Arena Matchmaking Issues

  • Good Day all Arena pirates,

    Jason Cross, Producer of Arena here with an update to Matchmaking in the Arena.

    Firstly I want to say a thank you for your patience and reporting of this issue. We have been investigating it each week in an effort to solve the issue as fast as possible.

    The Issue:
    We saw several Taverns not starting when they should have been, this meant players were sitting in a tavern for an extended time with no progress. During this time the Tavern would also struggle to accept new crews who were attempting to join giving the illusion of low player numbers. After further investigation we found this issue occurred more when Arena showed higher player numbers.

    We found the servers could get into this state due to two reasons, players in open crews leaving and the server believing they were still active and some servers changing region without the correct region settings.

    The Solution:
    We have now put in 2 temporary fixes which will lower the Tavern loading times. This will allow crews to start after everyone has loaded in even with phantom crews. A match will look to start with 5 crews and the relevant amount of players however, it will never start with less than 3 crews present. But this doesn't stop crews from leaving as a match starts meaning in a rare scenario you could be left in a 1v1 match.

    We are getting a more permanent fix out for you in the next patches. We are also releasing a new feature which will look to see if you have waited a more than 4 minutes in a tavern, if you have it will merge your tavern with one in another state.

    Thank you for your patience and understanding whilst we investigated this issue.

    I enjoyed getting sunk by you all the last few months, from last minute loses to complete pirate ship sandwiches. My pirate is very bruised but looking forward to some more matches.

    Thanks,
    'Cast Away Cross'
    Jason Cross

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  • This weekend, I've spent a lot of time stuck on the "Searching the seas..." page. Other people in the crew still see the "Waiting to set sail" button. Sometimes it starts loading into a server after a while, but most times it's been stuck like that for well over a minute and we've had to back out and try again. The crew leader is trapped on that screen (dash quitting is the only way out), but other crew members can back out by pressing B.

    Personally, I haven't seen this problem before this weekend. I was in a closed crew, but if this happens to open crews too, I would expect it to increase the number of partial crews that end up in lobbies.

  • Adding to what @PurpleFiftyTwo said, there is also an issue when joining a crew as a solo player. The game will say "searching the seas" as it tries to find a crew to match you with, but, once it's found you one it will continue to say "searching the seas" for minutes, rather than joining the player to the match once it has been found.

    Is this the same issue, but being experienced by someone that's not in the tavern?

  • @MoronicStraw Are there still more Arena matchmaking fixes planned? It got a bit better after last month's update, but still feels broken. Still getting "Searching the seas" delays, post match lobbies that get stuck on the "Recording results" dialogue, and lobbies that have 5 crews with at least 3 players in each that still take ages to get started. Sometimes those do a merge eventually, and the crews are all the same.

  • @moronicstraw
    My friends and I are quite interested if there is a sight into the future of introducing a brig into arena we are always a 3 man crew can never find a 4th for the crew as committed as we are and its never just 2 of us... I have a few more ideas in great detail for add ons for sea of thieves in general i just don't know where to go to throw out these idea's! Thank you to all that has made this game to what it has become I am 1 of those that have been here since launch and watching the stories be revealed is something I carry alot of pride in!

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