Current work update - 11/5/14

I would like too see the spawn system changed to 1 spawn per planet, but the spawnzone covers 1/3 of the planet ( in 1 (team) vs 1 (team) situations ).

It may bring more interesting gameplay in general. (asuming mex points are also more balanced spread out.)

With current ranked games, I can predict where my enemy spawns on the ice planet. So if my enemy does not have the same knowledge of the map, he has already lost with the current Dox meta.

"It's boring and doesn't encourage creativity and thought" - what a laugh. Only when you know a map can you start doing truly high level creative things. You can't divorce execution from creativity.

There's a reason why the big names always have a small pool of well defined and well played set piece maps: to allow players to reliably improve, create high level of depth in player interaction, and create map 'character'. Some of these maps have been played for literally more than a decade.

• Dust 2, inferno, nuke, train in CS
• The same godahm unchanged map in league and dota 2
• Small, stable set of ladder maps in sc2 with player 'favourites' like overgrowth
• Lost temple, turtle rock, twisted meadows in wc3.
• Wsg and ruins of lordaeron in WoW. And on the PVE front, there is always a small and fixed number of dungeon instances that even get re-used at the level cap in the form of heroics.
• Whatever set map pieces that were popular in COD. I don't play but they have small, set map pools and I can guarantee you there are fan favourites.
• Noshahr, metro, caspian, damavand, firestorm in bf3
• Even the bloody wilderness in Runescsape

You name me any popular/good game that uses 100% randomly generated maps that are never the same for each match. That's right, you can't. And don't pull out the 'lack of innovation' card, it's pretty clear why games across genres all have a consensus on the random vs created map topic. If you want to extend it past games, look at why good movies tend to focus only on a small set of unique characters.

Reality is also pretty clear about one thing. People are risk averse and tend to insure against it when it becomes unavoidable. Not knowing maps actually causes players to use the same safe, standard cookie cutter builds from map to map that don't exploit the uniqueness of any map in particular. Now you tell me which is the most boring? 20 or so handcrafted unique maps that offer different timing/vision/movement sets, or 9000 forgettable maps that lack character and end up feeling/playing the same.

I guess if you enjoy watching two players faffing around not knowing what they are doing and just randomly yoloing (or if this is your playstyle and you want to legitimise it), then random maps are for you. You're in a very small minority however. Thankfully it seems uber is rational enough not to go down this path, so i'm not going to waste any more breathe on this topic. Believe what you want.

Wow guys, how about we just have an option for both players to VOTE for if they want a procedurally generated map or a player-created one...

How do you split ties for it? Random selection from the votes?

probably. If both players want a different kind of map, someone's gonna be unhappy either way. The other option you could do, is have a set list of player-created maps, and then 2 options for procedurally generated ones, and then when a map is randomly chosen, it has a chance of being procedurally generated rather than pre-built.

Ultimately there should some options for the matchmaking. For example checkboxes for:
- single planet
- multi-planet
- small planets
- large planets
- designed system
- random system

You set the options you want and only match against people who have the same thing checked.

It can increase waiting time, of course, but then you can just widen your selection, so that's not a real problem. The variety of totally different setups in PA is so huge compared to most other games that either matchmaking needs to be very limited, or customizable. Or then we'll just see people dropping when they see what system they got, which is more annoying... Sometimes you simply need to know how much time the game is expected to take, or just don't feel up to something huge.

Also option to set how much ranking difference between players you want allow would be good. That's one thing they did right in SupCom 2.

Introducing options into matchmaking will just increase queue times until all but one queue dies.

Like I just said, that's not a real problem, because if you end up waiting longer than you'd like, you can select everything and get a match just as fast you'd get it without options. Up to you.

Or if you mean nearly everyone would end up playing with the same type of systems... Well, that's pretty much perfect majority vote. Then we'll know for sure what people want, instead of having to argue about it. With the added benefit that if people who actually want something different happen to meet, they might get it.

It will also make matchmaking and the hole ladder and competitve play useless. You have a ladder and mappool and matchmaking to determine who is the better player. If you only want to play certain maps than play costum games. I would like to see all kind of diffrent maps in the mappool. Only than players can show who's best on all fronts.

