Matchmaker Pool Feedback Thread

@cheeseberry I think the problem is that people have too high expectations of the matchmaking system, not realizing how crippling the small player pool is to any such system. We can't afford to have perfect matchups when half the time there are 0 people in queue.

The league system is exactly what was needed but I think development of it stopped at a critical point. If those shiny badges replaced rating numbers everywhere in the faf UI, lobby, scoreboard etc, then they might actually become desirable, and we'd finally stop referring to people as "the 1500" like they're wearing prison jumpsuits.

If the devs could count on queues containing hundreds rather than a handful of players, the matching algorithm could easily be tweaked to address all these issues.

@waffelznoob I think learning new maps can be fun, but I also can see how, a new player especially, struggling with the basic game mechanics, might want to postpone or minimize engagement with specific maps. It's a perfectly natural instinct to focus on skills that generalize, and since the game has such a steep learning curve, mechanics naturally rank higher than map-specific knowledge. New players feel inexperienced compared to their ladder competitors, even if they know nothing about them or their familiarity with bespoke maps. This is why the perception of a level playing field can make ladder more attractive even if it's based on an unjustified lack of confidence.

There wouldn't be an "if" I would just not allow those teams to form by automatchmaker nor be a premade.

@ftxcommando if no one gives a shit about new players we'll all run out of people to play with sooner rather than later. You're short-sighted.

Nothing quite like that new player experience of being used as a slave to farm 500 rating because rating systems falter at large variances and giving this 300 trueskill player 900 rating which will now take 3 times as long for him to reach his actual rating due to the impact of sigma.

Thanks for your long term strategic vision.

Your buddy somehow managed to convince you to install this old-as-balls game but you can't play with your friend because you're too new and some asshole decided that's problematic for some reason. do you A: grind alone until you reach their level or B: open your steam library and play something else?

Fuck rating, it's never gonna be perfect. Fun is more important. It's a game.

Also your proposed solution to the problem is shit when it doesn't need to be.

And I don't see the externalities of this system impacting me via the form of having to deal with 2000s that are actually 1500 or 1600 and kicking them because I don't feel like taking the tragedy of the commons cost of dealing with him ruining 30 games before he has a proper rating while also assuming he doesn't go and farm the old rating back again as fun.

Likewise I don't see games where players 1000 rating above others are around as serious games, nobody is playing them seriously. They're just messing around because nobody wants to tml the 0 rated dude's mexes, arty drop him, strat rush him, etc. The ones that do play it this seriously are the ones then are then either stuck in this loop of only playing these games because that's where their rating came from, risk getting banned for rating manipulation by deranking elsewhere and giving 400 rating to others to spread the problem around, or just ruining 2 dozen lobbies of another game variant. People are just playing as chill as possible. Like just play unrated games if you want to show a guy the game. Or coop, or ai games. Tons of options available beyond harming the integrity of the rating system.

Fuck the rating system and it's integrity. It's farmable and you need to address that before nitpicking this. Realize that before the matchmaker is any good at all it needs player count. You're not gonna achieve that without some compromise at the start.

Addressing it is stopping the problem of large variance games lol

How about you enjoy the game in whatever curated custom lobby you desire instead of telling others to play unrated? Do you even realize how hard it is to join a game as a 0 rated player? People enter the lobby and say don't kick me before even saying hi.

This isn't some uniform issue. There are plenty of new players that get pissed off at getting a game where the rating range is huge, particularly since you can get situations where the 0 rated player gets the slot that is supposed to lose against say a 1200 and the game becomes "who can gank the enemy new player faster." I read complaints from both ends about not getting games or getting shit games from every level of FAF.

I'm not even aware what the odds of not getting a game would be, I don't really see why it's a problem at low level lobbies. It isn't that difficult to get another <500 rated player to join or just launching with 2 players less. Most of the costs here are centered at high rated players that have no option but to join an 800+ game or whatever equivalent. Or queueing with 500s in tmm as a 2k. However if I had more security in being able to get an 1800+ match in tmm which would come with not having to worry about 2ks trying to curate a match via partying with 500s, I would also be more likely to queue. So that calculus is also not that simple.

It ultimately boils down to player counts. If they were high enough these problems would be easier to address. And if you're throwing new players under the bus to "fix" the issue now, you're giving up the opportunity for a better fix further down the line.

Your comments about games where the lanes are imbalaned also makes me wonder why you suggested custom lobbies need this restriction when that's precisely where the problem can be minimized by having 2 noobs face each other in a lane with manual balance.

TMM exists for new players. But It would now not let a 1200 queue with his 0 rated friend. Unranked/Coop/AI games exist. But they don't want to play it, only ranked pvp games. So now they join games. But they get kicked all the time because of the 0 rated guy.

This specific subset of new players would be harmed. Beyond that, this change is more likely to harm the smaller population pool of high rated players that have less options for games than the new players with a larger pool of viable games. There are as many <300 rated players playing matchmakers as 300+ rated players. I don't see the lack of game options as a reasonable concern.

The specific subset of players negatively affected you mentioned is way larger than the high rated players you wish to optimize tmm for, more likely to quit when faced with such bullshit as not being allowed to play with their friends, and since the custom lobby exists where you can enact all your balance fantasies I don't see why we should risk losing new players for pro convenience.

Global rating is shit because people can spam just one map, not because "all welcome" games exist. Either deal with the former or deal with the fact it's imperfect and your proposal does nothing to fix it.

On the contrary I’m trying to optimize the game for everyone by making games happen between players that are within at least 3 standard deviations of skill of one another. Which is already pretty lax by the standards of most games. It just isn’t as lax as “literally no restrictions at all.”

No the one map problem is vastly less of a concern. If dual gap players were playing 1800+ dual gap to get 2200 there, they would have a much easier time transitioning to other game modes.

Watch Foley play normal teamgames. He isn’t 2300 but he is still able to keep up with a 2000 skill player. That’s because he still plays high level games where people push the game, not 1k+ lobbies where it’s just 2-4 dudes playing with everyone else floundering around. When a dude that plays 1k+ games comes into higher rated lobbies, it’s significantly more noticeable. Problem with dual gap is that it’s too big (need 12 players) with too low skill pool (not 12 1800 dg players around) to host those lobbies so it caps out at 1.2k+.

Now apply your critical skills to figure out why tmm/ladder is 0 0 0 0 when 10 astro/gap "all welcome" lobbies are waiting to fill and 20 more are being played and how your proposal might help or hinder getting that gang to play the same game the rest of us are playing, and how much better the matchmaker would be if that was achieved.

Can't play with your friend is a dealbreaker for people that might otherwise put up with a less-than-perfectly balanced game as long as the discord banter with said buddy was fun.

I mean it definitely isn’t cuz all the 0 rated dudes are best buds with the 1200s in astro

map simplicity, streamer popularity feedback cycle, inertia are the biggest ones probably

I definitely met more players sick of astro and at a loss for games to play hosting all welcome than the dozen or so players you restrict yourself to playing with. I distinctly remember one of them, Raquaza, beating inspektor_kot on faflive in some scta tournament a while back. He had 900 global rating at the time I think, which made for some fun banter by the hosts and stream chat. He stopped playing astro as soon as his rating was high enough not to get kicked from human lobbies. He got there mostly by playing all welcome on normal maps.

Why the fuck should players like him not get rating from all welcome games, where their better but dead teammates can teach them what to do with all the bases? How the hell does that restriction fix global rating exactly?

Why do you think it's appropriate for you to gatekeep who plays with who when you can already do that in custom games if you want to?

https://replay.faforever.com/20419951