Create a casual noob-friendly matchmaker queue (to increase player retention)

Askaholic

An unranked matchmaker would be a pit people would never escape from, as not gaining rating would never eventually force them out of the top of the skill ceiling

I would implement an "unranked matchmaker" simply as a matchmaker with a hidden rating. It would still technically be rated just that you don’t get to see your rating so you can’t obsess about it. This is how I would expect casual queues (for example csgo casual) to be implemented.

biass

Askaholic I was actually going to ask you if this idea was possible, I also thought a queue that ran party games was a solid idea. It would help players get involved into the game better than immediately forcing people into balanced pvp. I don’t think I would be here if I didn’t play stuff like claustrophobia, etc. maybe it’s something to add? I don’t know if you have working ffa queue yet.

csgo casual is more or less a different game mode, it’s not the same thing. Your solution works fine though imo.

FtXCommando

The notion of casual queues was never discarded by me nor anyone else? It was put in the Soon(tm) pile just as all other additional queues.

biass

We have the ui space on the client to chuck on more queues. We designed the thing to allow that, I’m happy to see if I can task people to help with the resources (fix the game modes, find suitable maps for it) if you need.

It’s crazy that everyone comes up with the same idea at roughly the same time, the heads of the faf hive mind will be pleased.

Askaholic

Well I posted this in zulip months ago, but I suppose it got buried and I started working on other stuff.

FFA matchmaking isn’t implemented but I think it’s pretty trivial (sort by rating then take first X people for your game). Adding that would probably give the best value for dev time investment.

Coming up with some concrete ideas for maps and game settings would be a good start cuz then we can make sure to implement everything that’s needed.

Tagada

IMO FaF needs 4 things to become complete and really help with the retention. Games vs AI where you can quickly get a game vs AI with friends preferably. A casual matchmaker with hidden rating. Tutorial missions that take place in a carefully adjusted enviroment and teach you specific fundementals 1 by 1. Larger queues in TMM that are introduced as unranked queues and only if the player base allows make it both casual unranked and ranked competitive gamemode.
I also really like the rotating gamemode idea but tbh I don't think it would solve retention issues and new player experience. New players are usually afraid to check out new stuff, gamemodes with completely different rules etc. A casual matchmaker where people wouldn't stress so much about game outcome and where rating isn't visible so you don't get stigmas would in my opinion achieve more.

maudlin27

With a larger player base I'd be in favour of such a matchmaking idea. My concern though is that you'll only end up with a small number of people queuing at a time (except for very busy periods) similar to the existing matchmakers, and you'll inevitably have some people who are very good at whatever custom mode is highlighted compared to a new player.

That said, one of the biggest issues I have with both the 1v1 and 2v2 matchmakers is that the maps are too much like hard work. That is, if I get a 1v1 map there's a good chance it's some large sprawling map with mexes everywhere that requires me to do a crazy amount of actions a minute to keep up with t1 land spam being mandatory (except on huge maps or naval ones), which ends up being stressful not fun. In 2v2 from what little I've played it's similar, but with the added pressure of a teammate who will be angry that I don't perform as well as they'd like.

I think this is a large part of the reason games like gap, astro, dual gap, pass etc. are popular - you dont have to focus on as many areas of the map at once, and so there's more chance to just have fun, and it's alot easier to get into as a new player. Even setons and isis mirror this to a large extent (ignoring the players who will make your life miserable if you don't conform to the expected way of doing things when starting in a particular slot).

Therefore I like the idea of having lots of different 'fun'/different types of modes that will make a change in gamestyle from the standard 1v1, especially if they include vs AI challenges, I'm just not sure how to solve the issue of too few new players wanting to do it leading to those that do try getting crushed by pros. One possibility might be to showcase it on the news page (e.g. you have a different mode each week, and the news page features it prominently).

Anachronism_

@maudlin27
You make a good point about the sprawling map types chosen for ladder being a large factor in making them more stressful for noobs. I think a decent amount of effort/polling should take place to determine noob-friendly maps that could go in the casual matchmaker.

Tagada

It's already being considered when the map pools are being created, the noob map pools have less, smaller and easier maps. Surveys have already been made in the past and they've concluded that, what a surprise, bigger maps are more stressful and worse for new players.

Valki

For the rotation and casual I would suggest a pretty opaque "Quick Match" option.

Based on available players it goes through several pools of options, no option is solo.

6+ matchable players: Regular but easy Teamgames, Mini Dual Gap?
3+ matchable players: 2v2, 3-5 vs. AI
2 matchable players: 2 vs. AI, short campaign missions

I think the Player Councillor should play a big role in identifying popular and disliked options for the "Quick Match" matchmaker, and act quickly if needed or opportune.

BlackYps

different team sizes in the same queue are not supported at the moment.

Askaholic

The majority of stuff in this thread is not supported at the moment. The point is to throw out ideas for what might be worth trying to implement.

I quite like that idea of a quick match/adaptive queue that can scale to different game sizes depending on the number of players. That might be a solution for lack of players in larger queues.

BlackYps

I mean, it depends on the details how the queue should behave exactly, but can't a lot of that be mitigated by just queuing for multiple queues in parallel?

FtXCommando

An asymmetric FFA queue using map gen that can then launch a game once 3 or more people are in queue (and timer reaches 0) could work if an adaptive queue is set up.

Valki

@blackyps said in Create a casual noob-friendly matchmaker queue (to increase player retention):

I mean, it depends on the details how the queue should behave exactly, but can't a lot of that be mitigated by just queuing for multiple queues in parallel?

Was going to suggest that.

Is there any technical reason why we can't have 10 parallel matchmakers to just throw out a number?

BlackYps

Uhh, ui space maybe. But from a really technical point I don't think there are any downsides.
But we should keep in mind to make the ui not overwhelming, especially for new players. Would be bad to need a tutorial on what the 367 queues are.

Sheikah

Realistically as we add more queues the UI will have to change to use the space more efficiently

veteranashe

The more queues, the less players per queue.

My play time sometimes only have 2-3 players all though I think a casual will draw some players

Sheikah

You can queue for multiple queues at once so there is no reason it would reduce player count

biass

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Reminder that the TMM UI was drafted for 6 queues. This is on a 1080p space, so making more is pushing it.

Theoretically, how taxing on the server would it be to launch the matchmaking timer every 3 seconds instead of every minute and a half?