Broken game + misplaced priorities = bankrupt enterprise

DAZ0273

@MegaBee said:

@DAZ0273 said:

@MegaBee said:

@DAZ0273 said:

@entrailbucket said:

@WilliamK1983 said:

@Yepyep said:

@Bored_steve said:
Again, I'm not seeing anything close to a 1 second lag when skipping pvp teams, it appears to me to be just as quick as it ever was

But do the issues you're experiencing mean the game is now "shattered", or broken to the point of unplayability?

You have 8 posts to this forum, at this writing.

How many Top 10 PvP results have you had? If you don't have the hard-won knowledge of that game, then you might not be able to relate to my comments.

That's definitely not meant to be offensive. But my commentary is intended to be pointed at a small group of extremely active competitors. (And if I'm wrong about your game, then please add something useful.)

Edited for: drunken Saturday night

Don't drink and hit send.

Nah, I definitely think we should all compare qualifications to see who's right -- time played, number of top 10 (LOL, how about top 1?) PvP results, number of 550s, posts on the forum...

Posts on the forum?!?! Exciting!

Not sure about this one...

Oh come on now, this is just a conspiracy against me! This is because I once challenged your bee skills isn't it? I refuse to bee stuck on your honey laden sting of oppression!

Your post swarm is a full order of magnitude higher than mine. I will not bee silenced!

Unbeelievable! So that's the buzz word you are spreading! I won't let you nest in our ears!

WhiteBomber

Not defending the dev team, but I have seen a few posts about content VS fixes and thought maaaaybe some industry context could add a tiny safety blanket for the schmitstorm that is this game for some people right now:

I asked how many people their dev team was (maybe a year back or so) and it was pretty sizable. So the people creating and releasing new characters are surely completely separate teams from those who need to fix some of the more egregious bugs (crashes, freezes, performance).

Assuming they are following a standard practice, there is a design/character team (likely scripters, not strong programmers) and an engine/performance team (code only). So, regardless of how broken the game is to play, if the designers aren't also blocked, they will always be creating new content. Very often, if they asked those designers to help address some of these issues that have nothing to do with their work, it can slow things down even more. Due to this, you can't just say "everyone move to fixing crashes and performance". If the designers aren't designing (or fixing their own character bugs) they aren't working, and you probably don't want the flight attendant landing your plane (or the bank cooking your burgers?).

This of course does not excuse characters being poorly designed or released in tragic states... unless they created functionality that was controlled by game code that is not theirs (this doesn't feel like the case though). Either way, this was some of the worst blundering I have ever experienced in thirty some years gaming and I seriously hope they can make it right by the people who are being schmidt on. Fortunately, my S24 hasn't had many issues that impacted me drastically.

KGB

@entrailbucket said:

@KGB said:

@entrailbucket said:

@Chrynos1989 said:

@IceIX @S0kun
Tell these guys 5 super whales won‘t save their revenue when all the other players they love to hit are quitting the game

I think the recent matchmaking fiasco finally puts the lie to that one. I like beating up other players, but it seems like the majority of folks would prefer to fight nothing but seed teams.

Definitely some players would prefer this but I am not sure about the majority.

There's more than just beating seed teams as part of this. There are 3 other things in play that also happened:
1) The frustration of the new Unity engine (freezes, crashes, slowness)
2) The bonus cover drop that came with beating those seeds
3) For 5 star PvP the boredom of the same few meta teams + supports in PvP.

The seed teams in PvP were a godsend to me with regards to the new Unity Engine. Even with just beating seed teams in PvP, my time spent increased thanks to the general slowness of the new Engine. I really noticed this last night in the Aunt May PvP where for the first time I had to skip and fight real teams and just doing 14 matches took a lot longer than it ever did before.

The cover drops were also a godsend to a lot of players. If this remains in place it will make going back to normal PvP a lot more palatable.

KGB

So...you'd prefer to fight nothing but seed teams?

In truth it was fun for the first 4-5 events. Especially since this coincided with the extra 'Class of' PvPs being run.

But other than the ton of extra covers, the novelty wears out fast and then it became simply a chore to do 25 fights for the 25 covers + progression rewards. Note that in my case I don't have a 1 move win team even vs seeds besides Thanos (which eats health packs on the essential and couldn't be used in Class Of anyway) so those 25 wins took close to 1 hr of actual time (that's how slow menus/rewards etc are in Unity for me).

