The Curious Case of DSDHosts.

[Petah]

I love BA 8v8 DSD! It should never be banned, that's discrimination.

• In 1v1 I always get my ass handed to me, so why would I want to play it.
• Specing is no fun, I want to play.
• Hardly any other noobs play 1v1

[keijj0]

http://i.imagehost.org/view/0012/dsd

FUCK THIS SHIT

[JohannesH]

I love BA 8v8 DSD! It should never be banned, that's discrimination.

• In 1v1 I always get my ass handed to me, so why would I want to play it.
• Specing is no fun, I want to play.
• Hardly any other noobs play 1v1

But if there was possibility to play 1v1 or 2v2 or whatever vs equal opponents would you prefer 8v8 still?

(btw. it is possible)

[KaiserJ]

on a tangent, what maps do you guys feel are properly balanced and fun for a mixed-skill crowd in an 8v8 game?

[Pxtl]

but still there is a problem and it needs to be solved somehow

Fine, here are some thoughts:

1) Singleplayer, fun, learning-oriented campaign. Way, way, way easier said than done, but imho that's the only way to get players off of large porcy teamgames as a learning experience. Doable, but would be a lot of work.

2) Noob matchmaking service. Will be ruined by smurfs, and will need a lot of players. Suffers from the "need more players" chicken-and-egg problem, so isn't really doable.

3) More small, porc-intensive maps. Most small maps are designed with raiding in mind, except SmallDivide. Even SmallDivide gets kbot raiders going over the top, and it's too far from the start-points to the choke to properly secure the choke until after the scouting/raiding game is already winding down.

A newbie-friendly 1v1 or 2v2 map would look more like StarCraft than TA - a secure home base that can only be entered via 1 or 2 chokes (which are close enough to start-point that you can plonk an LLT quickly), a natural expansion, etc before opening out into the conflict territory. And limited access between the teammate bases so that if an ally falls, the whole alliance isn't farked like happens on Altored and DSD.

Kbot-oriented gameplay would probably be better than vehicles, because then you'd have the expansion move slower and have weaker attackers, and thus be more newb-friendly.

You still see a lot of 2v2 gameplay on SpeedMetal, and I think this has as much to do with the map layout as it does to do with the crazy metal map - newbies want some security, and the long narrow battlefield gives them that.

Otherwise, players will just get raped over and over again by the raider game.... and let's be honest, most newbs don't enjoy the raider game. Raiding is fun once you get the hang of it, but for a newbie it's just an endless biatchslap.... and that's most of the game for "hardcore" players.

Introduce newbs to raider-oriented BA gradually instead of expecting them to dive in to the world of jeffies blowing up their wind-gens.

[Sucky_Lord]

http://i.imagehost.org/view/0012/dsd

FUCK THIS SHIT

Good to see Fx not on dsd, we're promoting other maps! :D

Tbh i dont really see dsd as a problem. If people are happy playing it, it seems a bit control-freak-ish to try to stop them. As the players get to rank 5/6, they start trying out different game types, if only we had a larger community there would be more of the other games

[JohannesH]

If people are happy playing it, it seems a bit control-freak-ish to try to stop them.

Are they happy? There's kinda constant complaint of there being nothing else to play, from all kinds of players, who play it themselves too cause they feel they don't have an easy alternative.

And all the noobs who leave completely because of this fad...

Also changing maps doesn't really help if you're just playing people way better than you, they can own you in minutes anyway. Most noobs have the problem that they just don't understand what to do at all, not just that they cant micro or whatever. If I never attack a noob before taking every mex besides the 8 he built, and then steamroll him, will he be happier than if I pressure him straight away?
On the other hand possibility for early aggression gives something that's relatively easy to learn, for anyone to try. In a more defensive game they will die without ever finding a hole to mount a succesful attack.
Needs some guides maybe, to help peoples skill and confidence to play

[Sucky_Lord]

Well maybe forcing all hosts to have a minimum of ~12 maps would get some more maps played?

I dont see any other solution than this and getting more players.

[JohannesH]

Its not just maps, but the player number

[Gota]

@ pxtl
You must take into consideration that none of the involved that are complaining about DSD are gonna do jack shit.

The question actually is "how can we stop 8v8 dsd without doing anything except talking in the forums or in the lobby".

I remember when i brought this up like a year ago with the final offer being to limit newbies to smaller games and than when they have a higher rank allow them to participate in games of all sizes.
This way newbies can start with games of up to 8 players than move to 12 and than 16.

