We have an issue here

[Acid]

Voobly should do another room for authomatic 1vs1 balanced games or balanced tg games as battlenet.

You just select the map you wanna play and then u start a game with another guy who u don't know who is him automaticly. And if the game is a TG then the system balances the teams by ratings.

If you are smurfing ( voobly should detect it by IP ) then if the difference between ur other nicks and ur smurf nick is so huge then you will not be able to play on this instant matches maker and you just could go to the regular lobby.

[Fayt]

I will draw a parallel from Yahoo pool to solve this problem.. what they do is for new players for first 20 games they display ratings as provisional.. and once they complete 20 games then the actual ratings show up.. Now i dont think this solves the issue at hand as much coz now people will simply kick provisional players out of the game.. new lobby sounds more viable but not sure if we can get people in those lobbies.. from what i have seen is its just not about ratings... in voobly a lot of lobbies are like minimum 100 games played... i dunno if this is always the case or not coz i play on gr more.. but well if you plan to grow the game you need to figure out a way to welcome new players for sure..

As you mention with yahoo games, this problem isn't just limited to voobly. I used to play euchre and spades a lot on yahoo and make a new nick when I get bored playing too high rates and it was always an issue playing with anyone that isn't provisional when you are provisional yourself otherwise you would just get kicked even if your stats are 19-0 just because of the word provisional. It was an issue in msn zone with spades too starting on a new nick you get kicked unless you host the room yourself. This seems to be the only solution to host a game yourself, advertising for beginners to play with you. Unfortunately there is not a huge pool of beginner players, and even all 1400/1500 players are scared to play with a 0 gamer because they might be smurf so you probably will have to play 1v1 to start off with even if you don't want to. The masking of rate idea seems like a potentially viable idea, but recorded games are available on your profile, and you wouldn't be able to make those up, so that kind of isn't possible. It's a really crappy situation.

[Acid]

Also the if you play with a new player ( 5 games or less ) you could loose just the 33% of the amount u are loosing atm but he will win the same as now. Example: if he wins 18 pts you will loose just 6pts vs him. So people will not be scared to play vs them because if they loose they will loose very little amount of points.
(this rule is just in case u loose vs a new player.. if u win vs him then u win 18 and he looses 18)

[CondoM]

As a fairly patient person I never had any problems getting started at Voobly but sure this problem does exist and probably goes some way to explaining why there's 600+ people looking for games and only 200 or so playing. I still think that the best way to solve this is random matchmaking, an interface where you choose 1v1-4v4 and then it automatically assigns you to a game based on your rating and number of games played.
As far as smurfs are concerned, I think they are bad and they bring the community down. If you want a new nickname and want the challenge of making a better win to loss ratio then that's great but there should be an easy way to identify who the player really is. Just my two cents.

This is one of the things that I loved about aom. You could always get a game almost instantly. It wasn't always competitive, but it's a lot more fun than waiting around for an hour.

So how long zero-gamers wait for game?

Probably not long, some noob basher will probably spot the opportunity of some free points fast enough.

Guilty as charged

[Marathon]

Ok, I am not a good AOK player. I am a zero gamer. But I am 2700 in another online game. I know both sides pretty well.

From my experience in that other game, I totally dislike playing with less than 2000 players. The game is not fun at all. I don't even have to try to win, and the opponent isn't gaining anything really. He feels like he's playing with a robot, unable to understand a thing, unable to digest the tricks that I generously demonstrate. In the end, he usually gets sick of losing and leaves (silently or in a rain of insults) or in some rare cases he admires my game, but he doesn't offer anything to me. Wasted time for both in all cases.
Sometimes I get sick by 2200-2300 too. They are clearly inferior and lose 10-20 games in a row. They show me no new tricks. But sometimes they play well. I try to search for +/- 500, and this because of my extreme rating; otherwise I would stick with the +/- 200 general rule. I have spotted some talents there, I played with them lots of games trying to help them reach my level (I lost a couple hundreds points in the process). In some cases this actually happened and it is a great feeling.

In that game, I want to play hard matches, I want to learn new things, to struggle to win, I want to lose by a better player. I pay back with my best effort for a fun and impressive game and I call it a fair deal. What has a really weak player to offer me? Apart from a sick satisfaction for another crushing and humiliating victory...

