How come you don't play ladder?

Gibsaw

I do play ladder.... but not 1v1, as I'm simply not good enough.

However, there are also some practical matters that the devs could look at, that might encourage the queues to fill again.

I am finding that in the 4v4, it seems often take 20+ players before you get a "match". I've seen a 20+ player queue miss cycle after cycle after cycle, and dwindle to zero without a match.
I could be wrong, but it feels like it can only launch one match per cycle.
90 seconds for the ladder to cycle is way too long for the number of cycles it seems to miss.
It would be good to know where you are in the queue. Am I even in consideration for a match, yet?

I actually see no reason to wait the 90 seconds to indicate a possible match. If it's "missing" because it can't match, then surely the trigger for it trying again, should be people joining. (maybe with a short client refresh like 30 seconds - or possibly a push?)

It should attempt a match as soon as the minimum number is satisfied.
If it can't match, then it should try again, every time someone joins.
If there's no match, then it should say why. I have no idea what the criteria are, but I know I'm waiting cycle after cycle after cycle.

I don't have the bandwidth right now to get familiar with this codebase, but I hope that's some food for thought.

BlackYps

The only reason why here is no match when enough players are in the queue is that it can't create good enough games with the people in the queue. That's also the reason why people pile up. Keep in mind that these players are possibly spread over the entire rating range.
It is possible but rare to launch more than one game at once.
Making the cycle shorter won't fix anything about this, because the matchmaker doesn't "miss" matches by accident.
Having these regular cycles makes it easier to track how long people have been waiting in the queue than if we matched at irregular intervals.
I think the only solution to improve the user experience would be to show an estimated wait time instead, but that is complicated to implement.

Blodir

I think adding some explanation about how the system works on the client might help with the confusion, though it creates a tight coupling between that client helptext and the system so i thas to be changed any time the system is changed.

maudlin27

@blodir What about a link to a wiki article that explains it? Still have a similar issue with needing to keep it updated, but it would be easier to update (since far more people can update it and can update it immediately), and also of use more generally since people may look for the information on the wiki.

Gibsaw

@blackyps I didn't mean it "missed a match by accident"... I meant it missed a cycle. (i.e. could not find a match)

As I said - I've watched people abandon 26 person queue because it won't match an 8 player game for many cycles. I know there's criteria for a match... but it's not discernable to the user.

The idea for shortening (or eliminating) the cycle would:

permit one (or more) games to launch quickly if a queue change made one or more matches work.
allow it to loosen it's criteria quicker. (I assume this happens after a while?)

I know I frequently abandon the queue for a custom game for these reasons.. I can't be alone.

Perhaps we need a casual queue - or some adjustable ranges... I certainly wouldn't mind losing if it meant I actually got a game.

Anyway, those are some thoughts.

FtXCommando

There is always a perpetual argument about bad game vs no game. The criteria for matching also does get looser the longer you stay in queue.

Gibsaw

@leonpie said in How come you don't play ladder?:

<snip>...stopped playing because to me the game was only about make the live of the opponent miserable

Yeah, I feel ya... This is the reason I stopped playing quake. When the true winning strategy is to deny your opponent the ability to even meaningfully participate, it feels pointless.

BlackYps

We could explain how the matchmaker works in a wiki article, but I don't think it will improve the situation. I wrote the matchmaking algorithm and even I can't predict if a match will happen the next cycle. The algorithm is complex. To know what it will do you have to know all the inputs, but the client only shows the number of people in queue. You could suggest to add more info, but let me demonstrate what questions you need to answer to make an informed decision:
Are there any premades? Who has less than 10 games? How long have they been queueing already? What ratings does each search parties have? What was the average rating of the people in the queue during the last day? What are the config settings for the matchmaker?
All of this to answer the only question that I as a player are really interested in: Will I get matched soon?

When you argue for quicker matches you are in the bad game vs. no game discussion again as FtX said and we as a community will never reach a consensus that makes everybody happy in that regard.

Anachronism_

I still think we should have an in-client slider option:
get a match faster <---------------------------> get a match with better team balance

CheeseBerry

@penguin_ said in How come you don't play ladder?:

I still think we should have an in-client slider option:
get a match faster <---------------------------> get a match with better team balance

finding an algorithm to take everyone's preferences into account in a sensible way sounds very hard for such a slider

BlackYps

@penguin_ said in How come you don't play ladder?:

I still think we should have an in-client slider option:
get a match faster <---------------------------> get a match with better team balance

I still think this is technically unfeasible

FtXCommando

It’s also a recipe for total disaster.

“I have it on get match faster and I got no game WTF!!!!”

Yeah well, the other 12 people in queue have it on “getting a better team” whatever that means.

Or the reverse of 7 people having it on matching faster along with a guy saying he wants a better game. There is just too much obfuscation with a matchmaking system and pretending like a button gives much control over it will just make people more bothered.

CheeseBerry

Maybe we should add a nonfunctioning slider just for the placebo effect xd

ZLO

I remember joining SupCom at GPGnet times and i didn't know English enough to communicate with anyone. So rarely played teamgames. GPGnet didn't had any other rating than ladder rating so balancing custom games was tricky.
Actually remember thinking that ladder is awesome for new players cause it gives you an opponent of your skill level

Anachronism_

@blackyps

I don't see any reason it would be technically unfeasible.

