We haven’t given news in a little while, so this is quite a long post - TL;DR if you don’t have time: crossplay and player reporting will be available in 6-9 weeks, new ranked queue will be made available in a couple of months.
One month ago, Rematch was released, after 4 years of development (early prototypes started in Spring 2021). As a team, this was the first time we did a game of this type, and of this scale, and the first few days of release were quite rough, with some serious stability/desync/matchmaking issues. We did hotfixes almost daily for the first two weeks, and the game is much more stable now, with a vast majority of players having a solid experience, but we know there are ongoing issues, and we are in the process of fixing them. We’re sorry for the inconveniences some of you have faced, and may still be facing today.
Sifu was not just a kung-fu game, and Rematch is not just a football game - in a way it’s a samurai game. Interactions between players are swift, decisive, and can turn the tide of events in an instant. As such, for the game to feel fair, and be fun, our execution must be flawless - and we’re not quite there yet. We’re proud of the game in its current state, but please be assured that the team is working hard to deliver fixes and updates as fast as possible, and that we are very determined to keep polishing the game, and to bring Rematch to its full potential. There has already been over 60 million hours played in the game, a dynamic competitive scene is emerging, with teams created, tournaments organized, mechanics dissected, strategies discussed… We are very grateful to all players who have played the game so far, and the love you’re showing for the game makes us really happy. We love Rematch too, we play it during our evenings and our weekends, and we’re going to keep making the game better and better.
Upcoming Patch
Short term, a patch will be delivered next week that will introduce a first basic version of gamepad input remapping, colorblindness options, and fix a number of bugs - these will be detailed in the upcoming patch notes, but don’t expect significant changes at this stage. Shortly after this patch, a hotfix will feature two other netcode improvements, mostly to fix an issue linked to goals sometimes being validated, even when the goalkeeper has caught the ball, and another where tackles don’t connect, especially when performed on the end of shooting animations - these issues were too complex to be added to the patch that is currently being tested, which is why they’ll be delivered a few days later. Overall, core gameplay netcode improvement will be a continuous effort in the coming months (and beyond!), but we should soon be in a position where we can actually start tweaking and refining core gameplay mechanics (goalkeeper, tackle, volleys…). We’ll post a core gameplay update in a few weeks giving more details, but for now, let’s cover some topics that see lots of discussions and requests!
First, we can confirm that crossplay will be introduced at the latest in September when we launch Season 1 - and hopefully earlier than that! We are currently implementing the different components of the feature, the backend is already functional, and if all goes well, we may be able to start rolling out the first version by the end of August.
Player Reporting
This feature will be delivered at the same time - it’s the unfortunate reality of online games that some players can be toxic, and seem to enjoy trolling, ruining games, insulting people… these behaviors are not acceptable, and players will have in-game tools to signal toxic actors.
M&KB improvements
Should be coming in a patch as soon as possible: notably to tap aiming, introducing mouse sensitivity settings for tap, and WASD as a tap aiming input method option. We couldn’t get this in for the patch coming next week, but we’re not forgetting M&KB players! We are also investigating a method to allow players to adjust their aiming slightly after having given a shoot input.
New ranked queues
We see a lot of requests for ranked 3v3 and 4v4 - we probably will not add two new competitive queues right away, since this can split the player base and have an impact on matchmaking queues, but we are currently estimating the work to be done to release a new one in a couple of months. This requires backend work, but also UX/UI updates to player profiles, end of match screens, etc. More news on this soon.
Ranking and matchmaking
We are also seeing a lot of discussion around the ranking system, and for good reason. It is the main way for players today to measure their skill progression in Rematch. To clarify the current system; we use Openskill to calculate a player’s Matchmaking Skill Rating - this allows us to then create balanced games by ensuring that the average skill level of both teams is close. Based on the data we’re observing, this is an aspect of the system that seems to be working well. On the other hand, as we were facing issues with our matchmaking queues at launch, we had to loosen the restrictions for the skill difference between players, within the same team. This means that while the average rating of the two teams will be balanced, players can be teamed up with other players of significantly different skill levels. The matches will be balanced, but it can be frustrating to have to carry a lower level player, so we are looking right now at how to improve this, in order to both have games as fair and balanced as possible, while still minimizing queue times.
The Ranking system uses a different logic. It is a representation of your skill, but also a progression system. It is not used directly to select the players and create the teams, and with stricter parameters on skill difference within teams, this restriction should not be necessary. On a similar note, we decided to allow players to queue up together, whatever their respective ranks. Rematch is a game about playing football with friends, and for instance if Master players want to team up with a couple of Gold friends, we think they should be able to. And after all, this is football - we often see young talented players get a chance to play in the big leagues, and perform amazingly well.
A final note on demotion protection. Currently in Rematch, you cannot rank down a whole league (from Gold to Silver for example). This has positive effects, notably diminishing anxiety and frustration around the ladder experience, but it comes with multiple drawbacks, which have been justly pointed out by the community. We’re looking at this closely, and will have updates on this topic soon.
As you can see, there are a lot of moving parts around these subjects. We will be doing minor tweaks to matchmaking parameters soon, and overall we have a number of changes to make in order for the Ranked experience to keep improving. We will work on another blog post on this topic very soon, to go into more details, and are actively listening to all your feedback on the subject.
Servers and regions
Just like football, Rematch is a game that is played all over the world, which creates significant challenges in server distribution and latency optimizations. We are currently looking into deploying a solution to optimize the routing of packets on networks to reduce latency, which will be deployed in South America first, which is one of the regions with recurrent latency issues, before being deployed to Middle East and other regions, once we confirm results. We are also reviewing our server locations, and total number of regions, to ensure best possible latency for the largest number of players. There are other improvements we are planning to do, and along with the gameplay netcode improvements mentioned above, the objective is to ensure that players have the smoothest possible online experience.
That’s it for today! There are many other topics to cover, like core gameplay improvements, upcoming balancing / refinements, so we’ll have more news for you all soon. Thanks for your support and patience, and see you on the pitch!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2138720/REMATCH/