TASclient

[momfreeek]

I'm not sure 'Play now' is descriptive enough.. perhaps 'Find me a game' or something.

I don't think its what new players want anyway. They want to play other new players but the rank-limit doesn't work in their favour.

some evidence:


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See the game names: 'beginners first steps', 'Noob Game'. They've tried to restrict the game to new players and instead locked other new players out.

At the very least change 'rank-limit' to 'rank-minimum'. Preferably allow a minimum or a maximum.. or use it as a 'recommended rank' or something.

Sure, they end up playing by themselves.. but I don't think this is what they really wanted when they set the game up. Noobs do not want to join a big game in their first steps... they want to play other noobs.

[BrainDamage]

such thing requires a protocol change, which requires betalord to change the server, so it's not that easy to happend

[momfreeek]

I guess thats fair enough, but if its hard to implement thats a different matter.. it shouldn't end the discussion of its necessity or usefulness.

Changing the lettering to 'rank-minimum' in the hosting dialogue shouldn't be too hard though.. at least that would reduce the confusion.

[BrainDamage]

i didn't say hard to implement, just less likely to happend

and yes, i do see it's usefulness and i'd want the possibility too to set a maximum rank allowed

edit: (which doesn't implies autokicks nor no evidence outside the battle itself)

[Gota]

I suggested removing someof the columns because:
When a player joins the lobby for the FIRST time without ever playing spring and never even playing ota his soul desire is to see thegame and check if it is good enough to spend time on.
Culumns like player listings hostavg are not required for him they only distract him from things that will gt him into that crucial first game.
Anything that distracts that random newbie mustbeeliminated from the default look imo.
Hell even i wouldliek to do that...i dont ned the join culumn idont need host column dont needavg cuumn and i dont need description column.
Itihnk there re others that think the way idoabout different columns so an opton to addremove them should be added.
Imo the best way is to allow a enu to frop when right clicking the column titlebar.The menu should include all column names and a checkbox near them...

I like the popups idea,it is always the best way to provide help.many things should call a pop up including the different wndows of thechat playerslist and roomlist.

[Licho]

Protocol for real matchmaking could be completely independent from current server too..

It should be simple to implement such thing (I can do it) but imo its harder to design it properly to be really usefull..
Each player should imo be able to set min and max player size, ranks and prefered mods or even banned and favourite maps and willingness to wait :)

[ZellSF]

I suggested removing someof the columns because:
When a player joins the lobby for the FIRST time without ever playing spring and never even playing ota his soul desire is to see thegame and check if it is good enough to spend time on.
Culumns like player listings hostavg are not required for him they only distract him from things that will gt him into that crucial first game.
Anything that distracts that random newbie mustbeeliminated from the default look imo.

Not if it's basic functionality, hell no, shitty default settings to attract more users just isn't a good idea, especially since I really doubt anyone at all is being scared away by TASClient's interface.

That said, the average newbie will need the player listing and host column to locate his friends, assuming he isn't trying Spring alone, and if he is he will need the average rank colum if he wants to have a chance in hell of finding a game he'll fit in, as you seem to believe actually chatting to other users should be a last resort for figuring out stuff, something I really disagree with.

Allowing easy start of singleplayer games would really be the better option for someone who just needs to try the game.

[momfreeek]

my humble opinions:

Remove any columns and most won't ever enable them. I think with a little reordering of things and making some columns more prominent the game list could be much clearer without losing any functionality.

- 'join' column is arguable. I never used it to join a game.. never really noticed it. maybe some use it though. Its the column thats highlighted when you do 'find this player' and its way to small for that.. I thought that feature was broken for a long time.

- game description is more useful for noobs than pros. In my experience noobs are the most likely ones to read it.. and they will often use titles like 'noob game' (see pics above). If anything this should be more prominent... perhaps after host and in bold. Have a look down the game descriptions every so often and you'll see a bunch of information about the games being hosted that seems to be rarely noticed... much more informative than the host column and to a noob who knows less about what all the data means this is where they can get the most easy to interpret information.

- number of players is kind of hard to make out with the player names after it.. and the a+b/c notation is kind of confusing. Is the +b for specs necessary? How about bolding the numbers so they stand out from the list of names after it.

- IMO, mod is the column that should be sorted on by default. New players will likely have one, maybe two mods, and its this that has most effects which games they can join. If games aren't sorted by mod the list is very muddled and confusing (its simpler to scan a list of BA games for a green symbol than to scan a list of open games for a mod they have.. and in itself its a good introduction to the mods that are being played if sorted this way). The fact that BA comes first in alphabetic order is .. a bonus to me.

- state symbols are important to understand. Show new players the key when they first open the app (with 'click help to see this page again'). Mouseover help tips on each symbol would be *very* useful.

