@Nex agree. Moreover this is the simplest solution could be - just add more queues like other queues already exist nearby.
Punish bad lobbies
No the simplest solution is to start hosting lobbies yourself, not sure why that’s constantly ignored when other people in this thread bring it up.
I generally play setons and I would be against a setons queue and wouldn’t use it unless it killed custom lobbies and I had no choice, and if it did it would be a downgrade. This is how I’ve felt about that for a long time now and I’ve said as much before.
Sometimes people are reluctant to host themselves because it seems like the slowest option to get a game. @Cocucka all I can suggest is make your lobbies fun and fair and hopefully people will flock to them. It's slow at first but it gets better as you get better at hosting. Once enough people add you to their friends list, they get notified when you make a game and it fills a lot faster, even compared to matchmaking at prime time.
@exselsior the OP is indeed trying to host themselves already, I've seen their lobbies in the list.
Maybe the thread is partly about that solution not being entirely frustration free, and that might have something to do with people's reluctance to join lobbies hosted by lower rated players, but I'm just guessing.
Personally, I have to admit whatever gut feelings I might have about a hypothetical gap only queue are worthless since the death of 4v4 tmm came as quite a surprise to me. It was vindicating, but surprising as hell, based on what I perceived the consensus to be at my rating level at the time. The fact that it even existed at all is proof that fullshare was at the very least controversial, forcing the devs to launch tmm with both, which was the right call.
I wonder if no-share's utter failure came as a surprise to any them as well, and if so, maybe it's worth reminding ourselves our intuition is not perfect at predicting how large, mostly silent communities will react and can't replace actual experiments.
On the other hand, if it came as no surprise at all to anyone on the dev team, more the reason to trust their judgement on this, but it's interesting to think that they were willing to entertain no-share then just to prove to people hardly anyone wants to play it, so it must not have been that huge of an effort.
Well, can someone explain what I am doing wrong?
Spent 30 minutes in lobby without any single connection 
great idea to tell people to just host themselves and then wonder why there are 5 dual gap lobbys for <1000 with a total of 13 players that now can enjoy the lobby even more.
@phong said in Punish bad lobbies:
Personally, I have to admit whatever gut feelings I might have about a hypothetical gap only queue are worthless since the death of 4v4 tmm came as quite a surprise to me. It was vindicating, but surprising as hell, based on what I perceived the consensus to be at my rating level at the time. The fact that it even existed at all is proof that fullshare was at the very least controversial, forcing the devs to launch tmm with both. I wonder if no-share's utter failure came as a surprise to them as well, and if so, maybe it's worth reminding ourselves our intuition is not perfect at predicting how large, mostly silent communities will react and can't replace actual experiments. On the other hand, if it came as no surprise at all to anyone on the dev team, more the reason to trust their judgement on this.
This is easily bitten by statistics. But I can not find any in open access. Unfortunately, last years devs try to hide their "popularity".
@phong I don't know why the no-share queue was made and I can only guess on why it was removed, but it always seemed kinda empty anyway.
I think it's good that it was removed, because (unlike a dual gap or astro queue) this mode was competing with other queues (4v4 full-share) for players, since these queues were quite similar. So if you come to a point where there are actually people in queue in both of them, then people will stop queuing for the one they prefer less without knowing the rating distribution and actual likelihood of getting a match, thus segregating the players and reducing the chance and quality of matches.
So the addition of a dual gap queue could be detrimental to the experience if we expect a good portion of the regular queue players to switch over to dual gap instead, but I don't think that will happen.
@cocucka I think I saw some numbers about 4v4 share vs no-share on this very forum posted by the devs, trying to find them now
The objective arguments for a full share queue were always better than for no share. There would have been only be a 4v4 full share queue if it wasn't for all the outrage on the forum and similar that we need a no share queue, as full share was perceived as game-ruining by many. At least they argued so. So we reached the compromise to launch with both. Iirc the no-share queue started with around a third of the total 4v4 games, but then quickly died of until it was compeletely and absolutely dead. At that point it was removed.
So the "surprise" was that it died in spite of all the people insisting that it would be popular. I can't speak for anyone else, but in my perception the original intution was that we should launch only with full share, the backlash from the community introduced some doubts, so we changed plans in a "well, we could be wrong with our original assesment" line of thought. But in the end the original intuition proved to be right.
@blackyps Yeah, I suspected as much and it feels like the right call, although, ironically, it kind of set a bad precedent. At least that argument is now dead and buried, though, mostly, thanks to that extra work. Is it worth putting in a similar effort again to settle the matter of gap tmm? I have no idea how much work it actually is, but I also have a gut feeling that it's a problem the community will have to face at some point, if the long-term goal is to reduce emphasis on custom games.
As previously stated by Brutus a gap queue is highly unlikely just due to the number of players and connections. The reason it can work in custom games is because in lobby you know if players can connect to others or not and thus they can be removed. With the matchmaker this is not possible.
And as we already see complaints about failure to launch with 4v4 it only grows exponentially with 6v6. And this is even assuming that all the recent elevated connection issues are resolved.
