I’ve seen it discussed via their subreddit, particularly in this Q&A thread:
Thekillergreece — Q: Currently there are 7 options for matchmaking which can seriously affect your chances to find a player. Are there plans to implement a “Quickplay” so that you can find ANY map at your choosen difficulty?
Higgs - A: We’re looking into adding this feature (based on the community asking for it!) - it hasn’t made it into the roadmap yet, and we don’t have a solid timeframe.
I mean, it’s not a refusal, but also not a ‘holy shit we’re dropping everything to focus on this’ either.
(I suspect they’re relying on Discord a lot for their communiques but I’m not sure).
Its such a weird stance - they MUST know that a game like their thrive on players being able to find games - And they MUST have statistics showing them how many times I’ve cancelled out of a game having only bots, or one bot to get a full party. It would be such an easy fix(Not the implementation, but the idea of it) to what I genuinly think is the only issue facing this excellent game.
The game itself even strongly encourages you to play with others at higher difficulties. It should be bending over backwards to facilitate that. I fear this game is going to die a premature death due to matchmaking issues.
I’m at the final mission of the first chapter and I wipe consistently on regular difficulty, I would probably have better luck if I was able to get a human player to help.
The developers were acquired by Daybreak earlier this year. I wonder if they’ve been forced to put out what they had which is why its missing obvious stuff like quick play and its not particularly heavy on content. And now they are trapped in the sense that resources have to go into fulfilling their DLC obligations and not community needs.
You would definitely have better luck with human players. The bots are little more than roving dumb turrets. If you’re playing this is a solo game, play your first playthrough on casual, which will give you just as much xp. You can go back to standard after you’ve leveled up a bit. Also, don’t be shy about spending your requisition on stuff like turrets and cryo fields for the tougher stand-offs.
-Tom
Yoo-hoo, @Chaplin! From today’s patch notes:
I’m not sure if it specifically addresses your issue, but it might be worth another shot.
-Tom, still playing regularly
I replayed the 1st level in the campaign with each class (find Hunicker), just to check out the differences. Am I doing it right? On casual, the bots are good enough. If you know what is coming, you can prepare (and save a turret for later).
If the real game starts on harder difficulties? What am I missing? Better loot? No way to get the loot on casual? I will move on to the second level now, I like the engineer class for now. Is the medic even useful when playing solo?
I would say, yes, that’s the way to go. Play the game on casual, with bots, to learn/explore the levels, to experience the story*, and to level up (the xp difference between casual and standard is trivial).
The third difficulty level, called intense, is the way Aliens: Fireteam Elite was “meant to be played”, according to the game itself:
Not mentioned is that you get more xp. On the game’s very first mission, experience points break down like so: casual 5000xp, standard 5700xp, and intense 10,200xp.
And I cannot emphasize enough what a difference it makes to the class loadouts when friendly fire is introduced. The game is so much more tense, strategic, and balanced. It’s a lot less about just shooting stuff – whee!-- and much more about anticipating and controlling the flow of aliens as it develops. It feels much more like a tower defense team game. Without friendly fire, you might as well bring three demolishers into a mission and just spew grenades, napalm, and rockets. With friendly fire, well, you’re still probably going to want at least one demolisher. But he needs to be careful and you need to be sure to stay out of his way without straying too far.
Absolutely! The Trauma Station can be a great defensive tool and Combat Stims are always much appreciated when an elite shows up. The medical kit unlocks some pretty cool tricks, including ones that all the classes can use. For instance, Surgeon’s Hands:
Frantically trying to refill ammo while you’re being swarmed? Do you desperately need to rez someone while you’re the lone survivor being whaled on by a xenomorph warrior? Surgeon’s Hands to the rescue! Once the doc kit unlocks it, any kit can use it. There are a ton of non-obvious tricks like that to encourage leveling up different classes instead of just focusing on your favorite.
-Tom
* The story is actually pretty cool, but you’d never know because the dialogue is so frequently lost in the emergent gameplay.
