A welcome to new players?

[knorke]

There, I fixed it.

Code: Select all

function gadget:GameStart()
    local counter = 0
    for teamID, allyID in pairs(spawnTeams) do
    counter=counter+1
    local startX, startZ =Game.mapSizeX/2, Game.mapSizeZ/2
    if counter < 10 then
        startX, _, startZ = Spring.GetTeamStartPosition(teamID)             
    end
    SpawnTeamStartUnit(teamID, allyID, startX, startZ)
    end
end

[smoth]

0) Smoth and luckywaldo7, I really dont understand why you are trying so hard to demotivate changes?
1) are you mainly playing BA?
2) do you discuss with BA players to know what they think about the situation?
3) what are your goals and motivation in this discussion?
4) explain why the way autohosts are moderated now is the best way? And why they shouldn't change?

Sup.

0) of the two of us marci I am the biggest proponent of changes.

1) I don't have to. Saying you play more BA than me and are thus more qualified to make observations about the community is silly. Almost like you don't want a conversation just yes to whatever you say.

2) all the time.

3) what are yours? what is anyones, you are not owed this answer.

4) what moderation? Best way, because in life there is always a best way and things are not grey. Why shouldn't they change, I don't know I wrote a whole thread on it, you are too lazy too look it up and too filled with self-entitlement(question 3) for me to want to give you a link.


Dan: except these discussions never go anywhere all sides state opinions no one budges and the people who can do the work(like myself) find the constant infighting and dickwagging demotivating

[luckywaldo7]

Not to mention, this isn't about BA at all, this is about autohosts, and what happens has the potential to affect every game that uses autohosts, namely, all of them.

If this was about game-side lua to limit to 10 commanders it would be very different.

[knorke]

game-side player limit is possible to make.
limiting the autohosts is appearently not possible because that has failed since 2+ years. Thus it is the only way.
(my patch also encourages expanding for more pro and less porc )

[Johannes]

game-side player limit is possible to make.
limiting the autohosts is appearently not possible because that has failed since 2+ years. Thus it is the only way.
(my patch also encourages expanding for more pro and less porc )

But as you said earlier it's moot when anyone can make a version without that game-side limit.

How is limiting autohosts not possible, just because the lobby moderation has not wanted to moderate the lobby in the past doesn't mean they cannot. Limiting autohosts has never failed yet because it's never been done.

[knorke]

How is limiting autohosts not possible

1) autohosts owners simply do not do it (see eg this thread - only 2 posts by an AH owner. He just made another host "no-DSD" host, totally ignoring the actual problem)
2) server admins think it is not their job to controll what people are playing (which is true imo)

Limiting autohosts has never failed yet because it's never been done.

It has failed to get the attention of AH owners and to have them agree on a playerlimit.
You can make threads all you want and beg admins to do something, but it will not happen. It did not happen in the last years.

But as you said earlier it's moot when anyone can make a version without that game-side limit.

"Cracking" the game would be easy. There could be a comment in the Lua to please not tinker with it.
Maybe there is hope that people wait a month or so to see how it turns out?
If it still happens, that proves there is somebody who not care about anything but having his autohost filled with as many players as possible for epenis.
If the "cracked" version gets popular among players, that would show MAXIMUMBADSD is what players want and that there is no salvation for BA.
At least it would provide new energy to baww threads.

[gonpost]

Not to mention, this isn't about BA at all, this is about autohosts, and what happens has the potential to affect every game that uses autohosts, namely, all of them.

If this was about game-side lua to limit to 10 commanders it would be very different.

I think that's a very good point. Autohost limitations would apply to other games. It would have to be done game-side.


As a quick note (directed at everyone in this thread): In any proper discussion, people want to come to conclusions eventually about some problem. The...mistake, that most of you seem to be making here is that you start with your conclusions and then trying to backtrack and get other people to agree with you with insults and unclear language. This has a tendency to offend people's egos, which rouses up their emotions, and that puts people off of discussion at all. Obviously progress is much harder when this happens.

So if you want to propose some conclusion, you need to hint at what it might be first, develop it, support it, and then finally state it very explicitly. It's like writing an essay. You also need to consider your audience, and do your best not to offend them. It's impossible to offend me and I'm more reasonable than virtually anyone I've ever met in my life, but yet I myself am careful to always take their feelings and egos into consideration when I speak with them. After all, if I want something, I have to play the game. So if you are kind and goal-oriented, discussion can be very fruitful.

How is limiting autohosts not possible

1) autohosts owners simply do not do it (see eg this thread - only 2 posts by an AH owner. He just made another host "no-DSD" host, totally ignoring the actual problem)
2) server admins think it is not their job to controll what people are playing (which is true imo)

Limiting autohosts has never failed yet because it's never been done.

