I constantly play people that never expand and only build AA... I can only assume this is because they've only played the AI where this probably works. They then get pummelled by my Ants. So far I've only played against 1 random player that has been any good and in that game I started a minute and a half after he did thanks to load times. Can we have a simple skill matching system in the lobby? Something as simple as stating your skill level and it displaying on the games in the games list might be sufficient. I can then list my games as low/medium/high/Uber skill levels and hopefully attract players that think that are of a similar level. I may need to wait a lot longer for an opponent but at least I know I'm less likely to crush people in 5 minutes or be crushed myself... both grow old fast.
This is exactly what I want... but I know that it's not ready and I wasn't sure when it'd be ready so a simple stopgap like this might be good if it's not going to be ready for a while.
why would they waste time coding temporary stuff. if you dont like the system as it is wait till the full game comes out?
How about they code something permanent so like a title of the game so like Moon world one planet FFA fun or 5 Planet Good Players want. these would be useful for telling people what game they are joining and help the host get the ideal player set
Very much doubt it. volume of games counts. and as long as the issues experienced are reported then your perceived quality of game would have very little effect.
I think Murcanic has it right. People will want to name games eventually. So maybe just bump the priority of that.
Evenly matched opponents are arguably going to produce longer, larger games and test the system better than a 5 minute Ant rush. More longer games would be better at testing the breadth of the game content even if it results in less games overall.
Possibly... but is the benefit gained worth the time creating a temporary/ad-hoc ranking/matchmaking system? You san see via the cammed games there are already a lot of big long time scale games with high unit counts being played. If your opponents are as bad as you say they are try playing for the first 10 minutes. leave the game for 20 minutes and come back. Ive found that scenario to be quite challenging (Im not a good player, i was just playing against a few people who were playing their first/second game)
Sometimes I start late anyway because of load times... haha. But yeah, the temporary/ad-hoc ranking thing is not needed. As Murcanic suggested we just need to be able to name games which will be in the final game anyway so I no longer need a temporary feature to do what I want.
If you are looking for evenly matched opponents and possible better come to the irc. That's were all the good players look for games. There's a sticky post on the general discussion forums called the gentlemans ladder with details on the irc.
One potential issue with this is that most people have (possibly... ) either a very high opinion of their own skill level, or a very low opinion of their own skill level.
^^ this is very true but its better then the current system atm plus allows for game types to be formed
This. Please join us in the IRC! I know that I am always looking for people to play, and others there are too. Only the average to top tier players are there, so you'll certainly get a much more competitive game than the average random player. Just enter the channel name #planetaryannihilation here: http://www.esper.net/publicirc.php
