Let's talk about Ladder (1vs1)

[Voodoo]

Greetings to all 1vs1 Ladder players.

The Galaxy resistance leaderboards are live, a lot of old players found their way back into the game and there is a poll running about the map pool.
As you see a lot is going on at the moment and I want to use this thread to talk about your latest ladder experience.

I'm playing 2 - 3 games per day at the moment and I realy like it again. Old maps like Theta and Finns found their way back into the pool and I still remember my old build orders from 2010. So I have at least 2 maps where I can perform very well. I still have problems with 20x20 maps. It could be possible that 30 apm are too less but who knows

My favorite faction is UEF but I'm playing Cybran at the moment. I lost a lot of games with UEF against Cybran so I tried also Cybran and my win rate was growing. I can't say exactly why but I have a feeling that a massive Mantis spam is the best you can do at the moment.

So I'm still on my endless way back to the top 10 players and it is a very long way. ^^

What was your experience the last weeks? Do you also enjoy it?

[FtXCommando]

Gotta hijack the thread just to post the link to the survey 4head

https://forms.gle/uVbecUKXivysPt2n9

We’re nearly ready to deploy rating specific pools, so the point of the survey is to get a definitive statement about general player preferences. Or at least get the best one we can manage through my max shilling.

Chances are if you read the forms I already got to you, but leaving this here in the case I missed someone.

[keyser]

Last time i played ladder was in 2017

I always preferred small map pool (5-7 maps) with long rotation.
Idea is simple, having players knows the map very well, playing it at very high level (instead of being average on all map on a 15 map pools). In combination with maps that offer a big variety of gameplay. You end up with interesting gameplay, that isn't always the same.
If players can develop several BOs for each maps, with lot of different follow up strategies. That would allow people to develop their own way of playing, allowing for sharp timing attacks (lab raiding, T2 assault, gun timing etc). Then you have also a real interest in scouting your opponent.
gonna give you some example of map :

roanoke :
- You can steal island on initial expansion (if it's dual steal, then you get a completely different game experience)
- You can play "classic" frig spam to get the naval control early, deny some eco and get destro to do the killing blow on your opponent eco
- If both navy are similar, you turn into T2 navy micro, possibly even a T3 stand off.
- You can eco a lot and go full air. From there you can try to crush with air, or switch to navy after cleaning opponent navy on your side of the map.
- As uef, you can go for fast BC rush with shield boat combo and frig spam.
- You can go for T2 ACU drop in opponent main island.
- There is plenty of possibilities for dropping islands. The little one, to grab some map control (good radar spots) and deny some eco. Or even bigger army drop on side islands to do massive blow on opponent eco.
- Possibly some gameplay using subs, although the lack of water mexes makes it less relevant.
- You can try some T3 air rush to snipe all your opponent energy for example, can be a game winning move.
- You can go for some hover spam, especially if you could set up a proxy to pressure opponent side island.
- A wagner transition is also useful to raid opponent mexes, and force him to invest into tons of pds.
- And i'm not talking about the unlikely but achievable proxies and sneak tml, or sniping opponent ACU etc etc

So if you get few maps like this one, where a variety of style is viable, it offers quite a lot of different matches.

[Mr-Smith]

Hey All,

Just got everything running yesterday and played a few ladder games, notices quite a lot new maps in the pool, but the look nice, need to invest time to learn them, I would like if we could have like 50% of the base maps in the pool, would make it easier for me to get the basics back up.

So far im a bit annoied by the new ladder timer, i assume it was that after a game ends and you research it would not match you vs the same player again instantly.
As it was mostly only one player searching it did not realy change anything.

Aso was not intuitve where to get all the UI mods. the vault in the python client seems buggy, while downlords vault seems to work

Also to get back in the top 10 again seems like quite a challange

[Bennis-]

I didn't play ladder In weeks so I have nothing more to contribute than to say that I didn't play ladder for weeks.

I do agree with your analysis Keyser and it's the reason why tryhards like you Don't play ladder anymore. Because you are too proud or too lazy. Either too proud to reveal to the world that you are only medium brains on new maps or too lazy to learn the new maps and develop nice BOs or strategies for them.

I think small map pools force people to learn sweaty BOs and then when the mappool changes they become tired of learning sweat style BOs again. If there is a frequent rotation with new maps it makes it more easy to re-enter ladder after a while of inactivity or makes it more interesting to the cuasualt player to play a few games per rotation because you don't face extreme sweat. It also rewards freestylers like me. If you want to sweat go to setons. You are the prototype of a setonist.

