Matchmaker Team Sentons 4v4 TMM Inclusion

@jip said in Matchmaker Team Sentons 4v4 TMM Inclusion:

@Morax for what rating bracket?

1500+ of course! The current highest. And trust me, we are listening to feedback as Setons was going to be used for December:

We put the breaks on a bit after some debate but after reviewing think we want to see if it is more accepted this time around.

If we had some better content contribution we would have possibly opted not to consider it, but we are very, very low on maps to use and map authors willing to go to lengths to create high-level content.

I am not in favour of Seton in TMM.
Can see the usual seton players getting angry towards others for not knowing some particular seton BOs or understand how to play Seton in an 'expected' manner.
Seton is a good map. However, I fear the toxicity that comes with it. Same reason why I would never join any custom seton games anymore.

If you include it, its gonna be interesting. I wonder how many instant ctrl-K we will see this time.

Based on my experiences around the 1600-2000 rating tmm games over the last month, i feel like the willingness of players to instantly bail from a match they don't like (currently either because of some abhorrent dualgap like mapgen, or lag, or fields of ISIS) has only increased since the last time we had setons in the pool.

@xayo said in Matchmaker Team Sentons 4v4 TMM Inclusion:

If you include it, its gonna be interesting. I wonder how many instant ctrl-K we will see this time.

Based on my experiences around the 1600-2000 rating tmm games over the last month, i feel like the willingness of players to instantly bail from a match they don't like (currently either because of some abhorrent dualgap like mapgen, or lag, or fields of ISIS) has only increased since the last time we had setons in the pool.

We reviewed several of the maps last month and are adjusting. I’m going to be creating the pools starting again and will ensure there’s a better variety.

I agree that there should be a little as possible turtle / tech maps and continued feedback like this helps support that.

I haven’t played as much map gen in the past month. @Xayo when you say “abhorrent dual gap map gen” could you post a screen shot? There’sa whole set of map Gen types and it would be nice to see if there’s a particular type that needs Adjustment.

Here is a nice thread I made showing all the types of map gens and feedback from the community for reference: https://forum.faforever.com/topic/2526/map-gen-week-feedback-thread?_=1671194825596

Summary,
I am bad at the map compare to the people that play it, hence dont add it to the pool.

@morax said in Matchmaker Team Sentons 4v4 TMM Inclusion:

If there has been a huge shift in wanting map design to be what Blodir outlined (12+ mexes, lot of reclaim, asymmetric), that is news to me: please provide some info / discussions with others to back this up. I think there should be a variety of maps that have all sorts of ranges of resources / reclaim rather have rules like this. I have not seen a single person write this in the matchmaker feedback thread.

mapgen, especially 10km, tends to generate maps with low reclaim and ~6 safe mexes per player. all other mexes are towards the middle. this promotes gun acu gameplay.
Since gun acu is very powerful with a low skill requirement, there's not a whole lot a 2300 player can do to stand out from an 1800 player. this goes for man-made maps too, of course, if they have a similar mex layout

In other words, maps with low mex count per player kinda have a low skill ceiling and it seems odd to have a low skill ceiling (or at least depreciative skill value) in a high rank competitive game. at the very least maps where i dont have much to work with arent very fun, in my opinion.

was a bit short on time, so i'm editing this post now: lot of reclaim is optional, but its nice if theres atleast enough reclaim (~2k) to make decision between t2 mex/t2 land/t2 air (again, maps with barely any mass are usually dominated by gun acus)
asymmetric maps are nice because symmetric maps usually end up in stand-offs. i mean, what else can you expect when two equally skilled players are given an equal amount of resources. symmetric maps aren't bad, but i personally think asymmetric is more interesting

I would assume this stuff is graded on a curve, because in absolute terms every decent 4v4 map is a turtle/tech rush. The fact somebody is always rushing t3 air means everyone is on a time clock of getting t3 tech within a minute or two of that player. If they aren’t doing that, it’s because they went for t3 mexes instead.

Just do it and we will see if it works!

