Spring has less players

[AF]

It looks even worse if you filter out ingame battles and passworded hosts

[Carpenter]

What I see is a bunch of guys sitting in a big room, chatting and playing. This is the community playing BA. Banning specs and reducing max game size would kill that. And killing that is no guarantee of more 2 player games but it is killing the only thing BA does have going for it.

First off, nobody is asking for 1v1 games or something, it's about MORE team games, not just that one DSD crap day in and day out.

Secondly, BA community WAS very alive and pretty big 2 years back and the thing is, we didn't have this one big noob party, we had several other battles open or several other games running and nobody was complaining, remember? What we have now is only one same game running everyday and people are just too blind or ignorant to realize that we could get so much more out of BA.

So now please explain, how could it possibly harm BA if we killed that host in a way or another if the situation was so good few years back? Going back to max 16 players battles would only increase the amount of open battles/running games, not make players go away.

It's easy to figure out why it WOULDN'T kill BA community and the reason is that 2 years back = now complaining - today = there's nothing but complaining. And as we know, many have left already.

Reducing the number of empty autohosts seems like a good idea though. A game with one player in it just looks sad and lost amongst the wall of empty autohosts; not an invitation to a 1v1.

This however wouldn't help at all. It would almost look as if there were no other battles except that mass TERA host... Well, hosts.

[AF]

Who runs that autohost?

[AF]

Instead of trying to persuade eachother, go persuade the person who runs that autohost to change its config:

http://springrts.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=26946

That thread is for compiling who owns which autohost.

[momfreeek]

Going back to max 16 players battles would only increase the amount of open battles/running games, not make players go away.

Yeah, i don't see a problem with this. Its reducing specs that I thought was a particularly bad idea.. and reducing no. of players to less than 16 (this size being so ingrained).

Personally I think many things have changed and grown since 2 years ago and the real reasons for the decline in players and change in size of battles, etc are not so simple or easily reversed.

Reducing the number of empty autohosts seems like a good idea though. A game with one player in it just looks sad and lost amongst the wall of empty autohosts; not an invitation to a 1v1.

This however wouldn't help at all. It would almost look as if there were no other battles except that mass TERA host... Well, hosts.

IMO a whole page of empty battles looks far more barren than if most of them weren't there at all. 15 empty rooms + 3 used looks barren. 3 empty rooms + 3 used looks half full.

Ideally it coudl be arranged so there were always a few empty autohosts (as they fill, more open).

[Carpenter]

Going back to max 16 players battles would only increase the amount of open battles/running games, not make players go away.

Yeah, i don't see a problem with this. Its reducing specs that I thought was a particularly bad idea.. and reducing no. of players to less than 16 (this size being so ingrained).

I'm writing sleepy here but yes, I meant to say both; reduce spec limit and player limit.

[momfreeek]

Going back to max 16 players battles would only increase the amount of open battles/running games, not make players go away.

Yeah, i don't see a problem with this. Its reducing specs that I thought was a particularly bad idea.. and reducing no. of players to less than 16 (this size being so ingrained).

I'm writing sleepy here but yes, I meant to say both; reduce spec limit and player limit.

I understand that there's often a bunch of people speccing waiting to play.. but there's also often a bunch of people speccing cause they want to spec, chatting and discussing the game during and after.

[AF]

A word of warning:

New people don't know that the bots are bots, even when they have the name 'autohost'.

Back when I ran Cookiebot, I was pretty surprised by the number of PMs it got asking it to join AA/BA games. Even when I used my little UI window to respond through cookiebot and explain it was a bot, many people refused to believe me.

So it's likely these autohosts are getting told to close their battles and join another game so people have someone to play with ( as silly and futile as that is ).

[Columbus]

A word of warning:

New people don't know that the bots are bots, even when they have the name 'autohost'.

Back when I ran Cookiebot, I was pretty surprised by the number of PMs it got asking it to join AA/BA games. Even when I used my little UI window to respond through cookiebot and explain it was a bot, many people refused to believe me.

So it's likely these autohosts are getting told to close their battles and join another game so people have someone to play with ( as silly and futile as that is ).

Maybe the autohost should respond to this and send a random AI there

[AF]

I'm sure it has been done at some point, and its perfectly possible, but it isn't in force at the moment.

As far as I can tell, other than the relayhosts/springies, SPADS is the dominent autohost software?

[smoth]

It looks even worse if you filter out ingame battles and passworded hosts

and?
without passwords you get jackasses who join and don't have the map or mod..
without passwords you get people who join just to troll...

