Hi.
I’m not sure yet about this, but it feels to me like it’s way harder to get a game since the change to the OGS site.
Quick match are not quick at all, to the point I wonder if it’s sometime bugged ( I put flexible ).
Also, since the custom game tab has been on a different page, I feel way less people use IT. I used to see a lot of challenge and people would uselly grab mine fairly quickly, and now they don’t.
Anyone same experience?
What game settings are you using?
Overall the there are about 20% more matches getting made, the average match time is between 30 and 50 seconds depending on the speed with the 95th percentile under a couple of minutes, all comparable to what it was prior to the introduction of the rapid time controls.
That said, I’d be curious to know the settings you’re using to get a better understanding why you might be experiencing long delays.
I asked a player in game and he said it was fast for him.
As for me I use :
19-19
-flexible timing
-20 min + 30 sec
14 to to 25 Kyu ( I am 18)
Standard for handicap
Maybe people go for faster game? I had swapped to 5 min + 30 sec and 4-5 min later I still had no game.
I came back later and I got a queu pretty fast though.
It just had been a few time since change that I struggle getting a game with flexible parameters and pretty large Kyu ratings.
I’ve played 4 games using automatch (+1 that my opponent canceled) on another account, and waiting time was short, sometimes a few seconds, sometimes 1-2 minutes. Less than 1 minute on average. Time setting was “5m + 5x30s flexible”. The only bug is that I got 20m + 5x30s instead.
I have the same experience. Just waited 5 mins and got no match at all, using the quick match function, flexible time and handicap set to a few stones above and below me. My impression is that I never waited that long before the update. I tried the custom page and had a rather long waiting time there as well.
I also agree with the critique on the custom games being on a separate tab. That makes it harder to have a look at the custom games appearing at the same time as having a quick game request pending. Before I used to hit the quick game button and at the same time watch out for any custom game that I would like to accept.
Today I accidentally joined two games at once, because I had a request pending for a few minutes on each of the tabs. When the first one started I tried to quit the other request, but the popup saying that I had a live game going was in the way for me to get back to cancel the other request.
The irony is delicious 
Is it possible that waiting time depends on the rank of the player? I just played again 2 matches and only waited a few seconds.
Rank of the player, time of day, settings of the game. I’m sure there’s a few factors that can influence it, though I imagine those are big factors.
I see many threads so I don’t know where I should go to complain about this, but I too find the separate tabs for auto and custom games a bit confusing.
Do we really need the visual representation of each size in the quick match? I think quick match information could very well fit into half the space it has now.
Would it be too confusing to have the current open custom challenges below the quick match panel, and only if someone wants to create their own challenge they would have to go on a separate tab?
Since the last interface update (both on mobile and PC), I’ve never had a queue shorter than 5 minutes. Right now, I’m waiting 20 minutes to find a “quick” match.
I’m using the following settings:
Playing on mobile (OGS site).
By the way, it’s my father’s account… User ID: 1181062 (account name: “AG Park”)
I’m having the same experience, with queue times far longer in the most part than before the update (except I often give up waiting, maybe this is not reflected in the data that’s being examined?)
I’m sure having the choice of searching for multiple game sizes at the same time again would help, I’m not sure why that option was removed? It’s not really simplified anything in my opinion, you could just select either one or more size and search for a game. It was pretty simple already!
Indeed, my father is struggling with the new interface… he says its way more confusing
I personally liked the visual appearance before too. Though the new settings difference are made more clear ( what time you’ll get and etc.)
The main issue with separating the custom game tab and quick game tab is that it’s like we think we know people know what they want when they come to play Go. But I feel like myself, I go on OGS, and I’m like “ummm, custom or quick, custom or quick…” But I’m probably not gonna change tab, so I won’t see the games that someone offers.
A lot of players before might have thought they would go for a quick match, but than they see right under, on the same page, a custom game they like , so they take it.
Now a lot of players won’t see it, because they are not gonna constantly change tab.
I don’t really mind how much space the quick tab take’s, but it should be in a way I can still see custom games easily on the same page.
Exactly!!! Players don’t know if they will go for a quick game or custom. If a custom game pop that you want, you’ll take it, but it’s so hard to keep an eye on the custom games now.
Like I’ll check one or twice, and not see much, but I’m probably missing tons of them that I like.
I also used to create a lot of custom games, now I don’t.
Note that in other scenarios, such as waiting at a traffic light, or queuing at a service centre, user perception of wait times has less to do with averages and more to do with worst case. E.g., users often prefer the experience of slightly degraded average wait times if the worst case wait times are improved.
Does this mean that 95% of successful matches happen under a couple of minutes, or that 95% of match attempts are successful within a couple of minutes? IOW, it’s not clear to me how “attempted but abandoned before successful” quick matches are factoring into these stats.
It would be interesting to look at stats about the unsuccessful quick matches attempts (what kind of settings are leading to abandoned attempts? how long do users wait before giving up? etc.), to understand the failure modes better.
The “NORMAL” button was a good way to gather people under the same game settings. Now this button has disappear and so people find themselves waiting for an opponent who waits for a game but with different game settings (sometimes very little ones). So a game easliy created before with the “NORMAL” button, it is now not possible to create.
But that doesn’t necessarily sound like a bad thing, if what the automatch needs is more players to use it.
The update made sure to take away infrequently used options like Canadian Byo-yomi, but include the most popular custom settings like some of the Fischer ones.
However it would be nice to know if it’s possible to know a) what proportion of people queue for a game but cancel or the automatch cancels or times out (connection etc) before a game is made as @dexonsmith mentioned and b) if there’s any tweaking to just speed up matches in general.
For example if someone says I’m happy to play 12k-5k with handicap on and they’re 8kyu, should we wait 30s or 1m for an 8kyu to come along or should we just match with the 6kyu, 5 kyu, 12kyu, 11kyu that shows up first with matching settings.
So as in speed of matching vs perfect matching trade off.
I dunno, there are complaints that they can’t follow multiple choices like before, using custom and automatch at the same time. With different sizes and time settings. I understand that automatch will work better if you push people to use it, but I dunno if this is a good choice in itself as there are still people who like to chose what to eat too, be the daily menu or be a special dish.
With a good enough automatch system this should be redundant for a lot of players.
If the players are there to match one way or the other, then if the majority use a good automatch you don’t need to use both.
Unless you happen to like both a standard automatch preference but an unusual setting but want to play and queue for both for some reason.
Probably the average user just wants to pick one of the defaults and get a game quickly.
Maybe the multi queue for board size could come back, but as mentioned some way of dealing with it given it has size dependent time settings is required.