TMM option to hide your opponent's name and rank

It being an option is a false choice in the first place. It’s always optimal to give an opponent less information. But by giving people less information you also enable people to be more comfortable in bad, monotone gameplay rather than encouraging diversification. Likewise you simply make game plans decrease in general level because your own team, especially at a higher level, will not know where the weak spots are because you have zero information about who is where unless those people proactively tell you.

@ftxcommando the title of the post is Option to hide your opponent's name and rank (from yourself), not Option to hide your own name from your opponent. Unless I'm missing something, you're talking about the latter?

They're saying the preconception of an opponents strategy gives them a preconception of what to play. Not executed perfectly and not the more optimal strats at higher level play, their preconception of counter play is limited to what they currently know and are able to do, but this preconception can be distracting and can get in the way of trying something else.

The phenomena is analogous overfitting.

Isn't overfitting bad?

Then I don’t get any of the logic in the posts by the OP. Why would anyone try to hide who they are based on somebody potentially having an option to make their name hidden enabled? Why would somebody that doesn’t want to play with specific people and is willing to leave if they see them then desire to hide the names of the people that bother them that much? Nothing about the way those people operate that bothered you changed.

That sounds analogous to solving somebody’s issues with laggers joining his lobby by hiding ping and cpu scores so that they no longer need to worry about kicking laggers.

Well I think the OP explained themselves pretty well. It sounds like they want the option of hiding that info to keep their bias under control or as a challenge. I don't know what laggers and cpu scores have to do with it. I think a better analogy is trying to avoid spoilers before watching a movie, because spoilers ruin your experience by priming your expectations.

I can't be the only one having understood it as such, since why else would people be talking about UI mods to achieve this? Seems unreasonable to me to deny someone this option, even if it's an option you might never use yourself or you don't understand their reasoning for it.

If you have a bias against somebody, it’s because they act like an ass or play ass. Hiding names does zero except delay the realization for you. If you care that much about it to actively be averse to these players, the use of the system is totally incoherent for you. Likewise, hiding any identification of laggers and presenting it as a positive for people paranoid about laggers is incoherent.

I don’t care if it’s some ui mod for a dude, nothing said as an explanation makes sense unless the opponent is aware he is unidentified.

I'm having trouble making sense of your message, honestly. Especially that second sentence - what adversity, and what's this about incoherence? Still can't figure out what laggers have to do with it. What I meant by bias, @ovenman has already explained quite well, by the way.

Even if you don't want to clarify further, at this point, I think I have my answer. You don't care if an option to hide your enemy's name for yourself existed (but you can't understand why someone would want it). Did I get that right?

Community has become very stale, dominated by players who think the old way is always best. Many are even unwilling to listen and think for themselves.

I have given an option to try something new. I think it will lead to the TMM top 10 players ranks shifting drastically, and ultimately an evolution of play-styles as even top players try new things. But if the community isnt ready for this, and wants to keep the old ways for another 20 years then so be it.

Somebody wanna explain how a ui mod that hides player names only for you would result in any relevant meta shift?

I’m also really confused by this. How does you not knowing who your opponent is do anything other than maybe forcing yourself to scout more instead of relying on presumptions of their play style? Which sure that’s nice, but you should be doing that regardless.

@exselsior I think that's about it. It might also make you feel less discouraged at the start or less angry about losing, depending on what the rating of your opponent is, and what you personally think of them.

@FtXCommando, the OP also included a bit in parentheses about it being the norm, which is presumably what would affect the meta, in his view. You already said what you thought of that and you made your position perfectly clear from the start.

I was curious what you thought of having the option (which I interpreted as the main question, since that's the title of the post) and your thoughts on this are a bit clearer to me now as well, as long as I haven't misunderstood you: you don't care.

I think an option to hide your opponent's details could be helpful, maybe more for 1v1 Matchmaking, which the OP might have forgotten to include. A few people mentioned repeated encounters with the same player as one of the reasons they don't play ladder in a thread about that from a while back. @Tomma, you were one of them. Would you use such an option if it was available? Would it make you like ladder more?

https://forum.faforever.com/topic/5729/how-come-you-don-t-play-ladder/80?_=1683006634418

@Phong how hiding who you are playing against resolves issue of dead ladder? Btw i still play ladder, i just described what i dont like about it atm.
Also there is option to hide info about your opponent via ui mod, i believe its called deaf archon or smth.

I understand the interest in playing against an 'untested' opponent, since it creates a potential for surprise and unexpected strategies. With a small community and as rankings increase, most of the other players around your skill level will become familiar with their play styles and habits.

What would be fun is for an anonymous tourney with each player becoming a 'black knight' and unknown to the other players and even the casters, which would create great speculation based on their choices in-game and potential freedom to play opposite to your usual style, only the TD would know who is who.

@tomma thanks both for explaining why you said that and for mentioning the mod already exists. Maybe @misterdumass can give it a try

Misterdumass won't give it a try for he doesn't play TMM contrary to popular opinion.

I asked for similar thing but for 1v1 as the way to reduce pressure on players and obsession over rank but to not much positive outcome as I was hoping.

Have you ever seen a single game that has ranked mm and gives you the possibilty to hide your credentials?