I open this thread so we can discuss about the called "selective queuing". That would be when some player choose to queue at the same time that other player with whom he/she wants to fight. I believe this kind of behaivor tended to be a silent one, but today there were some top players (I won't name anyone so they don't get offended) agreeing openly at the lobby chat when to queue so that there would be more chances (because it's not a perfect system) to face each other. The reason? I read that was because of the fear of losing a lot of elo by losing with some lower ranked player, as they "design" their builds to play against other top players. Now, I have to say I don't approve this system for several factors: 1) The risk of losing elo is part of the game. The fact that top players win very few points when they win and lose a lot when they lose is the prize for being up in the rank. If someone doesn't want to lose elo because he wants to stay up there forever, maybe he should play just casual games. 2) The system is designed in a way so that you don't know who you will be facing next. That is one of the charms of the game, trying to build a deck that can compete against the majority of other builds and actually playing against those builds. Instead, the player who selects the opponent has the possibility of building a deck to counter the other player's deck in the best way possible. For example, someone who chooses to queue against a 3DC build will know that he has to take out all the parries he has in his own deck to maximize the chances of winning. This is not the way mp ranked matches were meant to be. 3) Now, if top players do this, it's even worse, because it creates a very small circle on top of the rank in which they don't play but against themselves. It takes out the variety and the fun this game can give. If a certain kind of build gives you trouble, just make adjustments to your deck so that you can face that one too. The reason they choose not to adjust their decks is because it would lose effectiveness against other builds, but that should be a risk that player is taking when he chooses to design his deck that way. He will do well against those, but poorly when he has to face any other build. With the selective queuing, this kind of risk dissapears, as you choose not to face the builds that give you more trouble. 4) I don't believe in the "If you can't stop them, join them". It's very hypocrite to complain about someone doing selective queuing and then doing the same thing. We have to put our foot down at some point. This is just my opinion, I would like to see what everyone thinks about this.
Can be nice to have a buddy who farms elo against "middle" players and then give you the elo so that you can pass a paladin.
You have 2 things messed up here, Jacques. If someone wants to play against, say, 3dc and takes Parries out before that game, that's cheating and abusing the system and it's theoretically possible to gain rating this way. But if 2 players simply agree to play (I've seen it done before today many times btw and done myself too) then there is no possible gain for this. All the rating 1 wins, 2nd one loses, no overall gain here. And Squidy, what? That's another topic, losing on purpose.
Isn't that one of the point of casual games, two players who want to fight each other can? Otherwise I am very unfamiliar with all the high elo drama, just reading Jacques post made me think about that.
Except that Flax's highest-rating ranking requires players to hit 10 matches a week to remian active. Selective queuing minimizes the risk of rating loss, which both preserves a common circle of top-ranked players and excludes others from quickly gaining rating by defeating high-ranked players.
I don't really have anything constructive to add here except that the ratings grubbers are missing out on all the fun. WHO'S AFRAID OF THE KITTY CAT? ∫[⁞⁞⁞⁞⁞⁞⁞⁞]≡(^ェ^)≡
If it's true that all this is because of Flax's season thing, then he shouldn't run more seasons after this one. If it encourages this kind of behaviour it's more a detriment than a benefit for the community, at least the highest ranked season. The worst is thinking that top players, with all the fantastic items they have, could be that greedy to do this to get more chests that they don't really need. If you tell me that some 1000 elo player does this, I wouldn't approve it either, but at least I could understand it, because he's looking for better items. But top players doing this? Really? I don't get it.
I think that's a bit of a jump. For one thing, players who were doing this, were probably doing it before the season started, to some extent at least. For another, future seasons / future queueing technology could minimize the impact of this, or even discourage it. This is definitely not a clearcut issue for me, and I want to see more people discuss it more. I'd also like to see @Jon weigh in on the topic.
I agree that there are potential problems around targetted building: if someone's openly just watched me and asked for the next game, I often worry I'll be facing a specific counter-deck. The league probably does have some effect on this, with people stopping after 10 games on a good score, but is it outweighed by the good side of keeping people engaged?
