The BIGGEST PROBLEM in Naraka and how to fix it...

[@esavage8855]

I had no idea about this setting. I definitely noticed that I was primarily fighting bots. But I thought that was just how the game was because I’m just starting out. I’m glad I found this video. Honestly I find bots a lot more difficult to play against for a couple reasons 1 they don’t have a specific play style they just adapt to whatever you do and 2 once they get a good hit on you they’re almost impossible to escape or reset the fight because they never disengage like most players do and no matter what you do to try to disengage they’re just always somehow right up your ass spamming attacks

[@jonathandeyne-ow2ib]

Yeah. The bots aren’t completely brain dead so you may not realize it in the beginning, but I noticed that bots don’t move as well as actual players, video gameplay on KZbin lobbies looked different than mine, and my 1v1 Top 2 fights in Solos require more effort to win than the entire match. These observations made me realize that I’ve been in bot matches.

[@LuckyNeffy]

" Have actual marketing and a western publishing team based in Netease Montreal, same with esports department. "

[@LuckyNeffy]

Crossplay mandatory is a little hard sicne they can turn it off outside of the game.

[@ChefOfTheDead]

Better western marking would be great, especially pairing it with something like PlayStation release…. and yeah the crossplay thing isn’t so simple I guess. Would it be weird to just not allow you to queue and prompt you with “turn crossplay on” ?

[@itsfrankly4866]

liked before watched, no regrets. as usual.

[@PhilSpender69Billion]

I’ve been playing since Xbox release and I could have swore even when a bunch of Xbox players left the game, I was still finding matches in less than a minute and for almost every mode. This has to be fixed ASAP. We just need as many players as possible and the devs see this video

[@kostasplayz3129]

Here 1 year later after the video was posted. As someone that has been playing Naraka since 1 week after its launch I have to say that this is pretty accurate but most of the points in the video still remain untouched. I will list them here: 1) Although some of the "PRO" players have been begging for map selection to come back, they all know that queue times will go insane if they add it back. (so its a good thing that its still out) 2) The "fill with bots" setting is still not removed, and a lot and I do mean A LOT of people have actually been complaining about it on reddit and asking if they are fighting bots etc... (but this does help with the people that just want to play the game for casual, but I think that it should be removed from ranked/immortal war and just be kept in the other non competitive modes) 3) Although I do want crossplay to be mandatory, I don't think that doing that would help in the longrun, as a PC player has quite a big advantage compared to any console player due to this game being heavy on movement, flicking etc. (there are actually groups of xbox (xbot) players that outright refuse to play against PC players because of this. But that isn't to mention that PC gamepass players also count as xbox players so it doesn't really add up...) this would hinder the gameplay for casual gamers quite a bit because even the less than average quick match PC players are likely to defeat Xbox quickmatch players simply because of said advantages. (but like in my previous point they could remove it from ranked and Immortal war and keep in the non competitive modes) 4) The game is currently Free 2 Play on PC (Steam, Epic, Official Naraka launcher), PS5, Xbox S/X (and Xbox 1 but that is soon to be removed due to hardware limitations). The game going F2P certainly helped the player base problem and thus made the queue times much better. But if they advertised the game a bit more for its actual gameplay/updates (and not just do random collabs with other games and pay cosplayers that barely get people in the game). For example the collab with Maximilian Dood worked great as he is a fighting game lover that has been in the industry for quite a while now, and since Naraka is similar to a fighting game, getting him brought quite a few players to the game. But cosplayers like (no hate towards the cosplayer) Xhemyd bring no players in the game and are barely seen overall. (One could argue that this is the creators fault but if you look at the other collabs and overall cosplays of said creator you will see that this isn't true). And please for the love of god, don't advertise using creators that don't have anything do to with the industry! For example I will take Joe Bartolozzi. He is a great content creator but he has NOTHING to do with the gaming industry, much less with games that are trying to game more popular that aren't already super popular. Personally I think more collabs like the ones with Shroud, Lirik etc would be better (even if the creators like shroud later admit that they didn't like the game for XYZ reasons). And with this I end my comment (Dang I didn't expect to write this much lol)

