Allow us to pick rating brackets for TMM

Simple as, allow us to pick the lowest rating bracket we can get matched with in TMM. Not gonna explain more cuz that would be waste of oxygen and I would start cursing at everyone and everything.

This would require 1800+ bracket to have over 50% competency level to be relevant

Anything so I don't have to play with animals. It's just retarded to have to play with players in the lowest bracket at 1.6k.
Like ffs, there should be ability cap the MMR level at certain point so that one don't have to play with people half their fucking rating.

I'm losing all my motivation the moment I enter the game. Fucking 40 minute Q just to play single retarded game that should have never happened. Like at this point I can just go join fucking Phong lobbies, at least there I know not to expect too much from the teams as they are gonna be all welcome.

It literally kills the point of TMM for me to Q in just to play a fucking all welcome game but with different interface.

And no, having to re-queue every 3-6 minutes is not a solution.

I think it would be cool because rn I have to queue with 2-3 other 1800+ guys so some humanity can be guaranteed, but it can be annoying if you then ask other ppl at that level to random queue against the premade. If you could say only make X matchup then it would be possible for this situation to just involve everyone queueing individually. Though I'm not sure how often of a problem this is beyond the 1800+ level and whether that small part of FAF justifies the added complexity into the matching algorithm.

It seems to me the root problem is a lack of activity in the highest bracket. Not sure if there is a good technical solution

Well no, it's the classic tradeoff of bad game vs no game. People would rather just play a 1.6k+ or 1.8k+ rated game but still would like the ease of queueing for matchmaker rather than going through the trouble of hosting themselves.

Currently the only solution for this is queueing with a significantly stacked premade so that it's impossible to have anything too low in quality, but it's more encouraging for people to queue up if there is no premade and it's just 8 people at that level queueing with the intention of only getting a game at that rating bracket.

implement the system that doesn't allow high ranks to play with low ranks as it currently happens, apex is a great example, you will never meet a pred with gold for example, this can be used on faf: don't allow group formations of x-2 divisions to avoid stomps

queuing with a newbie to show him the beauty of tmm and meeting tagada be like:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yLcRpdZ0Xb0&ab_channel=Tomoko

@rezy-noob What if a 500 and 1500 are a premade team though? A limitation on the rating variance would prevent them from being able to play

Good. I don't wanna be playing with 500 rated players in my team nor in enemy team. I want a semi-balanced game, not a roll of dice on who will get less animals in a team.

@maudlin27 well that's exactly what is supposed to happen, they shouldn't, you're gonna face 2 1k's which will surely affect the quality of the game and neither will enjoy the stomp

queuing with a newbie to show him the beauty of tmm and meeting tagada be like:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yLcRpdZ0Xb0&ab_channel=Tomoko

@rezy-noob If FAF had a larger player base it’d be less of an issue but introducing an arbitrary rating difference limit means both fewer games are created, and potentially fewer people queue for games (since you’re banning people from playing together if theyre not close in rating). Also For many people a game with a high variability in ratings may be preferable to no game at all, and you can still have fun games.

Eg I recall one I had where my team (iirc around 500-1k) had a matchup where the enemy team had one of the LOTS players (so probably 1.8k+) - we lost but it was fun to play and a much closer game than expected. Id much rather have had that game than be stuck in a queue with no game.

One middle ground that would avoid actively preventing people from joining the TMM queue and also allow people to avoid games with a wide difference in skill would be to have a checkbox people can tick to limit the rating range for if they personally want to join a game. Ie if checked then they would only be considered for a tmm game if the min/max rating would be within 2 divisions of them. It’d mean an increase in average wait times for games overall but less so than making it a mandatory change for everyone.

It’d also avoid creating perverse incentives for people to resort to rating manipulation or smurfing just to play with a friend in tmm

The matchmaker has some config values. Tuning those could already alleviate the problem with almost no dev effort. But I need IDs of recent replays to geht an idea what the problem is

@blackyps said in Allow us to pick rating brackets for TMM:

It seems to me the root problem is a lack of activity in the highest bracket. Not sure if there is a good technical solution

This is not entirely true. It seems to be generally true that there's a high rating discrepancy at top level.

aoe2: 450 rating difference between #1 and #100 https://www.aoezone.net/deladder/?ladderid=3
aoe4: 400 rating difference between #1 and #43 https://aoe4world.com/leaderboard/rm_1v1
sc2: 1400 rating difference between #1 and #100 (7.4k vs 6k) https://nonapa.com/ladder?4&season=52&region=2&mode=1

The examples are all 1v1 since teamgames are broken/dead in those games, but there's a similar trend in team based ladders too.

