What is the reason why XvsX team battle has ready button but not FFA?
I think it would be very handy for team battles to start same way.
ready button
Moderator: Content Developer
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Silentwings
- Posts: 3720
- Joined: 25 Oct 2008, 00:23
Re: ready button
The ready button is the signal you give to the server to say you've finished deciding where your chosen start position is. Most FFA hosts don't let you choose your own start position.
Re: ready button
I agree that it should start the same way.
However, I think the way Spring games start in general is lagging in comparison with what we have in the gaming industry today.
(Please bear with me, I'll soon get to the point).
The whole "custom game" setup, where people join rooms and wait for the required amount of players to accumulate, retrieve game resources and press ready has a few issues:
1) The waiting period cannot be easily predicted and often depends solely on a few players.
2) The fact that you have checked "ready" when you first joined the room doesn't imply that you are still ready when it starts, since very often a few minutes pass, and people cannot be relied to sit next to the PC for all that time.
3) Requiring people to press ready when the game has already loaded and is ready to begin just wastes even more time, when it should be assumed that people are already ready to play. Adding a fixed timer (at most 1 minute, far less than the ready-timeout is currently) should be preferred in case people need to go over the strategy, pick up initial positions and similar.
I've seen a few better alternatives to this, and the one I like most is in Dota 2. Here's how it works there:
1. You queue (optionally with friends) to play a game, and you wait until the matchmaking system has constructed a match for you consisting of 2 teams of 5 players per team. The teams are balanced as much as possible based on certain player details (matches played/won/lost, hidden ELO, etc.).
2. Once teams are created (and before they are visible), each player is given a dialogue he must click on, which verifies he is ready to play. He has about 10s to achieve this, and if he does not, he is temporarily kicked out the queue and has to re-enter the queue. The rest of the players are sent into a "high priority queue" (prioritized in the matchmaking system), and the process goes on.
3. If everyone has accepted the match, the game begins to load. Once the game has loaded for everyone people are given a choice to pick initial settings (much like what ARM/Core or starting positions is in BA), and the game begins after 1 minute. In case there are people who haven't loaded yet, a similar process occurs as if they have left the queue (the match closes and a new one is searched for, for those who have joined successfully).
We could easily "steal" this matchmaking in Spring, or at least parts of it: Ready before and only before matches, when a dialogue pops up, not by checking some box at some point in the past. And if people don't click on the dialogue, they are sent to be spectators. That would probably make most Spring games start faster (which is kind of a big issue for many people tbh).
Sorry for a long post, I hope you can see how it relates to the thread topic :)
However, I think the way Spring games start in general is lagging in comparison with what we have in the gaming industry today.
(Please bear with me, I'll soon get to the point).
The whole "custom game" setup, where people join rooms and wait for the required amount of players to accumulate, retrieve game resources and press ready has a few issues:
1) The waiting period cannot be easily predicted and often depends solely on a few players.
2) The fact that you have checked "ready" when you first joined the room doesn't imply that you are still ready when it starts, since very often a few minutes pass, and people cannot be relied to sit next to the PC for all that time.
3) Requiring people to press ready when the game has already loaded and is ready to begin just wastes even more time, when it should be assumed that people are already ready to play. Adding a fixed timer (at most 1 minute, far less than the ready-timeout is currently) should be preferred in case people need to go over the strategy, pick up initial positions and similar.
I've seen a few better alternatives to this, and the one I like most is in Dota 2. Here's how it works there:
1. You queue (optionally with friends) to play a game, and you wait until the matchmaking system has constructed a match for you consisting of 2 teams of 5 players per team. The teams are balanced as much as possible based on certain player details (matches played/won/lost, hidden ELO, etc.).
2. Once teams are created (and before they are visible), each player is given a dialogue he must click on, which verifies he is ready to play. He has about 10s to achieve this, and if he does not, he is temporarily kicked out the queue and has to re-enter the queue. The rest of the players are sent into a "high priority queue" (prioritized in the matchmaking system), and the process goes on.
3. If everyone has accepted the match, the game begins to load. Once the game has loaded for everyone people are given a choice to pick initial settings (much like what ARM/Core or starting positions is in BA), and the game begins after 1 minute. In case there are people who haven't loaded yet, a similar process occurs as if they have left the queue (the match closes and a new one is searched for, for those who have joined successfully).
We could easily "steal" this matchmaking in Spring, or at least parts of it: Ready before and only before matches, when a dialogue pops up, not by checking some box at some point in the past. And if people don't click on the dialogue, they are sent to be spectators. That would probably make most Spring games start faster (which is kind of a big issue for many people tbh).
Sorry for a long post, I hope you can see how it relates to the thread topic :)
Re: ready button
That's one of the issues I see too.gajop wrote:2) The fact that you have checked "ready" when you first joined the room doesn't imply that you are still ready when it starts, since very often a few minutes pass, and people cannot be relied to sit next to the PC for all that time.
My proposal: Game starts automatically in team battles without a Ready button within 5 seconds after everyone placed.
If people want to trade their spots or plan a strategy they can do it without actually placing commander (you are not able to place commander near another one anyway), by discussing and pointing with markers.
Alternatively, there could still be a Ready button which if everyone clicks, it will make the game start immediately without waiting for the 5 seconds countdown.
Difference between how game starts now in FFA and team battles:
FFA game:
Game starts right when everyone is in-game.
If someone gets afk, game starts anyway
Team game:
Game starts when everyone checked Ready.
If someone gets afk and didn't click Ready, game cannot start.
People start ringing the person and wait for a response from him.
Eventually someone starts a forcestart vote.
Sometimes vote can be cancelled or vote does not pass.
Ready button is a mandatory option for something which does not occur so often.
Re: ready button
If you placed your comander on a spot, it should be enough to signal the server you are ready.Silentwings wrote:The ready button is the signal you give to the server to say you've finished deciding where your chosen start position is. Most FFA hosts don't let you choose your own start position.
No need for an additional step.
Once everyone placed their commander, game can start within a 5 seconds countdown.
For 16 players, suppose only 5 players delay clicking the Ready button after placing their com.
If each delays by 5 seconds (without overlapping) that's almost half of minute just for everyone to check ready.
And this scenario happens a lot. Sometimes the wait is at least 1 minute.
In FFA, game starts way quicker.
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Silentwings
- Posts: 3720
- Joined: 25 Oct 2008, 00:23
Re: ready button
If you watch how people choose, it's not. There is plenty of swapping positions before team games. (It's also the engine's behaviour and not something BA chooses.)If you placed your comander on a spot, it should be enough to signal the server you are ready.
Re: ready button
It doesn't have to be changed that much to be smooth, I think. A big problem I think is that we have autohosts instead of human hosts, and this causes a big additional step into the game-starting process - you gotta negotiate what kind of game you want. When we had human hosts, upon joining you mostly clearly saw the parameters of what the game was gonna be, X map with Y amount of players of ~Z skill. So you decided if you wanna play that game before joining the battle room.gajop wrote:(Please bear with me, I'll soon get to the point).
The whole "custom game" setup, where people join rooms and wait for the required amount of players to accumulate, retrieve game resources and press ready has a few issues:
...
But now you join the autohost with people in it, and then you discuss whether you should start with the 6 players who are in, or wait until 16 people. You vote for maps, then you vote again when someone won't ready until it's to their liking, then you vote to spec an afk player, then another guy joins in and you've got uneven numbers again... And so on and so forth.