Help Needed with Multiplayer Game Infrastructure: Matchmaking, NLB, and Scaling Questions

Hi everyone,

I'm working on a multiplayer game infrastructure and have several questions about the best practices for managing game server connections, matchmaking, and scaling. I'd really appreciate some guidance from experienced folks in the industry.

Setup and Requirements

Game Servers:

• We use ECS tasks to host game rooms, with each task capable of handling up to 30 players.
• The number of rooms (ECS tasks) scales dynamically based on player demand.

Networking:

• We currently use an AWS Network Load Balancer (NLB) to route player connections to ECS tasks.
• Players connect via a single endpoint (e.g., game.example.com:7777).

Matchmaking:

• Our matchmaking service assigns players to specific rooms based on:
  • Room Capacity: Each room has a maximum of 30 players.
  • Player Type:
    • Premium players must connect to premium-only rooms.
    • Normal players must connect to normal-only rooms.
• Once assigned, the matchmaking service provides the player with a token indicating their assigned room.

Retries and Failover:

• If the NLB routes a player to the wrong ECS task (e.g., a full room or the wrong player type), the connection is rejected, and the player must retry until they connect to the correct room.

Token-Based Validation:

• The ECS task (room) validates the player's token to ensure they are connecting to the correct room type (premium/normal) and that space is available.

Constraints:

• We cannot use Amazon GameLift due to project constraints and must rely on ECS for hosting our game servers.

My Questions

1. How Does Matchmaking Manage Player Balancing?

• Given the requirement to separate premium players and normal players into their respective room types, what’s the best way to ensure room assignments stay balanced and don’t result in wasted capacity (e.g., partially full rooms)?
• Should the matchmaking service dynamically update a database like DynamoDB with room states, or is there a better approach to track room availability and player types?

2. Is Matchmaking Necessary?

• If the NLB already routes players using least connections, is matchmaking really needed?
• Wouldn’t the NLB alone, combined with auto-scaling and room capacity limits, be sufficient to ensure players land in available rooms?

3. How Does NLB Route to the Correct Room?

• If matchmaking assigns a room beforehand and gives the player a token, how does the NLB ensure it routes the player to the exact ECS task hosting that room?
• Without task-specific dynamic ports (the NLB uses a shared port like 7777 for all tasks), how can tokens ensure the correct task is chosen without retries?

4. Are Tokens a Valid Choice?

• Is using a token a valid and reliable approach given that the NLB doesn’t support task-specific dynamic ports?
• Are there industry-standard alternatives to ensure that players connect to the exact room assigned by matchmaking?

5. Retry Logic:

• Since the NLB doesn’t handle retries or failover, who should implement the retry logic? Should it be entirely on the client side, or is there a better approach?

6. Removing the NLB:

• Is it feasible to cut out the NLB entirely and have the matchmaking service provide clients with the direct IP and port of the ECS tasks?
• What are the downsides to this approach in terms of reliability, scalability, and complexity?

What We’re Looking For

We’re a small team (4 people) looking for the simplest, most scalable, and efficient solution to support matchmaking, premium/normal player separation, scaling, and room routing using ECS and NLB. Any insights, recommendations, or examples of similar setups would be incredibly helpful!

Thanks in advance for your help! Let me know if you need more details about our infrastructure or requirements.

TL;DR:

Looking for advice on multiplayer game infrastructure using ECS and NLB. Questions about matchmaking necessity, token-based validation, retries, balancing player types (premium vs. normal), and how the NLB routes to specific ECS tasks when matchmaking assigns rooms. Also asking if tokens are valid given NLB doesn’t support dynamic ports and how best to handle retries. Constraints prevent us from using GameLift. Would love your insights!