Make quick matches the primary way of finding matches

I very much agree with what you’ve said here. I think this thread is very related to this one:

It’s not ideal for a new player, or even a new-to-OGS player, to have to deal with filling out this form:

It’s overwhelming for beginners, something I’ve seen in real time on twitch streams as new players come to OGS. You have to walk them through it option by option. A new player just wants a default setting they can trust.

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Thanks for post link. I’ll check it out. Perhaps a UI change where you get three options

  1. Find a game - standard format (blitz, normal, slow, correspondence)
  2. Find a game - custom format (perhaps you can save some preset searches)
  3. Create a game - custom format (perhaps you can save some preset games)

Then, all games goes into the same pool so option 1 and 2 can search them. Since option 1 and 2 could have flexible search ranges, if the search finds someone who has overlapping ranges, then the server automatically creates a game using either random or middle values within the overlaps. The pool of all games could also be visible as the custom games list is now. That would perhaps satisfy everyone?

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Fun fact: The form is already filled with reasonable default values. They don’t want to trust them.

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Good point but they don’t know it, they need to trust it by themselves.

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How can you trust something you don’t know about?

Even dan players don’t know about all the time settings that we have available :slight_smile:

Edit: not to mention all the OGS specific stuff like Disable Analysis

If you want something standard you don’t have to check everything, the thing is you don’t know it is by default standard it’s harder to trust even if you may suppose it’s like this.

Well, actually it’s all about trust: if you know, you don’t have to trust, since you know.
Trust arrives when you don’t know: then you have to choose if to trust or not.

We trust those who look reliable right about what we don’t know. A doctor, a scientist, a journalist, a youtuber…

So maybe the issue is that Ogs UI doesn’t look so reliable. :grin:
Maybe adding some catchy graphics would help. :innocent:

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I think you could just add a button to set a couple of default game settings up in custom match. Or a return to default settings button, those that meant to be refilled. That would also say to players “There’s supposed to be something normal about these settings”.

The templates could for example be the time settings of the automatch games for instance. The settings for those games are not at all clear from the Play page.

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You’d have to make sure the buttons catch the players eye and are easy to understand, otherwise we are just cluttering the form even more. It doesn’t seem like the most elegant solution. I’m still in favor of prioritizing auto-match and leaving custom matches for those that want something specific.

I agree with your second point though. I don’t think the auto-match as it stands is clear enough. Right now it’s some sort of mid-way point between custom matches and auto-match. Too many ‘this, but not this, but maybe this’ choices that get in the way of players finding each other.

The gold standard IMO is probably the Lichess homepage https://lichess.org/
I don’t think OGS is big enough to support 11 options like this, but imagine a grid of six buttons, one 9x9 option, one 13x13 option, and three 19x19 options, with the ‘custom’ button in the bottom right. Each button with 3 details on it: The board size, the time settings, and the name of the time settings (i.e ‘blitz’, ‘normal’, ‘long’). I think OGS has to have a server default for handicap and rules that these quick-matches use, or the pools will always be too split to be useful.

To be fair, chess players have much fewer options to consider. One board size, one type of time control, one ruleset (but they have variants), no handicap, no komi. But what can we do, they play a much simpler game. A moderately good chess player can play full game blindfolded, with go you have to be a little insane to even attempt.

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Yeah, very true. It’s not a perfect comparison to use lichess, but I still think they’ve made many smart choices with their site design.

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Isn’t this due to standards? Through time, there has been a lot of different options. And for time settings, there could easily be an equally large variation of settings as on OGS. Looking at the wiki entry for time control, there are several options for chess (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_control)

They could also have analysis, score estimation (win chance in that case), and other tools. Time handicaps are also possible. But, they haven’t added that, though I don’t know if they have a custom game format where all this is possible.

I don’t think it should be impossible to play whatever mix of rules and time controls you like, but I’d think it’s in most players interest to make the pool of available games as large as possible, and this should necessitate some standard preset game types, with custom games taking the rest. Perhaps OGS doesn’t have the userbase now to do something like lichess or chess.com, but if someone new to OGS only has to press a single button to find a game they’re more likely to stay, I think. In principle, it’s like that now, but too few players use the quick match finder.

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This would be super useful in the cases where the settings are not actually set to defaults. (Rematch challenges, direct challenges)

My experience on IGS pandanet and foxwq, they both have “active seeking” and “active waiting” status for everyone (and also disable status).

Both prioritize the active seeking, where players seek games dictate the settings with preset game settings automatically applied if using auto-match. The system will remember each players previous game settings, and used it the next time The effect is players overtime just converge to a particular settings. On foxwq the active waiting players would get a pop-up invite which shows the challenger’s settings, and both sides can change the setting until they agree; On pandanet, when the active waiting players get the pop-up, they can only accept or decline, but cannot negotiate the settings.

OGS flips who dictate the terms. Players who create custom games are “active waiting” and set the terms, while the “active seeking” players have to accept these settings. OGS matching system is a good way to prevent pop-up I feel, since web interface isn’t the best with intrusive pop-up notice, unlike dedicated clients.

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Fox is hecking annoying with the pop-ups. It brings itself on top of everything else and screams at you.

Negotiations are also not ideal. If you don’t send the settings within 2 seconds, people leave. If you don’t accept theirs within 2 seconds, people leave. And if they don’t live you, they leave too. Foxy did good introducing their new quick match.

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I’m actually having a hard time buying that this is a trust issue. I think if OGS said “These are the default settings”, people would believe it. But right now, the settings modal doesn’t have any indication that they are default

Plus any time you open up a settings panel, users have a natural urge to understand what the settings mean. Maybe an “Advanced” tab would make this less overwhelming?

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Absolutely. A little heading like
“These are standard settings by default, change as you wish” could have a great effect on the trust level

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For the record, I’m not advocating a message like this. Just saying that there is no reason for people to believe that these are “reasonable default values”, as @flovo said

O ok then I thought you mean something like that with your words “If OGS said…”

I keep that for me then

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One can easily deduce the time settings are not random. When opening the drop-down you find the times being neither the minimum nor maximum value.

Also there is the strange fear against just accepting the settings and see what happens.