@bulliednoob said in Matchmaker Team Sentons 4v4 TMM Inclusion:

@morax said in Matchmaker Team Sentons 4v4 TMM Inclusion:

If there has been a huge shift in wanting map design to be what Blodir outlined (12+ mexes, lot of reclaim, asymmetric), that is news to me: please provide some info / discussions with others to back this up. I think there should be a variety of maps that have all sorts of ranges of resources / reclaim rather have rules like this. I have not seen a single person write this in the matchmaker feedback thread.

mapgen, especially 10km, tends to generate maps with low reclaim and ~6 safe mexes per player. all other mexes are towards the middle. this promotes gun acu gameplay.
Since gun acu is very powerful with a low skill requirement, there's not a whole lot a 2300 player can do to stand out from an 1800 player. this goes for man-made maps too, of course, if they have a similar mex layout

In other words, maps with low mex count per player kinda have a low skill ceiling and it seems odd to have a low skill ceiling (or at least depreciative skill value) in a high rank competitive game. at the very least maps where i dont have much to work with arent very fun, in my opinion.

was a bit short on time, so i'm editing this post now: lot of reclaim is optional, but its nice if theres atleast enough reclaim (~2k) to make decision between t2 mex/t2 land/t2 air (again, maps with barely any mass are usually dominated by gun acus)
asymmetric maps are nice because symmetric maps usually end up in stand-offs. i mean, what else can you expect when two equally skilled players are given an equal amount of resources. symmetric maps aren't bad, but i personally think asymmetric is more interesting

Great feedback.

I wholeheartedly agree that "gun acu" maps are kind of annoying in that your cannot truly use your skill advantage for almost anything to fight. This is why I love 15x15 map sizes as 10x10 can get to be a little lame; however, they work well for lower-level brackets.

2300 player can do to stand out from an 1800 player

jeeezz haha I was hoping you would say 1800+ vs 1500 less but gotcha. If 2300+ is the bar for creation we need to rethink our pool brackets as we have 1500+ as the top level.

It is funny you mention the "asymmetry" part as a lot of people have complained about going up against a player on the direct "lane" with 1.5 to 2 their own mexes (lot of map gens do this really badly...). Teamwork is needed to get by this and sadly not a lot of coordination happens at times, but it is not a good excuse to refrain from this style.

How do you feel about asymmetric maps like Selkie Isle where there is not a huge amount, but certainly there?

One final consideration: you are likely seeing more of the lower-bracket intended pools, unfortunately, as the current method for selecting a map is based on the queues (both team's) lowest-rated player: https://forum.faforever.com/topic/5170/matchmaker-update/3

We have discussed and pushed this idea to resolve low-level content resulting for higher-rated players for sometime now. The release is dependent on some other factors and hopefully it comes sooner rather later.

@morax said in Matchmaker Team Sentons 4v4 TMM Inclusion:

jeeezz haha I was hoping you would say 1800+ vs 1500 less but gotcha. If 2300+ is the bar for creation we need to rethink our pool brackets as we have 1500+ as the top level.

certainly not impossible for a 1400 to crush an 1800 because he clicked gun upgrade while the 1800 clicked a t2 mex, so the argument still works.

i understand complaints about asymmetrical maps because it can be unfun to be hopelessly crushed, but if you look at the bigger picture, asymmetric maps tend to play out more interestingly than symmetric maps (setons is a great example of this). lack of coordination is the player's fault

i think selkie is a good map, asymmetry matters a bit less there though because i feel it's all a lot more dependant on mid and air performance
prioritizing higher bracket mappools sounds pretty nice, thanks for the work

Nah selkie has pretty important asymmetry. The bottom right/top left slots lose long term due to the insane reclaim available to their opponent. They need to play proactively, I don't see it that much differently than how beach will lose to a rock that is allowed to boom in peace long term.

@azraeel said in Matchmaker Team Sentons 4v4 TMM Inclusion:

@casternumerouno imo TMM should be only random gen B)

This but unironically.

Don't support. Plenty of settons lobbies in custom, I'll join one of those if I feel like turning my shitty pc into a handwarmer.

