question

ferencnagy avatar image
ferencnagy asked

Can this work for squad joining with Playfab matchmaker?

I have to implement the usual join server with squad/friends.
We will have low player count servers (4-10 players).
I had this idea to enable some sort of slot reservation for a joining squad.

1. We have a squad leader. He does the matchmaking and knows the squad count.
2. In the matchmake call, he adds the count as an Including Tag so he only gets responses that resemble server with enough free slots.
3. The server would have tags for 5 free slots like ["1", "2", "3", "4", "5"] so it would return for 1-5 player squads.
4. After the leader successfully joins, the server tags are updated to resemble the free slots.
5. Squadmates automatically follow the leader with LobbyID (we are planning to use Photon for notifications)

My main concerns are:
1. Is the tag update fast enough to lower the amount of failed joins (eg when two 4-4 squads want to join a 6 player game)
Is the next called matchmake will have the updated values or is there seconds of propagation delay that would defeat the purpose?

2. Can this speed of updates (after squad leader joins and after player disconnects) exceed some limits? This doesn't seem too fast for me but still, it would be good to know.

Thanks!

Matchmaking
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1 Answer

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JayZuo avatar image
JayZuo answered

It seems you are using the legacy matchmake system with custom server. If so, I'm afraid this might not be a good solution. As in your workflow, the client calls Matchmake first to get server info and then the client need to connect to the server with the information about how many slots it needs. And once the server got this information, it can then update its tags. So between your step 1 and step 4, it would always take some time as there are multiple network requests to handle. And within this time, there might be other matchmake calls and this might cause collision.

For your requirement, I'd think the new PlayFab Matchmaking feature is what you need as it supports team matchmaking by default. However, this feature is still in Private Preview. Please key an eye on the blog to get latest news.

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ferencnagy avatar image ferencnagy commented ·

Thanks, this was my main concern as well.

Is there a possibility to join the private preview of the new matchmaking for smaller indie teams?

Thanks again!

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brendan avatar image brendan ferencnagy commented ·

We're working on getting the new matchmaker into public preview as quickly as we can - we're aiming to have that be right after GDC.

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