Ladders for live games?

Ladders
21

To serve the purpose of a ladder while playing live games at the same time?

22

I think it’d be pretty interesting to visualize live/blitz automatch games as some sort of impromptu tournament format (potentially something ladder-like and/or Swiss/McMahon-style), creating a story around the games.

  • As a spectator (and potential participant), it’d be interesting to look at what’s happening now, and what happened in the last hour/day/week/month, and how it all fits together.
  • As a participant, it’s interesting to have some sort of trajectory. Also, if there is a way to opt in, and visualize what you’re waiting for, you might sometimes be happy to wait longer for a more tournament-oriented match-up.

If we got it right, it might drive more people to use automatch, making finding a good match that way more reliable.

Regarding the leagues, I agree with above comments that we already have ranks/ratings to handle strength differences, so that idea doesn’t apply directly. However, maybe there is a second dimension that would be interesting? Some example ideas (maybe could be combined somehow):

  • Rating/rank deviation (indicates confidence in rank/rating)
  • Number of automatch games in last hour/day/week/month
  • Escaping stats
  • …
1 Like
23

We could kind of do “live ladder games” by having a long starting clock with little or no increment. Do the new ladder settings support setting the ladder clock to absolute 7 days or maybe Fischer 3 days + 30m up to 3 days?

With that clock, basically the challenger and challenged would have a few days to organize a mutually acceptable time to play the game live.

24

I’d call that fast correspondence

25

Just make Blitz Arena mode instead of Live Ladder
Who gets the biggest number of wins will be number 1st.
Anyone who enters can challenge anyone who has bigger or equal number of wins and not already playing now.
If you timeout, you will be kicked out. Anyone who returns will beginning with 0 wins again.

3 Likes
26

I’d like something like this. Don’t mind starting from the bottom as long as there’s people to play and they aren’t all timeouts.

I do worry about that last part though. I get quite a few no-shows in both ladders and automatch. I feel like a live ladder could be prone to it as well.

27

I hope we can reach something not blitzy.

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28

I get quite a few no-shows in both ladders and automatch. I feel like a live ladder could be prone to it as well.

For no-shows in live and blitz automatch (whether current/ladder/arena/etc.), maybe there should be a notification/modal/etc. when a match is made, rather than starting the game immediately. Players have 15 seconds to click “accept” to confirm they are still ready for a game (no preview of opponent, just “confirm you are waiting and ready”). If one player clicks “cancel” or times out, that player is dropped out of automatch, and the other player is returned to the pool (perhaps with higher priority than before).

(If/when we have a ladder/arena/etc. visualization, maybe there’s a way to take a break/pause, so you’re not signed up for games for some period without completely abandoning your position.)

You might still have escapers that abandon after the game starts, but at least people that have wandered off to do something else won’t be polluting the pool.

For no-shows in the site-wide correspondence ladders, I agree it’s really hard to guess which people to click on that will actually show up for the game. And you need to remember to go back to the ladder after the game times out so you can actually get a game. I feel like the fix there could be automatch integration:

  1. Joining a correspondence ladder signs you up for “automatch” to choose reasonable people ahead of you to challenge. (Maybe, minimum one challenge at a time, but you can manually make more challenges… or maybe you can configure automatch to keep your challenges maxed out…)
  2. When on vacation, automatch doesn’t make new challenges on your behalf, and it deprioritizes you as an opponent for others.
  3. To stop challenging people, leave the ladder (or go on vacation). To start again, rejoin the ladder (or return from vacation).

We could even directly integrate the “correspondence” automatch button on Play page with the site-wide ladders.

  • Change site-wide ladders to pick rules and time control based on the players’ correspondence automatch preferences.
  • Add “handicap auto” site-wide ladders. (6 site-wide ladders total, for the standard board sizes and with/without handicap)

Maybe too much detail… Why would this be an improvement for correspondence ladders?

  • Ladder is an accurate representation of currently-active correspondence players.
  • Ladder cleans itself up when people disappear. Anyone without a game will get paired up and then (if they don’t show up) drop off the ladder within three days.
  • Active members get games without having to remember to go back and choose someone to challenge.
1 Like
29

Sorry but i feel here it’s getting off topic.
We were considering a new live ladder.

Maybe better to start a new thread?

1 Like
30

For those that don’t know about it, I was also just pointed at this newer (but also old) thread which ended up discussing arena-style tournaments: Rumination on Tournament Systems

I’m still feeling like it’s interesting to integrate ladders and automatch, improving both in the process:

  • Automate challenges in ladders by using automatch (and cull inactive players)
  • Add ladder for live/blitz automatch games as well
  • Add some visualization of how a ladder is changing over time

For correspondence, I think it would feel similar to ladders now, but with challenges happening automatically, and pauses happening via “vacation”.

For blitz, an automatch-based ladder would work out to something more arena-like in feel, I think. For live, perhaps a kind of slow-motion arena would work well too? But, need some mechanism other than “vacation” for pauses.

1 Like
31

My suggestion is basically to merge the concepts of “automatch” with that of “ladders”. It seems important to understand how that affects existing ladders.

32

I am not sure at all that this idea has to be implemented in the same way for live and correspondance. Creating a new live ladder and modifying what we have already are different matters.

For example myself I like the way you can chose your challenge in the correspondance one, and i know that this choice is something that other players enjoy too because it gives some freedom and fit your taste. Will you play a very stronger, or someone around your level? Or try to climb quicker with a player of a lower level? Will you take 1 2 or 3?

There is a space of liberty here which seems to satisfy lot of players as it works. I heard about something like the ladder community, and compliments on the participants like it’s a good place for serious friendly games, where you can teach or get teached, and so on…

So switching to an automatch system there is a no no for me. You don’t change something working well and appreciated so radically.

Anyway because i like the idea of a new live ladder i still think to separate this idea in a new thread would help the debate.

2 Likes
33

Back on the topic of creating a new ladder system for live games, it seems hard to implement and differenciate from the automatch system.

We dropped the ranking of OGS players some time ago and it was pretty difficult to figure out how it worked anyway.

But maybe a global live/blitz ranking with live games associated to it (from automatch and from custom challenges, from tournaments and from other formats to figure like arenas) could be a way to partially answer this idea of a live ladder at first?

It looks difficult to organize live meeting, see how unsuccessful are the automatic tournaments (ASTs) on OGS. I am not so sure that trying to import the correspondance ladder system to live games could succeed. (As there is a much stronger constraint to make player x meet y specifically unlike in the ASTs ).

In my idea ladder involve a personal challenge system to climb it similar to the one implemented in correspondance. Without it, it just turns into a local ranking on the server.

One way could be to have a specific channel (chat) to regroup players open to play live in a preformated setting at any instant. So that challenges could happen? Or to have a category apart in the games offers?

1 Like
34

If you want to try out a lichess style arena tournament for Go, there’s a 9x9 one starting in ~1hr 50 mins, and lasts for an hour. So starting at 2024-02-27T14:00:00Z

(because I still see this as the natural end point for this “live ladder” idea)

3 Likes
35

basically now