[@Penemue]

good video, i hope it's gonna help making things better. naraka is a great game and hopefully it will get much more popular soon

[@0b0100]

nice overview of a really important topic; and i'm in agreement with all your main points. i think something important to note, which you did. is this and the effect that its has is naraka's fault and not the players. i guess keep that in mind with the rest of my thoughts. naraka's skillcap, is really high more than someone might expect when picking up the game. naraka's in game resources and tutorials aren't good. also a lot of techniques have come from player experimentation & collective knowledge. which aren't immediately accessible. naraka chose to make the game deceptively easier by using bots. this was the case even before the game was launched on console. there were a lot of instances when i was playing with randoms, of players feeling proud / accomplished from beating bots in a fight. saying stuff along the lines of "i just destroyed that guy" & "those guys sucked." however, in ranked, this didn't last very long. you eventually got matched against more players with various level of experience and start to lose fight much more than before. at the point you haven't had to learn how to actually play naraka. and this has lead to other issues, that still exist, involving baseless cheating accusations, xenophobia etc. on xbox (pc & console), replenish bots = on can almost infinitely extend this period of blissful ignorance, while also obtaining the supposedly hardest achievements in the game. this also somewhat amplifies the problem i mentioned because people are validated by these achievements. i think although it might've been done to make the game more approachable, and rewarding short term. it serves as a poor introduction to the current state of the game. in my interactions as someone who primarily showcases more technical stuff. i've felt like there's an expectation for things to be easier to learn than they actually are; everything else was given away easily. --- however, pretty sure crossplay is required to be an option for console players; there's valid reasons for it to exist as well, especially with naraka's current performance. if someone has crossplay disabled on their console, they were never in the cross-platform queue anyway; but they would form additional games that xbox players with crossplay on can join that others can't. so it won't be completely resolved with replenish bots off, but it will be way better ! leaderboard problem, i dunno. looked around on tracker(gg) and seems like a lot of cross platform games have console inflation on their leaderboards. not sure if those games have cross platform leaderboards in game. without bot replenish at least people can't farm bots forever on console.

[@adnansaleem6167]

For the points mentioned at the end, I agree completely with the first three and I STRONGLY AGREE with the last one. It is incomprehensible for me as to why they haven't done that yet!! I bought the game when it came out because it looked just like what I would enjoy, even though I despise battle royales. I was very hesitant and fully prepared for the 2 hour refund If I hadn't enjoyed it. But this should totally be FTP, like every other game of its type.

[@라타논사라냐]

I played the last couple of months a few hours a day Mostly after 11pm uk time or 7pm to 9pm On Series X I have yet to get a game in omni nightmare Some matches queue for 20 minutes and I play another game then back to resume and its still matching All I can do is quick match or ranked survival Or wait for hours. PC players have a edge regardless of bots and it was on pc a year ago. However a new pc player cant beat a xbox player with months of playing so the argument is not that clear. I did write that they could make Bots a specific outfit ie all gold metallic armour and that would help as you would not know what skills they have as they are all the same ie instead of 6 Kurunis So you know instantly which is a real player as they are a character. Then they could create a map that is 39 bots vs 1 player Or a gladiator style arena Where 1 or 2 3 players fight until a time up and the bots get harder as the Gladiator film. Bots appear from the ground or doors etc. You have a choice wait for a long time or do a quick match or get killed in survival then watch for 20 minutes. The match making is a issue so at least put in some form of a solo game with rewards at a fixed skill level So you can play that at least.

[@angelsaavedra5674]

Honestly just came across the vid and all points are extremely valid the biggest one being free to play and making its way to the PlayStation group which I think it would be better on.

[@nickgale1642]

I hate not being able to select the map for the bot modes. Also when you get a run of the same map over and over its really frustrating especially when you don't want to play the map. The old style server selection of games of yesteryear is a much better idea than removing map selection. Select the server you want to play on and then you can just select populated servers instead of all this queuing stuff.

[@ChefOfTheDead]

They should definitely leave in map select for bot modes! In my experience I don’t get the same map many times in a row anyways, but there’s definitely cons on both sides.