All that said, I DO like the extra covers and if the choice was seed teams + covers vs regular PvP with no extra covers I'd take the seed teams even if its a boring chore. In other words those extra covers are an expectation now.

The other thing fighting seed teams told me was that the skip feature really needs improvement. Skipping 10s or 20s of times is too slow (esp in the new Engine). We absolutely need a way to limit the teams we want to see in the skip (no repeat, by potential points to win, by average level of the 3 enemies, by highest enemy level etc) so that the skip only shows what we want to filter for. I don't expect it to cost the same 10 ISO, I'm more than happy to pay more ISO to see only teams in my filter and the tighter the filter the more it can cost. Again, I'm fine with that, I just want to get to what I want without wasting a lot of time skipping.

KGB

entrailbucket

@KGB said:

@entrailbucket said:

@KGB said:

@entrailbucket said:

@Chrynos1989 said:

@IceIX @S0kun
Tell these guys 5 super whales won‘t save their revenue when all the other players they love to hit are quitting the game

I think the recent matchmaking fiasco finally puts the lie to that one. I like beating up other players, but it seems like the majority of folks would prefer to fight nothing but seed teams.

Definitely some players would prefer this but I am not sure about the majority.

There's more than just beating seed teams as part of this. There are 3 other things in play that also happened:
1) The frustration of the new Unity engine (freezes, crashes, slowness)
2) The bonus cover drop that came with beating those seeds
3) For 5 star PvP the boredom of the same few meta teams + supports in PvP.

The seed teams in PvP were a godsend to me with regards to the new Unity Engine. Even with just beating seed teams in PvP, my time spent increased thanks to the general slowness of the new Engine. I really noticed this last night in the Aunt May PvP where for the first time I had to skip and fight real teams and just doing 14 matches took a lot longer than it ever did before.

The cover drops were also a godsend to a lot of players. If this remains in place it will make going back to normal PvP a lot more palatable.

KGB

So...you'd prefer to fight nothing but seed teams?

In truth it was fun for the first 4-5 events. Especially since this coincided with the extra 'Class of' PvPs being run.

But other than the ton of extra covers, the novelty wears out fast and then it became simply a chore to do 25 fights for the 25 covers + progression rewards. Note that in my case I don't have a 1 move win team even vs seeds besides Thanos (which eats health packs on the essential and couldn't be used in Class Of anyway) so those 25 wins took close to 1 hr of actual time (that's how slow menus/rewards etc are in Unity for me).

All that said, I DO like the extra covers and if the choice was seed teams + covers vs regular PvP with no extra covers I'd take the seed teams even if its a boring chore. In other words those extra covers are an expectation now.

The other thing fighting seed teams told me was that the skip feature really needs improvement. Skipping 10s or 20s of times is too slow (esp in the new Engine). We absolutely need a way to limit the teams we want to see in the skip (no repeat, by potential points to win, by average level of the 3 enemies, by highest enemy level etc) so that the skip only shows what we want to filter for. I don't expect it to cost the same 10 ISO, I'm more than happy to pay more ISO to see only teams in my filter and the tighter the filter the more it can cost. Again, I'm fine with that, I just want to get to what I want without wasting a lot of time skipping.

KGB

You're asking to create your own matchmaking algorithm, and they will never allow that (why on earth would they?).

KGB

@entrailbucket said:

@KGB said:

@entrailbucket said:

@KGB said:

@entrailbucket said:

@Chrynos1989 said:

@IceIX @S0kun
Tell these guys 5 super whales won‘t save their revenue when all the other players they love to hit are quitting the game

I think the recent matchmaking fiasco finally puts the lie to that one. I like beating up other players, but it seems like the majority of folks would prefer to fight nothing but seed teams.

Definitely some players would prefer this but I am not sure about the majority.

There's more than just beating seed teams as part of this. There are 3 other things in play that also happened:
1) The frustration of the new Unity engine (freezes, crashes, slowness)
2) The bonus cover drop that came with beating those seeds
3) For 5 star PvP the boredom of the same few meta teams + supports in PvP.

The seed teams in PvP were a godsend to me with regards to the new Unity Engine. Even with just beating seed teams in PvP, my time spent increased thanks to the general slowness of the new Engine. I really noticed this last night in the Aunt May PvP where for the first time I had to skip and fight real teams and just doing 14 matches took a lot longer than it ever did before.

The cover drops were also a godsend to a lot of players. If this remains in place it will make going back to normal PvP a lot more palatable.

