Matchmaker Pool Feedback Thread

trans rush on por is insane greed, you are drastically more safe getting a few ints out for security and the 15 second expansion delay isn’t going to be losing you games.

But I’ve seen plenty of tourney games lost because a dude got unlucky with his greed transport.

I think Point of Reach is the best 1v1 20x20 map. Every transport map has the trans/inty rush problem. On PoR it is likely you can get the opponents island if they take yours, or it is likely you can recover the island with ACU walking or dropping there, or just land units since there is space to set up. The map doesn't have reclaim that you need to spam and manage engineers to get so it is more chill to play than something like crossfire canal or bermuda locket. You can be successful with land/hover spam, ACU drops, raiding with air/frigates, or more chill ecoing into t3 air or big navy. It often results in interesting games to play/watch with ACU drops and battles for each island.

Adaptive Maridia has one less mex on the right side.

https://imgur.com/a/54k7gDS

Eonnacia, formerly only in the 1500+ pool, has replaced Adaptive Maridia while the latter is being fixed.

I dont think anyone appreciates fullshare abuse. With fullshare abuse I mean going for "extremely risky" ACU plays or even just ctrl k'ing them into enemy armies and not losing much of value because

  1. the ACU did tons of damage and/or the ACU explosion eliminated enemy threats
  2. its easy for one player to manage two bases.

Now this might be a hot take, but it's why I believe PoR is a bad map for 4v4 fullshare. The meta is to abuse fullshare to its maximum potential through comdrops, TML acus, or even just ctrl k'ing the acu into enemy navy (each preferably done with one of the acus on the island with two spawns). It easily has the potential to do game-winning amounts of damage while not setting your team back at all if you die. It might even help because it concentrates eco and lack of APM is a complete non-issue.

It seems every time I play this map my opponents know to go for comdrops/TML acus and whether I kill their acu or not, it sets us back a ton while not affecting the enemy team at all. I recall setons not being added to the 4v4 TMM pool because some players know how to play it while others don't, and that this would cause for extremely imbalanced games. From my experience, the same seems to be true for PoR.

Not convinced? See this.
https://imgur.com/a/k4fgTus

Thank you bully, I was on the edge until your ironclad proof came in.

It’s just one of those maps that suffer from the minimum rating for map selection issue right now I’d say, it’s fine as an introductory 4v4.

are you suggesting it should be in lower rated pools or in higher rated pools? i imagine the team that doesn't have a comdropper will lose either way. makes the map quite unenjoyable imo

I'm saying it should be in baby pools where people just don't think of doing that stuff.

@waffelznoob said in Matchmaker Pool Feedback Thread:

I dont think anyone appreciates fullshare abuse. With fullshare abuse I mean going for "extremely risky" ACU plays or even just ctrl k'ing them into enemy armies and not losing much of value because

  1. the ACU did tons of damage and/or the ACU explosion eliminated enemy threats
  2. its easy for one player to manage two bases.

Now this might be a hot take, but it's why I believe PoR is a bad map for 4v4 fullshare. The meta is to abuse fullshare to its maximum potential through comdrops, TML acus, or even just ctrl k'ing the acu into enemy navy (each preferably done with one of the acus on the island with two spawns). It easily has the potential to do game-winning amounts of damage while not setting your team back at all if you die. It might even help because it concentrates eco and lack of APM is a complete non-issue.

It seems every time I play this map my opponents know to go for comdrops/TML acus and whether I kill their acu or not, it sets us back a ton while not affecting the enemy team at all. I recall setons not being added to the 4v4 TMM pool because some players know how to play it while others don't, and that this would cause for extremely imbalanced games. From my experience, the same seems to be true for PoR.

Not convinced? See this.
https://imgur.com/a/k4fgTus

It's one of the cases where I feel like that's one of (if not the) only navy maps that is suitable for the 500-1000 bracket. Like ftx said it's a bit of an map selection algorithm issue. That being said I don't generally like maps where the optimal way to play is toxic regardless of if players have the knowledge to do it or not.

In the end decision to include it is the lesser of two evils if the alternative is to not have a navy map in 500-1000 and instead have players jump into the deep end when they hit 1k rating. I think the main alternative for the pool is flooded tabula, but that feels a bit too reliant on the lower rating players knowing the way of the frig.

