Considering the recent petition to disable Palladium and the following discussion, I have come to the conclusion that not Palladium is the issue but the existence of the Teams All Welcome lobby. The reasons for that are multiple. It reinforces bad playstyle. It is frustrating for many that are involved. It soaks up nearly all active players. Please, for a week disable the Teams All Welcome lobby and nudge people to use the matchmaker for team matches.
+14 / -2
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I also generally agree here, because TAW does, undeniably, create bad habits and it doesn't seem like it does nearly as much to teach Zero-K to newer players. As well, its much easier to help newer/worse players in smaller teams, because there's A) Less to do compared to TAW, and less to watch, and B) Sometimes people will argue otherwise, and although they may be technically correct for TAW, TAW does not play like other forms of Zero-K in some ways. Ex. Rushing Lance, Likho, etc. It would be an interesting experiment, at the very least. And yes, TAW does often soak up nearly all the active players in public multiplayer, which is a shame.
+2 / -0
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Same argument as disabling Palladium: the players will just make a custom lobby. Except that autohost makes the experience of starting a game easy for newcomers, and custom quickly becomes dictatorship / mess / votespam / cheats enabled / constant change of modes... This won't happen on Palladium because the players are clear about what they want when they join it, but in TAW, it's going to be ugly.
+4 / -0
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Well, preferably they end up going to the matchmaking queues, instead of a custom lobpot.
+1 / -0
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I think the argument that people can always use custom or private lobbies is not a strong one, because what humans do is often not guided by what is possible but by what is convenient. What lobbies are auto-hosted influences significantly what is convenient.
+5 / -0
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I don't think this is a great idea for some reasons.. To start, I think the lobby experience is a lot better than matchmaker which, like for example you can see whether it's a shitty map or there's a player that's trolling, etc. and not join, and as Galamesh said a non-autohosted lobby can get pretty hectic. Maybe it could be done as an experiment but is there really much benefit here? If people want to play lobpot then so be it. Personally (maybe im a masochist) I enjoy sitting on a front and slugging it out, even if I also enjoy 1v1. I have issues with the gamemode sometimes, but some people just like playing it. Reinforcing bad playstyle is probably true but I'd rather be able to play the gamemode I enjoy rather than being forced into matchmaker for teams and getting a worse teams experience. The only thing I see is it makes people start playing more 1v1/small teams which could improve on the one lobby situation, allow for people to play modes other than lobpot when it's active and maybe grow the playerbase.
+3 / -1
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Yes, that is exactly my point. TAW is convenient for newcomers.
+0 / -0
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The bad experience in small teams goes quickly away once your rating settles to where it should be.    Galamesh, maybe restrict ALL lobbies to max 12 players for a week would be the solution then.
+1 / -0
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I don't understand the sudden urge to control what other players do. You don't like TAW, do something else.
+4 / -0
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The existence of the Teams All Welcome lobby is already nudging people to play Zero-K multiplayer a certain way. So the discussion to change that nudging is valid. That Teams All Welcome soaks up nearly all players is discouraging others ways to play Zero-K because it feels like there is little activity otherwise.
+2 / -0
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People were saying for centuries that there should be no kings and yet there were kings for so long, until there weren't.
+1 / -0
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are the "bad habits" lobpot teaches ineffective in a lobpot?
+3 / -0
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Assuming this is a serious suggestion: Couple problems with this approach is that the current matchmaking options are not ideal, and in comparison to Custom Battles, matchmaking does not provide persistent lobby environments after a game is over, which I feel would be rather important for a sense of community. Currently, if you want to matchmake a team game, you have to select Small Teams (2v2 - 3v3) and/or Medium Teams (4v4 - 6v6). Obviously this excludes the possibility of 8v8 and especially 16v16. I would suggest the following options instead: Small Teams (2v2 - 4v4), Large Teams (5v5 - 10v10), Lobster Pot (11v11 - 16v16). I don't know if it already works like the following due to the rarity of matchmade team games, but the higher ends of a particular option should be prioritized, unless the players have been waiting in queue for some while (around a couple to few minutes maybe?). I theorize there is probably too much separation between Matchmaking and Custom Games. I would suggest for Teams Matchmaking to automatically create persistent lobbies that could be joinable through Custom Games, which aren't destroyed when the corresponding game ends. There should also probably be some preference option in the Matchmaking interface specifying if you're fine with joining a running battle (default), or if you merely want to start a new battle.
+3 / -0
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I think this whole thread should go away because you're all discussing performance and rating, and my hand in the fire that lob pot regulars just want a crowded place to shoot the shit at on a regular basis. They don't care if what they do is good or not. They just want to INSERT UNIT/FACTORY main and lul all night. If they cared about rating, they would have found a way to qualify for Palladium by now. If you have a star and you're not even blue yet, you ain't gonin' nowhere.
+4 / -0
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I cannot believe that I write this right now, but I actually think it could be worth a try. I specifically agree with 2 points in the og thread: quote:
It is frustrating for many that are involved. It soaks up nearly all active players. |
I have defended the lobpot countless times and I have a hard time imagining a zk-world where it is not a thing. But just looking at those 2 points, I simply have to admit that I see a lot of truth in them. Note that I am advocating for a test, NOT for a permanent shut-down of TAW. But the fact alone that I cannot imagine zk without it tells me that there is something to gain new information from.
+4 / -0
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It could be interesting to shrink the All welcome max size to 10 v 10 or so.
+4 / -0
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quote:
It could be interesting to shrink the All welcome max size to 10 v 10 or so. |
I'm not going to say if that's good or bad. I simply predict a change like that would recreate Palladium and TAW on a smaller scale. Recreating Palladium isn't really of any consequence. Recreating TAW on the other hand, small teams with newer / lesser skilled players is a very rough environment. There's not much you can do if you're the best player of your team and the rest of the team is monoproducing lances, krows and cyclops. The game is lost at minute 1.
+0 / -0
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So i mostly(only) play TAW in recent times, why? Because it allows me to not play at my best and do stupid shit like revenant rush, newton ramp jacks and other strategies which are, how to say this, unoptimal. Essentially TAW gives me a shield of 15 other players which gives me the space to do these strats.(yes there are some games where multpile players pick these ineffective strats which negativly affects the team but those will happen to the enemy too so in the end it "balances out" (also TAW is a lobpot, minelo exist for a reason) ) And it gives me 16 targets too. If my current strat isnt working against my direct opponent instead of switching strats i just search for an opponent against which it works In smaller games your individual contributions matter more, so playing inneffective tactics is more punishing, which gives me a duty to not play them for respect to my teammates. This is mostly because I dont have the time, nor the will, to "get good" at this game. I am ok with my current elo, i have my fun in lobpots and should you disable TAW i would just leave until you enable it, or just play custom lobbies. And this is why i find this whole discussion about palladium and TAW pointless and stupid, i mean TAW/ Palladium were probably popular custom games which got AutoHosted for convenience. Restricting either makes no sense to me, because most TAW players would just leave rather than grind their head against superior opponents (getting destroyed in 1v1 isnt particular fun) and the learning curve of the game (in MY opinion). Also on the topic on "bad Strats/habits". Consider that lance rushing makes sense because on most maps in a 16 v16 raiders become obsolete around min 5/6 and you gain an significant arty advantage if you manage to snipe the enemy arty with your lance as most games devolve into an artellery battle
+3 / -0
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