Favoritism vs the Discovery Algorithm

General Feedback & Requests
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I saw a lot of creators being reminiscent of the past and how we pushed the bar of quality with our content, and I also remembered the general critique of that time being Epic, favoring specific featured creators over everyone else, with few entries making it into the featured slots per category of content (practice, combat, variety). That time had its own issues (even though those creators worked a lot to get there), but now that the ecosystem has switched to an algorithm with the possibility that anyone can make it, I think what truly happens is that the current system is another form of favoritism, just for the wrong goals, because only a few maps hold high CCU and are presented in the forefront of Discovery (not everyone, mind you).

So what really has changed, in my mind, is how favoritism works. In the old system, you made a great level overall, that offered innovation and a fun time, you would get featured because the quality would be superior to another creator’s. Do that enough times and Epic starts to know you as a creator, potentially getting you even involved in events. In the current system, if you offer free skins if someone plays your map and make a post in tiktok with a secret way of getting them, then that offers you a high player count and the system puts you in the front of everyone else. Epic sees you as a creator and they know your name, but they won’t include you in events because they also understand that you didn’t make it there with legit methods.

However, the algorithm doesn’t know that, and human curation did back in the day (for the most part, they still missed a lot less than current system though). So favoritism, in a way, has never stopped to exist, its just now that favoritism is artificial and dilutes the goals of pushing content forward.

So to all those creators that called me out for favoritism back in 2019, and now are thinking to change profession due to how rough it has been lately, I ask, what is better? We now have seen both clique-fair and exploit-fair.

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I didnt create maps back in 2019 but what i can say is the system is so flawed its crazy.

The main issue for me is this…

When a map is on discovery itll get players and as a result itll stay on discovery. This makes it so og maps that tbh were good back in the day maybe now not so good on visuals and the creative aspect compared to others in the same genre but the issue is because this map is on discovery it stays on discovery.

I have friends who have made some awesome maps and they always die off due to not being noticed enough or being on discovery for 20 minutes. When i go down the list now some maps are great and visually look nice and attract players for the right reasons but others are imo 4 hour slop that look so poor and the only reason its on disc is probs due to like you say free skins xp ect ect

What happened to promoting and showing maps that are a true high quality and i know we as creators might see quality ect and have different views from the player but again i do play maps from the disc tabs and i wouldnt return due to how bad they are.

I think if a map has 1k or more ccu it should not be on any disc tab tbh as the map should sustain itself. This top map issue ie pit or go goated or 1v1 to name a few are always on disc being forced on people and the maps could delete most visual things make it look so bad and you know itd still be on disc its a crazy system.

I have many friends who have stopped and i myself am thinking of stopping as the time spent in maps creating seems to get little to no return. Yet on disc slop or dupe maps or blatent ip ripoff gets players and how can we as honest creators compete with it.

If a creator does something that is delibrate like how the unc maps had light saber on the thumbnail the map should be taken down from disc for min 1 week and money should be stopped. Its dirty scummy tactics like this that bleed the system from everything it could be

Anyways thats my rant

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It is so many things at this point but generally I think we need to have some systems rethought so we don’t depend on discovery. The lobby system imo is the biggest change that will impact the most of us, A lobby system where you join ONE server, not a potential of 8 different regions of servers would change things completely.

ATM the UX for the consumer is a joke for this reason. When a player joins your map they are joining their regions server of that map, if there is no one there they have to change their region and retry, repeat this until they just give up cause you have no players.

This is a MASSIVE flaw that I think is way more important than any of this micro managing of discovery. Players simply cannot gain the momentum that in the past games required to get a player base. This lobby system is only made for 1. Battle Royales 2. Already popular maps, it just kills momentum for a 0-50 player map. If all 50 players were in the same map like done in roblox we could create our own momentum and build our own communities without being forced to rely on discovery or marketing.

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Problem there is past 100 ping lots of things break inside maps. Joining a 123 ping server where you jump but not jump, then you are now actually in the air, won’t be any fun to players, especially if their connection is bad even on their own server.

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As someone who started a year ago my experience has definitely been seeing how only successful creators get promoted through both algorithms and curation. I’ve been trying to make innovative and creative maps with photoreal graphics (I work as vfx artist) and would love to do this full time but there doesn’t seem to be a pathway for quality besides epics picks because my discover slots are often at like 3 in the morning. Even then epics picks is a tiny selection and they still choose slop and prop hunt constantly. In my opinion the solution is expanding epics picks to be a larger selection with more humans looking for quality and innovation because an algorithm can’t really see those things.

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I am almost always having to play on Euro region cause I get discovery around 2am my time.

I am really particular about lag and this is a FFA First Person Map I have been testing so lag matters but I play at 150 ms and yet I see no lag and I tend to destroy the lobby (not to brag).

Otherwise if its not 2am etc then I usually only find players on the East USA servers, even at 100+ CCU I find it hard to find even 1 person in a West USA server.

So regardless, I am almost always above 80ms. And yet, I see no actual problem as far as actual latency lag what so ever.

At the very least, it should be an option in island settings and something as creators we choose to do or not do. It’s absolutely killing good maps.

