Matchmaker Team Sentons 4v4 TMM Inclusion

@morax Can you get stats on how many people ‘give up’ on waiting for a match on TMM (ideally also historically before the recent changes)? My worry is that further reducing rating differences allowed risks making TMM worse by making the wait times so long that fewer people try and get a game leading to a vicious cycle.

Also my understanding is some of the larger rating differences mentioned here are due to a bug - my comments are for if the intention is to go beyond fixing the bug and make it take longer for most games to find a match.

@maudlin27 said in Matchmaker Team Sentons 4v4 TMM Inclusion:

@morax Can you get stats on how many people ‘give up’ on waiting for a match on TMM (ideally also historically before the recent changes)? My worry is that further reducing rating differences allowed risks making TMM worse by making the wait times so long that fewer people try and get a game leading to a vicious cycle.

Also my understanding is some of the larger rating differences mentioned here are due to a bug - my comments are for if the intention is to go beyond fixing the bug and make it take longer for most games to find a match.

Sure, there is certainly a trade-off to consider. How much time is too much? In most of my recent discussions it seems that people are more annoyed that there simply IS a time to wait while in other games you get a match in almost no time.

Rocket League (i don't really play it) takes like 3 seconds, CS:GO or Destiny 2 PVP is usually less than a couple minutes.

Given we have so little people that play FAF I imagine 5 minutes is not that big a deal, and it is more about how many people are actually searching rather the parameters used in the code.

Even in current I know archsimkat and Blodir for instance have to search for hours to get a game due to the timezone. At that point, it is kind of a lost cause and does not seem to justify it hurting the quality of games for people WHO DO have enough searching.

I know that really sucks for folks in bad timezones, but I will try and work it out with others to see how long the wait times are, and what they would be should this get implemented.

I support 100%!

It's one of the most, if not the most popular 4v4 maps in supreme commander history!

Seton's is a perfectly balanced 20x20 map with all aspects of the game included (land, air, navy), with great potential for game-ending units being made, which are never not fun.

Add it!

@morax Please don't decide the fate of adding it to tmm solely on the extreme poultry few that bother to find and reply to this post. Just add it. It's 1 map, of many. Except it just so happens to be one of the most popular maps in the history of the game, it makes perfect sense to have it in the occasional pool.

@nvpiurgbp0uiwrbf said in Matchmaker Team Sentons 4v4 TMM Inclusion:

@morax Please don't decide the fate of adding it to tmm solely on the extreme poultry few that bother to find and reply to this post. Just add it. It's 1 map, of many. Except it just so happens to be one of the most popular maps in the history of the game, it makes perfect sense to have it in the occasional pool.

It is in the up and coming pool. We will reevaluate once January goes by.

I see it's already added, but I'll add my 2 cents.

I vote no. If I want to play setons I can join a custom or host one myself that will more than likely be much better balanced than anything TMM can throw together. In fact, I get so tired of playing Setons it's been the reason I've quit playing FaF for months at time more than once. If I stumble on it in TMM, it's probably the only map I would actually just alt-f4 because of. I like TMM because it gives lesser-played maps a chance. There's just no need to add Setons.

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

@nvpiurgbp0uiwrbf said in Matchmaker Team Sentons 4v4 TMM Inclusion:

@morax Please don't decide the fate of adding it to tmm solely on the extreme poultry few that bother to find and reply to this post. Just add it. It's 1 map, of many. Except it just so happens to be one of the most popular maps in the history of the game, it makes perfect sense to have it in the occasional pool.

It is in the up and coming pool. We will reevaluate once January goes by.

While I'm personally in favor of Seton's (would like to play it in tmm), I advice you don't add it to the pool. Never add maps that have a high chance to single handedly make many players not search tmm (which appears to be the case here!). You need to cut out the most hated maps (even if they are loved by many) or the negative impact of people not playing outweighs the positive impact of people enjoying the map pool.

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

Setons (all maps really) are "fine" in TMM if you only look at the >1.8k crowd.

Even if they don't have a BO, none of them will get navy locked at minute 6 or surprised by a strat at min 10.
And even if they do, or get out eco'd, they can just play unconventionally and still have good game.

In the <1.5k range though, Setons becomes complete trash if you have an unequal number of setoners on each team.

In that range, a player with an air BO vs a player without one ends the game.
Not in a fun way, it will still take 30 min until the score screen shows, but it will be essentially over before the first order was given.

