The -500 +500 Rating Range Is Already Getting Very Annoying, Can We Please Change It?

How long are you waiting for 3 check games? What is your rating range?

I can tell you're not knowledgeable about what the phrase means, so I'll just post the wiki link for you..

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_can%27t_have_your_cake_and_eat_it

I also don't think anyone is copying chess.com here. This was something that was wanted for other reasons. No one said we were copying chess.com, so...

1. I didn't point out that nobody would get games if they only seek games against higher-rated opponents. That wasn't what I said. Was people doing this a problem that motivated the UI change?
2. If it didn't motivate the UI change, what did?
2. What you call a "preference issue" is concrete for me and many others, because we can no longer get the games we want. How is this not "concrete"?

You pointed out that if anyone seeked the same way you wished, no one would get a game.

You can still seek only higher rated opponents.

The option to ONLY seek 'MUCH' higher rated opponents is not coming back.

If things are actually broken in this current state, we need to find the issues to fix them.

Okay, I guess an explanation won't be forthcoming. But you say we can seek only higher-rated opponents... how? It looks like we can only specify so many points below our rating, and so many points above our rating. What am I missing?

EDIT: never mind... I wanted at least 100 points above, that's what matters to me.

@Sazed

Firstly, one thing badly needed to clarify: are you speaking on your own, or on behalf of Lichess staff?

You have posted no proof that people wanting to play predominantly much higher rated opponents are more numerous than these wanting to play predominantly much lower rated opponents. Actually, I think that these two groups satisfied each other's needs quite well until someone decided to intervene.

I am the most vocal critic of these changes and I played far more games against people <-500 than against people >500. Of course, this is only an anecdotal proof, but on the other hand your comments along the line "you want to have a cake and each it too" are plain argumentum ad personam.

These changes restricted our free choice, giving nothing in return. Only a profoundly sovietized person could like them.

#AbC

I have no idea who I'm speaking on behalf of at this point.

1. I didn't state anything about numbers.

2. I'm here to figure out what is actually broken. There are technical complaints among the group of people just missing that they don't have the ability to only seek people rated much higher.

3. Yes, I'm a profoundly sovietized citizen.

@Sazed

"You didn't state anything about numbers", but you claim that most people wanted to play only much higher-rated opponents. Either you have numbers to prove it, or you are speculating without basis in public (in other words, simply lying).

If you are here "to figure out what is actually broken", I can only copy a post I made about it earlier, because apparently you didn't notice it.

Toadofsky, I explained the most important reasons why I believe these changes to be wrong in #9, probably rather harshly, but it was out of frustration that the community feedback had been apparently ignored. Now I'll try to reword them possibly cleanly and calmly:

1) Basically what Marinkatomb said in #65. The very idea behind creating a custom challenge is that you can choose to play, for example, people 100-200 points upwards from you (to learn from the better opponents) or people 100-200 points below you (to practise beating them consistently), or even people 500 and more points below you (to give them a rare experience, possibly an incentive to study chess harder). I saw that there are some concerns about it giving a possibility of rating manipulation, but as long as the rating system is mathematically sound (and Glicko2 is generally presumed to be), it shouldn't happen.

2) Limiting the opponents to 500 points relative from you, on either side, is very bad on itself, because:

2a) It removes the thrill that, theoretically, your challenge could be picked up in the lobby by an elite GM. Even if it is extremely improbable, for me such a possibility was one of the greatest flavours of Lichess. And at least one of the disputants contesting these changes claimed that it actually happened to him.

2b) If you are a very strong player in a rare variant (for example KoTH or three checks), you can wait for very long until you meet in the lobby someone less than 500 points away from you.

PROPOSED SOLUTION: a slider relative to your rating isn't a bad thing on itself. In order to address the aforementioned problems, I would suggest to change it in two ways:

1) Add position "Infinity" behind 500 on each side of the slider.

2) Make it possible to move both handles of the slider through 0 position (your rating) to the other side, so that you could set the range (for example) -400 to -50 or +100 to infinity.

Alternatively, another good solution was proposed by GnocchiPup in #43, point 3.

Do you think that there is any chance that all these problems could be addressed as suggested (or otherwise)?

Thank you in advance.

#AbC

Ok, I'm done with this thread, if anyone has technical issues with the current system, you're free to PM me or come to the Lichess discord and we can discuss them there.

@Sazed I feel pity for you if you, as a moderator, were actually assigned to come here in order to look for "technical issues", but I cannot allow my pity to overshadow the important case I'm arguing for.

All right, be done with this topic, run away when you have no counterarguments.

It is not about "technical issues" and you know it pretty well. There are no more "custom challenges", the name is retained but misleading, as they aren't truly "custom" anymore.

The community morally (but not legally, alas) deserves to have their say when so important changes are implemented in the code. Nearly everybody speaking in the forum was against them and now you come here, as a moderator, and say that you will ignore all the users' feedback because you can. You even dare to refuse to share any proof that something was actually working wrong before the changes. You devastate our experience in an authoritarian manner, because you know that you will never have to take responsibility for it, laughing us right in the faces. You show that you, along with the rest of Lichess staff, have the opinion of the community well below your sigmoid bowel.

May Caissa have her vengeance upon you and your collaborators for destroying the greatest chess website in history.

#AbC

> "Nearly everybody speaking in the forum was against them"

I saw a couple of complaint threads in the past 10 pages of posts on this forum, most were not about the rating range change. It seems to be a small vocal minority who hate the change. Of course the people happy or indifferent to it would have little incentive to post on the forum about the change.