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Please add another teams all welcome

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It's weird to have a 16v16 room and a 4v4 room and nothing in between. With another 16v16 or maybe a 10v10 room perhaps people will start populating those "potentially big rooms" (not bound to small teams) instead of making a 10-player waiting list on the one and only glorious lobsterpot.

On a side note I do think 32-player rooms are slowly killing this game and 20 is the absolute maximum HOWEVER at this point I think it's worth trying anything to depopulate the main cluster.
+2 / -0

2 years ago
People just want the big lob pot. It could be 100v100 and 95% of players would still join the overcrowded room. We know this for certain as we did have a balance bot like 10 years ago that would split people up to smaller rooms. Result: complaints and more complaints.
Conclusion: Adding another room would hardly change anything. People will not join. We don't even get small teams going here when there is a 10 player waiting list for the big room.
I don't like it, but thus is reality. :/
+5 / -0
2 years ago
See that's the thing. One evening I didn't feel like 4v4 so I didn't join the small teams but I would join a 6v6+ room. All things considered, I don't think adding another 16v16 lobpot(and a 10v10 small fry) will cause any damage so it's still worth a shot.
+2 / -0
2 years ago
Could be that it holds the pool of players better. But I don't know the numbers.
+0 / -0
2 years ago
I imagine that being able to split the room when it is overflowing would be a positiveg. I hate to see players who want to play stuck waiting.
+2 / -0
USrankfloomby: We have tried that years ago. When the auto-split was introduced I was really thrilled by the prospect of several smaller games. I thought that might eliminate waiting times and help grow the player base.
But many others did not share that point of view. I do not remember the specifics, it is too long ago, but I think there had been issues that people who were not necessarily in the same clan still wanted to be in the same game with / against each other and split did not account for that. Others might just have wanted a really big game or got irritated when they were automatically moved to a different room.

Trying an intermediate game size as GBrankBrofessional suggests might still be worth a try (wont be much effort to implement, will it?) I however am sceptical about the chances of success.
+2 / -0
2 years ago
But many people, myself included, want to play the biggest lobpot possible. I prefer 16 vs 16 and I am willing to wait one game for that instead of joining 10 vs 10. If there was another big lobpot room, it would never have another 32 players (unless Zero-K gains suddenly a lot more popularity), it would be rather like 5 v 5. The best solution would be to raise the limit and allow 20 v 20 lobpot, but some CPUs of some players would not be able to handle that. Altough, people have faster processors than they had like five years ago, maybe it really is the time to raise the bar? I presume graphics is not the problem, just CPUs...
+1 / -0

2 years ago
quote:
The best solution would be to raise the limit and allow 20 v 20 lobpot, but some CPUs of some players would not be able to handle that. Altough, people have faster processors than they had like five years ago, maybe it really is the time to raise the bar? I presume graphics is not the problem, just CPUs...

Perhaps more to the point, I for one would be unwilling to further compromise the game experience of everybody else for the sake of the minority who want larger and larger and more degenerate cluster games.
+5 / -1

2 years ago
The problem is the engine if I get it correct.

"Failed to allocate memory"



I enjoy all game-sizes usually, from 1v1 to 16v16. I often don`t enjoy a specific team or map, but thats it.
One size is not a replacement for the other, and 16v16 is a spectacle that no other rts i know gives you. Why terraform is beloved because of it`s uniqueness to zk, but clusterpots are called degenerate is beyond my scope.
You really just need the right maps for such a giant game. And sadly we have 2 or 3 in the pool that fit really big game-sizes.
+0 / -0
I mostly mean 'degenerate' in the mathematical sense:

quote:
being simpler (as by having a factor or constant equal to zero) than the typical case


Many strategies and units that are viable in smaller teams get invalidated by artillery/static spam in larger teams.

---

quote:
You really just need the right maps for such a giant game. And sadly we have 2 or 3 in the pool that fit really big game-sizes.

As far as I know the engine and people's computers typically can't handle these.
+0 / -0

2 years ago
Inculta and saltscape are okay, they are played regularily and very rarely crash.

Anyway, I agree that the average clusterfuck IS retarded, but it seems to be what people want to play. I don`t understand one-room-culture either, but I believe working against it is futile...
Adding a second host sounds fine, it does not seem to have the potential of any harm and MAYBE people will take it.
+0 / -0

2 years ago
There was second all welcome room in old lobby if i m correct. It didn't worked anyway. Everybody centered around big one room and was willing to wait.
+0 / -0
2 years ago
I realize I'm still very new to ZK, but I thought I might be able to contribute from that 'fresh' perspective. For those who have already considered this aspect, please grant me the indulgence.

