For sure. I agree with the general idea of reducing options of automatch to reduce fragmentation of the player pool, but handicap should be on not off. (I know their is a vocal portion of the OGS forums who dislike handicaps, and I’m not going to bother repeating my arguments why handicap on by default is better and how OGS’s off-by-default history has developed an unfortunate anti-handicap culture amongst players raised here).
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Go ranks are also rather a traditional feature of Go. The algorithm works with ratings no ranks. There is no intrinsic need for ranks for the match making.
Two players who are 9 ranks apart should never be auto matched.
I very highly doubt that a player who will not be able to choose the “New Zealand” Go ruleset (for ranked games) that he so direly needs will choose to play “unranked” so that he can keep using that option.
I totally agree that the settings for ranked games should not be limited more than necessary but the question is “What is necessary?”.
One thing I always wondered is this: Why does OGS have more auto match options than Fox while having a tenth of the player base?
I do not have the exact numbers but afaik (please correct me) Fox has about 30,000 players (online at the same time on average) while OGS has about 3,000 players.
Now Fox has 7 configurations for their “Fast matching” which is easy to understand (bonus points for usability) and leads to Fox having ~4300 players per config.
On the other hand OGS has 324 configurations for QMF (not counting “Opponent rank range”) which makes it look like the cockpit of an Airbus A380 (minus points for UX) while leading to OGS having ~9 players per config.
So while Fox already has ten times more players in general it has more than 400 times the players per config / game option.
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But they will on OGS due to the small player pool. Or change 9 to 5 if you like, still a big difference that makes an even game very lopsided. So you need to design a system which is sensible in that case. Btw, automatch on KGS has handicaps. I don’t know if it does on Fox, because there are so many players you are very likely to get someone of your rank (I vaguely recall getting players 1 rank off with no komi, which suggests you would get handis if 2+ ranks off).
This is not a fair comparison when the default for every setting is “No preference”
If most users are on the defaults, then we still only have effectively 9 configs (3 speeds x 3 sizes)
Edit: my statement about “No preference” was false. Looks like the defaults are Japanese, no handicap, Byo-yomi. I can agree that’s problematic, but the default player pool is still probably much larger than 9 players.
For a rating system to work well, you want most of the games to have a near-ish 50% expected win rate for each player. Having lots games with 99% vs 1% expected outcome means you are feeding low-information data into the system and it’s easily perturbed by non-skill factors like timeouts.
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I went on OGS to see if you actually have to play games against people 5 ranks apart. Seems like you actually do. I guess in your special case handicaps are really necessary 
I do not think that this applies the same way to the general population though.
This seems to be an issue for you specifically but not for the general population. This is like Eliud Kipchoge complaining that marathons are only 40km distance and that only takes him two hours, or Michael Phelps complaining that swimmers don’t have to swim with weights attached.
It’s not just because I have a high rank. Imagine some 5 kyu clicks automatch, 2 seconds later a 10 kyu does (and no one else did in those 2 seconds). Unless the automatch system has some bias to prefer matching people with close ranks so delays pairing them in case a better match comes along soon*, the 5 kyu will play the 10 kyu.
* which could actually be a good idea, but the parameters would need very careful choosing because you don’t want to make this system cause too much delay as the whole purpose of automatch and the experience we are trying to emulate is Fox’s “get me a game in a matter of seconds”, not “oh Mr 5k there’s a 10k you could play but OGS automatch things you might prefer a 7k so please hang around for 3 minutes hoping one appears; oh sorry you got impatient and went and played on Fox/IGS/KGS anyway”.
The limit for ranked games on ogs is 9 ranks apart, mostly because the smaller player pool. For example pandanet limits ranked games to ppl who are max 3 ranks apart, but their player pool is vastly larger than ogs’s.
As a moderator ive noticed that there are quite many so-called “bad reports” that are caused by misunderstandings.
A lot of games created via “quick match finder” are getting reported because people have wrong expectations about the time settings (games with 20min main time are not very “quick” and opponents are allowed to spend multiple minutes for thinking their next move)
Also there are people who mainly play unranked games, possibly with incorrect rank. They get reported for sandbagging quite often, and then mods have to explain that there is no way fixing that incorrect rank unless the player in question starts playing ranked games.
