why so many duel gap lobbies?

It is so called reality.

A lot of players, maybe even most players, like repetition and turtling.

1: Repetition: Knowing that they can use the same build orders over and over again on the same map with events unfolding in mostly the same way is more comfortable than trying to navigate unfamiliar territory.

2: Turtling: There is not a lot of harassment of the core base on Dual Gap and similar maps. People have a much better chance to move up to big economies and higher tech levels (big expensive T3 and T4 toys) without dying to mass T1 spam.

It's the same reasons that some people play the campaign missions over and over again.

You get repetition and turtling on Dual Gap because of the shape of the map. Depending on how a map is shaped, that can make some strategies (e.g. raiding, early t1 spam, gun comm pushes, hang back and build T3 arty) more or less viable.

Not everyone wants these things. I'm bored by campaign missions and I don't do much gapping. But it's not hard for me to understand why other people enjoy it.

Dual gap is really easy to play and is much simpler but it handicaps you and makes you a worse player overall, you shouldn't play it anymore on e you get to like 600-800

People just really like to play sim-city and hyper-optimize a few specific buildorders. Yes it's boring, but nothing we can do about it but host our own better lobbies.

You can also play matchmaker

Due to the clear meta for each position. Definitely host some interesting new maps though!

Because the 2 biggest groups on FAF are

1: campaign/AI enthusiasts, who prefer to play against machines than real people. This is why most of the changes that are brought to FAF are on improving how the AI functions and making them better.

2: Gap losers who enjoy vegetating in their seats and letting their higher faculties go to waste.

You can use the filter option in customs to rid yourself of Gap/Astro/seton games so you dont lose ur eyesight from the sheer mediocrity on the screen

if you only got time for 1 or 2 matches in the evening after work gap is fast and easy. you usally dont need to wait too long till the lobby fills and you can get a little gud on the map bcs you train the same bo's over and over again. i played so much gap just bcs the lobby is 9/12 and you know k, cool, i can play 2 matches maybe this evening and dont have to wait 30 min in lobby just the host time outs or somebody lags or somebody alt f4 bcs he dont likes his spawn.

never the less id wish other maps would be played more often, and as mentioned matchmaker queue could be a better choice (for me as well). but then again it has something to it, using those highly specific bo's and see who performs it better or see someone having sucess by breaking the meta.

I get it though. Gap-Astro-Seton are a drug; you get the thrill of FAF with zero mental effort. Either host your own and set a rating range you feel is appropriate, or find a clan/group to play with.

@arma473 Totally feel you on this topic. I try to do mapgens but it never gets traction. When I play maps that are OG and FA maps still no traction. It's always DualGap, Seton's Clutch, Astro Craters, or The Pass. I just can't play that way anymore. It's boring. No one wants to play a different map and it is crazy

@its_time_to_duel That's not been my experience. Whenever I play (afternoon/evening EU time) there's consistently 2-3 lobbies up with random gen maps.

Sure, there's plenty of people playing gap/astro etc, but you don't have to join those lobbies.