KGB

So...you'd prefer to fight nothing but seed teams?

In truth it was fun for the first 4-5 events. Especially since this coincided with the extra 'Class of' PvPs being run.

But other than the ton of extra covers, the novelty wears out fast and then it became simply a chore to do 25 fights for the 25 covers + progression rewards. Note that in my case I don't have a 1 move win team even vs seeds besides Thanos (which eats health packs on the essential and couldn't be used in Class Of anyway) so those 25 wins took close to 1 hr of actual time (that's how slow menus/rewards etc are in Unity for me).

All that said, I DO like the extra covers and if the choice was seed teams + covers vs regular PvP with no extra covers I'd take the seed teams even if its a boring chore. In other words those extra covers are an expectation now.

The other thing fighting seed teams told me was that the skip feature really needs improvement. Skipping 10s or 20s of times is too slow (esp in the new Engine). We absolutely need a way to limit the teams we want to see in the skip (no repeat, by potential points to win, by average level of the 3 enemies, by highest enemy level etc) so that the skip only shows what we want to filter for. I don't expect it to cost the same 10 ISO, I'm more than happy to pay more ISO to see only teams in my filter and the tighter the filter the more it can cost. Again, I'm fine with that, I just want to get to what I want without wasting a lot of time skipping.

KGB

You're asking to create your own matchmaking algorithm, and they will never allow that (why on earth would they?).

No, I'm asking them to only show me some of what their algorithm currently shows me.

Right now when I skip I might see a battle for 15 points, another with teams that have an average level (after boost) of 500, another with 25 points and an average level of 450. What I am asking is to be able to set a filter for battles worth say min of 20 points and a max average level of 450 (the 3rd team). The regular algorithm still runs search for matches but it would only give me the 3rd one and not the other 2. I'm happy to pay a higher skip tax, in fact I'm fine if that skip tax is all the teams the algorithm auto-bypasses (lets say it selected team 1, then rejected due to filter so that costs me 10, then it selected team 2 and rejected due to filter so that cost me another 10) then it finally found team 3 and gave that to me for a cost of 30 ISO (2 background skips plus the final skip to the team that's in my criteria). The cost is the same (30 ISO) but it's just saving me the time of seeing and hitting skip 3 times.

KGB

DAZ0273

@KGB said:

@entrailbucket said:

@KGB said:

@entrailbucket said:

@Chrynos1989 said:

@IceIX @S0kun
Tell these guys 5 super whales won‘t save their revenue when all the other players they love to hit are quitting the game

I think the recent matchmaking fiasco finally puts the lie to that one. I like beating up other players, but it seems like the majority of folks would prefer to fight nothing but seed teams.

Definitely some players would prefer this but I am not sure about the majority.

There's more than just beating seed teams as part of this. There are 3 other things in play that also happened:
1) The frustration of the new Unity engine (freezes, crashes, slowness)
2) The bonus cover drop that came with beating those seeds
3) For 5 star PvP the boredom of the same few meta teams + supports in PvP.

The seed teams in PvP were a godsend to me with regards to the new Unity Engine. Even with just beating seed teams in PvP, my time spent increased thanks to the general slowness of the new Engine. I really noticed this last night in the Aunt May PvP where for the first time I had to skip and fight real teams and just doing 14 matches took a lot longer than it ever did before.

The cover drops were also a godsend to a lot of players. If this remains in place it will make going back to normal PvP a lot more palatable.

KGB

So...you'd prefer to fight nothing but seed teams?

In truth it was fun for the first 4-5 events. Especially since this coincided with the extra 'Class of' PvPs being run.

But other than the ton of extra covers, the novelty wears out fast and then it became simply a chore to do 25 fights for the 25 covers + progression rewards. Note that in my case I don't have a 1 move win team even vs seeds besides Thanos (which eats health packs on the essential and couldn't be used in Class Of anyway) so those 25 wins took close to 1 hr of actual time (that's how slow menus/rewards etc are in Unity for me).

All that said, I DO like the extra covers and if the choice was seed teams + covers vs regular PvP with no extra covers I'd take the seed teams even if its a boring chore. In other words those extra covers are an expectation now.

The other thing fighting seed teams told me was that the skip feature really needs improvement. Skipping 10s or 20s of times is too slow (esp in the new Engine). We absolutely need a way to limit the teams we want to see in the skip (no repeat, by potential points to win, by average level of the 3 enemies, by highest enemy level etc) so that the skip only shows what we want to filter for. I don't expect it to cost the same 10 ISO, I'm more than happy to pay more ISO to see only teams in my filter and the tighter the filter the more it can cost. Again, I'm fine with that, I just want to get to what I want without wasting a lot of time skipping.