It has failed to get the attention of AH owners and to have them agree on a playerlimit.
You can make threads all you want and beg admins to do something, but it will not happen. It did not happen in the last years.

I have to agree with your points. For better or worse, no one is going to control the autohosts in any particular way besides how they want to. Furthermore, admins don't control what players play. I definitely agree.

I never asked that. Read again please.

I wasn't talking about your proposal, I was talking about dansan's.

Your proposal is along the same lines though...

Maybe player count is declining because there is no BA website, no publicity, no installer, and newbies have a horrible first experience. It's natural for old players to eventually get tired and move on, and to an extent there is nothing you can do about it. If you have fewer players coming in than you have leaving then you will have net loss of players.

Good points. A BA website would help a lot seeing as BA is a game and spring is the engine. Ease of installation is definitely a small problem, though with lobbies like TASclient everything is automatically downloaded anyway now. And newbies do have a poor first experience, which the whole autohost control thing was geared towards solving. Now that we know we can't control the autohosts, clearly we must do something else to achieve the desired effect.

So moral of the story is that changes will have to come game-side (from BA itself).

[CarRepairer]

Why don't like-minded people gather together and host a separate lobby server where they can moderate the autohosts any way they wish?

[gonpost]

Why don't like-minded people gather together and host a separate lobby server where they can moderate the autohosts any way they wish?

And that would be the other option. I thought about saying that, but then I thought to myself "Is that really realistic enough to even think about saying?" Is that even what we really want to do? I'm still not sure, but it's definitely an option. I think it merits discussion because our other option is game-side BA changes it would seem. Though even the details of those changes would still have to be hammered out if they took place.

[Andrej]

There is a clean limiting upgrade path possible within current unwritten legislation that will allow to achieve BADSD autohost regulation without need of special-casing rules to avoid impacting other games' autohosts (Seems ZeroK are able to host huge games with no problem):

Historically the current mainline *A mod (So AA, and now BA) have a very compex set of rules on forks or modified variants dictated by the various maintainer: Basically you can't name or advertise your mod in a way to be confused as the official version.
In other words moderator enforced custom restrictions !!

So instead of complaining to the poor admins, PM spam the BA devs (And hopefully get report for harrass since utility of player number restriction idea is questionable..) until they give in and add a custom restriction rule forbidding to change the xx player limit lua script.

Mods might be still too lazy to enforce it but if you present your case in the right way, (For autohosts outside the US you can accuse their owners of attempted intent of disrespecting the US foreign relations policy by not supporting the upcoming invasion of Iran) banning those autohost should coincide with the particular mod special interest area thus smoothing the proceedings.

Why don't like-minded people gather together and host a separate lobby server where they can moderate the autohosts any way they wish?

I don't see how moving to a separate [lobby server] can contribute to the American cause, in the catastrophic scenario it could shift part of playerbase outside Allied-nation sphere of control?

[marciolino]

I think that's a very good point. Autohost limitations would apply to other games. It would have to be done game-side.

Is it a real technical limitation? I mean, is it really hard to apply different rules to different games on the server?
I thought we were talking all the time about changing BA-autohost rules and not all autohost rules.

[Andrej]

I think that's a very good point. Autohost limitations would apply to other games. It would have to be done game-side.

Is it a real technical limitation? I mean, is it really hard to apply different rules to different games on the server?
I thought we were talking all the time about changing BA-autohost rules and not all autohost rules.

But there is no point [per-mod rules], they are a technical solution and can't easily contribute to a agenda.
On other side my proposal enables enforcement on a per-autohost-owner-nationality rule level, and INHERENTLY causes no problems for other games.
'BA-autohost rules' is also weakened by people forking / making mutators where those are explicitly covered by the existing custom restriction mechanism.

http://springrts.com/phpbb/viewtopic.ph ... 45#p434845

All present moderators and all new general moderators will be both lobby and forum moderators, and will be expected to contribute to the management of both halves of the community.

Also a good opportunity to post this.
I think there was concerns about missing lobby mods. But since all new moderators "will be both lobby and forum moderators" it is the perfect time
to promote all united states personnel.

[dansan]

Wow - this is great! Not even the moderators that participated in this thread cared to say or didn't know (?) that THEY actually DO have the power to change things.

It's OK if you don't want to moderate autohosts, but if the question arises who could, and the ones that (should) know don't say -> I consider this serious power abuse (knowledge == power, withholding knowledge about power == corruption)!

EDIT: In case you guys simply were clueless - pls help me in the next days I want to draw an organigram about springrts infra/orga - this is not the 1st time I'm really annoyed of this "organization" and its lack of transparency.

[knorke]

Wow - this is great! Not even the moderators that participated in this thread cared to say or didn't know (?) that THEY actually DO have the power to change things.