Aside from getting flamed and trolled by a massive amount of people, all saying there is no problem and GTFO i also tried contacting some of the autohost owners and explain the issue but i was a single person against hordes of players interested in playing 8v8 all the time.
Find a way to limit the ability to join a room of BA based on experience and the size of the room, if you actually care so much.

By the way, this thread,partially, IMO is about frustrated players bored of spring after playing it for ages plus all sorts of exaggerations and an attempt to address problems that are actually a result of a more fundamental problem about BA...
Let's be honest, There are constant smaller games going...Sure there are sometimes multiple DSD games but there are also other games on other maps.

The real issue is that there are not enough players, and there are very little players interested in the more intense smaller games.
Why?
Because the engine is aging while commercial games are constantly improving.
on top of that BA isnt using the new additions the engine(or the community) does get...
Ba has no real developers...Where is the website where is the installer where are the video tutorials where are the new models...etc etc etc..
with how BA is going(no changes, stagnation especially in GFX and single player missions/website/proper commercial game features) it will end up just like OTA...constant 30 old people online playing it while the rest of the world is playing something else..

forcing smaller games is an artificial solution to a core problem of BA, it's just aging as a game and nobody cares about it enough to do anything about it.

[hoijui]

Noob matchmaking service

There could be dedicated AI auto-hosts. probably would make sense to put a max rank limit there. AI types, number and bonuses could be chosen automatically, relative to number of players and their ranks, and there could be presets like !easy !medium !hard. map could also be auto changed relative to number of players and/or presets like !with-water. that would require the auto-host to run at least spring-headless though, and would only work until a certain level (no 32 * E323AI porc-fest on big map).
noob-auto-host could have less possibilities to change stuff, to scare pros away.

[Hobo Joe]

I don't have a problem with DSD per se, I think that simply banning it or making 8v8 dsd hard to do won't solve the problem, but I do agree that the dedicated DSD hosts are a problem. If people want to play DSD, they can easily join one of the 20 hosts that have it in their maplist, and still have the option of changing the map when the players or playercount changes. With DSD hosts, if people leave, or a new set of people join since it's the only open games, they'll just get frustrated and annoyed that the map can't be changed.

But I think there should be more hosts with player limits, there's simply too many hosts that just use a 16 player max with the logic that if people want to play smaller games they can just lock it, but it simply doesn't work like that. If you get 6-8 people in a game on a 16 player host, it WILL fill up, because people naturally join the game with players in it, and unless it's an arranged group, someone in the host will eventually unlock it. There are only a couple 3v3/4v4 hosts, but imo those are some of the best ones, all my best games have been in those hosts, with 6-8 people playing games on a variety of maps with very little turnover, simply because everyone is having so much fun. DSD isn't like that though. It's not fun - it's easy. If there were more hosts between 1v1 and 6v6 and less 8v8 hosts, this problem would largely fix itself I think.


So a general request to people running autohosts - please use a reasonable player limit. :)

[klapmongool]

As several people wrote above the problem at hand does not originate at DSD, despite what some suggested above. Other maps came before DSD and other maps will come after DSD. What exacerbates the situation is in my opinion the changed autohost situation. Autohosts have become very good hosts, and are being used to facilitate constant use of the host. This is done by allowing a great range of players (4v4s do happen, as do 8v8s and everything in between) and specs (which can join during the game). This ensures that a game can almost always start right away. This is actually a good thing. But

The DSD-only host owners donÔÇÖt (seem) to care about map rotation, or about the range of problems as described above (dealing with lack of skill development, meat shields etc). They see their hosts being used more than any other host, hosting more games for more players and thus provide what the people seem to want.

The issue at hand is that these hosts gobble up players and potential players because the likelihood of playing a game within the foreseeable future is much higher. I often find myself playing another game of DSD just because itÔÇÖs the only option, and there are many others. There are ways to cope with this situation, what we shouldnÔÇÖt and canÔÇÖt do is actually limit hosts or players from doing whatever they want. I understand my socialist PiRO brothers are prone to this restrictive option but it would deal with symptoms of underlying problems and could possibly worsen the situation somehow.

There is no need in abandoning DSD, itÔÇÖs a great map. It is the DSD Only we need to deal with. Even adding as little as one to three maps to the map cycle would be a great relieve. Apparently asking the owners to change hasnÔÇÖt worked. I suggest we compete with these hosts.

1: limit number of alternative hosts (Sure, I like the 2v2, 3v3, 4v4, 6v6, 8v8, 100v100 fi Hosts, but we lack players to fill them and it doesnÔÇÖt produce the concentration as needed for competition). Reduce those to just a fi BA 8v8.

