Matchmaker Team Sentons 4v4 TMM Inclusion

i am in favour of setons being in tmm

Me and Yudi have won sentons with:

1. double t3 acu thru mid
2. janus spam
3. arty drops

and iirc these all took place on teams with 2 or more high level sentons players. Honestly if anything it’s WAY easier to figure out what the plan is on sentons because as soon as I see the names I know what will work and what won’t because trying to play for late game t3 navy fights against dudes with 1000 games of experience is just asking to die. I don’t get removing the map because it’s a high quality 4v4 map that has a huge amount of potential tactics.

If low rated players are babies about it then put it into the highest rated pool, having a high 4v4 tmm rating with zero experience on the penultimate 4v4 map is hilariously sad to me, and I don’t even play custom sentons.

The BO stuff is whack, it’s just dudes mad they can’t scale better than others. If you are worse in a stable game scenario then destabilize the game. I don’t get mad that Ditch is in 2v2 pool even though I am horrendous at properly scaling on Ditch, especially against the guys that farmed the map for 1v1. Find your advantage and maximize it or refine your toolkit, that’s what rating is.

Blackheart famously had a sentons bo that consisted of:

• demand rock slot in lobby
• build land fac (already a mistake according to generic high level rock bo btw)
• inshallah

and he’s still gonna be better than everyone but like 8 or so dudes because he learned what tree reclaim and timed unit scaling is, which half the 20x20s in tmm already teach you.

Farm has shit macro on sentons. In generic teamgames he is one of the best at scaling but in sentons he is strictly average for his level. Does he sit there and wait until his inefficiency balloons to a 200 mass per second disadvantage? No, he plays with extreme massive cancer and disrupts the enemy team. He doesn’t sit there and let Nexus or Thau boom in peace while he’s doing what they do but worse and then cry about BO advantage in game chat while blaming his air and rock.

I believe that ladder, and by extension TMM, are supposed to provide the canonical 1v1-4v4 experiences for FAF. Consisting of maps that provide the 'correct' style of gameplay and put the type of skills a player is 'supposed to have' to the test. External factors, like the fact that some people play a map a lot in custom games, or some mapper wants to force people to test their map, should not be given any consideration. Setons is the ultimate canonical 4v4 map that tests pretty much all the 4v4 skills players should have, so it obviously should be a potential pick for map pools.

If you instead view matchmakers more casually, as a replacement for custom games, then Setons should still be in the pool. It would be pathetic and defeatist to exclude the maps people play in custom games from matchmakers. Then you are forcing players into custom games if they want to experience Setons, the most canonical FAF experience. The reason other popular maps, like gap and astro, should be excluded from matchmaking is that the gameplay they encourage is not 'proper' according to FAF culture. They are not excluded just because they are popular in custom games.

Setons is the iconic map for this game and adding to the TMM would be great exposure for newer players to encourage them to join dedicated lobbies.

Experienced Setoners could have a gentleman's agreement to a handicap, say by not using their hydro.

@Lord_Asmodeus / @FtXCommando I'd like to see you enjoy a game of about 1200 average rating where the air players are equally rated, yet one air player is a 'setoner' and manages to make an escorted strat before the other air player even has a single ASF.

The game is essentially over at that point. As beach / rock / mid player you didn't even participate yet. How is that fun for anyone involved but the air player with the strat?

edit: and how does that not result in a relatively toxic game, as Maudlin mentions?

In both your posts you use examples of high rated players (Tagada, Farms, BlackHeart, Yudi, and yourselves), or refer to the higher brackets (1800+). I'd be fine if the map is available in the highest bracket - those people are supposed to be good. But for any other bracket it would on average be a bad and likely frustrating experience.

@jip said in Matchmaker Team Sentons 4v4 TMM Inclusion:

@Lord_Asmodeus / @FtXCommando I'd like to see you enjoy a game of about 1200 average rating where the air players are equally rated, yet one air player is a 'setoner' and manages to make an escorted strat before the other air player even has a single ASF.

The game is essentially over at that point. As beach / rock / mid player you didn't even participate yet. How is that fun for anyone involved but the air player with the strat?

edit: and how does that not result in a relatively toxic game, as Maudlin mentions?

In both your posts you use examples of high rated players (Tagada, Farms, BlackHeart, Yudi, and yourselves), or refer to the higher brackets (1800+). I'd be fine if the map is available in the highest bracket - those people are supposed to be good. But for any other bracket it would on average be a bad and likely frustrating experience.

I would have zero faith in anybody 1200 rated to do anything and would work to win the game either myself via the things I mentioned or some timing attack with anybody else I trust on my team. Or I go t3 air myself, people have gone t3 air on front slot even.

The logic for how to win games reliably doesn’t stop extending downwards, the difference is that you’re more likely to have somebody to properly coordinate with at higher ratings.

I also don’t understand how this is a senton problem, air bos are pretty much identical regardless of map and the problem you’re describing would fit basically every other 20x20 replacement of sentons. Metir and no late game air bo? Immediate loss. Beetles and no late game air bo? Immediate loss. If air is bad, don’t make t3 mex and get shocked when game is over.

I also don’t understand how this is a senton problem, air bos are pretty much identical regardless of map and the problem you’re describing would fit basically every other 20x20 replacement of sentons. Metir and no late game air bo? Immediate loss. Beetles and no late game air bo? Immediate loss. If air is bad, don’t make t3 mex and get shocked when game is over.