[@voinian]

Map select for bot mode, map vote for ranked. You can choose your preferred map and the more voted map will be played. If this makes one map play too much, an alternate method would be making it not a vote, but random pick out of the votes, eg. if 70% of people vote Holoroth, then there's 70% chance it will be picked. The voting will balance itself - when one map is played a lot, people get tired it and start wanting to play the other map.

[@ChefOfTheDead]

@@voinian The mix of vote/random pick sounds great. Good idea :)

[@Xtrooper116]

I agree and I dont. While people want to be matched with players making matching processes happen quickly is also important. A game with long matchmaking will on serve to drive players off. Having faster times that contains a mix of human and bot players so the player is less likely to notice the bots creates an environment that encourages newer players to come back or to stay with the game. My solution is almost always this... Make the bots better and more divers. That means auto scaling the bots to the players lvl and sometimes putting in stronger bots than the human can handle for diversity sake. Giving the bots personalty traits like in perfect dark is a good way to make bots feel more alive. Stalker bots, aggressive bots, parry bots, combo bots, etc. This creates a better feeling environment and ensures that even if the player base disappears you still have as healthy an environment for the enthusiastic players, rather than having to shut the servers down.

[@ChefOfTheDead]

Normal matches without the setting on also have bots, just way fewer. And it’s already true that bots are scaled to your rank and are sometimes more difficult to deal with than players, however making a bot that’s too difficult for a human to handle would probably be the most annoying thing they could possibly do. Driving away players that would rather have a fast queue than fight against humans in a pvp game, while speeding up the queue for people who want to play the game how it’s intended, would absolutely be the way to go

[@aoshihk1311]

Good to know, A couple questions , I'm brand new just started on Steam about a week ago, 1) Can I try out the game on Windows game store (pc play store) and link my progress for Steam so far - like is your overall account saved on the Naraka game account... and 2) Is gold actually earnable on a free account(non battle pass)? I just completed something in game /or it might have been a amazon prime gaming reward not sure - put i said I was to get gold click on it in game - yet my gold balance still says zero??

[@ChefOfTheDead]

The game is not cross progression, so no, all cosmetics and progress would have to be made on the account you want to stick with. I’ve never even heard of the windows game store? Do you mean the Xbox app? Naraka is only available on Xbox, epic, steam, and psn. Anyways, no, it is not possible to earn gold without purchasing the battle pass or buying it outright.

[@inoyami3088]

I like how things are

[@shinrasoldier1251]

the game is very slow to shutdown for me i have no lag issues ingame but shutting this game down takes almost 2 minutes..how can i fix this?

[@ChefOfTheDead]

Not sure sorry, mine closes in like 3 seconds :(

[@shinrasoldier1251]

@@ChefOfTheDead ok np

[@maxrosefoxanime7225]

Thank you for the video because your right but personally im keeping it on because i don't fully care for rank that much but to me personally im just trying to get a high rank for the rewards but in general i can still mange fighting against pc players i mostly just want to play the game much as possible

[@DvrkAltarx]

I didn't even know there was an option to turn off bots in the game. I know what I'm doing next time I'm one. I only have 19 hours in the game

[@ChefOfTheDead]

Yes! Join us in real player matches 🙏

[@PhilSpender69Billion]

THANK GOD FINALLY SOMEONE DID A VIDEO ON THIS! I thought it was only me and a few others going through this it’s been pissing me off lol 🤦🏿‍♂️ the map section thing did help quite a bit but it’s not enough. I had no idea about that setting mine was on for some reason. I’ll turn it off and see what happens 🤷🏿‍♂️ I noticed I would finish a game with 2 people,I’d be searching for 7 mins but I end the timer and I see both of those guys are already in there own game for 4 mins and it happens way too often. Thank you so much this clears up alot I thought I was just straight going crazy about the matchmaking 🤦🏿‍♂️🤣 I totally agree with you on everything great video 💯 I’ll sub you seem cool

[@ChefOfTheDead]

Hahaha thanks for the comment. Makes me feel vindicated hearing stuff like this.

[@Nae-i1f]

I turned that off and now I'm not getting any matches at all. The timer runs out and I don't get up into a game ever. Do I need to turn it back on or something?