I agree with you. The season definitely affects the issue of selective queuing. Maybe we could make a list of pros and cons between all players so the next one can fix, if possible, the bad things and keep focusing on the good ones. The main season's pro is that, as it was intended, it has proven success in increasing the amount of active players, and that is always welcomed. The cons, on the other side (some of them have already been said in the season's thread), in my opinion are: 1) It discourages trying new builds because the fear of losing rating, so there's less variance. 2) It encourages A LOT speculation. Players stopping after 10 games in a good score and selective queuing are proofs of this. It may be true that there were players doing this before, but we have to agree that by giving players a prize the problem increases. I may have exaggerated when I said that there shouldn't be more seasons after this one, but I think it's important to take into account the problems it has brought if there is a next one. I wish techonology could minimize the selective queuing issue in the future. One possible solution would be not to allow a ranked match between 2 players that have already played that day before, so at least a 2nd selective queuing between the same 2 players wouldn't be possible.
Ok, I answer to some more thoughts here. "Except that Flax's highest-rating ranking requires players to hit 10 matches a week to remian active. Selective queuing minimizes the risk of rating loss, which both preserves a common circle of top-ranked players and excludes others from quickly gaining rating by defeating high-ranked players." That's again theoretically possible but actually it is not. 10 games is a lot, playing 1 (or even 2) specifically against another high rated player doesn't significally help. To do so with (almost) all 10... Well, haven't tried lol, would require more than 2 top-level players but it often goes wrong, too. The same example Jacques opened the discussion with actually went wrong. First one of them got matched against 14xx player and after that they tried again and got eachother. And this goes for the previous comment and to Jacques' one too "If it's true that all this is because of Flax's season thing, then he shouldn't run more seasons after this one. If it encourages this kind of behaviour" Look ot the week 0 data Flax took (good idea btw, Flax). None of the highest rated players had 10+ games played that week, that's definitely worse than playing 10+ games but some playing some of them against eachother on purpose. Also, I'm not aware of anyone doing this that much it would be a problem. (And who wouldn't want to play against our champ Paladin when he's online ) And well, as I've said before: I blame the low amount of players. Even if one doesn't look at (or see at all) online players before queueing, there are few enough (active) players to take some of them specifically into consideration when building a deck. Edit: I add a conclusion too. A topic to think/talk about but I consider everyone being wrong who consider this to be an issue at the moment.
Having just had a bad week of non-selective queuing, I will say for sure that selective queuing gives the perpetrator an unfair advantage. Certainly, being able to see who is in the lobby, who is in game and how close they are to finishing is what enables this to occur. Just the fact that this allows you to avoid a specific bad match up alone makes it badly exploitable. The fix Jacques just mentioned of one match between two players in 24 hours sounds good, but there could be issues with how that diminishes the pool of players to a point where you have to wait forever to get a game. I don't know if there is a way to set up a toggle between a "spectator mode" and an "active mode." When switched to spectating, you could have all the info we currently can see, but can't join. When toggled to active, you cannot see the list of players, nor the games joined with round #'s. You would queue blindly. Once in game, you could access lobby chat from there. You'd need a cool down timer for people entering active mode from spectator mode so any information they may carry over will be stale. Another easy fix is, we can shun the selective queuers and don't queue when they are around unless they are in game. I'm all too sure there is somebody around who would happily make a shun list for us. Of course, this would fall into the "If you can't stop them, join them" category and is just as bad.
Susurrus, the mode thing wouldn't work because one could just make a dummy account and use that in another browser window/tab to see the online player situation. It would make it a little harder to casually select opponents but for someone dedicated to selective queuing it could be easily worked around.
Susurrus' 3 paragraphs: 1) You lost rating because you didn't play well enough to keep yourself over 1700, no other reason. 2) What Jarmo said. 3) Wat?
I don't understand this. Which week are you talking about? Where are those statistics? And I don't get the last part neither, would you mind rephrasing it?
http://forums.cardhunter.com/threads/announcing-card-hunter-pvp-spring-season.5515/ Scroll down a little for week 0 data ("Sample stats"). Most highest rated players had played less than 10 games during the last week before this season. It's better now that everyone plays 10+ games a week, so don't blame the pvp season.
1. I didn't blame my tumble on the queuing. I can beat myself up for sloppy play on my own, but thanks for the pro tip. We all know that bad draws happen, and you can lose far more rating to a 1300ish player than to a 1700ish player when that happens. I don't suppose that is news to you, though. 2. D'oh! 3. Semi-serious.
Even a 50% successful match-up rate offers a significant contribution, especially over the course of several weeks. Come on, you're the statistics fan - selective queuing is an obvious means of stacking the odds in your favor over a long series of matches.