If you can't see this issue, then I think there's not much more to say for me and we will simply not agree on the matter. Which is fine too.

@jip said in Matchmaker Team Sentons 4v4 TMM Inclusion:

@Lord_Asmodeus / @FtXCommando I'd like to see you enjoy a game of about 1200 average rating where the air players are equally rated, yet one air player is a 'setoner' and manages to make an escorted strat before the other air player even has a single ASF.

The game is essentially over at that point. As beach / rock / mid player you didn't even participate yet. How is that fun for anyone involved but the air player with the strat?

While this doesn't invalidate your point given the current state of things, I'd just like to point out that this is a balance issue and things don't have to be this way despite the game having existed in such a state of air balance ever since the beginning.

On another note, I think it's sad that perhaps the best map in the entire game is so hated due to it being so good that it has developed a dedicated community around it. It seems to me that most (if not all) of the prejudice against this map is based on people not wanting to play against sentoneers rather than intrinsic qualities of the map itself.

@jip 1200 players knowing, or not knowing how to do t3 air isn't a phenomenon unique to setons lol

difference is the 1200 sentoners are so accustomed to the map that they’re capable of replicating an advanced air bo that would severely outmatch a random 1200’s bo, and that is not something you would see in any other similar 20x20 map

Don't support on 2 grounds:

• When I'm signing up for TMM queue, I don't want to commit to a potential 60-90min game (maybe not ingame time, but certainly wall-clock). Some of us have wives and families that also need attention, and an uninterrupted+unplanned gaming session of that length is sadly not a luxury I have anymore.
• Very map-specific meta. Same argument goes for asto and dualgap. If you like a single map that much, just play it in customs. No need to have it in tmm.

@BulliedNoob It is not - but learning a highly efficient build order by heart and being able to reason about an effective build order on an arbitrary map are two entirely things. There are Youtube videos on the former, yet learning the latter requires hours and hours of playing and training.

@chisato this same issue would persist if literally any 1200 cared enough to look at a high level game on any 20km map and copy their build order: they would crush a 1200 without one

I understand complaints about game length/sim lag, but cutting out setons because some are better at it than others is just kind of sad. It's like setoners arguing that wonder open (popular 10km land map !) needs to be permanently removed because they're at a disadvantage there

besides all this im not against limiting setons to 1500+ or 1800+

@jip then learning a setons bo is a skill they put time and effort into? why should they not be rewarded? and if it's so easy, why can't everyone else just watch the youtube video?

I don’t understand the game length one tbh, I’ve had hour long beetle and metir games. Sentons is just one of many high reclaim delayed late game navy/air teamgame maps.

Do we also remove 4v4 land spam maps because some 1ks (at least one every 4v4) don't build more than 2 land factories for first 5 min? What about maps where you need your acu in mid? Some 1ks (a lot) don't do this. Should 'acu in mid' maps be removed because people don't know the 'map specific bo'?

There's some real garbage I've had to play in 4v4 que like sera glaciers, sera outpost 4v4, or bloodthrone. An unbalanced game on sentons would already be 100x better than all the games I've had on those awful maps combined, my lane is at least dynamic unlike the other maps. How can anyone of you who don't want to que for sentons want to que for these? Like I don't even want to que since it's just 30 mins down the drain.

If map size is an issue then there should be map size preference while queuing. There's so many times I don't play because I don't have 40+ mins free time so would rather play something easier to time manage.

@bulliednoob said in Matchmaker Team Sentons 4v4 TMM Inclusion:

@chisato this same issue would persist if literally any 1200 cared enough to look at a high level game on any 20km map and copy their build order: they would crush a 1200 without one

yeah exactly but no one has a bo for any map that isn't setons, so they don't have anyone to copy from, there's isnt a map like setons (excluding dg and astro ofc) where people play them regularly and that's precisely why saying that "t3 air rush in senton is just like t3 air rush in any other 20x20 map" argument is invalid for brackets below 1500.

@chisato said in Matchmaker Team Sentons 4v4 TMM Inclusion:

yeah exactly but no one has a bo for any map that isn't setons, so they don't have anyone to copy from, there's isnt a map like setons (excluding dg and astro ofc) where people play them regularly and that's precisely why saying that "t3 air rush in senton is just like t3 air rush in any other 20x20 map" argument is invalid for brackets below 1500.

Eh I disagree, there are certainly BO elements to smth like metir air. Even beyond the fact you have an extra slot that is supposed to assist with t3 air, a 1200 that knows to make 2 land facs to scale bp for power and rock reclaim will be significantly ahead of a dude just plopping down 1 fac and maybe another at the expansion mex spot like it’s sentons. A person that has played the map a few times can definitely be a t3 mex ahead by the time t3 air production starts and it only gets worse from there.

And what about beetles air? That map has zero reclaim and if your air slot gasses itself trying to help win mid with t1 air or needless ints suddenly he’s at 2 t2 mexes at min 8 and your team isn’t looking so hot.

Im only 1200 TMM noob.

Dont support. TMM is filled with eco-air domination maps. If teams are not properly balanced - this is "first strat games", this is really annoying. Give more close combat maps pls!

In my opinion - every mapgen map in pool is really brilliant, cause human-made maps is about tiny-passages, mountains and other stuff what nerf land operations.
And now you ask, should we add one more? No. = )

let's consider this idea