KGB

You don't have a 4* Juggs/Rocket + whoever team? That is a one move win team, no?

entrailbucket

@KGB said:

@entrailbucket said:

@KGB said:

@entrailbucket said:

@KGB said:

@entrailbucket said:

@Chrynos1989 said:

@IceIX @S0kun
Tell these guys 5 super whales won‘t save their revenue when all the other players they love to hit are quitting the game

I think the recent matchmaking fiasco finally puts the lie to that one. I like beating up other players, but it seems like the majority of folks would prefer to fight nothing but seed teams.

Definitely some players would prefer this but I am not sure about the majority.

There's more than just beating seed teams as part of this. There are 3 other things in play that also happened:
1) The frustration of the new Unity engine (freezes, crashes, slowness)
2) The bonus cover drop that came with beating those seeds
3) For 5 star PvP the boredom of the same few meta teams + supports in PvP.

The seed teams in PvP were a godsend to me with regards to the new Unity Engine. Even with just beating seed teams in PvP, my time spent increased thanks to the general slowness of the new Engine. I really noticed this last night in the Aunt May PvP where for the first time I had to skip and fight real teams and just doing 14 matches took a lot longer than it ever did before.

The cover drops were also a godsend to a lot of players. If this remains in place it will make going back to normal PvP a lot more palatable.

KGB

So...you'd prefer to fight nothing but seed teams?

In truth it was fun for the first 4-5 events. Especially since this coincided with the extra 'Class of' PvPs being run.

But other than the ton of extra covers, the novelty wears out fast and then it became simply a chore to do 25 fights for the 25 covers + progression rewards. Note that in my case I don't have a 1 move win team even vs seeds besides Thanos (which eats health packs on the essential and couldn't be used in Class Of anyway) so those 25 wins took close to 1 hr of actual time (that's how slow menus/rewards etc are in Unity for me).

All that said, I DO like the extra covers and if the choice was seed teams + covers vs regular PvP with no extra covers I'd take the seed teams even if its a boring chore. In other words those extra covers are an expectation now.

The other thing fighting seed teams told me was that the skip feature really needs improvement. Skipping 10s or 20s of times is too slow (esp in the new Engine). We absolutely need a way to limit the teams we want to see in the skip (no repeat, by potential points to win, by average level of the 3 enemies, by highest enemy level etc) so that the skip only shows what we want to filter for. I don't expect it to cost the same 10 ISO, I'm more than happy to pay more ISO to see only teams in my filter and the tighter the filter the more it can cost. Again, I'm fine with that, I just want to get to what I want without wasting a lot of time skipping.

KGB

You're asking to create your own matchmaking algorithm, and they will never allow that (why on earth would they?).

No, I'm asking them to only show me some of what their algorithm currently shows me.

Right now when I skip I might see a battle for 15 points, another with teams that have an average level (after boost) of 500, another with 25 points and an average level of 450. What I am asking is to be able to set a filter for battles worth say min of 20 points and a max average level of 450 (the 3rd team). The regular algorithm still runs search for matches but it would only give me the 3rd one and not the other 2. I'm happy to pay a higher skip tax, in fact I'm fine if that skip tax is all the teams the algorithm auto-bypasses (lets say it selected team 1, then rejected due to filter so that costs me 10, then it selected team 2 and rejected due to filter so that cost me another 10) then it finally found team 3 and gave that to me for a cost of 30 ISO (2 background skips plus the final skip to the team that's in my criteria). The cost is the same (30 ISO) but it's just saving me the time of seeing and hitting skip 3 times.

KGB

Uh, maybe they could just fix whatever performance issue is causing your skips to be so slow? I skip hundreds of times every event and have not noticed anything like this.

I feel like it would be really confusing for players to have to deal with a full screen of matchmaking filters, and really easy to set them to impossible values. Like "I'm at 700, give me only opponents worth 70+ points with a max combined level of 150." And what would happen in your scenario where a player entered some really weird criteria and the game auto-skipped 10,000 times?