That's somewhat better argument. But "useless" is saying too much. The main point of the whole system is not really to be able to say who is the "best" player, it is to match equal players to get good games.

"All kinds of maps" is the problem. I want some idea of what I'm getting into. If there are no options, there must be strict size limits on what's in the map pool.

Admittedly, if and when rankings are shown in custom games those might work a somewhat better than now...

I understand you want to be teamed up against equal players. But the ladder nad matchmaking are here for competitive reasons. not for casual play. You can play it casual ofcourse. but it can't be on the cost of the competitive scene. Players rank will be shown in costum lobby's aswell there you can find the games you want to play against people of your rank.

Also if you want diffrent settings you need a ladder for each and single one of them. You can't compare the skill between player X who only plays small maps and player Y who only plays super large orbital games. as those kinds of games work totally diffrent.

The reason all kinds of maps is a good thing is because players need to learn how to play on all kinds of systems. As I said only than you can determine who is the better player.

Or then most players will hate it and avoid matchmade in the first place. Not the result we want.

Well, it all depends on what the map pool will be like. If it's only small-medium planets, 1-3 planets per system, then it'll more or less work out I guess. I might not play it much though, unless orbital gameplay is improved significantly.

Also, if I remember correctly, in the current implementation it's possible to leave when you see the system, without taking a loss. If it remains like that people can only play what they want anyway, just in a way that's more inconvenient for everyone.

I don't think anyone HAS done PCG successfully in the past few years, because PCG is a relatively new technology. Elodea, I don't think you've played enough PA to understand the beauty of random maps. To be perfectly honest, you've always been extremely good with the mechanics and stuff. This was my first RTS title - I had to work my way up through the rungs. And ultimately, this game shouldn't try to emulate StarCraft or SupCom or AoE in these respects. It's so much better than those games with the PCG nature of the maps.

No, because you're taking yourself out of my queue, making me queue longer too, which in turn reduces the number of people who want to queue in the first place.

Options are never going to be added to the matchmaking queue. It would be death for the queue, taking a small pool or players and making it smaller still.

Fear of the queue being divided up is a real fear.

However, that chance is relatively low, if all games are listed together, their details are listed to the side, and both players could see each other stats to agree to a match.

That is very selective ranked, but it works with games. The complaint is, you can select matches you are sure you can win, but the enemy can also decline matches they know they can't. Besides that, scale "rank and leaderboard" to lose less points to a bigger gap and gain more points in an underdog situation.

There is the extreme problem though, with people using auto-smashing planets as the map.

This is true. I know people say he's the best, but really he's just such an inexperienced player. Also, he made a bunch of 1v1 maps that lots of people think are some of the best maps this game has ever had. I know those maps aren't any good though, because Mered is smarter.

You seem to misunderstand how it would work. If you select "I'll play with any settings", then everyone is in "your queue".

What's going to be added is up to Uber of course. But I'm not at all convinced it would make matters worse. More likely it would increase total number of players using the matchmaker, and thus, more opponents for you if you indeed want to play with any settings.

I think Mered has a point although his wording is terribad. Elodea plays PA on particular maps whenever he can and rarely on random maps. I wouldn't say that he's playing PA "wrong", but he's not playing it how Uber intended and how some people may regard it as being the most fun.

Conundrum, you can stop attacking Mered every chance you get. We've established that you aren't fond of him, we don't need you to remind us every single post.

To the question or random vs designed maps, I say this game has room for both. A ladder map rotation can have some designed maps and an equal chance at getting random. I do see the value in needing to to plan your game on new terrain, but I also like the meta-games that develop around known maps. I don't really agree with Elodea entirely that random maps are always less interesting. I respect his opinion though and I won't try to win an argument by just saying "I am right and if you disagree with me it must be because you [don't play enough / know the game well enough / aren't smart enough]."

that is true i agree, random maps are not always less interesting- that's how we got the team genesis maps . I must have worded my post wrong. The vast majority of them however are.

Why don't i play random maps? Because like everything random, there is always a high chance of stuff like this, which is totally not acceptable for a fun experience let alone a ranked ladder system. Forgive me if i fail to find the beauty in it. It doesn't scream "strategy, tactics, creativity", as much as it screams "trolololol".