Arcade 2.0
Over the past year, we’ve had a difficult time balancing offering all the game modes we’ve wanted to while preserving quick queue times and pushing for improved matchmaking, usually solved by rotating modes in and out of the Core rotation to accommodate all players. In an ideal Realm, we’d be able to offer all of our Core modes in their own queues and allow players to Multi-Queue into whichever they want to most. However, Multi-Queue has a lot of flaws that make this increasingly hard as time has gone on. All non-Siege modes struggle to ever appear if in a Multi-Queue with the mode, leading to most uses of the Mutli-Queue system being “anything but Siege”. This still however leads to issues with splitting players into multiple matchmaking buckets (as each queue still uses its own when in Multi-Queue) and Onslaught often still overpowering the other modes. After running several data tests, we feel the best path forward is making Arcade a permanent queue.How will it work?
Arcade will feature all of the non-Siege modes that have ever been in our Core Rotation. This includes Onslaught, Team Deathmatch, Payload, King of the Hill, and Survival. We’ve curated the starting Map Pool in order to try and provide the best experiences in each of these modes as well as make it easy for players to not get confused by which mode they are playing on a map. Here’s the starting lineup:Onslaught - 30% Odds
- Foreman’s Rise
- Magistrate’s Archives
Team Deathmatch - 25% Odds
- Abyss
- Dragon Arena
Payload - 20% Odds
- Hidden Temple
- Frostbite Cavern
King of the Hill - 15% Odds
- Marauder’s Port
- Trade District
Survival - 10% Odds
- Primal Court
- Snowfall Junction
What about Quests and rewards?
Starting in this update, Arcade will be compatible with all quests and rewards normally associated with a casual queue! This includes Daily Queue Bonus, Trials of the Realm, and any other places we call out certain game modes other than Siege!Will modes within Arcade still see improvements?
Yes, our goal with Arcade is to better support and improve all the modes within based on the fact that they will be permanently available, starting with changes to Survival and Payload this update. Speaking of updates to modes...Siege
Map Pool Additions
- Stone Keep (Day)
Map Pool Adjustments
- Stone Keep (Classic) odds are normalized now.
Onslaught & Arcade
- When looking for a match, these queues will now prioritize matching parties of 3 or less with each other. Parties of 4 or 5 will be prioritized towards other larger parties. After a significant time in the queue, this restriction will be dropped.
- Arcade and Onslaught now share the same skill rankings for players when searching for a match.
Payload
- Now utilizes 2 Checkpoints on each map [list]
- The first attacking team will start with 3 minutes, then gain an additional 2 minutes per checkpoint passed.
- The second attacking team will start with 3 minutes, then gain a scaling amount of time back based on how quickly Team 1 finished their push.
Survival
- Added support for Anti-Healing scaling throughout the match. [list]
- Scales 5% every 20s.
Ranked
Requirements
We toyed around with it in waves and did some testing internally, but we’re now comfortable raising the Ranked level requirement from 20 to 35. This is a large shift in who is able to utilize the queue and will have impacts on matchmaking speed and quality. However, we’ve heard calls from the community to make this experience require more from players to achieve it so we’re giving it a proper shot!Map Pool
High Frequency Maps
- Serpent Beach
- Stone Keep (Classic)
- Stone Keep (Night)
Normal Frequency Maps
- Ascension Peak
- Bazaar
- Brightmarsh
- Frog Isle
- Jaguar Falls
- Ice Mines
- Splitstone Quarry
- Warder’s Gate
