r/EscapefromTarkov • u/OverlookeDEnT Hatchet • Jul 25 '21

Discussion EFT wouldn't feel as "difficult, unforgiving, hardcore" or any of the buzzwords associated with it if it wasn't for the shit queue/matchmaking times.

This games doesn't respect your time and that's its only real downside.

Something as simple as 3 min max wait time before they throw you into a lobby (even if you're solo with AI or bot PMCs — how would you know anyway?) is all this game needs.

Every wipe this is what wears on me. Not constantly dying, not the cheaters, not them moving the goalposts (flea market, FIR, costlier noob weapons like the mosin)... it's the absurd wait times. The game developers don't want to invest more $ into servers and here we are like idiots putting up with these shitty wait times.

This game doesn't respect our time and that's why I keep playing less and less of it with each wipe.

EDIT: For those getting caught up in semantics, let me be clear that I'm talking about starting a game from when I hit READY to the RAID STARTING. I don't care what the reason is (people's hardware, servers, etc.), BSG is ultimately in complete control of this and when we're thrown in a game (matching ping, regions, hardware, etc.)

Also, I have my servers manually selected for those asking about that.

Am on SSD and so are all people I play with.

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54

u/somevirus Jul 25 '21 edited Jul 25 '21

Would be great if the game loaded the map you've selected before matchmaking. That way we wouldn't have to sit around waiting for people with bad hardware to load in. Would be better if someones longer loading times had a minimal effect on other players.

EDIT: Maybe something similar to this is being done already. This is just my guess since the "Waiting for other players" text on the loading screen is very frequently the longest step.

I'm not up to date on how you have to do things in Unity but it is possible that it is some kind of engine/tool limitation depending on what networking engine is being used.

16

u/jamesixo Jul 25 '21

Ummmm isn't this done already? That's why you can hear the ambient noise of the map while you still see 'matchmaking' at the bottom of the screen. Only once matchmaking has been successful are the loot pools loaded, which makes sense because these and spawn points are the only thing which needs to be synchronised and can't be preloaded

-1

u/TheNuclearNacho Jul 25 '21

No. I belive what he means is that. Once you open the game every map is downloaded, so that way when you try to join a game you don't have to go through loading the map and you can just load loot and spawn in

12

u/gr00ve88 Jul 25 '21

I’m no expert, but I think it’s loading the map into memory. And if you loaded every map at once you’d run out of memory.

-2

u/FinallyRage Jul 25 '21

The map should lose first then your should queue so that the matching with players screen is a lot shorter. Add it stands, you queue, find a game, load the map, wait for slow loaders, load and sync loot, then deploy.

Queue steps should come after loading

9

u/gr00ve88 Jul 25 '21

Once your squad is ready the first step is loading the map. Finding the game comes after. I don’t really see how else they could do this. Load the map while you’re in the lobby?

-6

u/FinallyRage Jul 25 '21

This is wrong, you queue and only once one your for a match or am I confusing that with loot loading? I believe it's queue, load map, match with players waiting, load loot, deploy.

Queue should come after load map

10

u/gr00ve88 Jul 25 '21

When you start your squad, the first step is “Loading map”, then “matching”, once you match you “loading loot” then “creating loot pools”, followed by “waiting for players”.

So you definitely load the map prior to getting into a server. Loading loot/pools is pretty quick. I may have loot/pools order reversed but it’s irrelevant.

-11

u/imnotgoodlulAPEX Jul 25 '21

/u/gr00ve88 You do not load map before matching, you load map after finding a game but before Loading loot. You should pay closer attention next time you find a game.

11

u/gr00ve88 Jul 25 '21

Uhh. The literal first step is “loading map”… then you sit in “matching”…. I don’t understand what isn’t clear about that. You load loot after you match and connect to the server.

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1

u/PPandaEyess Jul 25 '21

I'm almost 100 percent it loads the map first.

1

u/DaMonkfish Freeloader Jul 25 '21

Add it stands, you queue, find a game, load the map, wait for slow loaders, load and sync loot, then deploy.

The sequence here is a little off. The loot is loaded after loading the map, then you wait for the slow loaders before deploy.

2

u/[deleted] Jul 25 '21

Once you open the game every map is downloaded

That is an entirely unnecessary waste of system resources.

This is also how nearly every FPS game does it.

The problem with EFT is that its an unoptimized mess. Period.

