Decluttering the Rengo match list

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Does anyone else feel that the Rengo match list is fundamentally broken?

  • It’s a huge list to manually search through to find an appropriate match
  • Even then there’s incomplete information to know if most matches are what you’re looking for – i.e. target size (it might be 8 players when you join, then balloon to 30), and how soon/if ever it’ll start.
  • It’s full of meme or junk games (4wk/move, 100 player 9x9, etc) that clutter the UI

The auto-start player count is a partial solution, but it’s not great either (particularly for small games) if it doesn’t allow the organizer a chance to balance the teams or boot out undesired players, which results in lopsided teams.

I could think of a few solutions, of varying difficulty:

  • Filtering options in the UI – at least make it easier for the user to narrow down relevant matches
  • A ‘Target Size’ mechanic with some level of auto-matching to consolidate similar games, and increase the pool of players for the algorithm to pick more even teams. Probably a lot of work.
  • Frankly, the easiest is probably just to have open matches expire after a month or so (?). This eliminates the clutter and prevents you from being joined into a match long after signing up (like happens often in tournaments, with absentee players). And, this isn’t meant to quash 100-player rengos – ideally it would reduce the number of simultaneous open large-size matches in the list, so players are concentrated into one, rather than spread across many, and actually get to play in a timely fashion.

Thoughts? Of course relevant statistics are welcome if anyone has them.

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Great topic, although the title doesn’t do justice to the scope of your list. Open rengo challenges are a huge disappointment because of many of the problems you mention.

The biggest problem is unbalanced games. So far as I know, I’m the only person that regularly creates balanced teams in open challenges. I title the games “Balanced Teams,” but it fails to attract players quicker. Therefore, I conclude that most players do not want balanced teams.

A problem not on your list is that most players time out instead of resigning, greatly delaying the game and driving down the interest of the other players. Early, capricious escapes from a game also unbalances the teams, often catastrophically.

Let’s consider your bullets. I think the list is rather easy to search because it is organized by the time specifications, which are important to most people and more variable than board size. It is easier to search a few board sizes within a time spec, than a large number of time specs within a board size.

Incomplete info is indeed a problem. There should be a column for “Pause on weekends” (yes or no). The indeterminate number of players in most game is very annoying, but can be resolved by a simple message in the chat, stating the target number of players. This could also be an info column. I say in the chat that the target is 8 or 10 because a balanced game can’t guarantee a number (two might join in quick succession, or the ranks might be inherently unbalanced (so I wait for two more players, hoping it will even out).

The clutter of junk games is a big problem. Many of these games will not start for years (if ever), they will take decades to finish (unless everyone escapes), and many of the players will never play. In my view, these games are trollish.

As you noted, Auto-start does not encourage good games because it usually leads to very unbalanced teams.

I don’t agree with auto-matching, unless it is merely optional.

The challenges already are culled periodically (manually, I think, but perhaps automatically).

Tip: If you want to create balanced teams, restrict the ranks. The smaller the gap between top and bottom, the easier it is to get good balance. On the other hand, the smaller the gap the harder it is to accumulate players. After experimenting over the past year, I would guess that 10 to 12 ranks is optimal (e.g., 5k to 17k in games I have created).

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I actually curate the list so that this is roughly true. I fell a bit behind, it’s back up to date now.

So this is not the case.

Challenges that are older than a month with a reasonable number of players in them, and no sign of curation by the organiser or sensible start condition are balanced then started.

Organizers can balance these up to but not including the last participant.

It’d be pretty wierd if auto-start games did not in fact auto start but instead waited for something else?

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