I frequently find I’m unable to get a short 9x9 or 13x13 game with automatch while custom game requests come up in game finder. So I cancel my automatch and accept the custom game. Or I just make a custom game request for a blitz game and someone will quickly accept it.
Why are those are automatch games so separate (and invisible) from custom games? I would so so want “automatch” to appear in the custom game request list for others to accept. Except that whenever someone else makes a matching (as per automatch rules) game request, I would like OGS to automatically accept that game request and automatically cancel my own pending (automatch) game request.
Then I could just always select automatch and consistently get games automatically without having to propose, scan, cancel and generally mess about with custom games when I just want to play with whoever.
I agree. Automatch should simply accept/create a suitable “Custom Game”.
Maybe the reason it does not is because Automatch has some features not available in a custom game, like prioritizing opponents with the same rank and avoiding playing the same person twice. But I don’t think that these are worth the disadvantage of splitting the pool of players into two. In fact, equivalent features could be ported to Custom Game (a checkbox to slowly grow rank range over time, and a checkbox for a temporary ban on recent opponents) and then the new Automatch could use them.
People who put up custom requests often have some non-standard time settings. It could be an annoyance to have your custom game accepted by an automatcher who cancels the game because of your setting.
In my opinion, there should be a lot fewer options for automatch. Maybe like five game types, similar to KGS/Tygem/IGS and you can search for multiple settings at once. A better automatch implementation would definitely bring more live game activity.
Yes! Pick one ruleset (Japanese since the majority uses it) and one type of overtime (byoyomi again since most use that). Right now the defaults are already that way except they only “prefer”. What happens in practice is most of your games use that because most do not change them. But suddenly you will get a game with a different ruleset, and not realize e.g. you have to fill the dame in this game, or get confused by a different overtime that you’ve never even seen before.
The proposal is that the automatcher would accept - just as it does right now - only games that match your automatch settings. If the settings do not match, then the custom game won’t be accepted by automatcher - just as a 15x15 game would never be accepted.
A “normal” timed game can have as little as 10 seconds byoyomi. There is no option for this. Or for people doing Canadian timing with anything from 2 stones to 25 stones.
People put up weird requests that would match current automatch options.
Automatch needs some work, I don’t think your option is a good step by itself.
You presume that when we can divide up the time ourselves we (well me) don’t spend a while thinking/reading and then still have to rush down more stones in probably less time than in normal byo-yomi, probably still using a few time sujis to get the stones down
I was imagining that when you join the automatch queue it would also host it as a custom game except maybe with a default title like “automatch”+(time setting=blitz/live/correspondence)+(anything else important but not visible?) and people in custom games could accept it provided that they match the automatch criteria (rating range say). Then if accepted it would cancel the automatch search.
Integrating automatch with custom game requests is a proposal. The code that determines if Automatch accepts a particular Custom Game request is not yet written, so you can’t say that it would do X and X is bad so the proposal is bad. Please phrase your concerns in a constructive way, like “Make sure that Automatch would accept a Custom Game request only if it exactly matches the request that it would create, including the number of stones in Canadian timing.”
Earlier you proposed a reduction of automatch options, and some people agreed that it’s a good idea, but this is orthogonal to the topic of integrating automatch with custom game requests. The ideas are not competing – both can be implemented. Maybe you’re only interested in a redesign of automatch options, but please don’t stifle the integration discussion which is the current topic. You can start a different topic if needed.
Yeah I wish it did this part. It has the benefit of showing how active the automatch queue is as well. Like how some games say “Expected queue = 1 minute” when you queue up.
I guess the main issue would be an automatch flood of games, if the automatch queue really is quite active. (I mean it might be a drawback if you host or tend to join niche settings)
In that instance it might be better to have a tab between proper custom games and automatch games. It might beg the question “why bother show the automatch games then if they pushed to another tab” but I think the point is to allow the quick finding of games, and people that use the custom games option to find/accept games might still accept automatch games that they’re eligible for.
They can insta-join the game rather than having to potentially queue up (which I presume is one draw for custom games other than the obvious of full customization of the game).