Yes having more players helps a little bit, but in general the top few players will still have issues finding games, because of the huge rating discrepancy.

In my case there's been 3 hours and 15 minutes since my last tmm game (rating 2316). It is pretty much prime time: 18-21 finnish time (1-2 hours earlier for most of europe). During this time there's been numerous games with many 1700-1900 players which I didn't get into (often the system matched them with 1200-1400s instead).
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I don't know exactly how the system currently works, but I'd like to see players that have been in queue for a long time get some kind of extra priority if it doesn't do that already. Or strengthen it if it does exist. Alternatively there could be some system to favor higher rating players as it seems that generally most players prefer playing with higher rated players (1700 would rather play with a 2000 than a 1400). If those games in above pictures were custom games I doubt I would have any trouble getting into the lobby.

In its current state it's pretty unfeasible for higher rating players to play tmm, which only exacerbates the problem (making it even harder for high rating players to get games since there's fewer of them searching).

Good idea!

I suggest just having a +1.5k or 1.6k TMM button-option if you've reached a minimum rank of that, so you can face a challenge regardless of who you're up against. Easiest way to learn and get quick games, as the top is only like 10-20 people anyway.

You could balance it a bit, but it will never be perfect, but that's okay. At least the people know what they are doing ... ish ...

I agree with giving higher rated players priority because it's easy enough for lower rated players to get games anyway. This would also promote more higher level games, instead of TMM spamming 1300-1900 games and leaving out all the 2k+
Atm it's only possible for me to get games when i queue with people >500 rating lower than me, and even then it's honestly really hard.

And then I'd like to add it's awful that I can't have any other games open while waiting, because that immediately crashes the TMM launch. Really makes the waiting experience that much worse when I can't A. walk away from desktop for prolonged period of time and B. can't do anything while I wait
Don't know if it can be fixed but would be really nice if it could (custom games don't have this issue do they?)

profile picture credits to petric

@bulliednoob said in Allow us to pick rating brackets for TMM:

And then I'd like to add it's awful that I can't have any other games open while waiting, because that immediately crashes the TMM launch. Really makes the waiting experience that much worse when I can't A. walk away from desktop for prolonged period of time and B. can't do anything while I wait
Don't know if it can be fixed but would be really nice if it could (custom games don't have this issue do they?)

On a related note I was doing some cleaning while in the queue and I felt like I had to glance at the screen every now and then in the small chance that I actually get a game. It would be nice if we could enable some very noticable sound notification (preferably several seconds long) when we get a game. Then I could at least leave the room safely while I have speakers on.

Speaking as a 1400-1500 rated player, I wouldn't be able to tell the difference between an 1800 and a 2300 teammate/enemy whilst playing the game myself (unless there was 1 of each to compare). I'm perfectly happy to have players like Blodir in my game, as long as the match is balanced and they can forgive my mistakes, but I do enjoy games more when everyone is below 1600.

A rating bracket system sounds alright, but not if the brackets are forced. Like if I have to play in the 1500+ bracket whenever I reach over that rating, I'm just always going to be the worst there and have no fun. With an optional bracket system it allows people who don't want to play with noobier players to opt out of those games, while still allowing those of us who don't mind playing with noobs as much to continue as we are. Those players who opt in will just have to accept the fact that imposing their own brackets will increase wait time.

Also, as a side note, whenever I get into a game where everyone is 1400/1500+, the map always seems to be 20x20, often with lots of navy, whereas the lower games are at least 75% land maps. Why is this, and can it be changed?

Higher rated game -> more difficult maps. A 10x10 is extremely simplistic gameplay in a 4v4 generally. Bases are compact, mexes are all taken and controlled by min 5, ACUs walk mid, all aggression is over. If that was made more pervasive at the top level of tmm, I’d definitely just stop queueing entirely.

In terms of sea based 20x20, they’re just easier to make than a decent land 15x15 or 20x20 so there are more of them on the vault.

I'll also throw my two cents in, sitting around 1600 tmm rating it's incredibly difficult for me to get games as well and it's causing me to play less and less tmm. I usually have to queue with lower rated friends if I want to get semi-consistent games. It's pretty annoying being one of the first in queue, then seeing the queue grow to 32+ players and then not getting a game. And that happens over and over. The last few weeks I've basically given up solo-queueing and just went back to hosting again. I imagine it's a similar-but-worse situation for even higher rated players as Blodir describes.