The “Social Joining” island setting is not functioning correctly. When social joining is disabled, players are still able to join the island through their friends’ parties.
Please select what you are reporting on:
Creative
What Type of Bug are you experiencing?
Island Settings
Steps to Reproduce
Set “Social Joining” and “MMS Backfill” to disabled in island settings.
Start a game with a player already in the island.
Have another player attempt to join through the first player’s party.
Expected Result
Observe that the second player is still able to join the island.
@Rubique@postboxpat@Nightzz I think this needs some explanation, because you are mixing party settings with matchmaking services and game discoverability.
They are a little related and may work together, but are not the same thing, and there are many different “cases” on how it behaves. Here is some examples:
Session Joinability (Matchmaking or MMS):
Configures if the matchmaking to the session is allowed or not
It is unrelated to mms-backfill, besides mms-backfill filtering maps that are currently set to disallow the matchmaking itself
Currently, map developers can only configurable this by placing a round settings device, and enabling/disabling matchmaking with gameplay logic in the map.
Not the same thing as just “matchmaking”. This works on top of it, but is a different “tool/feature” that does session search and player distribution on top of the available servers listed internally.
It searches across all “visible/public” sessions, then check conditions if the player is allowed to join them, and if multiple sessions are found, distribute the players across the many available sessions.
Developers can configure if want to allow or disallow mms-backfill in Island Settings.
Server Listings:
Holds all active and “public/visible” sessions as a big list. The MMS can see them all. Regardless of joining being currently disabled or not, it having whitelists or so on.
Currently internal to Epic Services only (such as the MMS). There is no public and user-faced server listing for now, like other games usually have. (ex. other games with active servers/sessions shown on a big list for players to select and join manually - see image bellow as example)
Setting the game as “Public” will mark the game as “visible” on server listings. Setting it to “Private” will mark the game as “invisible” on server listings
Is completely unrelated to player party privacy or user “online” status. Players don’t “own” a game session, besides they being able to “start” one. (Ex. session continues existing even if who created it already left)
Developers can configure on Island Settings if want the game to be always public, always private, or if want to allow players choose it on the lobby.
Social Joining:
Allows to join an existing session due to sharing a social connection with any player already on it (ex. clicking “Join Game” on the social menu).
It is only possible if the game is public (manually set by the player during launching session, or forcedly set by the map developer).
Setting game to “private” is the way to disallow social joining (That will make the game “invisible” to shared connections and the matchmaking service).
Skips enitely the “searching for available sessions” step of the MMS, due to it not needing to “find” a session at all on the server listing (Already has a direct link to it due to the social connection)
Also due to the above, neither uses the mms-backfill service to distribute the players across multiple sessions, since there is only one target session linked to (aka: Works regardless of mms-backfill being enabled or not by the map developer)
Is completely unrelated to game privacy, party privacy, sharing a party, or user online status. It works indepdendently from all of it
If MMS (Session Joinability) is currently disabled for the map (due to gameplay logic), players will be unable to join the game (but also prevents all other type of MMS/joining too)
Map Developers can configure on Island Settings if they want to allow or not social joining, plus they can override Island Settings config dynamically during gameplay by using a Round Settings Device if wanted.
Party Joining:
When players share the same party, they are considered “trusted” and skips all of the above
Even with game set to “private/invisible”, players sharing the same party with someone already on the map, it will still “know” the session to be able to join it, not needing to “find” the server on the server listings.
It also does not uses matchmaking backfill, since no player distribution is required across multiple available sessions here.
If MMS (Session Joinability) is currently disabled for the map (due to gameplay logic), players will be unable to join the game. This is the only way to prevent party joining currently (but also prevents all other type of MMS/joining too)
There is currently no way for map developers to configure it (Note: Depending on the case, it may still be possible, to detect players sharing the same party with verse, to configure custom game rules, permissions or even kicking the player out of the session upon joining, if wanted.)
Custom Matchmaking Code:
Works on top of all the above, just with an ad added “whitelist” check on top. (Checks if the player share the same code/password as configured on the session to allow/disallow being able to join that session)
Being on the same party also ignores this. (Sharing party info also means sharing that whitelist/password, allowing to join the session)
Social Joining also shares the session info (including that “password”) due to the shared connection, allowing players to join the session.
The MMS will still see all the whitelisted games, but will “check” the password to see if player is allowed or not to join the session.
Games set to “Private/Invisible” will not be choosen by the MMS-Backfill, but they are still joinable by knowing the password and having a direct link to the session due to party or social connections, like explained above
There is currently no way for map developers to configure Custom Matchmaking code rules or usages
In your original report, you mentioned about configuring social joining and matchmaking service backfill, then testing over party joining instead (And as I said, besides they sharing some systems under the hood, are not exactly the same thing…)
By all that, I think that what you want would be better control and granularity, in specific over party joining (which we don’t have ways to configure it), and with custom matchmaking codes too.
I believe that what you want would fit better as a feature request, since none of the behaviors described above are broken/wrong currently (It was broken on the past, but fixed some seasons ago…)
Plus, all other currently known JIP issues related to handling game logic and so on, I think it is still valid, but should be better described on individual bug reports, so it can be isolated and tested individually over time for future fixes…
(Note: Depending on the case, it may still be possible, to detect players sharing the same party with verse, to configure custom game rules, permissions or even kicking the player out of the session upon joining, if wanted.)