Would you rather?..
IronHorse
Developer, QA Manager, Technical Support & contributor Join Date: 2010-05-08 Member: 71669Members, Super Administrators, Forum Admins, Forum Moderators, NS2 Developer, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Subnautica Playtester, Subnautica PT Lead, Pistachionauts
Developer, QA Manager, Technical Support & contributor Join Date: 2010-05-08 Member: 71669Members, Super Administrators, Forum Admins, Forum Moderators, NS2 Developer, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Subnautica Playtester, Subnautica PT Lead, Pistachionauts
*DISCLAIMER*: This is an unofficial poll, it has nothing to do with UWE or existing plans. I am doing this on my own accord.
It's impossible to predict WAIT TIMES with any of these options, so try to take that into account when deciding your choice.
Just out of curiosity and for the sake of discussion... would you rather :
It's impossible to predict WAIT TIMES with any of these options, so try to take that into account when deciding your choice.
Just out of curiosity and for the sake of discussion... would you rather :
Comments
Also, there are certain servers with extra mods that I wouldn't join, so the whitelist has to be less lenient. I don't think there are performance issues now but that would be a concern as well.
When Joining Full Servers:
When attempting to join a full server, I should be added to a position-sorted queue for that server. I want to see my position in the queue, and I want to see that position count down as players join the server or leave the queue.
While waiting to join, I should be able to do virtually anything else: spectate another server, join a non-ranked arcade game (e.g. combat), browse the internet via steam, etc. I should not be removed from the queue while doing these things.
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When Spectating:
I should be able to join a server's spectator view directly via the server browser. If I've already joined the server and am currently taking up a player slot instead, I should be able to convert my player slot into a spectator slot by joining the "Spectator" team via the ready room option, or a keybind. Within the in-game world of the ready room, the holographic text for the "spectate" option should be colored red (so that it feels like an 'exit') and include additional text informing me that I will have to re-queue for a player slot after becoming a spectator. This should be a one-way ticket; I should not be able to spam F4 to grab the first available player slot once I become a spectator.
However, I should be able to rejoin the player slot queue directly via the spectator view. Upon doing so, I would be given my position in the queue, just as I would if I attempted to join via the server browser.
Spectators should not be able to communicate with the player population unless designated by the server operator.
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Thunderdome / Lobbies:
My understanding is that the system is going to be an in-game gather/pug lobby where you can designate your desired playercount and skill range, privacy level (e.g. public or invite only), and then spin up two rounds after everyone is present. One recommendation: allow these games to be spectated by the public. Another recommendation: do the following -
Public 'Seeding Availability' Flag:
Give me a profile checkbox which I can check to indicate my availability for seeding. You can do whatever you want with the population of users who flag themselves in this fashion. For example: send them quickjoin notifications to help populate high performing servers when adequate numbers are reached. In addition, this flag should be used to help populate public Thunderdome / lobby games. In this latter case, only send the notifications to players matching the lobby requirements (e.g. if there's a skill minimum, ensure that the notification only goes to players above that threshold).
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Quickplay:
Most new players use quickplay. Most older players do not. To improve quickplay, I recommend the addition of a 'Bridge' checkbox to the Quickplay option. With this option checked, quickplay would limit its consideration of available servers to servers flagged as being a part of the 'Bridge' system.
Advantages of Bridge:
- This would serve as an immediately accessible player retention mechanism because it would ensure that players are placed among competition appropriate to their skill level.
- You can't do matchmaking yet. There aren't enough players. You can do this. It's like the scalable, baby-version of matchmaking that's appropriate for NS2's current playerbase. This is a good alternative because it's the kind of feature that encourages developing players to stick around. When developing players stick around, you eventually collect enough of them to implement actual matchmaking. And since it also helps players on the high end, it'll keep more of the game's passionate superfans engaged. Why? Because they'll be getting hot injections of "this round didn't totally suck" more often than they currently are, thus feeding the addiction without having to rely on a third-party gather system. Bonus.
- Easy to deploy. Each 'tier' of the bridge is defined by a server configuration and rule set (e.g. playercount, accepted skill range, etc.). UWE or existing server operators can deploy servers matching these configurations, which gives UWE leeway in how they approach its implementation.
- The skill ranges (aka 'tiers') can be periodically adjusted to scale with NS2's current player count.
- Servers can be removed or added to the system as needed. You could run the system with a minimum of three servers at launch, or tens of servers in some hypothetical future where NS2 becomes very popular again.
- This system dovetails with the community server browser. These servers could be populated directly via the Bridge-Quickplay button, or via the server browser (because they're traditional servers in every other respect; the player joining from the browser would just need to be in the appropriate skill range).
- All new players want to feel a progression in their skills without being annihilated by opponents with vastly more experience and time invested. There needs to be enough player skill diversity to present a challenge and foster the growth of compensatory skills, but not so great a challenge that these skills are never realized or explored.
- For experienced players, there needs to be a quick and convenient in-game option to group with other players of moderate to high skill levels. This method should not require the manual filling of a lobby, and so the appropriation of the existing Quickplay feature is a great, convenient alternative. This is a casual-competitive game, and anything that helps those competitive players conveniently compete is going to indirectly benefit the remainder of the community.
My gripe w/ the first option is that it seems to be forcing me into playing with whatever 12 other people hit this button recently.
For 1 - if that's the only way to join a game, people will sign in, see 2 people looking for a game, and not play. I think this system could work in a game w/ a larger player base, something that we are not.