So, if I join a pro AOK room it will be wasted time for me. I will lose very fast and I won't understand what the other guy did to me. I would see that my boars were gone, I could assume that he stole them, I would be prepared to defend against it next time, but no question for doing this to HIM next game. It is not fun, so I totally understand a 2k who sees my profile and kicks me out.

What I don't understand is the insults. "gtf outta here u noob" and such slang expressions should be extinct. A zero gamer might turn his back to the community forever because of ONE such incident. And he has every right to act like this.
This is not army, nor a fraternity. There is no need for tests and insulting and prejudice. The everyday slang of this community is like a foreign language to newcomers. If I were a dictator, I would ban the use of the word "noob". A 30 or 40 years old newcomer won't tolerate it. A 15 years old kid shouldn't tolerate it either. Why should he? Did your parents tell you to tolerate insults?

Rating is just a quick way to find suitable opponents. You search for +/- 200 around your rating and you get a good game, that's how it works. There are some newcomers who try to find players 600 points higher. Sorry, but this won't work. There sould be some FAQ in every site with rating games. This FAQ should explain how rating works, what is its purpose, and how a new player should use it to his fun. If a 2200 player suddenly loses 200 points to smurfs, then he will get those points, no doubt. And then he suddenly IS a smurf himself. And the other players avoid him, in order to protect their rating, or else THEY will be treated as smurfs. So, a good player avoids smurfs AND smurf victims.
Smurfs are just sick people. It is ok to have a smurf nick for when you play from work, for example, but I know people with 50-100 such nicks. It is sick, these people are highly competitive, they only want to see their score rise, they are addicted to score elevation. They hate stability.

So a 2k player has 2 good reasons to avoid zerogamers:
- No fun playing with someone with too low or too high skill level.
- Protect the rating in order to keep playing with the ordinary opponents.

Once again, no need to be rude. A new player might be a smurf, but you have to treat him like a genuine newcomer.
"I play with people around my rating, for fun games. You should search with players around your rating. Once your rating becomes higher I will play you even if you are 200 points lower "
Yeah, after the 100th time it gets tiring, but this is the right thing to do. No need for stuff.

[BangOut]

for new players GR>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>Voobly hands down.

[MasterBarber]

i tried go to GP, but cant find aoc on the list . any help?

[Carlos Ferdinand]

Id recommend voobly for new players as well, they can have much more balanced games and improve their level of play. Playing in voobly you are likely to improve more than twice faster of what you would have if you played in GR.

[radicalyeah]

I just got back in to AOC about 2 weeks ago after an over 10 year hiatus. I used to play every second I had to spare, at the time I was 1 so I had a lot of seconds, especially in the summer. I started out in non rated and usually played team games, then I gradually met some people, joined a clan, got some training, and start to play rated. It was an easy transition, but I think the reason was that the non rated games were much easier to find. I think there were generally like 2500-3500 gamers online with the zone (it seems like there were 4-6 RM rooms and 2 of them were always close to 1000/1000 and you had to keep clicking it over and over, remember that?)

Anyway my point is, there were just simply more gamers back then which meant many more noobs to play with. Also noob is a stupid term in AOC now because all it means is less than 1650 from what I can see lol. There are plenty of people who host games saying 1v1 noob with a sub 1600 rating and over 2000 games played, and sometimes you see ultra noob in the title as well.

The sites need to get much better forums so that new players can get the hang of it quickly. Also people need to stop being dicks to true noobs, imagine if you had only played 20-30 games against moderate PC's and then you come online and everone is playing 1v1 arabia. You see 1 archer in feudal and you would shit yourself.

Maybe voobly should make a separate special for new players, and actually advertise it to get it going.

I think the will is there to keep the AOC community alive, back when I played you didnt have every expert posting all of their recordings for the whole community to see and get better.

by the way I think GR sucks.

[thepitzaboy]

Id recommend voobly for new players as well, they can have much more balanced games and improve their level of play.

Carlos 2 things:

1. Is this in reference to 1 vs 1 game or team games?

Playing in voobly you are likely to improve more than twice faster of what you would have if you played in GR.

2. The concern is for new comers(most of them don't wanna play 1 vs 1) for them to have a continued interest in the game they need to have few games.. where they improve faster is secondary..

Wish I had access to voobly database to prove that most new comers dont play 1 vs 1 and prefer TG's.. sql will be like

Select count(*),[game type] from allgames where rating < 1620 and [games played] <10
group by [game type]
order by 1 desc