I don't like goko, I don't like waiting between games, I don't like playing uneven opponents, and I don't like caring about my rating. I'm most comfortable playing against someone whom I know and respect, preferably a series of games, where you discuss the matches in between games and where you're going to have luck on both sides. I'm realizing more and more that a visible rating is inevitably bad for my play.
We have automatch, which is a huge improvement over just playing with whoever is in your lobby, but it's far from perfect. We have the
outpost thread, but noone is using it. We have the dominion league, which is amazing, but it's less than one game per day.
What I would love to have is a platform for players on f.ds to schedule series of games in advance, just like we do for the dominion league, but on a much broader scale. Ideally, this would replace as much of the conventional gaming (i.e. logging into goko and playing whoever is on) as possible. No league or any sort of rating involved.
If we're doing this, I imagine an online calender as the best item for scheduling, where you can mark your preferred time to play, and whenever two players choose an overlapping time spawn, the calender will ask both of them if they're fine with playing each other, and if they are it'll be a semi-obligatory date. Obviously, you could also change your entries, and we would expect players to be reasonable about it (don't spam, don't cancel dates on a regular basis.) Needless to say it should be straight-forward and simple to use. Sometimes you don't know when you'll have time, then you can still make a spontaneous post in the thread, and if noone is there you can still just go on goko and play with whoever is online. The details here are all open for discussion.
This is not that thread, this is just instead just asking to see how many of you would even be interested in something like this. If the majority is fine with using automatch/lobby systems, there is no point in doing it. If not, I would like to have a more professional approach than the outpost thread, to make it a platform that people are actually going to be using.
To summarize: these are the advantages that I see using a system as proposed:
-> More even games
-> Less waiting between games
-> More games in a row with the same opponent
-> Independence from goko pro-mode. You don't have to play every board anymore, you don't have to do full random, and you can resign more freely.
-> Less fuzzing over the vp counter, you can now do compromises
-> More games with people you know from f.ds
So... - who's interested?