Universal and Bleeding Edge Rooms - Cross-Version Play, More Testing Potential and Better Statistics!

The Problem

As of right now, the Nintendo Switch version of Rec Room has been separated from normal cross-platform play for about a month, most likely due to the slow update cycle. That means all the friends the switch players made with cross platform players are on a “newer version” than switch players, forcing them to not be able to play together.

We can either wait until Nintendo decides to let apps update more often, or we can implement an in-game compromise.

Bleeding Edge and Universal Rooms

What I want to propose is a way for older game room versions to visit older public versions of rooms with newer players, and the best wat i can think of doing that is a new option to make Bleeding Edge and Universal version rooms.

“Bleeding-edge” versions of rooms will use the latest features and props added in more recent updates, and can’t be accessed by older versions of the game. Every time the older versions update, these rooms will be unlocked as well. These rooms can also be used for longer feature testing cycles for developers, showing more bugs and allowing the Rec Room Team to polish creation things before release to all platforms.

“Universal” versions of rooms will have less features than the bleeding edge versions, but will allow everyone to play together, regardless of platform or version. These rooms will be every room as of the implementation of this feature across platforms.

The Ups and Downs of this System

By making and releasing “Universal” Rooms, player retention/engagement across switch players with cross platform friends will increase. Also, for the people who want to play and tinker with the latest and greatest, “Bleeding Edge” rooms will be perfect for them, yet will still be playable by some time. This will not only be a good for now solution, this is also good future proofing for players who can’t update all the time, as well as potential future platforms with an update limitation like the Nintendo Switch version.

There are some cases where this can be complicated. What if you want to join a room with everybody, but you’re on a newer version? Best I can do for that is a “Prefer Universal Room Versions” toggle in the Misc. settings, akin to the Avoid Juniors toggle. Either that, or present the player with 2 instance buttons for bleeding edge and universal rooms, or add a version dropdown like Rooms 2 Inventions.

However, in a way some of the work is already done. We already have a toggle for Beta Creation Content, both in rooms 1 and rooms 2. We can make all #beta rooms bleeding-edge rooms, and all non-#beta rooms universal. Then, when the beta content is released, or when the newest older version release is released, the room is already playable, just how rooms right now are, while all universal rooms are well, universally playable.

Conclusion

In conclusion, Universal and Bleeding Edge rooms are a way to not only allow disadvantaged platforms to play with newer versions, but also a better system to squash bugs before they go live on every room. This will also increase player engagement and retention, allowing an entire platform to play with friends from other platforms, as well as the potential future platforms after it.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but I do believe that there are already plans in the works to enable players to visit older published saved of rooms available on the Switch.

IMO Switch has been a huge headache, and I can’t see how it can be fun to play RR on the platform with the amount of restrictions imposed by Nintendo.

hmmm, i haven’t heard of anything (then yet again i am le isolated from discord and all main channels rather than here and in-game, so I’m quite behind most of the time XD)

Does it happen with the RR game updates or the room updates? What i mean is do all the rooms on switch only have other switch players in them or does switch not update as fast so rooms that get updated a lot by their creators arent available?

Technically, both. As of now, switch players are stuck with other switch players ONLY, along with any room that hasn’t been updated before that update. (I have no clue if room updates still forbid players from playing rooms as of now.)

AFAIK if you update your room after Nintendo’s update, it becomes unavailable on the Switch until next Switch update.

Switch actually loads to the latest version of a room that it can run no matter if it was published or not.

So if you make and release a room while switch is still in a older version they will just load the original MakerRoom or MakerRoom2 clone which is a slight problem.

Ah I see, this did not use to be the case.

I think it’s gonna be hard to find a viable solution. I wonder how it’s worth it to Rec Room to go through all this trouble and jump through all these hoops to have a Switch port.

I play it on switch and i like it a lot. I don’t have anything else to use besides this anyway.

Yeah! I know like most of my active player friend lists are switch players i can’t play with ;-; hence why i thought up of this solution in the first place.