I mean, it’s kind of a tradition at this point. I try to simplify, and I end up adding more! That said, in the current system the complexity is hidden behind a somewhat obscure settings modal with three tabs to page through, so I think removing that streamlines things and in some regards simplifies things a bit.
They’re measured 50th and 90th percentile values from the past many years worth of games with those settings, rounded to the minute. For 19x19 live games rounding to 5 minutes would be fine but 9x9 blitz it’s too course I think.
In Revisiting Automatch Time Settings: Data-Backed Proposal for New Automatch Settings on OGS I proposed just going with Byo-Yomi but there was a surprising amount of interest and good reasons to offer Fischer, however omitting Byo-Yomi seems like it’d be quite the affront to a good number of folks, so while I agree having one system would be ideal from a UI/UX standpoint, not sure if we can get away with it just yet. At least Canadian is gone though!
Quite tempting. Even games are 4x more common than handicap games though.
I think to a beginner it anchors their understanding about what they’re doing a bit, so I think it adds value. It also fills a space that would be otherwise awkward, balancing out the time controls on the right.