The technical implementation to launch some sort of gap queue is not an issue (I am purely talking about setting up such a queue. The issue Sheikah mentioned is highly relevant), but there is more to it than just technical aspects.
You can't just try something like that and then pretend like it never happened when it fails. People will demand experiments with other maps/other configurations etc. Not to mention the question of whether we want single map queues at all in principle.
I haven't really seen a coherent argument for map-specific queues that doesn't fundamentally conflict with the vision of the matchmaker as it is now, and I believe that has less to do with the specific map and is more just that, a fundamental incompatibility.
@cocucka said in Punish bad lobbies:
Well, can someone explain what I am doing wrong?
You're doing nothing wrong, it's unfortunately like that, until slowly, it isn't anymore. Still faster than waiting for gap matchmaker. You can try hosting 3v3s or 2v2s if you want, they might fill faster, but that's assuming you want to play those kinds of maps.
@sheikah with the current connection issues I also don't think a gap queue will be a good idea.
Launching it in a half dead state will keep players from using it even if it becomes rather stable some time in the future.
But a 4v4 astro queue could be a test project.
@blackyps said in Punish bad lobbies:
People will demand experiments with other maps/other configurations etc
I don't really see much cries for more no-share queues. (at least not to an amount that would be annoying)
So I don't think if it actually fails, you'll see an unbearable amount of requests for other configurations. The settings for these games are pretty clear and there are only really 2-3 maps that are played to that extend.
@blackyps said in Punish bad lobbies:
I haven't really seen a coherent argument for map-specific queues that doesn't fundamentally conflict with the vision of the matchmaker as it is now, and I believe that has less to do with the specific map and is more just that, a fundamental incompatibility.
What is the vision for the matchmaker that makes it fundamentally incompatible with how a large portion of the players play the game?
I don't think the matchmaker should tell players how they are allowed to have fun, by purposefully removing options that a large portion of players find fun.
But it should try to show people where the fun might be for them in an intuitive way.
So someone new to the game should be able to look at the matchmaker page and find a gamemode they'll like and have the simple requirement of hitting a button and waiting for a match instead of searching the custom game section, checking for all the settings what they do, informing themselves which settings are good and then getting kicked because they haven't played enough games.
With Queues for different maps you have everything uniform with all differences laid out directly on the selection screen And if you don't know what "dual gap" is, you only need one game to see the map and see the difference to other maps, while noticing different ingame options might be a harder feat to accomplish.
The matchmaker is the place where we carry out the vision how forged alliance should be played for the optimal rts experience. That's why balance is adjusted around the matchmaker, there are leaderboards for the queues, the maps in the pool are picked in an effort to provide a reasonable broad range of playing scenarios and that are of high quality.
It's not illegal to play custom games, so this notion of telling players how they are allowed to have fun seems like a very weird interpretation to me.
I don't think it's an inherent goal to have as many games as possible organized through the queues. Many people in custom games seem to want to play specific slots on specific maps with specific settings. Which is fine, but we can't provide this with a matchmaker. People that don't like the exact configuration of the queue or want to control the spot they are playing in, would still play custom games.
Then there are all sorts of complications when starting a map-specific queue: Why does balance not accomodate that map as well, why do some maps have a specific queue and others don't, where do we draw the line to create a queue for a map
Why don’t you extend this argument to balance then? Matchmaker isn’t a slave to some “popular will” just as balance isn’t. They exist in a window of creating the expected FAF experience. If people want to go outside said window and mess with a variety of settings, they have custom lobbies. It doesn’t matter for balance if 95% of FAF is dual gap, astro, de_dust2, or trouble in terrorist town. It also doesn’t matter for the matchmakers.
Likewise, people surrender a ton of control for the ease of automated lobbies. So the matchmakers do carry a responsibility in telling people what is fun because it becomes the game situations and dynamics in which balance is centered around. We also tinker with the constant question of “no game vs bad game” as well as how much of a concern asymmetric slot balance is. I don’t see any pattern of behavior in how any of these systems work that fit your description of them.
As an example, matchmaker basically carried the whole concept of full share being a better game experience than no share down from the 1.8k+/sentons area where it was basically quarantined into the rest of the community. I had to deal with tons of people explaining to me why it’s terrible back even during the 2v2 queue implementation. These days, far as I know, it’s basically dual gap and astro that only don’t play with it.
Which brings in ANOTHER reason why it would never be implemented: we absolutely cannot have different share conditions implemented in a coherent manner and just for these two random maps. It “worked” for 4v4 because you had full share and no share, but that was still bad because new players have no idea what that means. But at least you see that these two queues are differing in SOMETHING. A “no share dual gap” has no full share to contrast with and tons of new players are just going to see bases blow up with no discernible reason to expect it.
@ftxcommando Can you provide some statistics about whom and how prefer playing faf?
Currently "It also doesn’t matter for the matchmakers" sounds like "we do not players to get fun" or "we want a cyber sport league" or even "95% of players are fools".