I agree entirely that there needs to be a casual matchmaker, or at the very least a matchmaker that uses global rating. In fact THE MAIN REASON that motivated Geo and myself to even start building the TMM in the first place was to provide a way for new players to get into the game in a casual way. Sadly we have the ladder gods in charge of the matchmaker queues so what we got is yet another competitive rating to obsess about.
I have already proposed a number of interesting ways in which the matchmaker could be used in a casual way. The central idea which also solves the problem of having a small player base that is unable to fill more than 1 or 2 queues is to have a “Mode if the Week” queue that automatically changes to a new set of rules every week. These rule sets could include stuff like:
- modded games. Nomads, koth, phantom, etc. or non-featured sim mods as well.
- different game types. FFA, XvXvX, mapgen, asymmetric maps
- survival maps, or coop vs AI
- 64 ACU’s
- crazy rush
- zone control
Really anything interesting that people have played in custom could go into such a rotating "Mode of the Week" queue that would encourage casual play where rating is not the focus. Yes, automating a rotating queue would need some additional coding work, as would some of the modded game modes, but I would be interested in working on it if the community desire is there. In the mean time some of these ideas could easily be implemented manually. The matchmaker should be a place where people can queue up, relax and have fun, and where new players can learn different game mechanics and discover all that FAF has to offer.