Spring has less players

[AF]

Autohosts shouldn't open new battles if there are already open battles in that constellation of bots.

The code out their already exists for this, and some autohosts manage to obey this rule fine.

Basically we have battle spam, and it's not being treated as spam by lobby moderation.

My suggestion:

Boot the spammers off the server. If an autohost maintainer wants 10 autohost bots they'll have to manage their open battles or face moderation. Otherwise the moderators are well within their rights to boot the bots according to the bot policy.

I repeat, there is nothing stopping mods and admins booting spam autohosts off the server, it's in the bot policy. Autohosts that attempt to reconnect when kicked are also violating the policy and should eb banned accordingly.

[very_bad_soldier]

I doubt anyone will take actions against "host spamming" while trolling, smurfing and even cheating doesnt catch the moderators attention.

[very_bad_soldier]

To something different: What about asking the dsd hosts to limit spectator count to something like 3 or 4? That alone would free up at least 10 players for other games.

[smoth]

Fucking genius! Do this!

[se5a]

I think we'll get an influx of new (or old) players when the new spring version finaly comes out.

where is that btw? I thought somone said 'a few weeks' a few months ago...

[smoth]

"really soon now"

[luckywaldo7]

I feel like assuming spectators are lost players is the same as assuming every pirate is a lost sale. Cutting down on spectators isn't going to increase players much.

-----

Next spring release would make for an excellent time for a big marketing push for a lot of games, seeing how tremendous many of the improvements are.

[marciolino]

I feel like assuming spectators are lost players is the same as assuming every pirate is a lost sale. Cutting down on spectators isn't going to increase players much.

How can you say this? And so, even if will not increase players much, it will increase. It is already a good thing.

[Columbus]

I feel like assuming spectators are lost players is the same as assuming every pirate is a lost sale. Cutting down on spectators isn't going to increase players much.

Hell, for example I'm such a lazy bastard, that sometimes I just can't bother to play, so I spectate. If I had a choice of "play or GTFO" then I would definitely play. So if you did this, there would be already 1 more player playing[me]

[luckywaldo7]

So if a host is full and you aren't allowed to spectate, you will join an empty host in the hopes more people will do the same? If you are as lazy as I am, you will just go play something else instead.

You guys are looking for a silver bullet solution, something simple that will magically make everything happen the way you want. This kind of discussion has happened dozens of times and it simply doesn't exist. The truth is that people generally don't want to play badly enough to spend 20-30 minutes setting up for a 20-30 minute game. I don't blame them at all for that. The only thing I can think of that would make more games happen is a real matching system, which hasn't happened because it would require code and testing, and then updates to all the lobbies to support it, and generally be a pita to implement.

[se5a]

S The truth is that people generally don't want to play badly enough to spend 20-30 minutes setting up for a 20-30 minute game.

This.

[Columbus]

Maybe some kind of quickbattle thingie, where you are set up to a 1v1 automatically, so the lobby just finds a bunch of users with roughly the same level and asks them(or automatically) if they want to fight right now, and whoever accepts first will fight him. This feature ofcourse would be an optional setting in the lobby, so you won't be bothered by requests if you don't want to.

Or something similar to this, so you could possibly enter a battle without any battleroom BS- Just pick a map and go!

Although this presumes there are enough players online, who match the players skill, and who want to fight. Perhaps some kind of benefits for accepting quickbattle requests... free cake?

[se5a]

Cake or Death!

[very_bad_soldier]

I feel like assuming spectators are lost players is the same as assuming every pirate is a lost sale. Cutting down on spectators isn't going to increase players much.

Ok, agree, not every spec can be converted to a player. And not every dsd-player can be converted to a regular player. We can only speculate though "how much" it will help. But I think we all agree it WILL help. Even distributing the specs to different games would help imo.

So if a host is full and you aren't allowed to spectate, you will join an empty host in the hopes more people will do the same? If you are as lazy as I am, you will just go play something else instead.

It will increase the chance for those people to join a host that has only 1-2 player instead of joining as the 12th spec to the dsd host and wait for the game to end. Being forced to join a complete empty server to start a new game from scratch is the worst-case scenario that does apply only to one player.

You guys are looking for a silver bullet solution, something simple that will magically make everything happen the way you want. This kind of discussion has happened dozens of times and it simply doesn't exist.

Hm, whats so bad in looking for a solution? No one said it has to be a silver bullet or magical...
But what do you propose instead? Just do nothing and accept the situation is totally borked?

[se5a]

You guys are looking for a silver bullet solution, something simple that will magically make everything happen the way you want. This kind of discussion has happened dozens of times and it simply doesn't exist.

Hm, whats so bad in looking for a solution? No one said it has to be a silver bullet or magical...
But what do you propose instead? Just do nothing and accept the situation is totally borked?

Oh come on, he DID propose something, and it wasn't 'Just do nothing'

[very_bad_soldier]

Ok sorry, I missed that, my fault...
But still, I am not sure how a match making system would solve this.
Whats the difference if I log on and sit in an empty host to wait for people or if I tell the matchmaking-system what I want to play and then sit and wait for others wanting to play the same?

While I admit I dont know how you guys want such a matchmaking system to work, but I suspect springs community is just too small for a real matchmaking. You cant have 5 groups like "I want a 3vs3 on a kbot map", "I want 6vs6 on a metal map", "I want 15vs15 on DSD".
The only thing worth telling the matchmaking is if you want overcrowded DSD or not because otherwise you would split up the community into too many shards.

If someone thinks he has a good and working matchmaking system in mind he is ofc welcome to realize it though. I dont want to discourage anyone from implementing.

[AF]

I'd say just make the DSD autohosts lock themselves when there's more than 10 people in the battle ( spec or no spec ). The largest game that could ever happen then would be a 5v5, and there'd be an incentive to pile into a second autohost, and hey presto we have 2 games rather than 1 with a tonne of spectators itching to unspec.

But all of this is futile, because the people running autohosts aren't listening and lobby moderation refuses to act on the subject. Lets go talk to the people running the autohosts rather than endless discussion in threads like this.

[PicassoCT]

I think the big problem is (that sentece, oh, noes recursions) that spring by marketing self as "the free" rts gets itsel into the low-budget-crappy-handygame-with-built-in-trojan...

Point out how many working hours went into this game. Size that number up, size the money up, a company would have to pay for this. Also add that you save the money for adds and put it into the game.

[momfreeek]

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.

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.

[smoth]

just an FYI. the lobby right now...

no players my ass. this is a lot of games.

why is this not relevant btw?