Green symbol for open is fine, the hand and red are intuitive enough, p for password works. The ranks are kind of confusing (mouseover would explain). The exclamation mark I think should change (it says stay away, danger here).. when I guess for most NAT is not an issue (I just ignored any game with a danger sign without even thinking about it till I understood what it meant).

[Satirik]

the find player hihglighting the join column only IS a bug :) and was fixed few monthes ago

as gota said im gonna add more hint (tooltips) to tasclient like what is the x+y/z etc in each column header etc

[ZellSF]

my humble opinions:

Remove any columns and most won't ever enable them. I think with a little reordering of things and making some columns more prominent the game list could be much clearer without losing any functionality.

- 'join' column is arguable. I never used it to join a game.. never really noticed it. maybe some use it though. Its the column thats highlighted when you do 'find this player' and its way to small for that.. I thought that feature was broken for a long time.

- game description is more useful for noobs than pros. In my experience noobs are the most likely ones to read it.. and they will often use titles like 'noob game' (see pics above). If anything this should be more prominent... perhaps after host and in bold. Have a look down the game descriptions every so often and you'll see a bunch of information about the games being hosted that seems to be rarely noticed... much more informative than the host column and to a noob who knows less about what all the data means this is where they can get the most easy to interpret information.

- number of players is kind of hard to make out with the player names after it.. and the a+b/c notation is kind of confusing. Is the +b for specs necessary? How about bolding the numbers so they stand out from the list of names after it.

- IMO, mod is the column that should be sorted on by default. New players will likely have one, maybe two mods, and its this that has most effects which games they can join. If games aren't sorted by mod the list is very muddled and confusing (its simpler to scan a list of BA games for a green symbol than to scan a list of open games for a mod they have.. and in itself its a good introduction to the mods that are being played if sorted this way). The fact that BA comes first in alphabetic order is .. a bonus to me.

- state symbols are important to understand. Show new players the key when they first open the app (with 'click help to see this page again'). Mouseover help tips on each symbol would be *very* useful.

Green symbol for open is fine, the hand and red are intuitive enough, p for password works. The ranks are kind of confusing (mouseover would explain). The exclamation mark I think should change (it says stay away, danger here).. when I guess for most NAT is not an issue (I just ignored any game with a danger sign without even thinking about it till I understood what it meant).

Uh the only column you said to remove now was just the join column (which I've already agreed with).

That said, the NAT traversal exclamation mark is important, as many people can't connect to certain types of NAT traversal games... You can already disable it anyway, it's just on by default.

[momfreeek]

Remove any columns and most won't ever enable them. I think with a little reordering of things and making some columns more prominent the game list could be much clearer without losing any functionality.

Uh the only column you said to remove now was just the join column (which I've already agreed with).

Like I said, I think there's plenty ways to make things clearer without removing columns.

That said, the NAT traversal exclamation mark is important, as many people can't connect to certain types of NAT traversal games... You can already disable it anyway, it's just on by default.

I just think it could be less offputting than the exclamation mark that it is now.. then again I don't really know the extent to which NAT does cause problems. For me it made no difference.

[Gota]

I still think that some columns can be removed but only if they can be enabled by a checkbox menu opened by pressing the right mouse button anywhere on columns title bar.
I works great in say emule.any avarage player will know about it since its intuitive to have such a menu pop up when u click the columns titels.
Total noobs who jsut enter spring do not care about noob or exped games they just want to see a game.
The normal noobs that have played some games and think they might spend some time learning it will almost certainly notice clumns can be added if there is a pop up menu from the column title bar.

As i remember reading on the forums spring biggest fail is exactly with thoe players that want to try one game and get scared by the lobby and than the in game gui ^^.


Another thing.
We must all agree that the way the topic is presented fails miserably.
It shows up once when the noob joins in and than tons of them still dont know where they find mods and maps cause after a few seconds it dissapears cause of new text lines.
I ask again is it possible to include main's topic inside a space above the lobby chat?that would be very good since it will always be visible with accentuated words like mods maps help and whatever.
If not than i think the "newbies" channel should not open,instead a "read me" channel should open with main's topic and some other usefull info.that channel will stay open and imo it will be more usefull than the help button above and the topic that hardle gets read cause when u first join in u dont notice it cause there is already a wall oftext in front of you.
Also i think if possible the Local channel should be invisible by default and reports should just pop up in font of the player.
Everything should be customized but the default look for the first time users must be simplistic IMO.

I like the pop up idea,its great also a pop up should come up when a player is scrolling through a mod or map name that the player doesnt have.
Most of them dont realise that red means that you need to downlaod it and go aahh when someone tells it to them.

[ZellSF]

I still think that some columns can be removed but only if they can be enabled by a checkbox menu opened by pressing the right mouse button anywhere on columns title bar.
I works great in say emule.any avarage player will know about it since its intuitive to have such a menu pop up when u click the columns titels.