(You could also just level up your guys, and not have to worry about skipping anyone)

KGB

@entrailbucket said:

@KGB said:

@entrailbucket said:

@KGB said:

@entrailbucket said:

@KGB said:

@entrailbucket said:

@Chrynos1989 said:

@IceIX @S0kun
Tell these guys 5 super whales won‘t save their revenue when all the other players they love to hit are quitting the game

I think the recent matchmaking fiasco finally puts the lie to that one. I like beating up other players, but it seems like the majority of folks would prefer to fight nothing but seed teams.

Definitely some players would prefer this but I am not sure about the majority.

There's more than just beating seed teams as part of this. There are 3 other things in play that also happened:
1) The frustration of the new Unity engine (freezes, crashes, slowness)
2) The bonus cover drop that came with beating those seeds
3) For 5 star PvP the boredom of the same few meta teams + supports in PvP.

The seed teams in PvP were a godsend to me with regards to the new Unity Engine. Even with just beating seed teams in PvP, my time spent increased thanks to the general slowness of the new Engine. I really noticed this last night in the Aunt May PvP where for the first time I had to skip and fight real teams and just doing 14 matches took a lot longer than it ever did before.

The cover drops were also a godsend to a lot of players. If this remains in place it will make going back to normal PvP a lot more palatable.

KGB

So...you'd prefer to fight nothing but seed teams?

In truth it was fun for the first 4-5 events. Especially since this coincided with the extra 'Class of' PvPs being run.

But other than the ton of extra covers, the novelty wears out fast and then it became simply a chore to do 25 fights for the 25 covers + progression rewards. Note that in my case I don't have a 1 move win team even vs seeds besides Thanos (which eats health packs on the essential and couldn't be used in Class Of anyway) so those 25 wins took close to 1 hr of actual time (that's how slow menus/rewards etc are in Unity for me).

All that said, I DO like the extra covers and if the choice was seed teams + covers vs regular PvP with no extra covers I'd take the seed teams even if its a boring chore. In other words those extra covers are an expectation now.

The other thing fighting seed teams told me was that the skip feature really needs improvement. Skipping 10s or 20s of times is too slow (esp in the new Engine). We absolutely need a way to limit the teams we want to see in the skip (no repeat, by potential points to win, by average level of the 3 enemies, by highest enemy level etc) so that the skip only shows what we want to filter for. I don't expect it to cost the same 10 ISO, I'm more than happy to pay more ISO to see only teams in my filter and the tighter the filter the more it can cost. Again, I'm fine with that, I just want to get to what I want without wasting a lot of time skipping.

KGB

You're asking to create your own matchmaking algorithm, and they will never allow that (why on earth would they?).

No, I'm asking them to only show me some of what their algorithm currently shows me.

Right now when I skip I might see a battle for 15 points, another with teams that have an average level (after boost) of 500, another with 25 points and an average level of 450. What I am asking is to be able to set a filter for battles worth say min of 20 points and a max average level of 450 (the 3rd team). The regular algorithm still runs search for matches but it would only give me the 3rd one and not the other 2. I'm happy to pay a higher skip tax, in fact I'm fine if that skip tax is all the teams the algorithm auto-bypasses (lets say it selected team 1, then rejected due to filter so that costs me 10, then it selected team 2 and rejected due to filter so that cost me another 10) then it finally found team 3 and gave that to me for a cost of 30 ISO (2 background skips plus the final skip to the team that's in my criteria). The cost is the same (30 ISO) but it's just saving me the time of seeing and hitting skip 3 times.

KGB

Uh, maybe they could just fix whatever performance issue is causing your skips to be so slow? I skip hundreds of times every event and have not noticed anything like this.

I really hope they can get it sped up.

I feel like it would be really confusing for players to have to deal with a full screen of matchmaking filters, and really easy to set them to impossible values. Like "I'm at 700, give me only opponents worth 70+ points with a max combined level of 150." And what would happen in your scenario where a player entered some really weird criteria and the game auto-skipped 10,000 times?

It's easy to check if you entered an invalid filter. Guessing maybe 10K players in a slice (across all SCLs since you can be fed anyone in your slice regardless of CL they picked)? Maybe 20K? Just send the criteria to the server and check all to see how many fit in the criteria and are not shielded. If there are none, return 'invalid search', otherwise start skipping till you find one. Maybe to prevent real crazy rare cases where only 1in 1000 teams fits, you can put an upper limit of 100 skips max after which you charged 1000 ISO and can try again if you want.