You could give everyone a slider-based matching bonus value that is proportional to their selection on the slider (with the better team balance end of the slider giving a bonus of 0, or a negative amount, depending on how you want to set it up).

Example A:
Then, if you only want to put people in matches of equal or better game balance than their individual selection on the slider, you could just cap that bonus value for a given combination of players for a potential match based on the minimum of their individual bonus values (so, if you're matching 4v4's with 20 people in queue, the bonus value used for a given potential match would be the lowest bonus value of the particular 8 players in the potential match that is being considered, and a different value could be used when evaluating a different set of 8 players within the same matching cycle).

Example B:
Alternatively, if you want to not restrict in that way and make matches more likely if anyone wants faster matching, then you could do the same thing but not restrict the bonus value to that of the minimum, but instead make it equal to that of the average of the set of players being considered for a potential match. That could put people in matches of better, equal, or worse game balance than their individual selection on the slider, but it would factor everyone's individual preference in with equal weight.

I think either of those systems could be better than what we have now.

CheeseBerry

@Penguin_
Is there a way to implement some slider that behaves mostly consistently with the aggregate preferences of the people in queue? yes.
Is there a way to implement such a slider so that it doesn't just cause annoyance to everyone using it without providing any real benefit? Not that I'm aware off

The main problem is that for such a slider to make sense, you'd essentially split the queue into two sub-queues (with some blurriness inbetween). One queue that wants to wait longer for a more balanced game and another that just wants to play whatever.

If we had queue sizes of like 100+ players, you could do that, because two queues of 50 players each, with some overlap from time to time when the "fast" queue players get matched into a "balanced" queue game, still works quite well.

In the reality of faf where queue sizes for tmm are like 20 players, this doesn't work because two queues of 10 players are entirely non functional where a single 20 player queue is not

FtXCommando

No professional matchmaking system works like this, even ones with hundreds or thousands of players to parse through.

maudlin27

@cheeseberry You don't have to do a queue split - for example a simple implementation although it'd inevitably leave some people unhappy (but fewer than it would presumably make happy) would be to have a 'preference' system - you indicate if you would prefer to find a game faster, slower, or no different to default.
Then the algorithm calculates the most popular choice (you could even do a threshold, so it would only go with something other than default if more than 50% of players want the adjustment), and weights things based on that

So, if 8 people queue, 7 indicate they want a game sooner and 1 indicates they would prefer to wait for a better balanced game, the algorithm will try and find a game sooner.
If 10 people queue, 4 want a game sooner, 4 want a game slower with lower rating difference, and 2 indicate no preference, then the algorithm will work as it currently does.
As a result, more people benefit than suffer, although it's not without flaws (e.g. 7 high rated players all indicate they want a lower rating difference, and 8 lower rated players all indicate they want a game sooner than later, resulting in some of the higher rated players being matched in a poorly balanced lobby, although I expect some tweaks could reduce the likelihood of this happening)

Blossomed

Why have a timer until matching attempt occurs at all? It would make sense like @Gibsaw already pointed out to try to match as soon as somebody new joins the queue for example. If nobody new joins and nobody leaves the queue the only thing changing is the duration the people are waiting, and even then it doesn't make sense (except from easier algorithm implementation standpoint) to have regular matching intervals, but rather it would make more sense to have some threshold values. For example, if people are more than 2 minutes in queue and gap between rating is somewhat big, but not too big, match.

You said:
"Having these regular cycles makes it easier to track how long people have been waiting in the queue than if we matched at irregular intervals."

Could you elaborate what do you mean by that? You could just have a timer that tracks how long you've been in the queue alredy, not a timer that tracks how long until matching attempt. That brings me to the 2nd point: Even if you keep the current matchmaking algorithm it would make more sense from user experience standpoint to only show duration you've alredy been in queue. Why expose one detail of how matchmaking works (by showing it only matches on fixed interval) if you don't expose any other details and the queuer still doesn't have a good way of tracking how long they've already been in the queue? Just my opinion of course.

FtXCommando

@maudlin27 said in How come you don't play ladder?:

@cheeseberry You don't have to do a queue split - for example a simple implementation although it'd inevitably leave some people unhappy (but fewer than it would presumably make happy) would be to have a 'preference' system - you indicate if you would prefer to find a game faster, slower, or no different to default.
Then the algorithm calculates the most popular choice (you could even do a threshold, so it would only go with something other than default if more than 50% of players want the adjustment), and weights things based on that

So, if 8 people queue, 7 indicate they want a game sooner and 1 indicates they would prefer to wait for a better balanced game, the algorithm will try and find a game sooner.
If 10 people queue, 4 want a game sooner, 4 want a game slower with lower rating difference, and 2 indicate no preference, then the algorithm will work as it currently does.
As a result, more people benefit than suffer, although it's not without flaws (e.g. 7 high rated players all indicate they want a lower rating difference, and 8 lower rated players all indicate they want a game sooner than later, resulting in some of the higher rated players being matched in a poorly balanced lobby, although I expect some tweaks could reduce the likelihood of this happening)

This sounds even worse than the current system and I’d probably never queue again if I would be getting forced into a 1300 average rating game because some dudes wanna play. I already basically only queue in a party since that allows me to artificially control what “average level” of game I want.