I am working on a fall guys-esque Roblox game with a global matchmaking system. There is a minimum of 5 players per match, and a max of 20. When the game first releases, I wanna know how I can keep new players interested even if they aren’t able to get into a match at first.
The problem is, if there’s less than 5 people playing the game at once (which there probably will be at first), it’s likely that players would join the game, notice that there’s nobody else playing, and leave, which would prevent the game from reaching a player count high enough to have consistent matches.
Does anyone know how I can address this issue for when the time comes to release the game?
Obviously I’d like to have alot more than 20 concurrent players in the game (to allow multiple matches to be going on at once,) but I’m worried that won’t happen if everyone leaves immediately after joining
I think it’s better to think about redesigning the concept. Why do you need a minimum of 5 players per match? Why couldn’t it be 2 instead? Hell, why can’t you design it in a way that the game is also playable solo, where it defaults to selecting maps that don’t need opponents, and you can race against time instead, trying to complete as many maps as possible while the timer gets shorter and shorter.
Of course I realize you may have certain intentions with your game, but games with extremely limiting lobby systems always have a much harder time taking off. You’d need to spend a lot more on ads to guarantee getting a constant stream of 5 players near the same time. It’ll also make it much easier for your game to die when going through lows in playercount.
Before your game even releases, try get some traction going for it. Get a community going so that the moment your game releases, you can have active players. These active players will be the baseline.
If you chose to do this, and you now have active players for a short period of time - pump some ads out to keep it going, this will allow players to matchmake not only with your community but also eachother.
If you’re worried about ads not working, @thebigkannye 's concept is a great alternative.
I’m thinking about making a discord server where I’ll make announcements hyping the game up, so that there’ll be that rush of players right as it launches.
as for @thebigkannye 's idea, I have tried lowering it to 2 players or even having a solo mode, and it just wasn’t as enjoyable. the point of the game is to be strictly multiplayer where you compete against other players. There are practice zones in the lobby where people can practice/speedrun different maps by themselves while they wait to get into a match, but I don’t wanna make too many changes to the main game.
I’ve got a budget of 40k robux to spend on ads. is that enough?
Not even close to enough honestly unless you run that ad for only 8-10 hours. Players are very quick to leave if there’s nothing to do in your game. A few lobby games isn’t going to help that all that much. This will kill your retention and in turn get your game suffocated by the algorithm once ads run out. At least that’s my guess.
I’m also gonna be advertising on twitter, tiktok, etc
That sounds good, but none of us have a way of knowing how those ads will do.
I’d definitely recommend getting some friends together to help you fill up the servers at least initially. So there’s someone for people to play with.
Overall you can definitely get lucky and succeed with this, but it’s pretty unlikely and you’re not giving yourself good odds.
the 40k robux is only for the first day, just to get the ball rolling. also I think it’s worth mentioning that I did lower the minimum players to 3, so that there can atleast be multiple rounds even with a small player count. also there’s an ingame party system so you could technically invite up to 4 friends and start a match with them.