Downtime after Season Finale

From my perspective few weeks before Season Finale is the most active time,
where you can dedicate some time and really scale up your game …
But then when the deadline hits … there is nothing else to do for the next 1-2 weeks,
and all the energy … competitive spirit … unfinished ideas comes to a death stop.
May be you can watch latest matches result for 1-2 days … but there is nothing to do about it really.

I know the transition period is technically needed for stabilizing the rankings,
but it should be possible to work around that, or create some other good activities, to keep people involved.

Some ideas from me, please share yours too:

  • Can the matchmaking be accelerated in the transition period?
    • tweaking the algorithm to do minimal wait time before making the next match.
    • temporary scaling the hardware or running in on a special dedicated server for 2-3 days.
    • reducing the number of matches, by clearing inactive players or really low performers.
    • may be reducing the number of competing algos for player to just one… but this is for another topic.
  • Adding some filler content
    • Start next season as soon as possible, even while some of the old matches are still playing, by using some of the ideas above.
    • Publishing new season config for beta testings. Even without active match making new season config is interesting enough to keep players busy and keep the interest for a week or so.
    • Some custom events or competition that can be run in isolated queue. For example a Team competition or a Show match of some sort can be fun, after the tension of the finals.
  • Tools and Discussions
    • May be a good moment to sharpen our tools, call help, share ideas…
    • And some good discussions

It seems like matches have temporarily stopped for the transition period. My rating’s been the same since yesterday

Could just be the lack of opponents though

The last matches my algos have were against the very bottom of the table, so maybe all possible matches have been played.

Edit: ratings changed from this morning, so matches are not quite over yet. (as of September 7).

I think next season, I am going to consider moving algos into a dedicated competition during the ‘transition period’ so there is no downtime on the site. This would also let rating reset be handled in a more elegant way. This would also probably restrict everyone to choosing a single algo, so i’m curious about peoples thoughts on that.

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I’m definitely ok with just choosing one algo up front. I don’t think the meta game of having multiple algos is that important.

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