What can be done to make 1v1 more popular?

As with all things in life, it requires balance, saying large maps are for these people and small maps are for these people I believe not for the best.

another way of looking at this is that small maps require more micro and therefor suite a higher skill, and larger maps require more macro wich is something most players are familiar with.

lower skilled players can manage eco and these sorts of things but do not understand how to best use those units when they have been made, for instance i often see 1k players make rocket bots but then just suicide them in with t1 ect aswell as undertsanding that flares can beat mech marines but if microed the opposite can be true this is not a low level thing.

small maps mean that the loss of every single unit counts and could mean the differance between winning or losing whereas on larger maps there is more room for error.

I believe a map size that would provide the best experiances would be 10-12km

the only differance i can see in skill required for a map would be how much water there is, having a third factor to manage ontop of air and land would increase the challange, even more so with faction diversity, low players would struggle when their opponent spams zues or aeon t1 tanks on a navy based map when they are uef or cybran.

@lowki

No you are wrong. Individual differences aside, lower rated players in general prefer more 5x5 maps and higher rated players enjoy more 10x10 and 20x20 maps. The only plausible explanation is that map complexity becomes more enjoyable when you become more skilled. These preferences are not only understandeable intuitively, but are also observed. There was some survey done to establish this a few years back.

That said, its true that you need to have some variety at all levels. I know some 2k+ players that enjoy 5x5 a lot and wouldnt mind having half their pool be of that size. Also I know some <700 players that would like to play more 20x20. As always with these things, you cant please everyone. If a specific feedback becomes very frequent, however, I agree that changes need to me made.

It's hard to manage everything on a large map when you are low skilled (like me)

https://forums.faforever.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=19432

As conclusive as it's going to get.

How relevant is 4 year data?

Interesting, the data looks like almost every rank prefers 10km the most; yet the map pool for lower ranked players is overwhelmingly 5km.
While I understand to some extent the logic (in that playing on 5km lets you get good at basics of t1 tank spam and there is probably less to manage than on a 10km), the problem is that it leads to very repetitive gameplay that can quickly get tiring.

While I'm aware that personal preferences will vary (so there's very limited use in my own experiences), for what it's worth when I started with ladder I quickly got tired and switched to astro crater because of the lack of variety in a 5km tank spam game (yes, astro crater was much more varied and interesting to me! This is the low mex version that used to be played though). It felt like there was little room for alternative tactics and most games played out the same (further compounded by T1 being the stage with the least variety of unit types and other than Aeon, minimal factional differences).

Looking at the map pool, despite 10km being a preference for all ratings except 300-500 (for which it was still 2nd favourite) based on FtX's old survey, we have 100% 5km for <200 and 75% 5km for 200-700. Now I suppose you could argue that if you get good at managing your eco in a 5km and good at building the maximum number of tanks, coupled with a good build order and sensible use of your ACU in combat you should be able to get past 700 rating relatively easy. However, I suspect I won't be the only one who was turned off by what felt like a grind of optimising a single approach (spam t1 tanks).

Has anything been done more recent to see if lower rated players really do prefer 100%/75% 5km maps?

no data is more recent and i do not understand why yew thinks the community has entirely gone about face in preferences

5x5 and 10x10 have always dominated in preferences. Back during the ancient zep pools where 33% of the map pool was the most commonly picked maps and the other two 33% were the map picks of each player, the common map pool was majority 5x5 and had zero 20x20.

Please point out where I say anything of the kind. I am curious if and by how much we can rely on 4 year data. Surely it's not exactly the same.

Preference by and large probably does remain the same.

@maudlin27 said in What can be done to make 1v1 more popular?:

Interesting, the data looks like almost every rank prefers 10km the most; yet the map pool for lower ranked players is overwhelmingly 5km.

Theres your answer.

10k hits the sweet spot that allows for more varied play compared to 5k and in most cases wont leed to 1hr plus games.

@yew It's real data so it's quite valuable. I don't really see that anything large has changed to affect this data. Of course, it would be nice to have more recent data, but the fact the any genuine hard information exists is surprising to me.

Secondly, I will corroborate this data with my own anecdotal experiences. I have, and still do, find larger maps daunting. You usually get way more mass to manage, you need to do a transport build order usually and use transports and you need to defend and get intel on a much larger area. Not to mention that these maps can also include navy so it's so much new things to deal with. Back in the old days when Heaven was still active there was some kind of ice map that was massive and as a new player it was very stressful to get it.

I will concede that my earlier point about smaller maps being for more high level players was flawed as was pointed out by @StormLantern

however the only thing I stand by is that when it comes to maps for particular skill levels is the map complexity that has the largest impact.

So I would put farward this argument, the lower level maps should be as plain and as simple as possible, with no terrain or water or reclaim, and as skill level rises so to should the map complexity slowly adding features like plateaus, water and civilian structures to reclaim or capture

@blackyps Top G

@lowki @maudlin27

Looking at the survey results again, it does indeed seem that 10x10 maps are currently a bit underpresented in the lower rated brackets of the mappool..

Ill take a look if the team will agree with an extra 10x10 map in the lower brackets.

@stormlantern Can mapgen NOT be included into 1v1 ladder please? It generates terrible, turtle-y maps.

@ganima

Could you link me to one of your replays where it makes this type of map?

Edit: Nvm, I found your replays. You have played a handful of mapgen 1v1's and indeed with exception of 1 of them they were all turtle maps. However, I also checked the ten most recent mapgens created in your 1v1 rating bracket.
Of those, only 2 maps that were turtley.

So I think you have simply been unlucky with what mapgen came up with in your games. Besides, there has been some recent feedback from lower rated players that wanted mapgen in their bracket. Hence why it was added a few months back.

@stormlantern I have also checked and it appears you are correct. Still I think they are much less interesting and worse looking compared to handcrafted maps.

@ganima that's why we have a balance though. Can't please everyone.