Imagine a casual and fun-focused matchmaker queue that always matches the players in queue as long as there are enough for a game, where the lower-rated side gets a resource multiplier that gives them more mass and energy throughout the game. The basic idea would be to have a more relaxed queue that matches people quickly and tries to balance rating difference with a resource multiplier for the lower-rated side. I think this could create some novel situations with interesting gameplay that both offers new challenges for high-rated players and gives low-rated players a fun bonus and increased sense of capability, while significantly increasing the ability to get a match quickly, especially for high-rated players. What do you think? Is this something you would play?
Would you want to play a matchmaker queue that would match anyone but give a resource bonus to the lower-rated side based on the difference in rating?
If executed well I expect so yes. A variation on the idea could be giving a resource bonus to the lower-rated players on both teams (i.e. per-player bonuses instead of per-team bonuses).
M27AI developer; Devlog and more general AI development guide:
https://forum.faforever.com/topic/2373/ai-development-guide-and-m27ai-v70-devlog
https://forum.faforever.com/topic/5331/m28ai-devlog-v4
No because it isn’t a fun way to solve rating issues. Game reality assuming good play changes completely game by game based on the change in resource for both players and for any player below like 1200 it won’t even matter because they’re going to overflow all of it anyway. The best way to deal with penalties is a consistent, reliable penalty to the initiator (the “better” player desiring to enable it).
I wanna play 1v2+ games. Messing with resources or other game rules is bad since normal logic no longer applies, and it will make it harder for people to get a good feel for the game and improve.
How about if the bonuses are statically tied to rating instead (where a given rating always has the same resource multiplier)? That way, the resource multiplier is basically constant if the player rating is basically constant, and as the player gets higher or lower in rating, the resource multiplier adjusts accordingly.
pfp credit to gieb