KGB

entrailbucket

@KGB said:

@entrailbucket said:

@KGB said:

@entrailbucket said:

@KGB said:

@entrailbucket said:

@KGB said:

@entrailbucket said:

@Chrynos1989 said:

@IceIX @S0kun
Tell these guys 5 super whales won‘t save their revenue when all the other players they love to hit are quitting the game

I think the recent matchmaking fiasco finally puts the lie to that one. I like beating up other players, but it seems like the majority of folks would prefer to fight nothing but seed teams.

Definitely some players would prefer this but I am not sure about the majority.

There's more than just beating seed teams as part of this. There are 3 other things in play that also happened:
1) The frustration of the new Unity engine (freezes, crashes, slowness)
2) The bonus cover drop that came with beating those seeds
3) For 5 star PvP the boredom of the same few meta teams + supports in PvP.

The seed teams in PvP were a godsend to me with regards to the new Unity Engine. Even with just beating seed teams in PvP, my time spent increased thanks to the general slowness of the new Engine. I really noticed this last night in the Aunt May PvP where for the first time I had to skip and fight real teams and just doing 14 matches took a lot longer than it ever did before.

The cover drops were also a godsend to a lot of players. If this remains in place it will make going back to normal PvP a lot more palatable.

KGB

So...you'd prefer to fight nothing but seed teams?

In truth it was fun for the first 4-5 events. Especially since this coincided with the extra 'Class of' PvPs being run.

But other than the ton of extra covers, the novelty wears out fast and then it became simply a chore to do 25 fights for the 25 covers + progression rewards. Note that in my case I don't have a 1 move win team even vs seeds besides Thanos (which eats health packs on the essential and couldn't be used in Class Of anyway) so those 25 wins took close to 1 hr of actual time (that's how slow menus/rewards etc are in Unity for me).

All that said, I DO like the extra covers and if the choice was seed teams + covers vs regular PvP with no extra covers I'd take the seed teams even if its a boring chore. In other words those extra covers are an expectation now.

The other thing fighting seed teams told me was that the skip feature really needs improvement. Skipping 10s or 20s of times is too slow (esp in the new Engine). We absolutely need a way to limit the teams we want to see in the skip (no repeat, by potential points to win, by average level of the 3 enemies, by highest enemy level etc) so that the skip only shows what we want to filter for. I don't expect it to cost the same 10 ISO, I'm more than happy to pay more ISO to see only teams in my filter and the tighter the filter the more it can cost. Again, I'm fine with that, I just want to get to what I want without wasting a lot of time skipping.

KGB

You're asking to create your own matchmaking algorithm, and they will never allow that (why on earth would they?).

No, I'm asking them to only show me some of what their algorithm currently shows me.

Right now when I skip I might see a battle for 15 points, another with teams that have an average level (after boost) of 500, another with 25 points and an average level of 450. What I am asking is to be able to set a filter for battles worth say min of 20 points and a max average level of 450 (the 3rd team). The regular algorithm still runs search for matches but it would only give me the 3rd one and not the other 2. I'm happy to pay a higher skip tax, in fact I'm fine if that skip tax is all the teams the algorithm auto-bypasses (lets say it selected team 1, then rejected due to filter so that costs me 10, then it selected team 2 and rejected due to filter so that cost me another 10) then it finally found team 3 and gave that to me for a cost of 30 ISO (2 background skips plus the final skip to the team that's in my criteria). The cost is the same (30 ISO) but it's just saving me the time of seeing and hitting skip 3 times.

KGB

Uh, maybe they could just fix whatever performance issue is causing your skips to be so slow? I skip hundreds of times every event and have not noticed anything like this.

I really hope they can get it sped up.

I feel like it would be really confusing for players to have to deal with a full screen of matchmaking filters, and really easy to set them to impossible values. Like "I'm at 700, give me only opponents worth 70+ points with a max combined level of 150." And what would happen in your scenario where a player entered some really weird criteria and the game auto-skipped 10,000 times?

It's easy to check if you entered an invalid filter. Guessing maybe 10K players in a slice (across all SCLs since you can be fed anyone in your slice regardless of CL they picked)? Maybe 20K? Just send the criteria to the server and check all to see how many fit in the criteria and are not shielded. If there are none, return 'invalid search', otherwise start skipping till you find one. Maybe to prevent real crazy rare cases where only 1in 1000 teams fits, you can put an upper limit of 100 skips max after which you charged 1000 ISO and can try again if you want.

KGB

I would not characterize this feature as something they "need" to add. Wouldn't you rather have them fix the performance problems instead of adding some huge new feature to work around them?