If you must add setons into the pool, please only do so in the highest possible rating bracket only.
Even then I doubt it will be fun though.

This wasn't TMM, but quite literally represents your post:

Air was equally rated, but the game was over before it even started.

A work of art is never finished, merely abandoned

@morax Awesome!

@blodir Most of the maps in most of the pools are arguably worse, far worse than setons.
And how is setons one of the most hated maps? Players hate dual gap and astro crater, but not really setons.

It's all subjective preference at the end of the day. Except, a map like setons happens to be one of the most played maps in the history of the game, and for good reason!

@nvpiurgbp0uiwrbf said in Matchmaker Team Sentons 4v4 TMM Inclusion:

And how is setons one of the most hated maps? Players hate dual gap and astro crater, but not really setons.

The fact that we have a thread with this many people arguing for/against shows how divisive of a map Setons is.

@taunoob1 How many active players in faf? And how many players replying in this thread? I'd say it was a very small, insignificant amount which in no way indicates any sort of divisiveness for the map that is setons.

@nvpiurgbp0uiwrbf said in Matchmaker Team Sentons 4v4 TMM Inclusion:

@taunoob1 How many active players in faf? And how many players replying in this thread? I'd say it was a very small, insignificant amount which in no way indicates any sort of divisiveness for the map that is setons.

Believe it or not, this is actually one of the most replied-to "please give feedback" threads in my memory aside from player council voting.

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

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

@nvpiurgbp0uiwrbf said in Matchmaker Team Sentons 4v4 TMM Inclusion:

@morax Please don't decide the fate of adding it to tmm solely on the extreme poultry few that bother to find and reply to this post. Just add it. It's 1 map, of many. Except it just so happens to be one of the most popular maps in the history of the game, it makes perfect sense to have it in the occasional pool.

It is in the up and coming pool. We will reevaluate once January goes by.

While I'm personally in favor of Seton's (would like to play it in tmm), I advice you don't add it to the pool. Never add maps that have a high chance to single handedly make many players not search tmm (which appears to be the case here!). You need to cut out the most hated maps (even if they are loved by many) or the negative impact of people not playing outweighs the positive impact of people enjoying the map pool.

Good to know your thoughts here, Blodir. I talked it over with arch and we are going to give it one go in January, keeping in mind it will likely be the last.

I might not be the person to refer to here, but - how does the TMM team-forming and map-choosing work? What I'm thinking is, you could maybe implement a sort of 'blacklist' for players to mark maps they dislike. Then, based on the blacklists of people at the top of the queue a map is chosen.

How it would work could be as follows (again, assume 4v4, but maybe the same could be used for 2v2 as well):

Scenario 1 - majority blacklist:
The 8 players at the top of the queue are checked. For each map in the maplist, you evaluate how many people in the chosen 8 have it in the blacklist. If majority (so 5 at least), that map is not considered for a random-choice of a map. Say 5 players have Setons blacklisted and 6 Gap of Plateau - those 2 maps are not in the roster to be picked - the rest of the procedure is as it is currently.

This functionality is "always active".

Scenario 2 - minority blacklist:
The 8 players at the top of the queue are checked. As in Scenario 1, majority-blacklisted maps are not considered in the roster. Out of the maps considered in the roster one is picked at random. If the map chosen is blacklisted by a particular player(s) in minority, a new player from the queue is chosen in order, and checked to see if the chosen map is not blacklisted - in which case, the 'ejected' players are added to the top of the queue (pushback), and the newly picked players are added to the current player roster of 8.

This is active only if there are enough people to form another team (so queue_size >= game_size * 2).

Backfall scenarios:

  • Scenario 2 - small queues:
    Given the size of the community, it is more than likely queues won't be big enough to allow for player shifting - one of the reason being, you don't want to push people back in the queue, if they've been waiting for a while, without being sure they will get a 'replacement' game fast.
  • Scenario 2 - no substitute:
    If an appropriate 'substitute' is not found in the remainder of the queue.
  • Scenario 2 - long wait / multiple pushbacks:
    If players have been waiting in a queue for a long time, or an unlucky random map selection would cause a player to experience multiple pushbacks, you could get negative experience due to extended queue times. In such cases, threshold limits could be defined (say, 8 minutes and 2 pushbacks max).

