It's my understanding that when playing on the Ladder it restricts you from playing the same opponent in back to back matches. Is there any way this can be increased to maybe once in every 5 games or so? I'm currently playing in 1 Ladder game at a time and have noticed that I'm constantly cycling between the same 2-3 players because they happen to have higher game settings and are often in the queue waiting for a new game to start when I finish mine. While I'm not saying that I don't enjoy the games I've had with these players, it would be nice to play some different people every now and then without having to jack my game count up...Any thoughts?

As a side note: I would even be willing to wait for an alternative opponent to become available if that had to be the case. Maybe we could make it an option where players can set how often they want to see a recent opponent like we have for game counts?

Hmm I've actually read the write up on how games are decided and it appears the setting is at once every 3 games and not just back to back as I had thought:

*"Next, we eliminate any opponents that you've played with in your last 3 games in order of creation, and also eliminate any opponents that were in your last finished game for this ladder, and also eliminate any opponents we're currently playing with in this ladder. From this trimmed down list, we pick the highest rated player and create a game between you and them."*

However, this still doesn't make sense in my case as my last Ladder matches have been the following:

-Samurai
-Heyheuhei
-Bombfrog
-Heyheuhei
-Samurai
-Heyheuhei

The reason you're seeing players you've played in your last 3 games is because it runs the algorithm for both players. In other words, Heyheuhei had 3 games with different people after your game, so when it ran this algorithm for him, you were an eligible opponent to him. You can verify this by opening up the Settings on a game and checking who Opponent 1 is. Opponent 1 is the one that the algorithm created the game for.

That being said, I do plan on revisiting the matchmaking algorithm to try and streamline it more.

The main part of the matchmaking algorithm that regulates this is the median check, which was described before the blurb you pasted. It counts how many times you've played each opponent, and take the median of this data set. It eliminates any opponents that we've played more than this median.

This is designed to ensure you spread your games out between everyone evenly, rather than playing a few people many times and having other people remain unchallenged. For the most part, it works well, however, it can cause repeat games when a new player enters the ladder. Say player A has been on the ladder a long time and has played everyone around him 3 times. Player B enters the ladder for the first time and rises to be near enough to A to be eligible for playing him. From A's perspective, B has 0 games played whereas everyone else has 3 - the system will prefer matching A and B whenever possible until B catches up to the rest of A's opponents.

Could the fact that you are at the upper end of the ladder have an effect? I may not be interpreting the algorithm correctly but is would seem that as you get to the top end you might get more and more limited for choice if you are "Opponent 1".

Another thought: maybe expanding the range of the potential opponents would be helpful? I get paired with more opponents below my rank than above at probably a 4:1 ratio. Possibly this has something to do with folks higher up participating in less games skewing the available options.

I was thinking about this some more, and I do think it would make sense to make all of the requirements go both ways. For A to play B, A must be eligible for B and b must be eligible for A. I'm going to think about adding this to 1.4

Not that it makes much of a difference, but may I ask why you used Median instead of Mean? Is it solely because it's less effected by outlying numbers? because the system you are using is made so that there should be no outlyers on the high end, and in my opinion it should be weighted towards the bottom end because there are most likely many players you have not played according to this current system. I may not be interpreting it right, but I believe that mean would be a more effective way of setting up matches because it would make it more likely to be matched with someone you have not played against before. (I have a limited background in statistics)

I also think that you should consider adding more options as Eitz said so that players could choose weather they would rather play opponents they have played more recently or to sacrifice time by waiting to find a different match.

I do like the fact that it should take into effect both players' requirements though.

Thx for looking into this Randy.

I understand what you're saying about the median and how that trumps any of the scenarios I pasted from the excerpt above and I only put down what I did because it was immediately relevant to my current conundrum. It is true that Heyheuhei and I actually hadn't played against eachother on the Ladder yet until the games in my post took place, I've just found it a little strange that we've now played every other game for my last 6 matches since...

I also understand what you said about me qualifying as an opponent for Heyheuhei even tho he didn't qualify as one for me but this is definitely something that I agree should go both ways when determining eligibility of players.

Perhaps you might consider just taking the matching by rank cap off (or significantly raise it from it's current 25%) which at the outset would cause a lot of David vs Goliath matches but in the end would balance out where based on the system we've currently got in place (as well as potential changes mentioned above) everybody on the Ladder would play everybody on the Ladder virtually the same amount of times. This would make rankings even more accurate (in my opinion) and keep games extremely diverse with the faces and rankings of your opponents always changing.

For the record, it's not just this specific Heyheuhei situation either. 5 of my last 19 games have been played against Samurai as well yet I've only played Duke and Nuckluck once and Troll & Lil Eitz I haven't even played a match against yet (and these are just quick #'s pulled off the top 10). Again, I understand that it's based on "available" opponents and Samurai and Heyheuhei both happen to be players that tend to finish games asap and thus virtually always be in the queue for a game but (and again I'm not insinuating anything about the games I've played with these players) I would definitely prefer the option of waiting for a different opponent to play against rather than playing the same 2 opponents repeatedly.

PS - I'm sincerely not meaning to be a pain in the ass or come across as complaining, I'm merely voicing my opinions purely from my perspective.