The whole dynamic of people being able to join without having the required content to play has really hurt the community more than people passwording their match.

etc..

if it makes people happy to password a match. fine. It troubles me because I see tons of new gundam players do it and I cannot help them but if people are playing that is all you lot should care about.

getting a password to join a game is often as simple as asking for it. considering how frequent griefing is though, I can see a reasonable person locking the match.

[momfreeek]

Didn't he just mean "counting the public games available" (so not counting private-passworded games or games underway)? I didn't see any argument against passwords.

Nothing against passwords or filtering them.. just that all the empty autohosts look even more barren.

[albator]

What I see is a bunch of guys sitting in a big room, chatting and playing. This is the community playing BA. Banning specs and reducing max game size would kill that. And killing that is no guarantee of more 2 player games but it is killing the only thing BA does have going for it.

First off, nobody is asking for 1v1 games or something, it's about MORE team games, not just that one DSD crap day in and day out.

Secondly, BA community WAS very alive and pretty big 2 years back and the thing is, we didn't have this one big noob party, we had several other battles open or several other games running and nobody was complaining, remember? What we have now is only one same game running everyday and people are just too blind or ignorant to realize that we could get so much more out of BA.

So now please explain, how could it possibly harm BA if we killed that host in a way or another if the situation was so good few years back? Going back to max 16 players battles would only increase the amount of open battles/running games, not make players go away.

It's easy to figure out why it WOULDN'T kill BA community and the reason is that 2 years back = now complaining - today = there's nothing but complaining. And as we know, many have left already.

Reducing the number of empty autohosts seems like a good idea though. A game with one player in it just looks sad and lost amongst the wall of empty autohosts; not an invitation to a 1v1.

This however wouldn't help at all. It would almost look as if there were no other battles except that mass TERA host... Well, hosts.

perfect sum up

Instead of trying to persuade eachother, go persuade the person who runs that autohost to change its config:

http://springrts.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=26946

That thread is for compiling who owns which autohost.

Pointless. Owner does not care, barely read forum and only want to be popular, that is why all complain has been done HERE, where they thought something could be done. Now poeple that have power have the choice to actaully do something and make it back like 2 years ago or let this situation continue hopping the fag/troll will fix themself.

Looks like a lot of poeple who were expecting an action WAIT TOO LONG: this situation has been running for months and MOST OF PLAYERS THAT STILL ENJOY BA BUT CANNOT PLAY IT HOW IT USE TO BE JUST LEFT because of that. (most of the one I had a chance to talk with)

Will it continue ? If nothing is done, there in no way it will fix themself: only the ones liking this kind of game will stay.

That is why I support ANY idea that would change that. Point is the ones that have the power to do it DOES NOT WANT to. And when idea are proposed (e.g. http://springrts.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=26812 :D) , most of the ones that have the power do something dont even gave their opinion showing how much they dont give a f.... about it

There are a lot of otherway to solve this problem using moderation only:
- impose 100% of maps design for at least 8 for host that are XvsX | X>= 10 for exemple
- force limit to 8v8 authost and host XvsX | X > 8 yourself
- http://springrts.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=26812 :p

etc...

The question is : whose the crime benefit of having all the players running away from BA ? If I dare I would say another mod....

[AF]

Smoth I was mentioning that if I put up a filter that removes ingame passworded and locked battles, it looks worse because there are 10-20 empty autohosts sitting there. ( aka I was talking about the present, not what would happen if we did X Y Z ). If anything my statement was in agreement/support.

Autohosts

I think lobby moderation is doing the usual "lets sit back until it all settles down so that we avoid the hassle even though most of the hassle and discussion is our fault for keeping out of it and not acting".

So far the general consensus is and has been:

• There are too many open, unused autohosts
  
  Within lobby moderator jurisdiction. This could be considered spam using the existing bot and lobby rules. The technology to avoid this exists and is already in use on some autohosts, so there're no excuses. Moderators should kick/ban accordingly as stated in the rules.
• BA Autohosts need lower limits on the number fo players allowed in, making giant 8x8 type games impossible unless a player hosts
  
  Outside lobby moderator jurisdiction
  This is up to the autohoster, and the chances of lobby moderators/admins intervening are tiny. The only way theyll step in is if the autohost owner uses lewd or innapropriate battle descriptions or usernames.
  
  It took a lot of effort to get moderators to moderate the public channel message ( private channels are private, its up to the channel owner to moderate them, and this meant the channel messages even though said channel messages were public, leading to html containing pictures of goatse and porn being strewn across the public AFLobby channel picker for weeks thanks to Moderator inaction ).
  
  Moderators will resist this on the grounds it is up to the community, and even when justified as within there jurisdiction, it normally takes a long time and a lot of persuasion before its acknowledged as the right thing to do.
  