Anecdotally I don't mind playing PoR too much tbh, but I've also seen lots of comdrops. Last game I did a sparky drop myself B)

Loving the new higher rate of getting map gen maps by the way 🙂

5af431bf-52a9-4759-a7f2-9f615b8a7e3c-image.png

Preliminary March 4v4 pool

By the way. Why the fck was MapGen-only-week removed?? It got such a positive feedback from all ranking ranges (as well as literally all my trainees I had during the past year) just for it to be used like two times and never again so we have trash such as Comet Catcher in the pool again.

Required rating for participation in balance talks when?

I agree some mapgen only weeks could be nice the odd time but there's nothing wrong with comet catcher.

@jaggedappliance There's a good chance that I'm one of the few with that opinion, was a bit tilted and therefore threw in that random comment about Comet Catcher. I apologise for that randomness.
I didn't speak with a lot of people about that map, but honestly it's just boring to play in my opinion. The fact that there is zero reclaim and nothing "special" to fight for just makes it boring for me.
That's my perspective however and yes, I do hate the majority of 5x5 or 10x10 without a good amount of mass. E.g. Desert Arena is quite good imo, the counterpart such as Comet Catcher isn't.

(At this point I know the forum too well and want to note that I'm not talking about "it requires zero skill" or anything like that - so comments such as "just get good so it becomes more interesting and exciting to play" are kinda useless for me.)

Required rating for participation in balance talks when?

Actually since I'm at it.. If someone from the MatchMaker-team could be so nice and create a tierlist such as Blodir (or Gimplex?) did for 4v4 TMM, it'd be nice to see whether I'm alone with that opinion or if the majority of higher ranked ladderplayers share the opinion who don't speak a lot. aka. we all know Mr. Thomas is a fan of 5x5 and that definitely influences the way other people see ladder maps bc on the other hand basically everyone complains about the pools being ass 90% ouf ot the time.

Required rating for participation in balance talks when?

I think comet catcher is a good map. Need an interesting build order and scale your production as you go, instead of dragging a line of facs at min 2 and leaving it at that. Lack of reclaim also makes it so much more important to use units efficiently and reclaim EVERY unit trade you get

Anyone could make the tierlist though, just use the website B)

@sladow-noob said in Matchmaker Pool Feedback Thread:

If someone from the MatchMaker-team could be so nice and create a tierlist

I can make them but I usually just give them to the map pool creator to post if they want so there is no forum drama.

The embodiment of depression...

Main reason I asked is bc there's a high chance mine just gets ignored if I post it - at least I assume that cuz I have nothing to do with the pool nor am I known for being a ladderplayer 4head

Required rating for participation in balance talks when?

Isis in 1v1 pool is giga aids change my mind, 5km maps are also not great. Like you wait in queue for 30 minutes, pmevery single human in existance, finaly get epic ladder match and its willy... Its so unsatisfying

Skill issue

@tomma

As you know, 1v1 ladder pools are cumulative, in the sense that you get all maps of your bracket and lower. Isis is put in the pool for the <200 bracket. This means that the <200 players have a 1 in 4 chance of playing their game on this map. The other three maps also being easy 5x5 maps. For a 1800 player like yourself you will get games from a pool of 20 maps. This means you have 1 in 20 chance to get Isis. The map is of course less suitable for the higher bracket, and therefore there is less chance you will play on it.

As for excluding 5x5 in ladder.. Opinions differ a bit on this. However, its definitely true that interest in playing 5x5 maps is inversely correlated with rating, meaning higher rated players are less likely to enjoy playing on a 5x5. But there are quite a few exceptions. That's why there was decided to increase the probability to play on a 5x5 map when you are lower rated and decrease it when you are higher rated. However even when you are 2k+, you will still play 1/5th of your games on a 5x5..

Excluding 5x5 maps from high level 1v1 ladder altogether would necessarily mean that we cant use the cumulative system anymore, because new and low rated players need these maps to ease into the game. There have been some discussions about this in the matchmaker team, but there was no consensus on changing to a non cumulative system like tmm.