Everyone plays games against users of the 4-4 stones.
if you unusually attack any 4-4 as soon as it appears, it may work in even game. If there are four 4-4 already, while you attack one of them, others may become double-defended. So such unusual strategy will be unable to work. So handicap decreases freedom.
It gives an advantage to black, that’s the whole point.
And it opens up a whole new set of positions, increasing freedom.
An even game could be called a 1 stone handicap.
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I’m glad to see that others having similar issues with the current implementation! I’m convinced that it is a major blocker for OGS to grow.
I have made specific suggestions how the behavior could be improved 2,5 years ago but I’m not aware any changes were implemented.
I would be interested to learn what you think about the suggestions I made back then:
Renamed the thread title to avoid future confusion over the recently renamed tool.
I think many people are longing for an improvement but there seem to be two main approaches here that go in very different directions.
A. Merging the player pools for AF and CG
This is what you want. Your second post almost sounds like you want to get rid of the AF entirely since you want one place with all options that matches all players. Some other people have suggested this as well but I personally would like to go in another direction.
B. Make AF the default way to find matches and make it simple
I would like to go more in the direction of Fox or modern games like StarCraft. Meaning:
- CG should only be used for casual/exotic matches → CG is always unranked
- AF is the only place for ranked games
- The only options left in AF are board size and type (blitz, live, correspondence)
- AF games (i.e. ranked games) will have a site wide setting for ORR (should be auto. anyways), Handicap, Time Control and Rules → These settings are too unimportant to risk a fragmentation of players. Also makes ranked matches more uniform.
I have posted a small graphic for how I could imagine the AF menu to look like in the initial post.
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it would be ok for new site, but on old good OGS it will make a lot of people sad
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I hope this will never happen.
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Fortunately, OGS has a tradition of not fascistically dictating the specifications of a game, nor of stomping on the preferences of correspondence players, who prefer a long game where they can play their best and mostly avoid ridiculous blunders. (As I have said before, I don’t want to win or lose based on a blunder.) Also, abolishing ranks from custom games would make it very difficult to get a good match in such games. The whole proposal is prejudiced against old people, who may have weakening memories and therefore prefer correspondence.
Disclaimer: I rarely use the Automatch finder, so maybe my opinion is not very relevant, and / or I might misunderstamd something.
My impression is that OGS’ implementation gives its users a lot of control over how they wish to enter the Automatch queue. And - if I understand OPs arguments correctly - the believe is that it takes a lot of time to find a match because some users enter the queue with very specific search constraints, and / or some users prefer the custom game challenge feature.
I think it would be interesting to know whether actual data agrees with this theory. Do many people enter the queue with a custom configuration? (An alternative explanation for a long waiting time is that there are overall few players in the queue.)
It seems to me that taking away customisation options would be a step backwards. Surely there is such a thing as “too many options”, but I think that OGS has done a good job with the UI, not making it too cluttered (imo) while still having a lot of options for those that want them. I can only assume that people who use these options priortise this over shorter waiting time, and would not like their removal.
Independently, I think a nice addition would be an indicator such that players have a rough idea of how long they will wait. Could be that the number of players in the queue is displayed, or a rough time estimate based on that.
Just to exemplify why I like this approach.
Scenario I
Peter is logging into OGS. Peter loves to play 13x13 and just wants to play a live game with anyone asap. Peter goes to the AF and picks “13x13” and live". Peter joins the AF queue. Now Pablo also logged on at the same time as did Peter. Pablo prefers to create CGs. So Pablo goes to create a CG game for “13x13” and live" at the same time. Now 15 minutes pass. Peter is stuck in the AF queue. Pablo keeps waiting for someone to Accept his CG challenge. Another 5 minutes pass. Both players log out of OGS and into Fox. They click on “13x13” and are directly matched against each other. Both Peter and Pablo do not visit OGS all that often anymore.
