The experience of inXile's upcoming action/dungeon crawler Hunted is firmly rooted in a two-player cooperative experience. But with the lack of split-screen play, you'll be doing all of your cooperative hunting online. But what if you don't have a buddy to tag along? No worries, says inXile's president Matt Findley -- Hunted ships with some solid matchmaking features, thanks in part to the wonderful world of online dating sites.
When setting up a game, Hunted will look at the way you already play the game, taking into account things like the rate of enemies you kill versus time played, for instance. Additionally, you'll be presented with more than a handful of options to choose from. Do you want to play only as E'lara, the game's female ranged weapons expert? Or with another player at a more advanced skill level?
"Our crazy multiplayer programmer did all of this research on dating sites," Findley says, laughing. "We wanted to find a system that would allow players to find players to play the game like they want to play."
"You can change all of these settings," he continues, "plus the game studies the way you play the game as well, and tries to create a really good match... like you would on Match.com."
For more details on inXile's upcoming title, don't miss our romantic preview of Hunted. The game has a "TBA" release date for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PC.
Contest:
3:20 PM on 03.17.2010
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I approve, Dave.
One thing I've always hated about online matchmaking is the inescapable degree of complete randomness associated with them.
For example, when the survival mode came out for Dawn of War II, I was really intrigued. Multiplayer hero survival sounded like a good bit of fun. (And it is)
However, PUGing groups would always result in the same outcome: a wipe on wave 9. Again. And again. And again. And again.
So I called up a buddy of mine, we jumped into ventrilo and snagged individual random players. Through our cooperation and communications, we pushed the wipe point from wave 9 until wave 12.
By chance, we stumbled upon a guy who was really good, had no beef with following orders, played the Farseer (which we were lacking) and on the first night we're making it to wave 15. The second night we made it to wave 20.
It was fantastic, the three of us played at a level a random PUG couldn't play at and achieved what random PUGs couldn't achieve. Unfortunately, I can't play that mode again because I can't stand wiping at wave 9 because I have no control over what kind of players I have to group with. I could spend an entire night joining and leaving groups until I found a decent one, but... the whole matter has kept me from ever returning to give it another go. I need to make it to at LEAST wave 12 before we wipe, but holy balls is that hard.
I, for one, welcome more robust online matchmaking systems.
The industry needs more of you.
I agree. These online dating sites barely work.
There's a site called http://www.weopia.com thats worth a look for finding compatibility. It isn't a dating site, but works with any of them.
And its virtual world dating!
I just want to see a check box that says "Do you collect anime/manga/anime figures? Yes? GTFO!"
I guess I don't have too much luck with matchmaking in games. I usually play games that have a sort of server listing or if there is a team based system, say Left 4 Dead, I just play with a group of people I know that that's it. Hell, I haven't touched L4D since maybe for onlyt he month it came out. Kinda sucks if I think about it...