[@ChefOfTheDead]

Are you playing in the morning? Timing out is pretty rare. I’d suggest playing around 5pm-12am for the best queues. Also what mode? Ranked is the most popular

[@Nae-i1f]

@@ChefOfTheDead I play at all random times but today I've been trying to play on and off all day. And no I don't play ranked I've been playing quickmode. Also with showdown I wanted to play trios it never loaded but loaded with solo. I'm new to the game I can't play ranked yet because it's still locked

[@TheGamingraccoon-qe6zn]

from some reason i cant find the settings

[@julsss5297]

I just started playing, but I play on steam, I just found out I’m playing against bots, they needs to make this setting on all platforms otherwise I just might quit.

[@ChefOfTheDead]

The issue is the setting existing. Replenish bots is off by default on steam. You just get bots if you’re bronze/silver rank either way

[@julsss5297]

@@ChefOfTheDead is it really? That’s good, I’m gold so that probably why I see so many.

[@EmeraldBlade98]

@@ChefOfTheDead really? I was playing just now and I'm in Gold 1, I'm getting only bots it's very odd. This is the first time I played in 2 months idk why it's like this

[@ChefOfTheDead]

Gold will still have a lot of bots but certainly not all. Just keep pushing to plat and the players will start to outnumber the bots

[@Ashen246]

What would your take be on the matchmaking now? I was a paid player thats returning after a LONG time because the terrible queue times drastically put me off. I've just hit silver 2 and im constantly against people who are high ranking players with a partical character in their country, for example I was killed by a Zai earlier who was number 1, is there any sort of skill based matchmaking or will there be? I expeceted there would be skill based matchmaking due to the newer players coming into the game, they will get burnout getting rolled by smurfs and high level players surely?

[@ChefOfTheDead]

Queues haven’t really had a chance to stabilize since most ftp players haven’t had access to ranked yet, but yes there is skill based matchmaking, and at high rank I’ve had great queue times since the game has become free

[@Ashen246]

@@ChefOfTheDead interesting, I'm not sure why as a silver player I'm getting put in incredibly strong lobbies, I'm not even close to that skill level

[@ChefOfTheDead]

@@Ashen246 the new players don’t have access to ranked yet so player count hasn’t been able to help low rank matchmaking yet

[@fuzailayyaz4755]

Bro I've such a massive ping issue it's unplayable what I do ???

[@ChefOfTheDead]

What’s your ping?

[@evbeatzz]

my problem is that i always get thrown into high level lobbies. necer have i had a game below +400 average

[@dusknews9939]

HI body, great skills u got , i hope u stream little bit of your matchs so we can watch more of your skills

[@maddness-demongaming4894]

N ps5 and I was using setting and still had to wait over load time can't get a match at all now was playing all first week or so

[@elmoblatch9787]

Another excellent video from the chef...bringing the light to Naraka -- and its challenges.

[@slevin003]

11 months and the setting still there, sadge

[@Sagerizz]

H i i would like to ask about the setting bcs it looks like they remove the option of that or hide it properly thx for response

[@ChefOfTheDead]

I’m guessing you’re on steam…?

[@Sagerizz]

@@ChefOfTheDead Yes sir

[@ChefOfTheDead]

0:42 😔

[@Sagerizz]

Ohh so we are doomed we hit lvl 50 with my friends but literally every ranked is full of bots like 10 teams fighting on random spot kinda sad

[@ChefOfTheDead]

Wdym doomed? Definitely play ranked and work on ranking up. The higher rank you are, the fewer bots

[@MarzelleStylez]

I concur.

[@baron7562]

I would actually strongly disagree with your last point. Making a game F2P has serious long term consequences. It brings in a lot of cheaters and toxic players. I have seen this happen too often, to the point where I purposefully stay away from F2P games nowadays. I would much rather have a game with small but dedicated playerbase rather than large but toxic one. I hope that makes sense :)

[@ChefOfTheDead]

I stand by the value of going ftp 100%. I’ve heard this argument before but the cheater issue is really not something that outweighs the benefits. If naraka has 1% paying cheaters, it will basically still have 1% ftp cheaters. Right now, the main thing causing players to leave is long queue times, not cheating.

