We need more head-to-head game players

[Yakinabe]

I'm tired of spending 30 minutes in the "play alone until another player joins" mode. Some ideas I could think of to suggest:

- Allow free tier users to compete. If that's too much to give away free, maybe allow them to join only if a paid user is waiting, or only during events. 

- At least one head-to-head game "event" per day, just so people know when they are more likely to find an opponent.

- Display the head-to-head game leaderboard somewhere more prominent (e.g. side panel when the main menu is shown in the Play app) to get people motivated to play.

Who's with me on this? Any other ideas?

[Snowpelt]

I'm tired of spending 30 minutes in the "play alone until another player joins" mode. Some ideas I could think of to suggest:

- Allow free tier users to compete. If that's too much to give away free, maybe allow them to join only if a paid user is waiting, or only during events. 

- At least one head-to-head game "event" per day, just so people know when they are more likely to find an opponent.

- Display the head-to-head game leaderboard somewhere more prominent (e.g. side panel when the main menu is shown in the Play app) to get people motivated to play.

Who's with me on this? Any other ideas?

We are totally on the same page and are always looking for ways to encourage multiplayer and are open to suggestions.  I can outline a few of the problems we face below.

1. Users are all over the world timezones for workouts vary
   
2. Only about half our users at any time are using Play vs Explorer
   
3. Many of the people who use play do not participate in multiplayer for various reasons.
   

What we have done so far:

1. Added a notification at the top level if someone is waiting for a match
   
2. Created a discord for easier real time communication (not being used by many currently)
   
3. Encouraged planning of times in the facebook group (this seems to work well)
   
4. Created events for Multiplayer to encourage people to be on at the same time (thunderbowl is tonight from 7 to 10 est)
   
   

• Le Tour is Tuesday
  
• Gate Race is Wednesday
  
• Curvy Race is Thursday
  
• Thunderbowl is Friday
  

What we have planned to improve it:

1. Free tier users in this coming update will rotate weekly with the event rather than monthly. Free users can play multiplayer in the current free game already
   
2. Discord alerts for when someone is looking for a match up
   

To your suggestions: 
1) addressed the first one already above
2) Semi addressed above. We could add events to the other 3 days of the week if people think it would help but the current times are hardly being used.
3) Displaying the leaderboard may be more useful, will discuss.


We have also looked at calendars and such but nothing seems to work very well. With the small community size that VR has it's always tough to get multiplayer games going and when you couple that with requiring people to time a workout with finding a match it can be difficult. This is something we talk about frequently behind the scenes and as our community grows it's becoming easier to find a match, but it's still pretty common to go 30 minutes without someone joining.

[Yakinabe]

Thank you for your response. Good to hear that free users do have access to multiplayer. Would you consider allowing them access to head-to-head events as well, even when the game for the event isn't the one on rotation that week?

Also please add a Winterstan event as well. (Monday evenings maybe?) Also my observation is that Friday evenings aren't very popular times for people to be using VZFit, so maybe consider moving it to lunchtime or Sunday night? Last Friday I checked late evening and the leaderboard was empty.

Also, am I the only one who has trouble getting the current Event list to show up? I think I reported this to vzfit support already, but when I start the Play app and click on Events, it takes 10 or 20 seconds for the current event to show up.