Its very good question indeed. I feel like its necessary to be able to use all of the different rulesets that ogs provides for ranked games, but i also think it would make sense to expand those unstandard board sizes for ranked games too (currently only 9x9, 13x13, and 19x19 are allowed for ranked games) and for custom komis (now only games with automatic komi can be ranked)
More ranked games means that the (fully automatic) rating system has more data to work with, so in the end it should result for more accurate and trustworthy ranks
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I’m confused about what the problem is. How slow is QMF for you?
Maybe I don’t have the same expectations since I don’t do a ton of live games, but at 8-9k like you, I feel like it’s always really easy to find a match with “custom game”. I can make one with any weird settings I want, like AGA handicap 9x9, and it will usually get claimed within 30 seconds or so. And if I try to claim someone else’s game, it’s often gone before I can read over the settings.
On the other hand, I never use QMF since I want to know what I’m getting. Is it possible that most of the other SDKs stay away from QMF for the same reason?
I mean, before asking why they would, do they?
If you want another perspective, I’m 7k, only play live and always use QMF, never custom. I also always used QMF in the past when I was climbing.
I think it works fine, though obviously I wouldn’t be against a higher playerbase.
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The problem is that the QMF could be better. Yes as an SDK I can find matches on OGS. Yes, I can navigate the settings as well. But is the feature really implemented in a way that gives us, the OGS community/players, the best result?
The queueing times depend on many factors such as player rank, current datetime, board size, etc. All these factors will create a certain queueing time X. Now imagine we would tackle the two factors A = CG queue cannibalization and B = player fragmentation through 324 configs. This would hopefully lead to the new lower queueing time of Y because Y = X - A - B. In other words this, for me, is a potential that we are missing out on.
The other problem in my personal opinion is the UI. When I started playing Go two years ago I was totally overwhelmed when first searching for a game by the many options. And I indeed chose “Japanese rules required” for a relatively long time because I thought that these were the only rules I know and that I would not be able to play by other rule sets. Now two years later I’ve come to the realization that Go rule sets basically don’t matter to me at all. Or to anyone for that matter, when there was that one incident in the Nongshim Cup where the rules actually mattered it made international headlines. So again from the perspective of A. Queueing times and B. Usability I think we should remove the rule sets from the QMF.
What you described is exactly how modern auto matching usually works (refer to e.g. lichess or StarCraft II).
As I said in my post early in this thread: my main hope is that we can remove this option from the QMF and have a default for ranked games. Then the option can remain for custom unranked games.
My opinion on if the handicap option should be enabled or disabled for ranked games is less strong. It still feels like a solution that is only proposed for historical reasons to me. Other modern games do not use this approach so I’m very skeptical about it.
I wonder if the entire QMF could be replaced with “Arena” format, where players would get paired with other ppl in the arena as soon as there is an available opponent, all the games would be using the same settings, and maybe some cool little virtual trophies for users with the most wins/games/something for the day.
Instead having all those separate buttons for game speeds and options to choose from, just have one big button for joining the arena. For everyone who wants to play under some different settings, they could use the custom challenges as before.
I’m just thinking out loud here, i dont use QMF very often since im mostly playing just corr games, and for those open challenges, tournaments, ladders, and direct challenges are usually enough xD
But i do fully agree that QMF could be made a lot better. IIRC the main reason why it was originally requested by so many users was to reduce the amount of clicks needed for starting a game, and i personally think that the arena format would actually work better than the automatch system.
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Most games are not as lucky as Go to have a natural handicap system which allows players of widely different skills to enjoy a close game without distorting the game mechanics much. It’s a feature not a bug! In an ideal world of a huge player pool like Fox (or lichess or starcraft) all automatch games would be between same ranked players so even anyway so the point is moot, but on OGS with the smaller pool the issue does arise.
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What’s wrong with handicap games?
I think the option should be on by default, to maximise the number of potential opponents, which was the point of this thread.
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It will maximise the number of potential opponents in handicap_go , while number of potential opponents in full_version_of_Go will be decreased.
They are the same game, but no handicap could be prioritised.
they are the same game only for users of 4-4 stone
With chinese rules you can place your hc stones freely, so you can try new set-ups and have super interesting games ^___^
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if you are limited to Chinese rules only, you will get less opponents.
Also, for users with unusual strategy, (2 ranks difference = 2 stones handicap) is not true.