I have a question. Let’s say Player A puts Player B on his “avoid teammate” list.
Evidence seems to show that this increases Player B’s queue times. My question is why?
If Player B is on Player A’s avoid list, then that means that Player B cannot appear in one of Player A’s games. But it also means that Player A cannot appear in Player B’s games. But there has never been any mention of people getting longer queue times because they avoided people.
So does this mean the matchmaking prioritizes finding a game for Player A? And if so, should it? Shouldn’t the person demanding the game make way for him and demanding the game tailor itself to meet their expectations be the one who is the second priority? Shouldn’t the avoided player get first crack at game prioritization, and only after he finds one is Player A allowed to enter the queue?
Wouldn’t that solve any and all problems with Avoid Teammate leading to longer queue times? If you want the game to suit you so much, you should have to wait. That way you don’t wind up in games with people who you don’t want to play with, and no one else is punished because of your desires.
Based on what they have told us, it does work more-or-less in this fashion.
Honestly, probably no. You can impact someone else’s game experience adversely, to the point they might not be able to get a fair match any more. And there’s no downside to using it.
Personally I think if you’re using this ability it should de-prioritize you. If someone is really toxic enough then everyone that avoids them would end up in the same de-prioritized match anyway.
And it would be far less open to abuse since you’d have to want to avoid them badly enough that you yourself also take some sort of inconvenience.
What are you doing that so many people would want to avoid you though?
I don’t think this question is particularly relevant. Personally, I don’t consider the community mature enough to place much value in who they decide to avoid. But, if they want to report people, then I think they should bear the brunt of any extended queue times. This would inspire them to use it responsibly and with great consideration.
It’s a win/win for everyone.
There hasn’t been any proof that 1 or 2 avoids mean longer que times.
Sure, it’s all anecdotal at the moment. But at high levels like GM or Top 500, barring a possible 12 players from a single game is massive.
If you look at how much hate certain players get for doing things that actually work quite well such as onetricking or playing “off-meta” it could become a soft-ban.
The Dev Update video basically said as much, and that if your queue times rise to unplayable levels then you just need to suck it up and let other people dictate how to play.
And that’s not even getting into the possibility to deploy tactical avoids against people that are just less skilled than you to min/max your win chances.
There’s no need for that. The matchmaker can always still put the avoided player on the opposing team. It really only affects queue times when a TON of people avoid that player as the matchmaker has no trouble finding them fair opponents, but a lot of trouble finding them teammates.
Yes but there are so many players at most SR levels that avoiding 1-2 is statistically unlikely to affect anything for either player. And the ranks where it matters, it can be abused easily.
Its a win for toxic people, sure. You’re basically inflicting a harsher punishment on yourself than the offender.
And there’s the kicker. Punishment.
See, you people imagine the avoid system to be some sort of workaround the report system. But it’s not meant to be a punishment. It’s simply meant to make sure that the one toxic player that ruined your previous game does not ruin the next. You are the one demanding the game acquiesce to you, so you should take the responsibility of longer queue times. You shouldn’t be looking at it as a punishment at all, but rather taking a little extra time to make the game more palatable to your demanding tastes.
Sure, 1 or 2 salty people will avoid you once in awhile because “you didn’t do your job REE”. But how often do you think that really happens?
…like I said, I do not consider this community to be a mature or friendly one. I think this will be abused just like the report function is abused. Community policing tools are a bit paradoxical - if your community is mature enough to handle self-report and self-avoiding, it wouldn’t need these systems to begin with.
With the avoid teammate feature, you don’t have to wait for the toxic person to get in the game and can just que without worrying about them.
And for the privilege of having the matchmaking system literally bend itself over backwards to please you, you think waiting a little longer to get into the game is too much to ask?
That doesn’t explain nor source the sort of back-end stuff that would be involved. The matchmaker has to make decisions on how to prioritize and we simply don’t know how it handles two people that avoid each other. Especially if either of them have other avoids deployed by or against themselves.
You can absolutely look at it that way. The only issue I have is that the avoided player is not making any demands of the game, nor intentionally trying to lengthen anyone else’s queue time.
Your way of looking at it definitely makes sense if you look at the Avoid Teammate option as a punishment. But that just doesn’t sit right with me.
We don’t live in the 80’s. Computers do trillions of calculations per second. You honestly think it does it one at a time? Come on now.
For sake of simplifcation say we had 24 people. All have the exact same MMR and each player joined que in the exact order of their numbers.
MM is going to put people on teams on first come first serve basis.
But that doesn’t mean it needs to do it 1 at a time.
If MM knows there are 24 ppl in que it knows already it needs to make 4 teams. So T1 - T4 is already made. Now it populates the teams in first come order.
P1 blocked P2.
So MM knows P1 and P2 cna’t be on same Team
But P2 was 2nd in que. So it can simply move P2 to T2
Then P3 blocks P1 and P2 so MM knows it can’t be on T1 or T2 so it puts it in T3
P4 has no one blocking him, so He gets put into T1.
Etc.
In other words MM easily can make hundreds of games at one time if needed but will prioritize based on how long that person has been que and put them in the first available spot.
For example if P5 was blocked by p1,p2,p3,p4 and can’t be put on any team from T1 - T4, it will just make a T5 for him and populate his team after T1 - T4 are filled,