⚠️Community investigation on SA server situation(Since Bungie have yet to fix or address it)⚠️
(I'm typing this between matches, so I have usually between 10-20 minutes between them)
Hello devs! Since you're taking 2 weeks almost to address it and we've been staring at loading screens for this long we've been talking.
WHAT IS HAPPENING?
SA players from different countries and platforms are experiencing matchmaking issues resulting on the inability to find a match for most of the day and long Queues 7~15 minutes to find a match on peak hours leading the game to be literally unplayable for a large part of the playerbase.
WHEN DID IT START?
Reports vary between:
-After the first Patch
-Before it but during launch
-At launch
What is a consensus between all is that during the Server Slam and the first days the first days players were matched from SA to NA without any issues, no percebitble lag or input delays and queue times of a couple of seconds or at least less than a minute
POSSIBLE CAUSES?
From the community opinions are:
-"Bungie region-locked the game in a almost xenophobic way against LATAM"(???)
-The system that, in periods of low population, would match SA players to NA server got disabled or broke.
-Bungie forced strict set of parameters to match both regions making the "ping" of SA being unnaceptable to match up(less likely)
-The NA server is having a bug/glitch where it's "pulling" the wrong regions to matchmake with it
-This one is interesting, because it isn't just SA or LATAM in general feeling weird matchmakings, but regions also been reports of regions that SHOULDN'T theorically match to NA being matched there, them being Australia(usually matched with asian servers) and UK(being matched with EU in general)
Possible Fixes/Suggestions?
Hell, who am I to tell you how to do your job? I'm just a highly motivated player to help the community and see the game thrive(and very frustrated with the situation and apparent inertia of Bungie Support) but from what I gathered in consensus with the community some of the ways are:
-Looser restrictions to matchmake between regions
-"un-regionlock the game"
-Add a Region/Datacenter selector/picker like most other multiplayer games nowadays(most asked for)
-Fix the issue where NA is pulling the wrong people)
-Refund the whole LATAM region for selling a defective product
What has been Bungie's actions until now?
The Official MarathonDevTeam account on X(Formerly Twitter) sent this reply on 17th of March after a long battle of me trying to get their attention to the issue on their replies:
https://x.com/MarathonDevTeam/status/2033946111262839099?s=20
Global Community Lead Andy Salisbury(@asalisbury) had this exchange with me about the situation which apparently he wasn't aware of:
https://x.com/EatRatLove/status/2034796634593194049?s=20
But still, it's been almost 2 weeks, we've been through Cryo Archive and Ranked launches and no fix or Community Reassurance/Addressing in sight.
Images/Screenshots of a few of the reports found all over the internet(quite easily found by just looking for "can't find match Marathon"
Link of Discord topics related to the issue from #feedback on the Official Marathon Discord
https://discord.com/channels/1303855380845301861/1482525572960751808
https://discord.com/channels/1303855380845301861/1484914980540387559
https://discord.com/channels/1303855380845301861/1484922711330394346
https://discord.com/channels/1303855380845301861/1484959921815556197
https://discord.com/channels/1303855380845301861/1484814952983171113
https://discord.com/channels/1303855380845301861/1484947335925600256
There are more but the bottom area would be too long, I can add any information needed, you can find me probably any most if not all Marathon posts on Twitter sharing the situation and on Discord doing the same.
Personal note:
I know you're all probably working your butts off with a heap of reports, bugs, suggestions and I can only imagine how much you guys have at stake in the success of this game, but I ask you to take this matter with certain urgency, I'm seeing a lot of people refunding the game because of it, not only that, in my personal opinion, I think a big part of your playerbase being literally unable to play the game should take a bit of priority on top of some non-gamebreaking bugs right?
I hope you have a great rest of your week
-Insanely yours, Sani.
Comments
Just to add to this, the long wait times happen across all game modes and maps. It feels like the queues were completely normal, but after some update, the issue escalated drastically, making the wait unbearable. You can easily tell the game was made with a lot of care—it has great sound design, the art is good, and Bungie's universe really makes you curious. It's not like there are only 6 people in my neighborhood trying to play at different times. This is a real problem, not just here in SA [South America] but in other regions as well.
People want to play, but they are dropping the game because it's just not possible to enjoy your product right now. There's so much talk about accessibility—hours upon hours of meetings to decide on font sizes, colors, keybinds, languages... but what about the game itself? At its core, it's... well, simply meant to be played, and that's it. It was made available in multiple countries, and everyone should be able to use it and play. It's that simple.
It's Sunday morning, I'm playing on Steam, and I can't find a match The community is waiting for a response, Bungie.
Apparently it's on multiple regions and and on all platforms, it's crazy that they haven't said anything like "hey affected community, we're working on it" instead of this silence.
I want the game to succeed because the game is good not because of the Bungie basically scamming people selling a game that can't be played
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