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Option would make sense. Depends the build and game type, parkour maps especially are really bad on 100+ ping. Depends the complexity as well

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Well said. I agree 100% !!

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That would be true, but I guess the solution would be to customize what parts can be done on the client first and what are server-sided mainly.
Eg In roblox you can literally yank the internet cable and you can still jump around in a parkour with no delay (till Client Kicks you out for no internet). Obviously having such features would open the avenue I assume for more brutal cheats/hacks like flying etc. which won’t be a good idea for a mostly competitive game. That’s why it would be cool if it were an option in the Island Settings eg

Handle PlayerMovement: Client Mainly/Server-Sided Mainly
Matchmaking Server Selection:
-Same Region Only
-Nearby Region (Will allow to connect in nearby matchmaking nearby regions
e.g. NAE can also be connected to NAW,NAC but not to Regions Like Asia,EU
-Medium Distanced Regions (Same as before bit slightly expanded)
e.g. EU could be matched with NA servers and maybe ME servers
-All regions (All Regions will be matchmade in, Should only be used for maps that are almost No PvP related, like Fort Who,Fortnite Chess or story maps.)
Obviously if a server exists closer and the map has a plethora of people no matter how diverse the pool is selected it will try to join on the closest one if one is running.

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Then cheating software will be able to cheese and mess up everything in our game, not sure

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Not if Done correctly, Roblox has FULL customization and even let’s you “define” client scripts and server scripts. Hacker’s are at most just flying and can’t really do any damage if the developer is smart about what happens on the client side and what only happens on the server side. Obviously if someone just makes your eg coins to be client sided and not saved on the server yes people will change it that’s why it should be up to the creator and the experience itself.

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Exactly, options and choice is all this needs.

But really, The point where cheaters would exist happens once your map actually gets players :rofl:

The lag is also largely a optimization thing, If you have 800 devices on your map or a bunch of items waiting for events to happen then ya you are going to have lag. Like throwing on a bunch of physics and thinking its just gonna be optimal. A lot of these parkour or tycoon maps are not remotely optimal so it would make sense they lag.

Also, Verse replication is really good and if we are to ever reach this goal tim etc have of 1000-100000-1000000 player servers this region lock has to go.

But really, we cannot be holy reliant on discovery because discovery is just going to make the best $ decisions forever so we need a way to take are niche maps and “craft” our own player base. The reward of that could be discovery sure once we prove ourselves but this is basically what a lot of the pillar talks epic does talks of “crafting” our experiences experience for example,

but what use is that in this system? with a lobby system that doesn’t support that we are all holy dependent on discovery and those talks don’t really mean much, were just begging for discovery, epic picks, or some form of insider special privilege cause otherwise we have nothing outside of marketing.

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Another example of algorithm favoritism, TWDU maps front row is “top 10” which are just already popular maps that were converted :sob:

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I see this its a disgrace tbh why epic thought this was ok to do and even then red vs blue ect like the system is a joke now

Talking about having a monopoly those big creators should be ashamed of themselves its a dirty scummy tactic that should never be allowed to happen

those maps taking yet another disc spot

Epic need to have a rul if a map has more than 1k ccu for a week then it should be removed from disc it clearly can fend for itself

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It is no wonder discovery is where it is with all this controlled exposure, its not conducive of a good game and nothing innovative will come of it, is that the intent?

Why are they (ai? algo?) putting the same propped up maps in “More Islands” even? Shouldn’t that be for.. More Islands?

I genuinely believe discovery broke like 15 days ago and someone at epic just haven’t noticed :rofl: I hope :sob:

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bruh I made a whole map for that and it hasn’t been included at all yet :sob:

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Well ya its just been the same thing the whole time, nothing changed really since i took a screenshot 10h ago.. wtf is going on this has nearly nothing to do with competition let alone fair competition, i thought xp calibration was bad enough this is just gross.

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I just wanna add something about “Epic Picks”

I applied in march the same week as a creator got listed on epic picks published their map. This was 3 weeks ago. Im still waiting for an answer.

In 3 weeks the same creator was listed twice
currently the same creator is listed twice on the same week
every week there seems to be the majority is big creators ie looknorthworld, goodgames, Alience i could go on

Something is wrong with this system its again showing already big creators and i understand its epic picks ect but seriously ???

This feels like such a setup system promoting big creators more

I dnt like to vent or get frustrated much but legit this is so discouraging to apply to this so called great opportunity program.

Lastly i dnt like to be negative to other maps but i mean some that have been listed the past numerous weeks i wouldn’t call an epic pick

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I agree like small creators have no chance anymore tbh the entire platform is controlled by a handful of big creators and its vile and disgusting imo

Without sounds too bad i hope something drastic happens so change can be implemented. I wonder if some big company sued Epic for ip stuff if then a rule would be put in place that you must prove you have the right before publishing ip stuff.

Wonder why players are dropping and creators are leaving just look down discovery. Same repeat stuff over and over this disc algo is half the problem and deffo not the solution

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Players must be overwhelmed with the amount of content available. I think I would be happy if my maps could be found in search, that way players looking for specific content could find it.

I wish there were more tags we could use to describe our games. I think the list of tags is pretty much the same as it was 2 years ago and it is quite confusing.

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