[@baron7562]

@@ChefOfTheDead Players are not leaving. They are simply moving to PvE modes. Steam still gets the same 100k+ concurrent players which is similar to post launch. And now we have crossplay too. There is no reason to play ranked for an average player. You can complete Achievements and Season Pass faster in bot mode. Ranked requires thousands of hours of investment and the rewards of high ranks are not clearly stated and neither are they high enough value to begin with.( I may be wrong about this but that is part of the issue) They need to add more incentive for players to play ranked mode. Also, currently the PvP lobbies are divided in 3 ways: quick match, ranked and bloodbath. This works negatively with mm in ranked.

[@ChefOfTheDead]

@@baron7562 Not really sure what to tell you. The fact is that there are dramatically fewer players now compared to before, and that was the case before showdown was released as well. If the game went ftp, the playerbase would go up substantially, there’s no arguing that really. I’m not alone with the opinion that the game should be free haha, in fact I’d say literally everyone I’ve spoken to about it agrees

[@baron7562]

@@ChefOfTheDead I never said player count wont go up if you go f2p, it will obviously go up. My argument is that, they should instead incentivize people to play ranked. That way, the current population will be enough to make matchmaking faster.

[@ChefOfTheDead]

I fear that working within the current population may not be enough to support ranked in the long run, but yes that would indeed help

[@DSP_Gaming0]

Why doesn't PC have that setting. This is fucking ridiculous. Bots are all legends in combat and movement. Even my ranked matches are filled with them.

[@darknsq1093]

hey can i disable it from pc ? rn i dont see the choice where i can turn it off

[@ChefOfTheDead]

If you’re on steam it’s already off. Gamepass you find it in game settings just like console

[@hewas9738]

@@ChefOfTheDead Not true. Been playing via steam, don't have the setting and games are plagued with bots.

[@ChefOfTheDead]

@@hewas9738 Actually it is true. Just because the setting doesn’t exist on steam doesn’t mean there aren’t any bots. You’ll find a decent few at very low rank, and occasionally at high rank. The setting makes the difference between 10% bots and 90% bots

[@blaketurner8523]

I feel bad cause I can tell he’s super passionate about this game and it looks really good but it’s so niche one and so hard to get into so these vids don’t do as well ;(

[@ChefOfTheDead]

Yeah that's how it goes with Naraka on YT usually, not super popular in the West. But as long as I'm having fun with the game I'm happy to post it :)

[@mariusskrupskis2042]

sorry but i rather play with bots than with sweaty players or even cheaters ;]

[@ChefOfTheDead]

I don’t suggest playing a pvp game then, maybe go for something single player

[@KW-de9sc]

My first match it teleported beneath a set of stairs and trapped me there. I waited until the shadows killed me *AND I WAS STILL TRAPPED UNDER THE STAIRS* because the fucking things were some sort of eternal ethereal prison that contained my very soul. I uninstalled it after trying a second match, where it lagged heavily every two and a half seconds since combat so heavily relied on that rock paper scissors bullshit with no block. This game was a piece of shit and considering the crossover it had with Nier it had absolutely no business being that bad, so it deserved to get nuked.

[@ChefOfTheDead]

That is an extreme outlier experience. Pretty ridiculous reason to drop the game. I recommend trouble shooting your pc hardware.

[@KW-de9sc]

@ChefOfTheDead this was Xbox. And it’s a pretty good reason to drop it considering it has a major crossover and it still does things like teleporting you beneath the precursor to the ghost busters box.

[@ChefOfTheDead]

@@KW-de9sc The fact that it’s had a crossover is a weird thing to bring up with that lol. The fact is that that’s a once in a year glitch that I have literally never heard mentioned before

[@byronwilliams4062]

PC users! Once I stopped cross-platform better

[@elbarto9781]

Bruh i haven't even turn off this shit and i get top 100 players every fuckin time

[@ChefOfTheDead]

Top 100 [C] players? Hey it’s better than bots

[@nobleokami9746]

Don't care just allow me to play with only console players.

[@ChefOfTheDead]

Then turn off crossplay, not replenish. Although, cutting off the entire pc player base will mean your queue times will last forever. So really you have the choice between bots, or players