2: set up a limited map cycle (three or four maps max; DSD, Tabula, Nuclear winter, Small supreme?)

3: Set the host to automatically change to DSD when it is empty.

4: Take your responsibility and dont play in the DSD only host. Lure people in at the start of a evening by setting the host to DSD. The map cycle will take care of the rest.

[scifi]

@ pxtl
You must take into consideration that none of the involved that are complaining about DSD are gonna do jack shit.

The question actually is "how can we stop 8v8 dsd without doing anything except talking in the forums or in the lobby".

I remember when i brought this up like a year ago with the final offer being to limit newbies to smaller games and than when they have a higher rank allow them to participate in games of all sizes.
This way newbies can start with games of up to 8 players than move to 12 and than 16.

Aside from getting flamed and trolled by a massive amount of people, all saying there is no problem and GTFO i also tried contacting some of the autohost owners and explain the issue but i was a single person against hordes of players interested in playing 8v8 all the time.
Find a way to limit the ability to join a room of BA based on experience and the size of the room, if you actually care so much.

By the way, this thread,partially, IMO is about frustrated players bored of spring after playing it for ages plus all sorts of exaggerations and an attempt to address problems that are actually a result of a more fundamental problem about BA...
Let's be honest, There are constant smaller games going...Sure there are sometimes multiple DSD games but there are also other games on other maps.

The real issue is that there are not enough players, and there are very little players interested in the more intense smaller games.
Why?
Because the engine is aging while commercial games are constantly improving.
on top of that BA isnt using the new additions the engine(or the community) does get...
Ba has no real developers...Where is the website where is the installer where are the video tutorials where are the new models...etc etc etc..
with how BA is going(no changes, stagnation especially in GFX and single player missions/website/proper commercial game features) it will end up just like OTA...constant 30 old people online playing it while the rest of the world is playing something else..

forcing smaller games is an artificial solution to a core problem of BA, it's just aging as a game and nobody cares about it enough to do anything about it.

+1 completely agree, but still nothing will happen no person, dev is going to do anything about it.

[JohannesH]

There's as much BA players as always... Sure there could be more with proper advertisement

But fact is that many more of those players are playing 8v8 than before, and big part BA players dislike that to some extent. And that's not really related to new models or whatever at all.

[keijj0]

klapmongool has some good ideas.
i just want to get enough SKILLED players on server with enough metal.
so 8v8 dsd wont cut it. bigger map would be ok but theres too much "noobies" in there. i mean even veterans who are just dsdplayers and cant do much else

[KaiserJ]

seems to me that the main reason people like DsD is not for the porc, or the 8 player games, but the fact that there are only 2 main "paths" which ends up forcing teamplay, wheras with open maps like comet people tend to make their own little section of defensive wall rather than mixing in with someone else

hell, i'd love to have some better options for 8v8 than DsD, and in fact we already do, thinking mainly of maps from behe and artturi (although i cannot offhand think of one that actually has enough metal for 8 players to start comfortably besides Lost)

[JohannesH]

Also 1 thing, SD's automatic matchmaking tends to throw people to dsd, they have no control over what kind of game they play when using that feature

Instead of that matchmaking helping people play the gametype they want, that tends to just make the trends of what is played even stronger.

Kaiser I don't think that's true, almost nobody plays as a team on dsd, or if they do they tend to win really one-sidedly. Or they just suck awfully, then it makes little difference if they cooperate or not.

[Pxtl]

Remeber that SD was made by CA players, intended for less-popular mods. The idea is that you give it a list of what mod you want to play and tell it to go find a game that matches this. For "I want to play CA or KP, go find one and idle until it starts" this is the right tool for the job. It doesn't need a map-filter for those games since beggars can't be choosers.

Iirc intent was that, at a future date, SD would also _create_ games if there were enough SD-using players looking for a gametype that it would start, especially if all existing battles were in-progress. In such a case, map-preference would be easier to represent.

[Hobo Joe]

It would be good to add an option for game size as well. So someone could say 1v1, if there were no games with 1 other person in them, it would join an empty autohost(or host a new game), and wait for another person to join, if two newbies are using this system, it will match them together and wallah, you have a newbie 1v1 match. If there was something this straightforward, I would use it too. Doesn't seem like it'd be any more complex than the current implementation of SD's matchmaker as far as I know.

i.e., settings would be something like:

map: any
mod: BA
gamesize: 1v1

Or possibly a game range, i.e. 1v1-4v4, and options such as 7v7/8v8 could have a big red "NOT RECOMMENDED" next to them to deter newbies.