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Increasing your Game Play

While the game has been out for almost five years on Xbox LIVE, unlike a lot of the multi-player titles on LIVE, it has not experienced the stagnation and lack of play that most have. But it can feel that way sometimes, so we thought it might be helpful to add this page on methods for increasing your Ticket to Ride game play opportunities.

Making Friends

The first step in improving your chances for a game is to Friend the people you do play, since people who play Ticket to Ride competitively tend to play it whenever they see someone in THEIR Friend List who is in the T2R Lobby - which means you can often get a much faster pickup game by simply being in the Lobby looking for a game when one of your T2R mates logs into LIVE.

Xbox LIVE Beacons

Hitting the Guide Button (the large glowing green X in the center of your controller) will bring up the Sxbox Guide Blade, and if you look at that menu you will see an option called “Beacons & Activity” that, when you select it, shows you your activity for the last five games or apps you played.

From that page you can check Ticket to Ride to see who on your Friend List has been playing it, and when the last time was that they played. That can be useful to you for figuring out what time of day or day of the week that your mates are most likely to be playing the game.

If you hit the Left D-Pad it switches to the “My Beacons” blade on which you can set a Beacon. When you select the Set Beacon button you are then presented with the choice of the different games and apps that are installed on your system - you can then select Ticket to Ride from the list, and once you have that Beacon active, load the game and hang in the lobby.

When any of the gamers on your Friend List log in to LIVE they will immediately be notified that you want to play Ticket to Ride with them, which increases the chances of getting a game.

The Day of the Week

It should not surprise you to learn that Friday, Saturday, and Sunday are the most popular days to play Ticket to Ride for most gamers, starting with Friday evening and ending with Sunday Evening, since that is when most people are not at work and can play games, but would you be surprised to learn that Wednesdays are also a day that it seems easier to get a pickup match from people who are not on your Friend List? That has been our experience!

Picking the Right Map

While the 1910 and Europe Maps are fun to play, you will find that 99% of the time games on those maps are an arranged thing - people are not hanging out in the lobbies searching for games on those maps as a general rule.

Another thing you should note is that the vast majority of players hang out looking for games in the Ranked Lobby, and not the Player Match Lobby, the latter getting hardly ANY game searching. And when you select Ranked Match you will find that the Quick Match selection is the fastest route to a game, since that is what most players choose.

Finally you should be selecting the North America Map, since that is the one that 99% of the players hang in looking for matches.

Searching for Games

The default Lobby is the one called Searching for Games, and when you are in that the server basically looks for other gamers who are HOSTING a game to match you with, so if everyone is in the Searching Lobby it is possible that there are players waiting to play, and all you need to do is hit the 'A' button to enter the second Lobby to find them!

Host Game Lobby

After you hit 'A' again you will end up here, where you are the host of the game. You decide how many opponents you want to play with by closing out the slots you do not want filled, and once you get the number you want, you start the game. Simpatico!