An Explanation of why Heist matchmaking is so bad

[GrandTheftBatman]

Alot of people are waiting around trying to start a heist. Yesterday, me and my friend waited 30 minutes between each heist waiting for people to join. What the f*ck is the hold up? Everyone wants to play these heists right?

 

There are key reasons why you may end up wasting an hour due to no one joining a heist lobby:

 

1. Invitation options are severely limited.

The only options you have are to invite from session, friends, or skilled matched players (variable effectiveness.) Furthermore, from my understanding a lobby has a limited amount of invitations it may queue at a single time. The result is players staring at static list of names; Players who will never join. In its core, the invitation matchmaking system assumes that someone out of a limited player pool will join. Obviously, this couldn't be further from the case.

 

2. The heists hosting barrier is flawed.

The only requirement of being able to hosts heists is a high-end apartment (and what is arguably a laughable amount of money.) This is problematic because most players own a high-end apartment already.This works in tandem with 3.

 

3. Heist progression is done only through hosting a heist, not through joining.

Due to the low barrier to hosting a heist and only progressing by hosting, most players who want to do heists are hosting them. That is, there are too many players hosting and not enough joining.

 

4. Heists are segmented into separate missions, but do not auto-start and keep the same lobby.

The matchmaking wouldn't be so bad if after every mission you didn't have to invite the previous people or, god forbid, attempt to find new ones. Heist missions should auto-start into the next lobby so players can still leave, if needed, but the lobby may remain together and continue completing the missions.

 

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5. Crashing/UME (Unidentified Matchmaking Errors)

So, you waited 30min for a 3 people to join a lobby and you're ready to do some robbing. Right when the action is about to begin....it simply doesn't. The game just crashed. And you wasted ALOT of your time. Or, don't tell me, someone accepted your invite and they receive a prompt telling them they are unable to connect without any further explanation.

 

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Just an observation after wasting my 3 hours doing 2 heist setup missions. Seriously, who designed the whole lobby invite system?

Edited March 18, 2015 by GrandTheftBatman

[roboticsuperman]

I had similar conclusions to wasting an equal amount of time. But knowing the problem doesn't make it any easier to accept sitting in a lobby for 30 mins to have someone quit.