I did not mean players deciding on map, I meant the room size. But still:
How are BA hosts coordinated?
I think when comparing to lobby a few years ago: Yes, should be obvious that player numbers are decreasing.
To anyone in doubt: When did you last see so many full games at once:
download/file.php?id=9269 ?
(that is not even max, it is just random old screenshot from somewhere on spring site.)
"More games at once" is of course better because it is means less waiting for games.
Problem is, spring players are a bit special. It is not normal to idle/afk for hours in a battleroom or chat and wait for an opportunity to play.
Average new player is unwilling to do that.
If yes, the technical difficulty should not be a problem.
The technical side was never a problem. More a matter of coordination and maybe "who dares to be responsible to do something that might turn out very unpopular and maybe kill the last playerbase, at least short-term."
Historically there has always been one main mod and once a successor appeared, all players switched over.
With apperance of zero-K that changed. Not saying it is anyone's fault but the players were now divided between two mods.
Despite large overlap it was a split and two smaller communities grow slower and struggle more than when there was one mod.
It will be interessting to see what happens with BA:R: Will all players switch over of if some stay with normal BA.
With Tech Annhilation there is now actually a third "big" mod. Playernumbers are maybe not down that much, but more spread out.
For matchmaking it would be nessecary to deal with the large team-room soaking up all players like a sponge, as was imo one main problem with any matchmaking attempts of zero-K.
Matchmaking does not work if there are 20 active players, 16 ingame in same room, 4 who "maybe" want to play but are also happy just waiting 50min for the next round.
The current playerbase has been condensed a bit to "8v8 lovers" and it has lots of momentum, hard to sell matchmaking in such enviroment.
Any change or rebuild must be slow, matchmaking is no silver bullet...
There was once a common lobby channel that, among other things, helped players to find each other.
Eventually it got abused by spam and once spam
(and silly anti-spam rules that only hindered normal talk but not the actual spam) had made it useless it was removed as default-joined channel in some lobbies.
As result: no more common chat for players to find each other.
All the activity had moved into one battleroom anyway, so it was not missed much.