I'll state first that I live in the UK so I don't own a copy but from what I've gathered from prior threads and the Q&A we only get advanced match options in Private Match.

In the past I've made it clear how in this day and age of video games it's not impossible to have more advanced options for matachmaking on consoles. Just look at Battlefield 3. Crytek say that they're pushing consoles but it only seems to be on the visual side when a game has so many more important factors to consider especially if multiplayer is a part of the equation.

I'm glad we can have more options but I think it's very silly to only be able to use them in a mode that I'll rarely play if at all. Private match in my opinion would only be viable if I had a huge list of friends who play this. I don't. Private match would be viable if this game has splitscreen. It doens't. What about bots? None what-so-ever.

So why is it that we couldn't have these features implemented into standard matches? Many games have custom matches. Or are Crytek afraid that this would split the community? If you make a really good MP then you shouldn't be afraid of this and you can still add in quick match.

Ewwww bots. I wish we had more than 100 friends on friends list. Also bf3s population is significantly larger and they didn't even have private servers until months into game launch.

Ewwww bots. I wish we had more than 100 friends on friends list. Also bf3s population is significantly larger and they didn't even have private servers until months into game launch.

Yes Rent a Server was late but you still had server browser.

A small player base makes public matchmaking with custom options pretty hard. Basically every single change creates a new mode/playlist. One change in one of 10 options means ten different playlists. From then on it grows exponentially. The existing system would have to create one lobby each for every game that is offered, and with all the options, the amount of permutations might actually be bigger than the active players.

So outside of the "Dev's choice" mode (which is a game mode with custom options set by Crytek - I think the first is something like Golden-Gun every shot kills - and changes periodically), public matchmaking for custom games with that many options is simply not feasible.


A server browser, or in the case of consoles a Host Browser, would probably be at least technically possible. GRAW 1 and 2 featured such a system with a quite varied list of options, and it did work. Same goes for the HAWX and Ace Combat series. The Xbox Arcade shooter Seal Team X is the most recent game I can think of with that kind of Browser.

It would require a certain infrastructure, though, and direct streaming of Custom Game Options to and from the Crysis servers.

You'd have to set up your game, send the info to the Crysis servers, who would then have to show the info and offer the game via a "Game Host Browser" to people that search for games. Obviously the available options would have to be drastically turned down, at least for the search part. With all the possible combinations of options, you'd go crazy setting your search preferences. When you look at a game, the Crysis servers would have to show you the exact game options (which means that they'd have to be saved on, constantly updated on and constantly streamed from the Crysis servers, for every single game) and the connection quality.

And while all of that is undeniably possible, I think it would be too much of an undertaking to create all that infrastructure, or adapt the existing one. And once more the player population comes into play. The decision to be unable to gain XP through custom matches is sound - the Host in control of the game just has too much possible advantages to create a match he'd be good in, and one thing Host Browser can NOT provide is skill-based matchmaking (Crysis does not have that anyway, but I thought I'd mention it). It is not an unreasonable assumption to expect those "custom match host browsers" to take away a part of the player base, which might in turn adversely affect the players of the XP-based progression playlists.

With Crysis's history of connection problems, I would prefer a host-browser withOUT custom options, ranked games in ranked playlists and modes, but with the possibility of seeing the general connection quality for that match before joining. Like the Server Browser on PC. But the intention behind the matchmaking is to do all that for you. You just choose which mode you want to play, and the modes do sound different enough to offer something for most people to enjoy. Now, if it works as intended, that's a different thing altogether. But I think (and this is pure supposition) that the "Dev's Choice" will be used to preview different custom game modes that might possibly get their own playlists. The devs make some combo, or look at the forum and try some ideas from there, let people play it, and if it's popular enough, they might introduce it as a playlist. (Note to Crytek: it would help make the mode popular, if the Dev's Choice playlist had an incentive, like more XP for the first hour every day of playing Dev's Choice...)

All you can do is hope, but I don't think it will happen.