  The only way the limits are going to be fixed is via very persuasive intervention by players and the BA maintainers

[knorke]

I think lobby moderation is doing the usual "lets sit back until it all settles down so that we avoid the hassle even though most of the hassle and discussion is our fault for keeping out of it and not acting".

I think it is even simpler: no active lobby moderators are left?
There are server admins but no moderators.

[PicassoCT]

no gagamels in smurfCity? so if you are good at gaming, but bad at socialising, you become a outcast, and join the desperado comunity that is spring. Hola, hombre, there is only place for one nob in this town.

[smoth]

The question is : whose the crime benefit of having all the players running away from BA ? If I dare I would say another mod....

because zk obviously had to engage in sabatoging ba to get players..

OR

because ZK has earned it's place and has given many people other than you a good gaming experience...

just saying... people like what you don't like.

[MidKnight]

The ZK team (especially Licho, Car, maackey, etc) put countless hours into getting players from outside the Spring community with initiatives like http://zero-k.info , PlanetWars, Zero-K Lobby -- the list goes on.

The reason ZK has the players it does is because the devs work incredibly hard to provide an infrastructure that makes ZK easy to get into. Trying to steal BA's playerbase has not and will never work.


More players is what will save BA. if you want more players, you're gonna have to work for it. ZK's laid some excellent groundwork -- why don't you guys take the initiative?

[bfc]

More players is what will save BA. if you want more players, you're gonna have to work for it. ZK's laid some excellent groundwork -- why don't you guys take the initiative?

As a BA player I acknowledge the incredible work of ZK developers. And I also think that there is no point opposing TA and BA, that world is big enough for both to exist.

I also quite agree with Albator. I see everyday in this forum that BA counts some good willing supporters that make propositions to improve (save?) it. What is kinda frustrating is that we come to this forum to propose things and we are welcomed with, at best, skepticism and we don't see any changes related to the propositions. From a newcomer point of view the decision/development processes are kinda blurry.

Maybe to help make the things clearer we should first answer these questions:
1/ who is at this time is actively involved in BA development?
2/ who among lobby/autohost developers/owners/admins is ready to make some efforts to help save BA?
3/ how can people with no specific knowledge of TA related technologies help?

These are not aggressive questions, its' just that from a BA player point of view I can't say if, like ZK, we have that very motivated group of people to promote the game.

[AF]

Maybe to help make the things clearer we should first answer these questions:
1/ who is at this time is actively involved in BA development?

Last I saw fat controller had dabbled in his great return, though the entirety of that episode is on the forums it would appear.

Beherith was in charge but IIRC he lacks the time now. His push was on organising a repository and trackers, and moving forward with BAR. According to Beherith, there's no point investing in promoting BA as it'll look different with BAR, so best focus on promoting BAR when it's done. This is why he turned down a BA website, and I'm inclined to agree.

2/ who among lobby/autohost developers/owners/admins is ready to make some efforts to help save BA?

Just so that I can clarify how much this particular question is doomed, I will take each one by one:

• Lobby Developers - The only active lobby developers left are Licho (ZK) Satirik (tasclient) and car (weblobby), of which only Licho & Satirik have a working lobby ( weblobby is progressing but is missing some things ).
  
  Springlobby is in limbo as development has ground to a near halt. I would not expect new features to be added soon. As the most popular lobby outside of ZK, we're stuck static here.
  
  Satirik is interested in what he wants, and you might get him to add something if you're nice, but thats for Satirik to decide. I don't think his users are numerous enough to effect change right now.
• Autohost developers
  Bibim and Licho, of which bibim I have seen no trace of in quite a while.
  
  Of note, Lichos springie constellation of autohosts already implements what I suggested to prevent autohost spam. ( and while currently there are 2 planetwars and 2 springies, this could be reduces to 1 of each, but it's still nothign compared to the 8 BA tourney bots, the 4 empty robot defence hostmind autohosts, the 4 [ACE]Serveur, 5 [fi], autohosts etc
• Lobby Admins
  Who? At the moment Aegis is in charge, though I haven't seen much of him lately, and various people have assumed uberlobby dead and the lobby itself 'administratorless'. Which is certainly true of the forums ( we have admins but they haven't done anything or even acknowledged issues in such a long time ).
• Autohost owners
  Are for the most part either unaware of this issue, unwilling, or not even a part of the community. It's easy to setup SPADS and forget about it.
  
  Autohost owners will need to be approached individually.

3/ how can people with no specific knowledge of TA related technologies help?

By explaining and asking autohost owners to host only 1 autohost at a time, not 20. Putting limits of 5v5 rather than 8v8 would also help.

It's all well and nice discussing it here, but there's nobody with the power to do anything here. Lobby and forum moderation have always been considered separate affairs, and neither are in the best situations at the moment in terms of manpower and leadership.