Match queueing and FTA

[wonderpug]

Huh? When you start a new league match, don't you already have a 50/50 chance of going first or second? Am I misunderstanding what you're saying?

[CombatEX]

Syvan's post was about how you can game the system to increase your chance of going first. If no one else is in the 'queue' (searching for a game), then you'll be player 1. If someone else is already searching for a game, then you'll be placed into their game as player 2. However, if you queue up a bunch of games really fast at a down time (when no one else is searching), then since no one else is in the queue, you'll start a bunch of games in a row as player 1. This isn't much of a problem until you have top MMR (skill rating) because if you are at a lower rating there is a much greater chance that there will be plenty of other people searching so you won't have a chance to start a lot of games without anyone else starting a game of their own.


As for the solution to this problem, I agree that simply waiting until 2 players have been found before deciding who goes first at a 50/50 chance is the best fix. But yes, unfortunately as Harti said this will likely be low on OML's priority list at present, especially because it only affects a very small fraction of the player base whereas general bug/stability fixes directly benefit everyone.

[wonderpug]

I'm a #2 super titan and I haven't seen the phenomenon happen much myself, but I do think I usually start my matches during prime activity times so that's surely skewing my experience.

[swimj]

I don't do this, so the vast majority of my league games are as the second player. It is pretty frustrating because I don't want to game the system in order to get the fta, yet because a few players do it, probably 20% off games I get to go first.

[worldfamous]

Hero Academy added an option, which both players need to agree with, to have P1 start with 3 wits (or HA equivalent). In the case of HA it's actually unnecessary due to the random draw. Hmmm, I just thought of something. What if P1 had a less favorable starting hand, say 1 less toon, or wit space out of reach? Wit space out of reach probably not realistic. Just a thought.

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(07-30-2012 01:53 AM)wonderpug Wrote:  Huh? When you start a new league match, don't you already have a 50/50 chance of going first or second? Am I misunderstanding what you're saying?

No, the way I understand it is: You start a match. If there is a queue with players equal to your skill level, you will be added as player 2 to one of those games, of which Player 1 has already taken their turn. If there is no queue, meaning no player of equal skill level has started a game, you take your turn as Player 1 and the next player of equal skill that starts a game joins your game as Player 2. Hope that's clear. Please correct me if I've misunderstood the system.

[Cookie]

(07-15-2012 07:42 AM)Harti Wrote:  

(07-15-2012 07:22 AM)calmon Wrote:  Let him start with 2 wits and is good.

LOL

You hopefully understand what limiting it to 2 would mean for the first player. Nothing else to do than to grab the bonus spaces, effectively giving P2 the chance to set everything up like P1 originally would have been able to do. Second turn advantage then, pretty much.


If OML has an open mind about doing something about FTA, the beta testersalready presented a fair amount of (better) solutions than limiting P1's wits to 2.

Even if it means Player 1 limited to taking the bonus spaces, it is not (in my opinion) a bad solution. It is already the case that in the first turns, 2 wits are spent (on bigger maps) for each player to take the bonus spaces. In that variant, the 1st player would have 7 wits on his second turn to do something else than taking bonus spaces.

The reason (as I explained in that other linked thread) is that the turn by turn wits will be 2 5 7 7 7 7 7 7 ... (for big maps) if you take the difference between P1 and P2 wits after each turn it is instead 2 -3 +4 -3 +4 ... so probably on the bigger maps it still leaves P1 with a slight advantage. On the smaller maps the same calculation will lead to the prediction that 2 wits for P1 will give P2 a (very) slight advantage.

If you dislike how the first turns are spent to take bonus spaces, an option is to somehow change the game to make it harder to take the bonus spaces (i.e., imaging a runner is not enough to take a bonus space, or 2 units has to step on it before you get it). This would make it a bit more of an investment whether or not to contest the bonus spaces, but probably it would still be necessary, as games generally go to 20+ turns and the extra wits you get will basically always be worth it.

[wonderpug]

(07-30-2012 03:22 PM)worldfamous Wrote:  Hero Academy added an option, which both players need to agree with, to have P1 start with 3 wits (or HA equivalent). In the case of HA it's actually unnecessary due to the random draw. Hmmm, I just thought of something. What if P1 had a less favorable starting hand, say 1 less toon, or wit space out of reach? Wit space out of reach probably not realistic. Just a thought.

In Hero Academy the players don't need to agree on anything. The player going first can choose to self-limit, and the second player has no say one way or the other.

As for your suggestion, you'll see quite a few people on the forums hoping for a first turn limiter of some sort.

[myninja527]

Another solution would be a system with on and off switch for starting games. If your switch is on and you start you get first player and the switch turns off. The next game will start you second and match you will a player whose switch was on...and so on invariably making you start every other game in first position. It essentially would just make a separate queue for placement. One with switches on, one with switches off.

[nivra0]

Yah, this has become much worse now that it's been published. I stopped playing 1v1 for a week or so. I just started 9 games in a row. The last 8 were all as P2. So frustrating.

Here's a thought experiment. Let's say for evenly matched ST players, FTA yields a 60% winning pct.

Now let's say you randomly queue and get FTA half the time. Your winning pct stays around 50%.

Now let's say you know the strategy in this thread. Once you get FTA during off-peak hours, then the best strategy would be to:
(a) resign all games in which you have a <40% chance of winning, and then
(b) queue up as many P1 games until all 20 slots are filled.
© stop queueing until you have a lot of empty slots (or games <40% winning pct) again.
(d) start randomly queuing during off-peak hours trollling for FTA again.

This is essentially the strategy calmon is talking about above.

If everyone followed this strategy, then it might even out with the chance to get FTA about once every 10-20 queues or so.

However, not everyone follows this strategy, so people like Calmon who won't resign on principle won't see their MMR move up as fast, since it's not optimal play. Players who have a lot of non-1v1 league games such as tourneys or 2v2's will also not see their MMR move up as fast.

[Alvendor]

If you are the first player to move and are feeling generous, you can skip your first turn and you have just negated most of your FTA advantage.