If any of these, and presumably any other marginal situations I couldn't think of from the top of my head, were to transpire, the minority blacklists will be ignored - for example, if there is no way to replace a player(s), or a player(s) has been waiting for a long time, then the map chosen by the TMM system will be used regardless of any minority blacklists.

The result:
What this kinda system would achieve is, it would allow for players that blacklist certain maps to see those less often. Even more-so if, at particular rating, there is a general dislike of a particular map. But in case where it is not possible to achieve this, which can be presumed to happen often given the size of the community, it won't prevent players from joining games - albeit at cost of playing on maps they might not prefer.

Additionally, to maybe avoid players accidently locking themselves out of games, a limit to amount of maps blacklisted could be implemented, say 1 + 10% of the amount of maps in the maplist. You could also, for simplicity-sake (not sure how complex player-pairing to balance rating is), just use the 'scenario 1' functionality.

I worked out a way for a veto system to work for the matchmaker already, it's mainly a problem of getting somebody motivated to actually code the implementation.

@ftxcommando i started looking it a little, but ive been quite sick since my Christmas break started. Hopefully i can get more done once my fever goes away.

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

I might not be the person to refer to here, but - how does the TMM team-forming and map-choosing work? What I'm thinking is, you could maybe implement a sort of 'blacklist' for players to mark maps they dislike. Then, based on the blacklists of people at the top of the queue a map is chosen.

How it would work could be as follows (again, assume 4v4, but maybe the same could be used for 2v2 as well):

Scenario 1 - majority blacklist:
The 8 players at the top of the queue are checked. For each map in the maplist, you evaluate how many people in the chosen 8 have it in the blacklist. If majority (so 5 at least), that map is not considered for a random-choice of a map. Say 5 players have Setons blacklisted and 6 Gap of Plateau - those 2 maps are not in the roster to be picked - the rest of the procedure is as it is currently.

This functionality is "always active".

Scenario 2 - minority blacklist:
The 8 players at the top of the queue are checked. As in Scenario 1, majority-blacklisted maps are not considered in the roster. Out of the maps considered in the roster one is picked at random. If the map chosen is blacklisted by a particular player(s) in minority, a new player from the queue is chosen in order, and checked to see if the chosen map is not blacklisted - in which case, the 'ejected' players are added to the top of the queue (pushback), and the newly picked players are added to the current player roster of 8.

This is active only if there are enough people to form another team (so queue_size >= game_size * 2).

Backfall scenarios:

  • Scenario 2 - small queues:
    Given the size of the community, it is more than likely queues won't be big enough to allow for player shifting - one of the reason being, you don't want to push people back in the queue, if they've been waiting for a while, without being sure they will get a 'replacement' game fast.
  • Scenario 2 - no substitute:
    If an appropriate 'substitute' is not found in the remainder of the queue.
  • Scenario 2 - long wait / multiple pushbacks:
    If players have been waiting in a queue for a long time, or an unlucky random map selection would cause a player to experience multiple pushbacks, you could get negative experience due to extended queue times. In such cases, threshold limits could be defined (say, 8 minutes and 2 pushbacks max).

If any of these, and presumably any other marginal situations I couldn't think of from the top of my head, were to transpire, the minority blacklists will be ignored - for example, if there is no way to replace a player(s), or a player(s) has been waiting for a long time, then the map chosen by the TMM system will be used regardless of any minority blacklists.

The result:
What this kinda system would achieve is, it would allow for players that blacklist certain maps to see those less often. Even more-so if, at particular rating, there is a general dislike of a particular map. But in case where it is not possible to achieve this, which can be presumed to happen often given the size of the community, it won't prevent players from joining games - albeit at cost of playing on maps they might not prefer.

Additionally, to maybe avoid players accidently locking themselves out of games, a limit to amount of maps blacklisted could be implemented, say 1 + 10% of the amount of maps in the maplist. You could also, for simplicity-sake (not sure how complex player-pairing to balance rating is), just use the 'scenario 1' functionality.

This is a nice idea but really diverging from the original thread topic. If you and whoever replies to this do not mind, please start a topic!

I understand that I will write nonsense. I don't support it, because I have a weak laptop.

@matecarter55 said in Matchmaker Team Sentons 4v4 TMM Inclusion:

I understand that I will write nonsense. I don't support it, because I have a weak laptop.

So, are you going to also be in favour of banning other 20x20 macro maps?