Note that eMule also shows a ton of columns by default and is *not* scaring people away. I'm not disagreeing with the ability to hide columns, but the idea that hiding important columns by default is a remotely good idea.

Total noobs who jsut enter spring do not care about noob or exped games they just want to see a game.
The normal noobs that have played some games and think they might spend some time learning it will almost certainly notice clumns can be added if there is a pop up menu from the column title bar.

Default settings that everyone *will* change are shitty default settings. Don't make TASClient less convinient to use for just about everyone just to cater to a very tiny minority of people who want to play a complex RTS game while still having an attention span of less than five minutes. It just doesn't make any sense.

As i remember reading on the forums spring biggest fail is exactly with thoe players that want to try one game and get scared by the lobby and than the in game gui ^^.

Find me forum posts by 10 users who said they have been scared away from Spring by TASClient's interface. If the problem is as common as you say, it shouldn't be too difficult.

Another thing. We must all agree that the way the topic is presented fails miserably.

We *must* agree with you now? Sorry, I won't. The topic is presented in a standardized way everyone who uses any chat room is familiar with, and has been proven a very effective way to convey information even in very active chat channels.

It shows up once when the noob joins in and than tons of them still dont know where they find mods and maps cause after a few seconds it dissapears cause of new text lines.

Here's a hint: TASClient tells you were to find mods and maps, and if you're too stupid to follow TASClient's instructions, other players will tell you how to find mods or maps. Fighting problems that don't exist just isn't a good idea.

I ask again is it possible to include main's topic inside a space above the lobby chat?that would be very good since it will always be visible with accentuated words like mods maps help and whatever.

Again, there's just not anything important enough in the #main topic to waste additional window space in it, and consider other channels which might have even less important stuff in topics...

If not than i think the "newbies" channel should not open,instead a "read me" channel should open with main's topic and some other usefull info.that channel will stay open and imo it will be more usefull than the help button above and the topic that hardle gets read cause when u first join in u dont notice it cause there is already a wall oftext in front of you.

Uh? Now you want the *chat* hidden by default? That's just solving a problem by creating another: confused users would then be unable to easily get helped, as if they were too stupid to scroll to the top of the chat to get the topic, they surely are too stupid to switch to the chat tab too.

Also i think if possible the Local channel should be invisible by default and reports should just pop up in font of the player.

Well that creates two obvious issues:
A: Where to put the MOTD?
B: How to troubleshoot connection issues without it?

An option to hide local sure would be nice, not sure if I agree with hiding it by default or not though.

Everything should be customized but the default look for the first time users must be simplistic IMO.

It *is* simplistic, it's a chat window, with a game browser. Nothing extra, at all. It's like complaining that Firefox has those silly confusing back, forward and home buttons by default when all those would just intimidate the new user who just needs an address bar to actually browse the internet.

[Gota]

Oh man.some of your replies make no sense at all.
I was sayingremoving columns that were NOT nessesary by default like avg,host and listing of player in a game.
And yes i think that the lobby should be made less comfterble by default for people who already are familier with it in the benefit of bringing in more players.
Peopel who already know and like the game wont mind tweaking the lobby for exactly 2 seconds!!and marking the columns they want...i personnaly would immediatly remove the join column the host column and the description column,they are confusing and useless and take too much space, but I guess description is needed for noobs so that should be left alone even though it is needed by noobs who already are familier and like the game.

How am i to find people who were scared away by the lobby?you actually think the would bother looking for a forum to the game ? wtf...
I say this out of statistics that were posted by soemone saying that
people were joining and connection to the lobby once and than bever again..in very big numbers and it wasnt about the communities smurfs.

I personnaly directed many noobs to scroll up and look at the topic to find what they needed and they went like aaaah ok...
Obviosly that is fail and means that many when confronted with the lobby are a bit confused and miss on important stuff like the lobby's topic.

again you must remember Spring ISNT Starcraft 2 or SupCom or Warhammer,it doesnt have marketing and has no hype thus it must ,absolutly must,do anything in its power to catch in its nets anyone that takes the time to download this unknown game,we must stop being so snobish and accept the fact that if the spring community wants to grow it needs to do everyting it cant to hold onto new players,time to step down from the ivory tower.

I dont want thechat hidden by default Oo how did u understand that?damn man d you eve nreadwhat your quoting? i suggested removing the newbies channel since it is useless and instead make a help channel but not call it help so it wontbeintimidatingand call it something like "read me" or something similair.That is to be done only if there is no way to make the topic hang above the chat.

the local channel shuld be possible to open easily but should not be thereon default it is just another mnor confusing factor.
No it is not simplistic,spring as whole is not user friendly i am sory but that is truthso get over it,spring isnt perfect.
We dont even need to compare spring to other stuff we ned to make it much better both the engine and what surounds it liek the lobby and websits and all that.