Thanks Tom! I don’t know if it fixes my issue or not, but I have an eye on the Steam forums about how UW is “improved”. I wished they patched it prior to my refund deadline, but alas.
I liked it plenty enough to want to play it, and I’ve only refunded like 3 games ever on Steam. I just couldn’t get Aliens to play nice within my viewable limits either full or windowed. If it works now, I will very likely pick it up again. I just need some UW recon first.
It’s the only way to be sure.
The latest update:
Oops.
-Tom
I did notice the view being a bit more pulled back after the patch, but then also that I couldn’t hit shit any more. You couldn’t make it up. Also Oops.
These dudes are spinning gold intro straw and it breaks my heart.
Abilities don’t inflict friendly fire, even to yourself, so you should totally spam grenades and rockets! Only your guns do friendly fire damage, so just leave the flamethrowers at base and use the flamer sentry instead if you wanna stay frosty.
@newbrof intense difficulty (and above) seems to have an additional loot pool so certain guns, decals, etc. can only be obtained there.
Anybody reading the Steam forums where people have determined that if you play the game long enough (which irrevocably increases the size of your save file), you can no longer join randos’ multiplayer games? Yoinks.
Which came first… people giving up on Aliens rando multiplayer, or people being essentially shadowbanned from Aliens rando multiplayer
Sounds like someone hasn’t played his demolisher much! Or hasn’t gotten any of their heavy weapons beyond the smartgun, because those are the grenades and rockets I was talking about. :)
I was wondering about that. I have all the weapons you can buy from the NPC vendor, and I’ve done all the missions repeatedly on standard and casual, and I’m not finding anymore weapons or attachments. Glad to know there’s more unlockable stuff out there. By the way, what’s your source for that? And how are you guys getting your Aliens: Elite Fireteam info? I can’t even find a way to access update news on the game’s official site.
Link? Based on what you told me in email, this sounds highly suspect. How would anyone even know, given the utterly useless matchmaking system? I mean, I don’t doubt the developers do dumb things, but I’ve never met a player base that can’t out-dumb its developers.
-Tom
Easily debunkable, if it’s false. Join a stranger’s lobby with a save file bigger than 1250kb. Seems like nobody can do it. (The “solved!” is in reference to the issue being confirmed, not fixed, I believe.)
Easily debunkable? How? How are you going to join a stranger’s lobby to test it, given the matchmaking system? Furthermore, I have no idea how someone’s save file gets that big. I’ve put absurd amounts of time into Aliens Fireteam Elite and my saved game is barely 80% of the size “Fritten Fuchxs Sdeiwels WILD” claims will trigger the bug. I’m going to file this under Nothingburger, along with most of the stuff I read on Steam forums from people with names like Fritten Fuchxs Sdeiwels WILD. Because even if it is a actual bug, 99.99% of players will never run into it thanks to the way the developers set up matchmaking.
-Tom
I said abilities! And those weapons suuuuck (maybe not the impact grenade launcher).
The purveyor of all internet truths; reddit (though the info there is just regurgitated from Discord as that’s where the dev is at). Also personal observation though. Pre-patch there were 30 guns total I think (31 with the preorder shotgun). With the new ones there’s 34/35 maybe? Anyway, because of the skill limitations of one of the people I was playing with, we were just doing standard difficulty. I noticed reading around there were a set of guns I hadn’t unlocked, and despite always looting the crate I wasn’t getting those guns. So after reading on it, I solo a mission on intense and sure enough at the end I get one of said guns. A few more intense missions and I had them all.
There are also mods to be looted out of said crates but I think these are quite rare indeed so consequently couldn’t tell you whether those are tied to difficulty or not (I feel like they probably are).
There are also separate rewards for surviving different rounds of horde mode, albeit mostly cosmetic. Intense 10 gives you a unique weapon skin, and I think extreme 10 gives you a unique armour skin. I got the weapon skin (so can confirm that) but not the armour one (haven’t done it).
best name