1 vs 1 Ladder

[Ze_PilOt]

They don't need to know what trueskill is (or even it exists) to know that a matchmaker is used to rank you with people of your level. And if they don't know a popup come to explain them !

Sorry, but I still don't get what is so hard to understand. It's no more complicated than any other lobby I know (look at the BF3 one if you want to see what is a lobby cluttered by infos).

[Peori]

It'd be nice if you could see how many people are currently searching for a game with the matchmaker before and after you initiate the search. That might get more people to use it.

I stopped using it because sometimes it would be searching for over 20 minutes and that meant I'd be better off doing something else. Someone else in a similar situation might then see "1 Person Currently in Matchmaking" and know they'd get a game and end my wait, or vice versa.

The other reason I stopped using it was because when I was getting games I was constantly going up against this guy who would just quit if he didn't like the map (which was nearly every game) which was frustrating as when he DID play I was 1) unprepared for an actual game and 2) he clearly knew how to play the map and I got stomped. This also seemed to massively inflate my "games played" stat. This guy should have just been hosting the maps he wanted to play, so it's not the matchmakers fault but it was detrimental to my experience.

Also, the map pool is very big for total noobs like myself, I'd probably be more comfortable using it if I knew I'd get 1 of 3 maps that'd let me focus on learning how to play instead of the minutiae of individual maps. So maybe having the map pool scale with rating is a good idea.

Of course you can just play custom games to get around all that but if you want more people using the matchmaker these things might be worth looking at. I think making it a real "Ladder" is a good idea too though, make the rating persistent for matchmaking purposes but reset the ladder periodically to keep people interested.

[SeraphimLeftNut]

This is a good idea. It would be nice if the lobby would tell the players that a ranked game is available for players with rating between x and y. Giving away more information about who is searching might be a bad idea with people trying to avoid playing certain players. In cases where either a really good player is searching or a player who is his/her provisional period is searching, it would be nice if the system didn't specify and just said, ranked game available.

[Ze_PilOt]

It'd be nice if you could see how many people are currently searching for a game with the matchmaker before and after you initiate the search. That might get more people to use it.

Or even less because they won't bother searching seeing that 0 or only 2 people are currently in the system.

Also that doesn't mean much, you need people about *your rank* in the system, not only 'in the system"

[Ze_PilOt]

would be nice if the lobby would tell the players that a ranked game is available for players with rating between x and y. .

That is overly complicated, and will clutter the lobby with too much infos (one of the previous statement was the ladder doesn't works because people don't read a single line of info).

[Ze_PilOt]

Also, that make me think :

Keeping some new players is the system is good. But that won't make any difference for the top/medium players as they will never be matched against.

If good players wants more competition, it's not bringing more "noobs" that is needed, but bringing more good players. And you don't do that the same way.

[Zock]

No, but if we can't have more good players, let's at least take the "noobs" before we get nothing.

[rootbeer23]

No, but if we can't have more good players, let's at least take the "noobs" before we get nothing.

i said it before (*scroll*), i got no reply, so bear with me repeating myself:

there is the chance to pair up a noob/medium and a good player with a roughly 50/50 chance of one winning if you give the less experienced player some help. Based on the rating, each mass extractor could give a higher income (vulgo: handicap).
if the ratings are close there would be no extra income of course.

[Gowerly]

I don't think that's a good idea. You won't learn how to play if all the numbers are wrong.

The best way to get more good players is to bring in noobs and let them learn and become good.

[Ze_PilOt]

You won't even know what kind of game you are playing as the rule can change on every game. That's a terrible idea.