Fairly sure you would get matched with 9th through 5th kyus
2 Likes
I don’t like the new layout at all, but never mind. Software people need their jobs so every now and then they create new interfaces. This happens with any popular website I know of.
However, more problematic is that the Bouvardia bot doesn’t seem to work at all. After going to “Quick games” and selecting “Exact” timing and “Disabled” handicaps and Bouvardia, and clicking an absurdly large “Play” button, I do get the 19 x 19 board and I can put my stone but then Bouvardia does nothing for 5 minutes and loses by time-out. I haven’t checked the other bots.
2 Likes
I wish there was still the choice of searching for multiple game sizes at once on Quick Match. Previously if I wanted to play a small game of 9x9 or 13x13 I would select both and hit search. Say there was no one wanting to play 13x13, then it was no problem. A 9x9 player would appear pretty soon. Now if I select 13x13 on it’s own and no one wants to play, I sit there forever. I keep waiting in excess of 5 minutes and it’s putting me off…
2 Likes
Does the data include people that queue up, don’t get a game and then cancel searching?
Or is it limited to time in the queue which eventually leads to a game starting?
5 Likes
Overall I like the new matchmaking, especially that there is now an option between blitz and long 20 min games.
However, I have encountered some bugs/issues:
- Whenever I try to get a 5 min games, I get a 20 min game instead
- Blitz games now appear as actually blitz in the history (blitz tournament games still show as live games), but don’t impact blitz rating
- Many bots either reject 5 min games outright or simply don’t move
- The custom games tab seems very clunky, the game creation settings take up almost the entire screen and I can’t see any challenges without scrolling down. Why not show the open challenges on one side and the creation settings on another? Or just replace the creation settings by a button “create challenge” and hide the settings behind a popup?
Apart from that I agree that perhaps the coordinates could be removed from the board and some highlights could be clearer, but those are minor issues. It also would be nice to be able to select multiple time/board settings (e.g. blitz and rapid, but not slow).
Like I said I overall like the direction, but it seems there are still some kinks to be ironed out, and some possible improvements.
3 Likes
Can we please have the option to play on any size back? I am finding it a lot harder to find a match.
5 Likes
I think this is significant though. Current interface is indeed more cluttered, mainly due to the decision to retain both byo-yomi and fischer settings.
The poll that was done showed that people were split over preferring Fischer or Byo-yomi, but did agree that only one should exist.
3 Likes
I very much like the new changes 
I think people just don’t like change. New user experience is very important. The fact that automatch is the main thing to do now will hopefully speed up the queue. I do expect this to take some time though. I plan to change my Tsumego Dragon matchmaking page to match this setup as well as I agree with the direction.
@GreenAsJade I will also mention the bots issue. Another forum post I listed the broken ones and there are quite a few. I have no idea if the update is related or not or if it was just bad timing.
2 Likes
Definitely a step in the right direction!
If the numbers already show shorter waiting times, my bet is, they will decrease even more, as soon as people have come to terms with the change.
I agree. Byo-yomi influences how the game plays more than main time. 20 m + 5x30 s is almost the same as 5 m + 5x30 s. Maybe 5m + 5x20 s is an option?
2 Likes
Oh, that was intended as a rhetorical question to illustrate that it can seem ambiguous. I know that there’s one correct answer.
My point is that “5k to 9k” is completely unambiguous, whereas language like “12k and above” is a common point of confusion that people use to mean either “12k to infinity kyu” or “12k to infinity dan”, and if you’re not familiar with how the speaker normally uses that kind of language, you can’t necessarily be 100% certain what they mean.
In the case of ogs the meaning is static, but i don’t think that negates my point, even if that is the standard and correct usage of the terminology. New players are frequently confused by this, and on occasions where a stronger player said something like “11 kyu or higher” and i asked them to clarify whether “higher” meant “weaker” or “stronger”, they actually had to pause a moment to consider the meaning of what they were saying.
I kind of think that the meaning of x kyu, +y, -z is probably pretty obvious to mathematically-minded people when you consider kyu rankings as negative numbers, but i don’t think this is an especially universal assumption.
I understand that this is all anecdotal, but it’s my experience and i’m fairly confident i’m not alone here. Maybe a nice and simple compromise would be the old +x/-y selector, with the addition of a visual indicator of the resulting rank range.
7 Likes
Talked a bit about it on stream today.
1 Like
Not to add more work to anyone, because I quite like the direction the layout is going. But this is my mock-up idea for my site to handle matchmaking for my users using the same system that this new play page is using. Maybe it inspires someone.
2 Likes
Having an anecdotal really hard time to find games got me thinking. Aren’t we over-thinking this entire matchmaking thing? Is it even necessary? I mean, the server is small enough that the custom games tab alone could reasonably service everyone without being overwhelmed. What is the total number of people consecutively searching for live games in peak hours? I highly doubt it’s over 100 at any time. After filtering for your preferred board size and rank range that is completely managable. It would be the ultimate form of not splitting the player pool. In the unlikely case the custom games tab does get overwhelmed, we can set up matchmaking bottom-up by using the singular most popular game setting. No options, take it or go custom.
2 Likes
This has been heavily discussed in another post Upcoming changes to the Play page and general time settings
I think that maybe the numbers of players have droped down a bit
I’m ignoring all the other changes for now, as I don’t use OGS matchmaking anyway, but this here seems a serious thing:
IMHO we should definitely not remove an option that apparently quite a few players have used before.
2 Likes
… or maybe it is a loud minority, and the majority of players simply don’t use this feature…? Or worse - it makes them less motivated to ply on OGS…?
5 Likes
I wonder the same, cause I’ve cancelled a bunch of 3min+ requests that never gets any match. Never had these kind of problems before. The stats don’t match my experience at least…
Sigh. Once again: what settings did you experience long delays for?
I’d love to go searching for data that helps understand this, but this is too general.
If you’ve selected 11-12k only for blitz 13x13 that might be different to “any rank live 19x19”…
2 Likes
I don’t know if it’s related to the bug but I tried
- 19x19, 5k-2d, auto-handicap, flexible, 20m + 5x30s. Got no game after 5 minutes so I canceled.
- 19x19, 5k-2d, auto-handicap, flexible, 5m + 5s. Got a game immediately but it was 10m+10s instead.
- 19x19, 5k-2d, auto-handicap, flexible, 5m + 5x30s. Got a game after about 1 minute but it was 10m+10s instead.
1 Like