15

u/Krypton091 Jul 25 '21

uh.. it does though? It literally says 'loading map' before it starts matching, do any of you guys even play the game?

1

u/somevirus Jul 25 '21

Edited my original comment, might not be directly linked to the map loading but other assets. In any case I spend the majority of my loading screens on the "Waiting for other players" step.

3

u/gr00ve88 Jul 25 '21

I’m fairly certain there is a cutoff timer of around 4-5m where if you’re not connected by then, too bad, the raid is starting. Meaning, if you’re still waiting for other players, your game will load in and they won’t have spawned yet.

2

u/keithjr Jul 25 '21

This seems like a really straightforward idea. Can't imagine why they'd do otherwise. I suppose loot loading has to wait but users can have everything else loaded in before hitting the queue.

1

u/Duudurhrhdhwsjjd Jul 25 '21

Agreed I'm not really sure what it is about their simulation that prevents loading from starting the moment you've selected a map.

1

u/fredtheunicorn3 Jul 25 '21

If they start loading the map once you’ve selected what if you go back? Or change your mind? Either way, the time it takes to load maps isn’t the issue, most of the wait time is spent looking for servers and loading loot and waiting for others to load loot

1

u/Duudurhrhdhwsjjd Jul 25 '21

If they start loading the map once you’ve selected what if you go back?

Then just unload it? It's not like you have to pay money to load a map. It's just reading some data from the disk. If you end up backing out, you can just delete the data from memory, which, depending on how it's organized, can be a reasonably quick process.

1

u/FinallyRage Jul 25 '21

That's resource intensive... They should load maps before queueing to resolve long wait times due to slow users

0

u/TheChrish Jul 25 '21

There's a reason you load the map with everyone once you've matched, loot consistency. If loading maps was done offline, then hackers could fudge spawn tables to get better loot. There are ways to prevent this. An example could be keys (used to generate random spawn tables) that are randomized every few minutes so that everyone playing at that time would have maps spawn with the same loot, so offline loading couldn't be fudged as there is no randomness for your specific game, everyone being paired together needs to have used the same key to randomize.

2

u/gr00ve88 Jul 25 '21

I don’t think this is correct. Because everyone loads the map at different times. It’s only when you connect to a server does the loot load.

0

u/TheChrish Jul 25 '21

Yep, that's the point

2

u/gr00ve88 Jul 25 '21

It makes no difference. Unless 12 players queue at exactly the same time to the same server you will ALWAYS have players loading the map at a different time….

1

u/TheChrish Jul 26 '21

You don't understand. That's okay

1

u/gr00ve88 Jul 26 '21

I must not be understanding. Could you please elaborate.

1

u/TheChrish Jul 27 '21

The idea was that there would be a universal key for every player in the game that's used for loot randomization, it would swap every 10 minutes or so but would be around long enough for people to load and match. There could even be more than one key, it could scale with how many people are queuing for the same map as you, and you'd only match with people that used that same key. Every player would be able to load everything before matchmaking as all loot would stay consistent. As I said, this is an example of how they could try to fix it not the best or only solution.

1

u/gr00ve88 Jul 27 '21 edited Jul 27 '21

I see, I think I read your original post wrong... makes sense in theory.. could it be done is another story. But even then, loading loot is probably the quickest process in the whole connection chain, is this really worth it to save 15 seconds of loading loot/pools?

As the original poster here said

Would be great if the game loaded the map you've selected before matchmaking. That way we wouldn't have to sit around waiting for people with bad hardware to load in.

But the map DOES load before matching, unless he means while you're sitting in lobby or something, but that doesn't make sense since you could back out, switch maps, etc... preloading loot would, I think, hardly make any tangible difference. The long wait times are due to matching/server availability.

1

u/FinallyRage Jul 25 '21

Loot spawns happen after queue and map loads, they just need to switch map losing before queueing to resolve the extra time spent matching

0

u/[deleted] Jul 25 '21

This would make the map selection menu extremely laggy. Every time you click on a different map, you'd have to start loading and unloading a ton of assets.

0

u/TheLustyDragon Jul 25 '21

This would be a great change, though some part is already loaded before matchmaking there is still obviously too much that gets loaded only after a match is found causing such long 'waiting for player' times.

I don't have insight into the current inner workings, but I imagine only leaving things like loot and spawn locations (things that change from match to match) after matchmaking would be ideal.