[ZellSF]

Oh man.some of your replies make no sense at all.
I was sayingremoving columns that were NOT nessesary by default like avg,host and listing of player in a game.

And I gave you reasons earlier that they *were* necessary.

Peopel who already know and like the game wont mind tweaking the lobby for exactly 2 seconds!!

Why should they have to?

personnaly would immediatly remove the join column the host column and the description column,they are confusing and useless

Description's very useful, for any rules the host need to state for example.

Host column is useful if you want to find the game your friend is hosting easily.

The join column is indeed useless now, but meh.

How am i to find people who were scared away by the lobby?you actually think the would bother looking for a forum to the game ? wtf...

Yes, when you're arguing, I do expect you to be able to at least back up the basis of your argument with at least some indication that there is an actual problem.

I say this out of statistics that were posted by soemone saying that
people were joining and connection to the lobby once and than bever again..in very big numbers and it wasnt about the communities smurfs.

Those numbers are nothing without the reasoning for the users never returning again though. Statistics don't have a relation to your case just because you say so :p

I personnaly directed many noobs to scroll up and look at the topic to find what they needed and they went like aaaah ok...
Obviosly that is fail and means that many when confronted with the lobby are a bit confused and miss on important stuff like the lobby's topic.

Again, the lobby is following a standard for displaying topics, and people must learn it sometime, I'm all for Spring teaching people new things, personally. Besides, how many times do I have to repeat that there isn't actually anything important in the topic, at all?

again you must remember Spring ISNT Starcraft 2 or SupCom or Warhammer,it doesnt have marketing and has no hype thus it must ,absolutly must,do anything in its power to catch in its nets anyone that takes the time to download this unknown game,we must stop being so snobish and accept the fact that if the spring community wants to grow it needs to do everyting it cant to hold onto new players,time to step down from the ivory tower.

Again, to attract players, we need to avoid telling them that they're too stupid to understand a very simplistic interface.

dont want thechat hidden by default Oo how did u understand that?damn man d you eve nreadwhat your quoting? i suggested removing the newbies channel since it is useless and instead make a help channel but not call it help so it wontbeintimidatingand call it something like "read me" or something similair.That is to be done only if there is no way to make the topic hang above the chat.

I so wish I wasn't reading what I was quoting, ever heard of spaces? You *are* suggesting hiding the chat if you're suggesting defaulting to a tab that's not it. As changing tabs is just as confusing as scrolling a window is.

[Sertse]

Posting to ask whether anyone else commenting here has actually tried Spring Lobby as well.

Just for the sake of getting the whole picture, if you're going to talk about clients. Seeing as it is the main alternative client that's used.

I personally find SL's design more accommodating to newcomers.

[ZellSF]

Well, SpringLobby just puts stuff in seperate windows. I wouldn't really call it more user friendly because of it, just a different interface design choice.

It still has mostly all the things gota thinks are problems.

[Gota]

Mt desire is not to win the argument but to give goodsuggestions that i think will help i nthe curent situation.
The topic can hold important information and it does give users a sort of full spectrum of spring connected important websites with content the topic also contains info about dsyncing as well.
I have been playing for 2 years without the description tab but that is my personal taste.
As is said i dont reccomand removing room descriptions cause that is usefull for new players(i dont care about exped players at all).
but if not removing a few columns as default(and i do think that is nessesary and will help)at least allow to remove and add them as a person desires same in the room columns...i dont care about nothing else besides name id team rdy and sync/unsynced.I thnk those should be the only default columnsin the room but all else should also be possible to add with a drop down menu.

[ZellSF]

Mt desire is not to win the argument but to give goodsuggestions that i think will help i nthe curent situation.
The topic can hold important information and it does give users a sort of full spectrum of spring connected important websites with content the topic also contains info about dsyncing as well.

TASClient automatically redirects you to a page to download mods if you try to join a game where you don't have the mod, and clicking the minimap if you don't have the map gets you the map. You can use the search files button to find anything else.

otacontent desyncs, while important, are probably something TASClient itself should warn you of somehow (?), at any rate, I think the default install options install otacontent.

As for it linking to "important websites", Didn't you ever see the "Links" button in TASClient? It's even a nice dropdown menu.

i dont care about exped players at all

That is stupid, annoying experienced players for no reason (or at least you seem unable to document that there is one) isn't going to get more players, it's going to get less.

[Gota]

About the room filter.
I thing that instead of totaly removing filtered rooms they should just drop to the button of the room list no matter what kind of sorting you do to the list and become half transperant or anything to differ them from the non filterd rooms and after that it could be possible to make a few filters be on by default for noobs;like the rank limiting games,passworded games,ladder games and locked games.