Scenario II
Gustav and Seunghyeon both want to play a game of 9x9 blitz. Seunghyeon searches for a game with the Korean ruleset while Gustav searches for one with the Japanese ruleset. Now 15 minutes pass. Seunghyeon and Gustav are both waiting in the queue and are wondering why so few people play on OGS. After another 10 minutes they finally find an opponent and played their game. They both disliked waiting 25 minutes but after their games they logged in to OGF and praised OGS for its many game options.
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I created Scenario I and II to showcase why I’m proposing this change. Most of you guys seem to want Solution A but the issue with solution A is that it only solves Scenario I. My proposed Solution B would solve both Scenario I and II.
Could you explain why you think this would make “a lot of people sad”?
Could you explain why?
Over my years working with software I sometimes have had negative feedback to implemented or proposed features in the past. But this has to be the number 1 most negative feedback I’ve ever gotten 
I do want to clarify one thing though.
I’m not proposing to get rid of ranked correspondence games! As I wrote here:
You would be able to find correspondence games via the AF as before.
True if your aim is to get a very good match up → use the AF.
Quite the opposite. You are exactly the type of person I want to reach with this. May I ask why you don’t use the AF?
It would.
I mean they could right? Because the settings allow them too. Why introduce options in the hope that they aren’t used? I’ve heart this several times but I think that this sounds like bad design. An app should not add features in the hope that no one will use them. That is a very great sign that these features are actually anti-features.
This sounds exactly like what Gustav from Scenario II would say. I firmly believe that Gustav would prefer the shorter queueing times though in the end and does not realize the dilemma he is in.
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OGS already gives a lot of options to everyone. Someone create custom games with unique settings that he likes. If it would be possible to get rank in standard settings only, he would be forced to sometimes play with settings that he don’t like or he will have outdated rank.
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Yes, and I think it is great that that is possible on OGS. But for ranked games I think the queueing times should be much shorter than they are now and we should try everything we can to get there.
What about the unique settings is so important to you? Is there some ruleset that you just have to use? Or do you think fisher time is so great that you do not want to play without it? I’m genuinely curious, because to me Go is Go. I just want to choose the board size and the type (blitz, live, correspondence) and then get a game fast. I have a hard time seeing how these minor settings provide a net benefit to the player when considering the damage they can do.
I think having these options available for casual unranked CGs outside of the main flow should be good enough.
Because I mainly play correspondence games on OGS.
I think that players who use these customisation options might be “disappointed” by their removal. I don’t think we can just assume that they would prefer the shorter waiting time. One should know that very specific settings would generally result in longer waiting times.
usually fast for me in custom, auto-match usually slower
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I’ve to ask: Have you changed the settings from the default “I don’t care” ?
If no, you already have the fastest queuing time you can get. if you changed it 
.
Reducing the number of options in the automatch finder doesn’t speed up the match making, as long as you don’t have strong preferences. If you have strong preferences, I think you are willing to wait for a game matching these preferences. But even with strong preferences, you just throw out other players with strong opinions.
To remove the settings from match making does only improve the user exercise if the users don’t have strong preferences, otherwise you would simply remove the games they like to play. Either way it does not improve the user exercise.
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Why do you not use the AF to find you correspondence games? I think it is inefficient that the community is so split up into AF users and CG users especially for correspondence games. Why have two different player pools and cut the number of possible opponents in half.
I mean that kind of sounds like a problem to me.
Yes, for the handicap option. I’ve turned that on required=off.
No the fastest queueing time I can get would be if we abolished CG ranked games and unite the player pool. Currently X% (and X is large) of players only play games via CG and I never get to interact / play against these players which is kind of an issue, don’t you think?
I can’t stop myself… Just remove the option
It does because it will make it possible to easily merge the player pool.
possible solution: remove automatch.
standard settings button will create custom game that anyone can accept
if 2 standard custom games created, they are auto-paired
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As already said, I don’t think that works well though.
When you want to play correspondence you don’t care at all about quickly finding an opponent, and you certainly won’t sit in the queue and wait for automatch to find you somebody. Many people create a dozen challenges at once, and are fine with them being slowly accepted over the course of the day or the next.
I can follow your reasoning for live games, but this is a very different situation.
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