Competitive/casual lobby split on jinteki.net

Jinteki.net
1

So it’s been three months since we introduced separate rooms feature to jinteki.net. Now that the dust has settled, I’d like to hear your opinions on how has this feature has changed your experience with the site.

The initial goal of this change was to help players with certain expectations find more satisfying matchups/opponents. So players with similar expectations end up in the same room, playing each other. Furthermore, by abusing the default effect, we ensure that most of undecided or not-reading-titles players end up in the Casual lobby.

That’s how it was supposed to work on paper, but have we achieved these goals? I’d like to discuss the following:

  • Do you find that your chances to find a satisfying opponent improved compared to 4 months ago? (ancient history, I know)
  • Have the increased wait times for finding a game discouraged you from playing on jinteki.net?
  • Suggestions for improving the matchmaking situation? (often proposed ideas are automated matchmaking, ELO/TrueSkill system, player personal white/blacklists, feel free to discuss these or problems with them)
4 Likes
2

I have liked it personally. In general it splits quite well and I can bring my fun decks to casual, and if I want to play whiz I can log into competitive.

Future improvements:
I would like an ELO rating assigned to each player based upon results. To avoid the disconnect problem set a 2 min turn time limit per player, with an auto-loss if the time limit is breached.

3

Like it too very much!

Would love a third area, for private games so no one joins them by accident.

7 Likes
4

A tournament / spectator mode would be amazing so that streamers can see the hands of the players playing whilst they are commentating (similar to OCTGN)

3 Likes
5

Love the split.

ELO or at least some private payer stats would be a great addition.

2 Likes
6

Yup, split is great.

7

As I was telling you earlier, I love the split. I want to play decks I expect to see at top tables against other decks of the same. People used to rage at me for playing boring netdecks before the split, and I’d get annoyed when I stomped a poorly tuned exile deck that neither player really got anything out of. Now basically the only time I get yelled at is for IG or DLR when people don’t read the title.

Eli would be cool in competitive but I don’t have strong feelings about it

4 Likes
8

I’d personally prefer to have ELO either not be public or at least be optionally invisible. It’s stupid, but I know I’d get “ladder anxiety” with an always visible ELO, which doesn’t fit well with my current user of the site as a place to make a ton of mistakes so I make fewer of them in meatspace.

6 Likes
9

CUSTOM BACKGROUNDS.

That is all. I’m so tired of the root and the space ships. Please can I just have a color background.

9 Likes
10

If you do do Elo it should be runner Corp split as well as having a combined one

1 Like
11

Even just an page that says I have played 99 games and won x% by side and ID would be amazing.

7 Likes
12

It can be private behind the login too … I do think those are the only two updates I’d like to see currently on what is IMO an excellent platform.

When are you guys making the AGOT one? HMMM?

2 Likes
13

ELO/other ranking is good when it can be used for matchmaking. Currently we have too little activity to really need matchmaking. I think this could make sense if we get to 200ish parallel games at peak times.

14

It’s also great at seeing your own progression.

2 Likes
15

I tracked all of the results between players in our Japanese meetup over the course of 1 year, computing an ELO for each player and then filtered on their runner/corp results to generate a Runner ELO and a Corp ELO by player. There was little difference (after a big enough sample) between the two.

It turns out, perhaps unsurprisingly, that people who are good at runner are good at corp too :slight_smile:

Also, recorded win method stats, again it turned out that people who murder a lot also rarely get murdered themselves in the reversed game (those who know how to kill also know how to survive).

3 Likes
16

Well, my only complaint is that I play against a jinteki damage deck every time I stray into the casual room…

But that’s not a problem you can fix.

1 Like
17

That doesn’t happen if you play Corp. :slight_smile:

18

That’s pretty cool

19

If you’re not afraid to install a plugin that lets you change the css of the site, like User CSS, you can alter the background quite easily.

Here’s my personal setup:

.messages div {
   animation: fadein 0.3s;
}

@keyframes fadein {
  from {
    opacity: 0}
  to{
    opacity: 1}
}
.lobby-bg {
    background-image: url("http://orig06.deviantart.net/8a89/f/2013/156/9/4/android__netrunner_doppelganger_by_howi3-d67x4l0.jpg");
}

.blue-shade {
    background-color: rgba(3, 4, 6, 0.62);
}

a {
    color: rgb(138, 184, 255);
    font-style: italic;
}

.topnav li.active a {
    color: rgb(138, 184, 255);
}

.lobby .games .button-bar .rooms .roomtab.current {
    color: rgb(138, 184, 255);
}

.fake-link {
    color: rgb(138, 184, 255);
    font-style: italic;
}

.gameboard .header {
    font-size: 11px;
}

button, a.button {
    border: 1px solid #00ADFF;
    background-color: rgba(119, 168, 241, 0.35);
}

.deckline h4 {
      text-overflow: ellipsis;
      white-space: nowrap;
      overflow: hidden;
}

.gameboard {
   overflow-x: auto;
}

using Doppelgänger as background image for the Play tab

5 Likes
20

I agree with this, and suggest that any statistic should only be derived from games played in the competitive section.

On the OP I think the split works well, I’d provisionally suggest additional groupings of ‘beginner/introductory’ (with new accounts defaulting to there until they play a few games) and ‘tournament/something’ (where you put the functionality of spectators being able to view hands)

1 Like