Discovery doesn't help new maps, even if they perform well

General Feedback & Requests
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We were told that unique mechanics are prioritized when publishing and may give you a chance in Discovery. Spoilers, they are not.

We were told that discovery tests games upon release and gives them a fair chance. We were tested for 1 hour, in NAE servers, 8 in the morning. Another map that was a gun game came out at the same time and was tested and placed on 1 more category than us (New and Updated) and placed in a prime spot.

We were told that thumbnail virality shouldn’t improve the chances in discovery as that would mean clickbait always wins. Yet the other map that was tested at the same time had the word written “bodycam” and reached homebar, while we reached a CCU peak on our own promotion solely and when a content creator played it.

Discovery is not working as intended, it’s not helping new titles, it doesn’t show variety and it can be gamed to oblivion still. Is that what the ecosystem needs? I don’t think so.

My assumption is that the algorithm is hooked on too many things and even if one doesn’t apply to a new game or genre for XYZ reason, game won’t be promoted further. This makes games look all the same, assuming there is one benchmark type for assessing level performance.

You can only succeed currently with instant gratification, clickbait, small maps and multiplayer combat. Rest of the content is a luck of the draw, no guarantees. Why did we come to this? Because people are Epic are still stubborn and against curated lists. Just experiment, try it for once. Forget the stupid reasonings against favoritism and making the platform fair, because it seems this is somehow a lot worse, when actual effort is ignored and clickbait mid is favored.

I am going to stop here since the facts speak for themselves. Make it be fair, allow new games that are unique to stand a chance against clickbait and stolen content. Or you will lose all your talented creators/ studios, and keep quality-ignorant creators who are only good at marketing and analytics.

I am not tempted to make the simplest thing when I have UEFN tools up till Discovery never favoriting hard work. Everything, and I mean everything is against us. And it hurts the most when I see players that genuinely enjoy the game say “I wont play cause there are no players playing”. You have created a snowball of a mess that relies on CCU alone and shallow metrics.

Add curation till the algorithm is more genuine.

Discovery has a single job: Surface great content. Remember that

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The search algorithm, when searching for a map doesn’t work well if you just use (1) keyword for example.
Usually you have to type the exact island name into the search engine for it to pop up.
Especially when its a one word island for example, like HelloWorld. If you type just hello, the island will not appear under the search.

It would be nice if Epic Games displayed all tagged maps under each relevent category section to give everyone an equal chance and give users the ability to discover new maps and have more fun and stay on the game longer :smiley:

Thank you so much for your time. :slight_smile:

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What’s Mercenaries playtime and retention?

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I believe rotating the genres they share within Discovery should also happen. Obviously they should keep certain tabs static, but there should be rotating genre tabs too.

Discovery is a mess, I cannot confidently say what should be done to fix it, as I am not the expert.

I would love to see some improvements though, I remember them promising Discovery would be cleaned up when UEFN was released, when it all actuality is had become even worse…

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Let’s say around 40 mins when it was in 50 CCU. Its way more now but CCU has dropped so not relevant. 20% retention

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If Epic has the spheres to actually make a change and create something great out there, they should stay away from analytics and look at how Steam does things. Ratings, ratings, ratings. Let the user determine the quality, not some dumb excel list. There is no way, even with the addition to AI now to everything, to determine quality, only a player can. The longer this doesn’t happen the more messy it ll get.

My issue is that they are doubling down on this algo-only approach and even though there were some occasional sparks, this aint working chief. Take it down, replace it with something that works, fix it, then bring it back up as 2.0 and repeat

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I agree with this, Roblox has a rating system but my only issue is, they need to make sure bots can’t abuse it to either boost ratings or tank them. Discovery needs a rework, its flawed, and its being proven time and time again. Very unfortunate and discouraging to see.

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Yup. All Epic has done now is try to reinvent the wheel and make it square. AI is not in a position to judge quality and any system that does that online has been proven to create a soulless, addicting mediocre cesspool of grind, rather than works of love and passion.

Very few exceptions exist right now that are genuine games that are not clones but have their own identity and are still fun and engaging. And with the exception of a handful, none place in Discovery.

The fact that having 3 players playing your game puts you in spot #3000 goes to show how many games have players atm due to this system.

The algorithm treats minigames, games and massive games as the same thing, so what’s the point of not making minigames right now?

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I know if you search for an Island Creator Code/Name it doesn’t work either :‘(
To pull up the Island Creator’s Content, u kno :’(

NVM!!!
Totally works now :stuck_out_tongue: just checked :smiley:

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How about things like this? Ever since, no matter how we update our map, we will never be listed in any of the discovery (can only be reached by searched/play history)

Do they really lifted the sanction or this is just a automated email? Fun fact: they only answered the email after 3 months, which means that Epic has wrongly applied the sanction on us for 3 months.

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Epic says they want to reward creators who bring players from other platforms and focus on attracting new or returning players. But they don’t even push well marketed maps for discovery. Their algorithm really needs a fix up because it doesn’t match Epic’s new marketing playbook.

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Here is the current CCU of the game. We had 3 peaks of players so far, but none were from the discovery algorithm, just us having to battle this unbeatable algorithm with good old organic promotion and players that genuinely want to play the game.

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We made a unique game that may not tick all boxes when being recognized/promoted by the algorithm, and this goes to show that new is risky and trends are safe.

Discovery was added to Fortnite in 2021. Since then, we had the same issues, mainly because it was built to replace manual curation. It hasn’t worked IMO, and I 've been watching and complaining for years now.

Now look at steam. They promote different games everyday that you want to play. They have great content, because great content was worthwhile to build in the first place.

Here, its not worthwhile, and its an never ending cycle because no matter what update they do to Discovery now, they ll never have content to promote because of those previous choice. I know for a fact that I don’t want to develop another game like Mercs until things change, and this time I ll be waiting for a change from Epic. So first make it worthwhile, then maybe you can introduce Discovery back in a more fair format.

Do better Epic, stop killing all this effort we put into your ecosystem.

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Grats on the launch of Mercs!

I’ve heard a creator mention recently that it’s better to focus on being a part of ‘Epic’s Picks’ (Curation) than to rely on the algorithm.

I was surprised to need to manually search to find Mercs on launch day. (In my mind, a high-profile release from a group of high-profile creators). But maybe my expectations are coming from the historic ‘launch day is your biggest day’ paradigm.

Would the path to success look something more like: Featured on Epic’s Picks → Popular Streamer plays your game → You have more concurrent users than ‘Rust’

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Featured on Epic Picks is not that good anymore, another brilliant decision by the Discovery team. They nerfed the celebration of content because now if you have a high CCU in Epic Picks, your content gets punished for being good and is pushed back at the end of the row. Something that is inverted on every other row that is a popularity contest.

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I agree.
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This solution for Epic’s Picks should help out a lot :wink: