How exactly do we expect low rated players to play the game?

@ftxcommando said in How exactly do we expect low rated players to play the game?:

Should be said you are talking about peak time in terms of the west coast, 3 hours before you posted there were plenty of games because that was peak time for east coast. When you posted, most of east coast is done playing. You're gravitating into Oceania peak time, not US peak time at that timezone.

Then I guess the question is, why do FAF gamers go to bed so early? In any other game, 9PM central on a Friday is when it starts getting busy.

Not really going to bed so early so much as PC games in general being less popular in NA and RTS on top of that being less popular in NA. West Coast gets none of the overflow from Europe staying up late that East Coast gets, so US prime time is centered more on East Coast 4-6pm aka your 1pm.

@redx I totally appreciate the problem.
I myself adjust my waking hours when I want to play, but appreciate that it's a bad solution.

FWIW, I often start queueing when I see 'zero' players currently in queue. I have a feeling that people don't want to queue unless they see another player already waiting!

I wish I had better advice than just clicking that 'Play forged alliance forever' button. I know how poor that advice is, considering that you're likely already doing it (and nobody else is).
But I give that advice having seen it work even when I'm playing on american times.

@redx said in How exactly do we expect low rated players to play the game?:

why do FAF gamers go to bed so early? In any other game, 9PM central on a Friday is when it starts getting busy.

This might well be a 'blizzard entertainment' thing, given the genre and the popularity of the titles.

@sylph_ said in How exactly do we expect low rated players to play the game?:

FWIW, I often start queueing when I see 'zero' players currently in queue. I have a feeling that people don't want to queue unless they see another player already waiting!

That's why I think having an option to be matched vs an AI in 1v1 (say M27) or having your game filled up with 1-2 AIs in teamgames (M28) and have those games still rated (to a certain degree) ofc would be a nice Idea to get people to queue up even when the queues are rather empty.

I think having this as an option on the queue page would be great, so people that don't want any AI in their games can turn it off and it should only grant to rating to a certain limit, so you can't "farm" the AI (M27/28 is often reffered to as roughly 700 rated so around that level would be the limit).
So having the guarantee that after <5 Minutes you will play a game be it a real player or an ai (while always getting a chance to push your rating) will get more people to actually queue up.

@nex said in How exactly do we expect low rated players to play the game?:

I think having this as an option on the queue page would be great, so people that don't want any AI in their games can turn it off

But still get AI in their games?! Ewwww

This is all feeling a lot like 'players are scared of fighting humans'.

I honestly don't know how much worse it is for the US, but it's hard to imagine that you HAVE to fight AIs because there are no humans (wanting to play) online.

It feels more like this 'I'm not ready for ranked yet, I need to do 28 months more practice vs AI before I'm ready' stuff is the culprit.
(I say stuff - honestly, folks, I understand. I've been gaming online for decades, I get it. The cure, and it's a beautiful, comprehensive, joyful, hand-across-the-ocean, happy cure - is just losing some games vs people, ditching the fear, and joining the community! The more we lose, the easier games get!)

I'm in no way sure, but it really sounds like making people fight AI when they're finally queueing to fight humans is counter productive. You might be right though, maybe forcing that line to be blurred is the answer. If THAT is what it really takes to make these people start playing vs humans, then maybe some trickery is in order!

I personally wish I could help overcome the whole mindset that prompts people to think 'I'm not 'ready' to fight humans, but I want an AI that doesn't cheat, but that performs on a human expert level to 'practice' against.
Like, really, WHAT is the problem with fighting people similar to themselves?
I don't know whether it's people convinced that they are trash, or whether it's people obsessed with ONLY winning ~100% of games against humans!
Either way, it really feels like the 'problem' comes down to convincing people that playing against people is fun, rather than pandering to these weird mental blocks.

I say that, I don't fully understand all the nuances at play. I only know 'ladder anxiety', and what a HUGE proportion of gamers that it prevents from joining in and having fun with the rest of us.
This game seems like one of the very worst for 'ladder anxiety' ruining the experience of so many, and I wonder whether it's because FaF doesn't create a load of game modes (like the 'fake' unranked ladders that loads of other games implement!)

All that being said, I'm only offering my feelings. I could be massively wrong. I just really want people to play games - there are SO many of us that are kinda trash at the game, and so many great games in store if we just played one another instead of fighting the AI!

@sylph_ said in How exactly do we expect low rated players to play the game?:

@sladow-noob said in How exactly do we expect low rated players to play the game?:

If someone asks how low ranks should play the game since it's difficult with the timezone and

Can you ellaborate on why these players can't use the matchmaker functionality?
From my experience it's a really good way to get games, and it honestly seems to be MORE populated at the lower levels than it is at higher ratings.

(This isn't meant to be a hypothetical, nor a 'gotcha' question btw... I myself think of at least 2 reasons why new players might not use that option, I just wanted to be sure everyone was on the same page before I started spitting out ideas.)

Cuz it was mentioned that the Matchmaker is dead around their time in a previous post

@sylph_ said in How exactly do we expect low rated players to play the game?:

I'm in no way sure, but it really sounds like making people fight AI when they're finally queueing to fight humans is counter productive

What do you mean?
That's why I said it should be an option you can turn off, so that you never will face an AI if you don't want that to happen.

@sylph_ said in How exactly do we expect low rated players to play the game?:

Either way, it really feels like the 'problem' comes down to convincing people that playing against people is fun, rather than pandering to these weird mental blocks.

You can't really do much to get people that don't want to play against humans to do so and this option isn't aimed at doing that.
It's aimed at people that want to play vs humans, but want to play first and foremost. Currently they are forced to either start a custom game vs AI or wait for an undefined amount of time in queue or lobby hoping they get a game.

Like people have these options

@maudlin27 said in How exactly do we expect low rated players to play the game?:

1 - Join the All welcome setons game (although given my own experience joining a setons game when I first started custom games after gaining a base level of skill at 1v1 it's not something I would recommend)
2 - Host their own all welcome game
3 - Join matchmaker queues
4 - Play the campaign or a custom game against the AI (intended as a temporary solution if there arent any players in matchmaker and they just want to play some FAF, and they may find other players joining them if they host a lobby)
5 - Post on FAF discord to see if someone will play them in a 1v1 custom game

and now you have 6 people that want to play, but all indepentently roll on this table to choose their option to get a game and they will most likely not get a game together. The more of these options fall together (by combining queuing up and fighting vs ai or, but probably more difficult, to let players play campaign missions while in queue and pause them when a match is found) the more people will choose the same option thus making a match more likely.

The idea here would be that people that want to play (ideally vs a human) but see 0 people in queue don't go into a custom game vs AI, but instead queue up.

@nex From memory when having matchmaking AI was last discussed in detail (https://discord.com/channels/197033481883222026/1069766221140074626) while there were strong views both for and against the main hurdle was someone with the time and ability to implement an 'AI in matchmaker' solution (although an agreement would also be needed on what form it would take as there are a number of options).

As a very brief note of some of the arguments I can recall, a potential benefit might be increasing the player base and TMM activity since people are more likely to find a game which is likely to be more interesting than watching the timer tick down. A potential risk (which would depend on how it was implemented) is that people who would've waited in the queue and then matched with another player both end up fighting against an AI instead, with this being less preferable to both players than if they fought each other.

However, the pros and cons were discussed at length before and are largely academic if it's not feasible to implement in the first place (and it is not straightforward to implement even if there was a general consensus that AI in matchmaker could be a good thing)

@maudlin27 Yeah I would expect there to be some things to think about.
And if it's a hassle to implement, there are probably more pressing matters right now.
(sadly I can't see the discord thread you linked)

@funkoff said in How exactly do we expect low rated players to play the game?:

I watch under 1000 rated 3v3 TMM games. They are baaaaaaad. It's kind if amusing to watch them

Of course low-rated players are bad at the game. That is precisely what a low rating means. And that's why higher-rated players don't want to play with them.

If people hate being 500-rated, they can find ways to improve. Most people who are 500-rated don't care enough to put in the effort to seek that kind of improvement

That's okay. Not everyone takes the game so seriously. People are allowed to play the way they want to play.

I'm guessing the 11 people who downvoted you are all 1200+ nerds who take their rating VERY SERIOUSLY so they're white knighting for 500-rated players who think your post was funny.

Also, you hit the nail on the head as to why higher-rated players won't let 500s into their games. It's because 500s are BAD and having them around can ruin the game for everyone else. It's the same reason, when someone hosts a "1.6k+ Setons" that I'm not invited.

How many of the people who downvoted you play 3 matches with 500s every week?

@arma473 said in How exactly do we expect low rated players to play the game?:

I'm guessing the 11 people who downvoted you are all 1200+ nerds who take their rating VERY SERIOUSLY so they're white knighting for 500-rated players who think your post was funny.

Downvoting happens if you make post that simultanously

• is not constructive to the discussion at hand
• reeks of the stupid "bad players should feel bad for being bad" mindset common in gamers that feel the need to compensate their fragile IRL egos with video game skill
• makes fun of probably about 65% of the PvP player base / more than 80% of the total player base
• fails to be funny, sarcastic or generally entertaining

@clyf said in How exactly do we expect low rated players to play the game?:

@snoog

How does the ranking of a player affect how long it takes to get a game started?

The higher ranked a person is, the more likely they play the game more and have a more stable setup. Hosting a high ranked game generally goes a lot more smoothly than lower ranked.

@arma473 said in How exactly do we expect low rated players to play the game?:

@funkoff said in How exactly do we expect low rated players to play the game?:

I watch under 1000 rated 3v3 TMM games. They are baaaaaaad. It's kind if amusing to watch them

Of course low-rated players are bad at the game. That is precisely what a low rating means. And that's why higher-rated players don't want to play with them.

If people hate being 500-rated, they can find ways to improve. Most people who are 500-rated don't care enough to put in the effort to seek that kind of improvement

That's okay. Not everyone takes the game so seriously. People are allowed to play the way they want to play.

I'm guessing the 11 people who downvoted you are all 1200+ nerds who take their rating VERY SERIOUSLY so they're white knighting for 500-rated players who think your post was funny.

Also, you hit the nail on the head as to why higher-rated players won't let 500s into their games. It's because 500s are BAD and having them around can ruin the game for everyone else. It's the same reason, when someone hosts a "1.6k+ Setons" that I'm not invited.

How many of the people who downvoted you play 3 matches with 500s every week?

How are people going to get better when they're lucky to get 1 or 2 decent games in a night? I understand not wanting to play with terrible players, but we also need to be realistic about how many players are actually on at a given time and what's realistic to expect if want a health playerbase. Similarly, I could rant for hours about the people who insist on only playing 12-16 player lobbies when there's a grand total of like 30 people actually playing.

It's not the responsibility of anyone to sacrifice their evening playing games that they don't want to play. Furthermore, I don't think most low rating players would appreciate playing with much higher rating players on a regular basis. You can only get crushed so many times until you start to feel terrible.

Yes, there's clearly a problem onboarding new players. However, telling people to just play more with low ratings players is not a viable solution.

On a related note, I've been playing ladder in a different game recently where the matchmaking range is far too broad. I have 73 wins and 15 losses. It is not fun for me that the majority of my games are essentially meaningless stomps. I don't think it's fun for the opponents either.

@redx said in How exactly do we expect low rated players to play the game?:

How are people going to get better when they're lucky to get 1 or 2 decent games in a night? I understand not wanting to play with terrible players, but we also need to be realistic about how many players are actually on at a given time and what's realistic to expect if want a health playerbase.

Low rated people are be the biggest rating bracket. I don't know why we don't see loads and loads of noob lobbies. Maybe these people don't feel confident to host a lobby. Maybe they all play in the matchmaker instead, after all that was a big reason to create it. But you already said that the matchmaker is dead in your timezone, so honestly I have no idea where the low rated players in your timezone are hiding. But they must be somewhere.

@blackyps said in How exactly do we expect low rated players to play the game?:

Maybe these people don't feel confident to host a lobby

Maybe because for people to actually join you, you'd need to look through 5 bazillion lobby options, because I think not even astro is played on default settings.
Plus, you'd need to balance the game, so you need to know how to enable auto-balance and you'll still get problems with people that want to be on the same team if you can't manually balance, which can put you into an uncomfortable position.

I'm also not sure if maybe an astro and a dualgap matchmaker queue would help in bringing players together more.
(No idea how different the settings of the different astro/gap lobbies are or if there would be other reasons why they would rather host a custom game instead of a matchmaker queue)
Having a matchmaker queue for one map is kinda weird, but if it reflects what the people want to play then why not?
(If people use it) it will also allow you to queue normal 3v3 and Astro at the same time, again to give people that want to play a normal game, but would be fine with astro, the option to queue both instead of having to commit to either matchmaker or waiting in a custom astro lobby.

Speaking for myself, the only option for late US east/pacific timezones is dual-gap custom games. Aside from the lessons learned in dgap bad on their own, in big team games your fate is tied much more to the performance of your team, so unless you're carrying (unlikely) it's a bit of a coin flip. I've lost as many games in front land, winning my slot, as I have in an air or eco slot contributing very little*.

*That ratio is made up, but the issue of wins/ranking being divorced from individual performance is real.

Throwing AI opponents into low-ranking ladder would A. allow playing ladder to be viable in non-European time zones and B. add more resolution to low ranks. When I see anything <800 right now that player can range from pretty-good-actually to absolutely-sim-city-godawful.

@clyf yeah, the rating system isn't designed to handle large teams, so it takes a lot more games to accurately reflect a players skill when they play 8v8 than if they played 1v1.
The feeling of the coin flip won't ever go away though, as your winrate against equally skilled players is bound to be 50% and the higher the player count the lower your own impact, so even if the teams are ~balanced (assuming all players have a high enough game count) your win rate will be ~50% no matter if you do well or not, since it will average out over the players. (for each fuck up you do, someone in the enemy team will fuck up as well)

Yes I think my implicit point was more options for smaller games would be better.

@nex said in How exactly do we expect low rated players to play the game?:

@clyf yeah, the rating system isn't designed to handle large teams

On the contrary

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/wp-content/uploads/2006/01/TR-2006-80.pdf