[keyser]

I do agree with your analysis Keyser and it's the reason why tryhards like you Don't play ladder anymore. Because you are too proud or too lazy. Either too proud to reveal to the world that you are only medium brains on new maps or too lazy to learn the new maps and develop nice BOs or strategies for them.

I think small map pools force people to learn sweaty BOs and then when the mappool changes they become tired of learning sweat style BOs again. If there is a frequent rotation with new maps it makes it more easy to re-enter ladder after a while of inactivity or makes it more interesting to the cuasualt player to play a few games per rotation because you don't face extreme sweat. It also rewards freestylers like me. If you want to sweat go to setons. You are the prototype of a setonist.

Don't worry Bennis, i still crush you on new maps.

Although i agree that it might fright people off. Kinda why i would prefer a rating reset every 6 month with a change of maps. So everyone start from fresh.
Also i don't like the pace of setons.

[Cetea]

Hey All,

Just got everything running yesterday and played a few ladder games, notices quite a lot new maps in the pool, but the look nice, need to invest time to learn them, I would like if we could have like 50% of the base maps in the pool, would make it easier for me to get the basics back up.

So far im a bit annoied by the new ladder timer, i assume it was that after a game ends and you research it would not match you vs the same player again instantly.
As it was mostly only one player searching it did not realy change anything.

Aso was not intuitve where to get all the UI mods. the vault in the python client seems buggy, while downlords vault seems to work

Also to get back in the top 10 again seems like quite a challange

I think they changed the ladder timer so that they can eventually make team matchmaking, so it's not a terrible trade off IMO if the rest of the playerbase can just jump into team games that aren't gap or astro with one click. Maybe we'll even get more ladder players out of it!

I 100% agree with how non-intuitive it is for newer players to get the useful UI mods (such as advanced reclaim info, advanced strategic icons etc). Would be great if the high ranked players as a whole came together and curated a list of mods that everyone agrees are very useful, and promote them to all ladder players without them having to do research on the forums for it. That being said, Keyser's mod list here is already pretty comprehensive!

Personally as a low ranked ladder player (1100ish) I don't think my opinion on the current state of the ladder really matters that much. I currently I only have a game-plan on two or three maps, and I'm just winging it on the rest by defaulting to some really generic stuff since I don't know the map. Whether that is good or bad for game-play experience as a new player, I can't really decide, as I'm usually too busy trying not to stall or trying to spend my mass (this gets much worse on maps that I don't know in general, and on maps that I do have a basic idea of how to play, I can generally spend less time trying not to have a terrible eco and spend more time moving units etc).

[Voodoo]

I played a little bit Aeon today but it looks bad. I won 1 game out of 8 games. Aeon is realy hard to play. Auroras getting killed by t1 bombers, the game is over if you are too late on t2 and so on.

Or maybe I'm playing just bad ^^

[Hybrid_]

I play ladder a couple times a week, and its mostly fun. I recently expanded my pool of factions to aeon now too, because i would get crushed when playing them, but now they got buffed so i thought i will start playing them again.

I like the map pools most of time. But there is one map, i just cant play, and is the most cancer, and thats land wilderness.

However, ive noticed the more i play 20x20s, i see myself improving on them and enjoying them a lot more. I really enjoy 20x20s as i feel like there is many ways you can play them. Like t2 air rush, interceptor rush, comdrop, and a lot other more cheese.

Im additionally trying to improve on 1v1s as a whole recently, as i think eventually i can get 2k and compete. Im looking for someone to potentially train me if they want to aswell. But the only thing with that is that quite a few of my mistakes are mistakes im already trying to improve on and i think for the most part i know what im doing. But that could be wrong.

Theres one thing i cant get my head around though in ladder and thats just t1 spam. I personally think it doesnt require as much skill as other play styles and there just isnt much you can do about straight t1 spam, i feel as everytime i try to get t2 while spamming, the one factory difference seems to be the end of me. The only way i seem to be able to play against it is just spamming too, and whoever's com is out of position loses. I just find it very annoying to play against.

Anyway, just thought i'd share my experience too

[codepants]

It would be nice to see either:
- How many people are currently searching
or
- How many people typically search at a given time of week/day

I've been "Searching for opponent" for 10 minutes now, would be nice to know when I can come back, or if anybody starts searching right as I'm about to give up.

I assume when there's an odd number of players, one player doesn't get matched -- would be nice to know if that's you, so you can wait for the next round (when presumably you're given priority).

I enjoy ladder mostly because I'm lower-ranked (1200 ladder, 1300 team) and struggle to feel like I have an impact on team games. In ladder I know, win or lose, it's 100% my fault. In a 5v5 Canis/Wonder/whatever, when two or three of your teammates die and you're crushing or even just drawing even with your mirror, it's like... really?