I'm wondering if it's possible to matchmake with a party or Entity Group so that players can group up before trying to matchmake or queue into a game. I haven't found any information that indicates that this is possible.
If not, I'm guessing that using the Matchmaking API to create our own matchmaking system would work and we can take the size of the lobby/party/entity group? to match every member of the group into a server with N number of open slots?
Thanks
It sounds like you're envisioning a sort of "two-tiered" matchmaking system. You would matchmake players into pre-match groups and then, once they'd sorted thing out, match that group into an actual game. Is that about correct? Let me know if I'm missing something.
If that's the case, it goes a bit beyond the basic matchmaking that we provide right now. You might be able to finagle something with specific lobbyIds, but it might also just create a headache. For something custom like that, you may be better off writing your own matchmaker and utilizing our Matchmaker API. It's sufficiently generic that it can be used to accomplish both aspects of your matchmaking.
The goal is to be able to queue into a match with your friends. It's similar to Rocket League. I'm trying to figure out whether PlayFab even has the concept of a party system. Is it Entity Groups?
By "your own" do you mean we write our own software/master server to handle this or write in Unity using your Matchmaker API?
If the party system is supported, I suppose the party leader would be responsible for handling all of the matchmaking calls and finding the right server that can fit the entire party into, but how would we communicate which server to anyone other than the party leader making the API calls?
Okay, I think I understand better.
Yes, we use Entity Groups to represent parties (as well as other organizations of players). There's more info about that here: https://api.playfab.com/docs/tutorials/entities/entity-groups
If you have the concept of a party leader, she can initiate matchmaking using the client API and get back a lobby id (https://api.playfab.com/documentation/client/method/Matchmake). She can then write that lobby id as an object on the entity. When other players are ready, they can read the lobby id from the entity group and provide it to the matchmaking API to be placed in the same game.
Actually, thinking on this more, the matchmaking solution I described is still going to run into problems. We don't support reserved spots in a lobby, so there would be lots of collisions on the same lobby id as you tried to get your whole party in. For non-hacky party-based matchmaking you're going to be better served either writing your own matchmaker or using photon.
We're aware of the limitations of our existing matchmaker and will be updating it in the future with many much-needed features. Stay tuned!
Hello Andy,
Were there added features since 2018 that would make it easier to create such a two-tiered match system ?
My current plan is for the phase 1 (gather members of team) is to use PlayFab Party (inviting friends) while some other team somewhere else does the same , THEN use match making to create a match (and dedicated server) for these two teams to play in.
TIA!
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