2 - What if I don't want to play on a server with an average tier rating of 1. Right now I actively get to decide "well I could join and play instantly on that server, but it has 1k lower average hive skill, so I'd rather wait"
C - Right now a player decides the environment they play in. There are communities formed on the servers that players actively return to w/ the intention of seeing the same nerds from yesterday. Not to mention things relating directly to the server itself. I don't play on TTO almost ever, even though it has high hive skill and I know a lot of the players. I don't want to play this game on 150 ping, so I don't play there.
C.2 - In relation to what Nin said, and considering the player base, I don't think there is any way to account for a matchmaking queue that functions in any way that could make players happy. Even if there were 10000 preferences you could check, and everyone was happy to do so, you're not going to get any of those preferences to matter. NS2 doesn't have the luxury of taking a matchmaking pool of 1000 players searching for a game and pairing them accordingly. Even from the description, it is painfully simple and wouldn't account for anything other than 12 players hitting a button.
late 4 work kthxbai
yes
honestly I am not sure if I would do any of those. Mainly because I imbalance most servers that hard that I am hesitant to join any public servers and ruining the experience for many players on that server. So I'd much rather join a private server with people I know are around my skill level which would either make it a matchmaking system (not enough players for that) or I organise with other high skill players and make out a time when to play with them (current)
I often see 14+ people "searching" in the browser, while also seeing 10+ spec slots filled over multiple servers... I can't tell you how frustrating this is to me.
I vote this. It sums up all the bad parts of the current and old systems while offering real solutions
Getting a notification won't solve anything. By the time you react, the slot will be taken already.
As for the other options, the playerbase is too small for those systems to be effective + most of the time I want to play on a specific server or/and with specific players, so getting a way to play on a random server is useless, I can do that myself through the Menu.
The one where Tishka Dront can open his 8v8 servers, since he is probably the most successful server operator to run 8v8.
- Queue for as many servers as you like simultaneously, with the default being "any." You can do anything at all while this is occurring, spectating, seeding, reading twitter, whatever.
- If there are ever 12 people in the "any" queue that are close enough to share a server, they get immediately dumped into a server, preferably one that is already slightly populated and with ping near them.
As a simpler to implement alternative:
- Every 10 minutes, pop up a message for all spectators that lists a server with decent ping that is attempting to seed and needs players. 1 click to join. Menu option to opt out.
These would only be valid if servers were identical and a commodity, but everyone knows this is not the case. These are community run servers for fun and sometimes profit. Servers can have bad ping, bad performance, bad mods, and bad administrators. Some even have pop up ads, some had smaller hitboxes for paying members, and in the past one even had a bitcoin miner.
In your system, what happens when 1 of those people are banned/gagged on the server the system chose? What if the server is running some weird map with a giant wall that pops up in nanogrid? Or a troll map where it's impossible for one side to win? All these variables make it impossible for such a system to be satisfactory in a world of community servers.
This objection would apply to any system that can choose a server for players by itself, but that's why the server whitelist exists. The same requirements that quick play uses would apply here.
In the queue system I described, a player worried about playing on a server that they intensely dislike would choose to exclude that from the list they are queuing on, or perhaps would blacklist it in their client in some other way.
^^ Basically this.. I want the current system improved with a better queue that lets you join another server to play and/or seed without leaving the queue.
So if I hop on and see the following
Server A - 18/18
Server B - 3/18
I want to be able to queue to server A and hop on server B to play/seed while I wait.
If a slot opens up before the server I'm on hits 6v6 it automatically takes me there.
On the flip side if the server I'm on hits 6v6 it should automatically remove me from the queue.
I basically do this manually with the current system. Hop onto an empty server to seed and every minute or so I check the browser for open slots. - But I think that having the ability to queue while being in a different server seeding would encourage more people to seed while waiting for that slot instead of just sitting in spectate.
I will add that the last thing in the world I'd ever want is to be forced to use quick play/matchmaking type features. My biggest fear is that NS2 devs will make the horrible decision to drop the server browser in a future update
The server browser is literally the only reason I've played this for 4500+ hours while not even touching any of the other popular fps games out there.
If a game doesn't have a server browser so I can manually choose the server I join, then I just consider it unplayable and won't even touch it.
Edited for clarification.
But then you're basically not automating anything. Now players need to discover for themselves if a server is acceptable to play on? No thanks, I want the algorithm or rules of the system to figure that out. I just want to play the game, not do chores.
Again, that's the purpose of the whitelist. The rest of it is just to accommodate our apparently extremely neurotic player base.
There are the roughly 60% new players and or old returning players who play who primarly use quickplay, but they don't stick around very long anyways. Most play less than 10 hours of gameplay, and almost all of them quit before 20 hours of gameplay.
Oh that's a good one!
That said, I like this idea.
Well if people are already on the server, it's not empty, is it?
Find my regular server in the server browser, if there are slots join it, if there are no slots wait in the server browser queue until a slot is free.
There is a reason why im regular there, and it's mostly because of the other regular players. I dont just play for the sake of the game, but also because of the community that gathers on that server.
Also i would like to keep the server browser option open so I can join some of my favorite servers.
Wouldn't it be better if the server could be on combat during seeding then switch over to normal NS2 once you get enough players?
I personally think pre game should be modeled after sentinel mode... There used to be a server set up sort of like that (Tactical freedom?) and it was always easy and quick to seed.
During pre game - everyone on marine vs hordes of alien bots
Once you hit 12 players it shuffled everyone and reset automatically.