From a numbers perspective, where people clearly stated "for" or "against:"

For Setons in Pool [7]: Rezy-Noob, Lord_Asmodeus, BulliedNoob, FtxCommando, ThomasHiatt, Black_Wriggler, Blodir, ovenman

Against [13]: Maudlin, Jip, Sladow-Noob, MarcSpector, Tryth, haifron, Chisato, Xayo, PerciThunercock, Zeldafanboy, Cyborg16, BananaSmoothie (Banani), IndexLibrorum

For those who want to be add to this, please state clearly your stance.

I support adding it, mostly because i find it fun. As for the argument that it would increase toxicity, i think that is stupid, that logic applies to all maps. There is always a chance that you get a player that is good or bad at a specific map and its just part of the game.

I also support adding it, I don't really see any issues with it.

Just FYI, the final numbers are not going to determine its usage; this is simply just to show where it stands.

I've argued against the inclusion of setons in the original thread and in the pre tmm release map pool discussion thread.

So yeah, please keep setons out of the tmm pool.

I'm for adding it for a a few reasons. Obviously people here know my bias towards it, but here's why:

• It's a good and dynamic map that has at least a bit of everything. Very few maps have everything in the way that Seton's does imo.

• More navy maps in pool is nice

• It's a very high skill cap map - I don't really like the Setoner's have BOs argument. My reasoning for that is similar to what FTX said in the thread Cheese linked: You can go with aggressive non-meta play and absolutely trash most Setoners under 1800. There aren't a lot of traditional Setons only players that wouldn't work pretty consistently against. You can just go first bomber from any slot and crush your opp if they mostly just play setons and you have at least some level of competency in eco scaling in general. Should we remove EOTS (I think that's the right map I'm thinking of...) from ladder pool because it's free win if you know the meta of winning through air dominance and you opp doesn't? Should we remove Seraphim glaciers because having optimal transport timing making use of the spread out reclaim at start optimally can easily win the game for you? What about The Ditch and other maps where if you have a basic BO it gives massive advantage over someone who doesn't? I don't really hear much about those outside of lower ranked people complaining about people having BOs for ladder maps. This sounds the same.

• At least with Seton's even if people have sweaty BOs the meta is obvious what you do in general, the whole supposedly not knowing the meta on that map makes no sense. Sure I'm biased, but the meta on setons is more obvious than most other maps in tmm pool imo. Clear cut air and navy slots, clear mid mass that should be obvious to walk your com to pretty quickly, etc. It's not like other maps where no one knows they should be t3 air or whatever.

• The toxicity argument sounds like complete bs as Spikey pointed out, outside of my next point.

• People who ctrl k are being dicks and that's a them problem. Maybe they should actually be getting warnings from mods when ctrl k'ing in tmm matches and wasting people's time. I don't ctrl k on shitty 4v4 10x10 guncom rush maps even though I hate that shit, it's boring, and has a super low skill cap.

• Some have complained about the lag in late game seton's, a couple things there: Jip's wonderful work has largely made that a thing of the past outside of people playing on potatoes and there are other 20x20 maps with high mex and reclaim counts in the pool as well and no one is arguing those should also go away.

Edit, one more point: I think I saw somewhere where someone said a setoner could beat someone 300 rating higher by virtue of knowing the map. I really don't think most 1500 rated setoners are beating a (solid) 1800 rated tmm player unless the 1800 is beach and that's mostly fine anyway. Only exception might be on air, and definitely if you get a certain 1500 who is way stronger on air than other slots. Can count on one hand the number of people who fall into that category though and none of them play tmm afaik

@exselsior

Should we remove EOTS (I think that's the right map I'm thinking of...) from ladder pool because it's free win if you know the meta of winning through air dominance and you opp doesn't? Should we remove Seraphim glaciers because having optimal transport timing making use of the spread out reclaim at start optimally can easily win the game for you? What about The Ditch and other maps where if you have a basic BO it gives massive advantage over someone who doesn't?

While I get your point (and agree with it), the correct sequence of answers to the questions you presented is: yes, yes and yes.