.
Any thoughts on the matter from anyone?
There have been a number of people complaining that they're continually getting into rooms of people that are either too good for them, or not good enough. And having checked the status pages, in quite a number of circumstances, rooms were available with hosts that were significantly more matched to their abilities, (at least from a basic numerical standpoint, veterans on new licenses and hackers notwithstanding).
I do feel like this could be a bit of a problem. The unbalanced rooms don't really help encourage people to play, as the newer racers who aren't really familiar with the game get bored of losing and quit, and the veterans get bored of constant 100cc, "random" shocks, item usage and similar, due to the lower VR players and quit. Then they all search again and find each other again, rinse and repeat until everyone gets bored and leaves. Mario Kart Wii is a game with enough skill that no matter how powerful the items in this game may be, that if there is a skill gap, some players can legitimately stand no chance of winning, which is a shame. Of course, if there's only one room around, then there's not a whole lot that can be done about this, but when there are multiple rooms...
With CTGP, I developed a feature whereby the VR matchmaking is enabled for the first 100 seconds and then swapping to searching for anyone (pseudo anyone, I think I do like 2000 - 9999 VR to avoid low VR hackers), which gives enough time to for rooms to get off suspend if there is an appropriate room, or find another brand new player to start a new room with to keep a bit of balance, but if no valid player appears in that time, it can fall back and find anyone. (Incidentally, I count the requests to work out when 100 seconds have passed, since once request is made every 4 seconds, I wait for 25 of those before disabling the VR matchmaking, and it resets when they get put in a room). Maybe Wiimmfi could also implement a similar feature? Obey the user's VR range request for a given period and then ignore it if nobody useful becomes available? It worked pretty well for balancing things on CTGP at least.
Any thoughts on the matter from anyone?