FTA / slow matchmaking / queue stacking

[Samura|]

Three key issues I've seen making the rounds in the forum again and again:

1) FTA (first turn advantage) - significant FTA exists, particularly on certain maps; leading to debate on whether points be allocated differently for P1 games as opposed to P2 games

2) queue stacking (i.e. players lining up a lot of P1 games)

3) slow matchmaking ('waiting for players' for a long time)


The evidence on FTA suggests P1 is at least 1.5 times to 2 times more likely to win than P2. This has raised discussion of whether points should be allocated differently, depending on whether you're playing as P1 or P2.

(2) and (3) are to a large extent related to (1) above. It's the FTA (especially at higher league levels) that incentives queue stacking. Starting as P1 simply gives you much greater odds of winning the match... and this automatically means that there will be people who queue matches to climb the league standings (or to offset having started as P2 too many times)!

How does this affect matchmaking? I've recently started 2 games, but after 24 hours have yet to be matched against an opponent (I'm only high Gifted therefore it really shouldn't take this long). I then started a 3rd game and was matched automatically as P2. Why wasn't this P1 player matched against my 2 other games when he started a new league match? The answer (I believe) is that it is possible to start a match but not take your turn (Da Wizerd has a good post about this from a while back), i.e. the matchmaking system does not look for a match yet. So this new opponent of mine could have queued a lot of P1 games when he had the chance, and only recently took his turn. When players do this, they simply add to the list of P1 games looking for P2 players, creating a significant mismatch between P1 players and P2 players.

Therefore for players looking to be matched more quickly, you could simply start a new game periodically, as it means you're more likely to be paired up as P2 against a longer list of P1 players (obviously means you're playing more as P2). You can quit your 'waiting for players' games to free up space in the queue.

The Fix: Given the issues are all inter-related, they can all be fixed quite easily --> by fixing FTA. This is already underway in the beta as most of you already know, by letting P2 start with 8 wits rather than 5. My belief is that this works very well to address FTA, so fingers crossed this will make it out of the beta into the next version of the game.

This will mean there's no need to allocate points differently, queue stacking should become much less of an issue, and matchmaking should improve. I'm still of the view that matchmaking can be improved further (per my prior post), but perhaps that's a discussion that can be re-ignited after the current beta phase is completed.