<[RoX]knorke> !KICK #main [TERA]DSDHost1
<ChanServ> #main: You do not have permission to kick users from the channel
I can not even change the topic of #main
NOT ENOUGH MANA CONSUME MORE PORTIONS.
(not that I want power to ban/kick players or hosts: sometimes players already pm me because some ally reclaimed their nubcannon <- yes of course i will watch your 45 minute long dsd replay)

pls help me in the next days I want to draw an organigram about springrts infra/orga

tada.

Why don't like-minded people gather together and host a separate lobby server where they can moderate the autohosts any way they wish?

And that would be the other option. I thought about saying that, but then I thought to myself "Is that really realistic enough to even think about saying?" Is that even what we really want to do?

"no" to both questions.

[Pako]

This discussion is just bullshit, even gonpost ejects full of bullshit. I can only blame the shitty moderators keep closing these threads, it would be a lot better to keep one retard theard where people can paw with each other than every week a new one.

Good points. A BA website would help a lot seeing as BA is a game and spring is the engine.

So moral of the story is that changes will have to come game-side (from BA itself).

Damn hilarious, after 5 pages of shit you manage to still repeat the obvious things. ANYONE can make a BA fansite and it would be popular because there is yet none.

Actually almost anyone could fix any of the 100 little things currently badly broken in BA but most people are too lazy or not willing to shove into the shit pile what BA management is.

Edit:
-I'm not against discussion but please think before posting any bullshit
-this is an opensource commuinty so there is no political authority to decide things, the ones who actually do the things has the ultimate power to do it how they want, and they sometimes look into these threads

[the above]

The "technical" solution to forcibly limit # of commanders is much worse than to moderate BA autohosts a bit.

Because as was said, moderating autohosts still leaves people the freedom to host what they want if they host it themselves, or with relayhost. But then you'd always have someone actively moderating the game which I think is quite necessary for a big game, in order to cut down the waiting time between games and to get rid of unwanted people quickly.
Whereas making it hardcoded in BA to have a straight player limit, would totally disallow big games.

Probably it should be BA developers (whoever that entails currently) to decide who is allowed to host what kind of autohost, and not the lobby moderation directly. Then any other game devteam could also start making autohosting their game require being whitelisted too, if they so desire.
Of course that needs that firstly the BA team wants to do that, and also that lobby admins agree.

[luckywaldo7]

The "technical" solution to forcibly limit # of commanders is much worse than to moderate BA autohosts a bit.

Because as was said, moderating autohosts still leaves people the freedom to host what they want if they host it themselves, or with relayhost. But then you'd always have someone actively moderating the game which I think is quite necessary for a big game, in order to cut down the waiting time between games and to get rid of unwanted people quickly.
Whereas making it hardcoded in BA to have a straight player limit, would totally disallow big games.

Is it the lack of moderation and long waiting times that make people dislike large games? I get the impression it is the lack of starting spots, lack of metal, and decreased framerate, pretty much all game-side problems.

Consider that from a game-side commander limiting solution, you could still have 12 players on a team. The 5 best (or random or by vote or whatever) players could be given commanders and then share the units they make out to commander-less teammates for microing. Actually that would make for a cool mix of teamwork, to have some players manage the economic side and some manage the offensive side.

Then you have the best of large-team games (the players like less individual pressure), with appropriate numbers of commanders and factories for the map size.

[knorke]

I can only blame the shitty moderators keep closing these threads, it would be a lot better to keep one retard theard where people can paw with each other than every week a new one.

I agree. But when you close one thread because another is already open, people go "omgomg closed thread."
In future maybe just move all those threads to BA subforum...

The "technical" solution to forcibly limit # of commanders is much worse than to moderate BA autohosts a bit.

Moderating BA autohost failed since forever.
Nobody seems to like 12v12 player games, still they are played.
It is a group dynamic, like panicked people who trample each other to death.
You can try to calm a crowed down (=moderate) but at some point it will not work. Nobody wants to get pushed down the stairs (or be the one who pushes) but it still happens.
So the only way to is to not let everyone into the Justin Bieber concert at the same time. (=limit player/commander numbers per game)
And before somebody says "but sooooooooometimes I want to play 12v12": there was enough time to play that..

luckywaldo7:
yes, that is what I thought too.
Not sure though if you can arrange player teams like that ingame if they were not set up to share in lobby.
And I feel some players would just selfdestruct/troll all their teams units to get the "normal sized" games back.
(would need extra Lua to figure out what keeps issuing self-destruct every 10 seconds etc)

[KingRaptor]

Here's what I really want to know:

Why is it that ZK has 8v8 autohost games all day and doesn't die from it?

[the above]

Good starting point would be to just make upping !teamsize require a vote.


And yes, waiting times and trolls are not the only reasons to dislike big team games, but they are the things that could be fixed, to an extent at least, by having a good host.