My opinion is that DErankkatastrophe captured a core concept well which explains players' attraction to these overly large team games. Spectacle does enter into the equation, and ZK does that better than can be expected from any other RTS game currently available. Firstly, nearly everyone loves a spectacle. Many deny the curiosity and fascination surrounding the witness thereof. The truth is as obvious today as it was to the ringleaders of the 1920's traveling circuses. The sidelong glances of passersby at a traffic collision attest to that. All told, I believe the raw truth runs deeper.

Second--and possibly more effective a draw--is the nature of ZK being a multiplayer game combined with the spectacle. This is a shared experience. This is the same effect I believe we see in people who travel to witness large sports events, gather in silence around tragedy, or experience the solemn peace of nature with friends. Any of these events might be a spectacle alone, but the dynamic changes significantly when there are others to share it with. It could be argued that even total strangers have a fundamentally different experience when together as opposed to individually.

This is what humans do and have done for ages. They seek out associations (lizard brain say same is good) that they can relate to or apply to their own lives (see monkey eat fruit - monkey happy fruit good, monkey sick fruit bad) that reinforce behaviors and builds group resiliency through community bonding (Grund throw spear well - I also want throw spear well - village all learn throw spear well - village prospers).

That isn't to say it doesn't go haywire from time to time (Ku Klux Klan, Nazi Gestapo informants, Uyghur genocide in the PRC, ad nauseam).

It is my opinion that if the prior can be encouraged while simultaneously discouraging the latter, the whole of ZK can only see improvements from this forward thinking approach about the needs of its community.
+0 / -0

2 years ago
How many people watch "Funny Car Crashes" videos compared to how many want to be actually part of one? :D
ZK-Clusterfuck allows you to be part of one without financial and mostly without health-consequences.

There is another thing about team-games in general, and it is the main reason why fighting-games and rts have declined and the big competitive games are team-shooters and MOBAs at the moment. Team-Games allow you to give up responsibility. If you lose in a single-player-game, you have no other option to accept that it is YOU that sucks. (okay, you can still blame the game)
But this is more about teams in general, less about clusterfuck specifically.
+1 / -0
quote:
Perhaps more to the point, I for one would be unwilling to further compromise the game experience of everybody else for the sake of the minority who want larger and larger and more degenerate cluster games.


You are twisting my words AUrankAdminAquanim. What I wrote was suggesting, that maybe it is not about compromising the game experience for everyone for the sake of minority who want bigger (in your words more degenerate) games, but maybe that almost everyone now has PC that would be able to run even 40 v 40. If it was either 10 people waiting in the lobby, unable to join, or 2 people having lag, I would maybe consider allowing more people into the game. It is essentially only about this. Maybe I am wrong and more people would have problems running 16+ v 16+ games, but that is why I posed it as an open question.
You just used a straw man.
+1 / -0
2 years ago
CZrankSilent_AI

The problem isn't CPU-wise, it's design-wise.
ZK just wasn't designed around 40vs40 games. and in 40vs40s you will get a very monotonous strategy of spam arty and rush super. We see this trend where 3v3s are at one side of the spectrum and 16v16s at the other, extrapolate this to 40v40 and we have pure cancer.
It's been suggested that bigger maps could solve it, but that requires somebody to make such a massive map (quite a feat, auto-generation programs such as world engine would be almost mandetory). Such a large map also pushes the limits of Spring Engine. which is probably old enough to drink in most countries.
And game size also scales the computational power needed up quadrically. 3x the players mean 3x the units running pathfinding and 3x more map to accomadate the players so 3x the map to run pathfinding through.
+2 / -0
I am neither twisting your words nor constructing a strawman CZrankSilent_AI. I am pointing out a part of the problem which you did not talk about. Namely, that when considering whether to increase the maximum size of the teams room the developers need to not only consider whether the engine and people's computers can technically handle it but whether it is a good idea for the health of the gameplay and of the community.

quote:
But many people, myself included, want to play the biggest lobpot possible.

Many people, perhaps, but not every person. I do not like being accused of strawmanning simply because I made a statement representing the views of people who do not have the same wants you do.
+0 / -0

2 years ago
quote:
Such a large map also pushes the limits of Spring Engine


AGAIN, YES, the engine is the main bottleneck!!!
+0 / -0


2 years ago
I want to try a technical solution.
  • 1. Check the size of the waiting list when the game starts. If there are at least 12 players, split them off into a 6v6 or larger with a new room with the same map and host settings.
  • 2. Reduce the size of the big teams room to 14v14.

This is a system of tradeoffs and constraints. Fundamentally, if there are 40 people wanting to play a huge teamgame but the game only has reasonable performance up to 16v16, then the options are some mix of:
  • Most of them play a 16v16 while eight people miss out.
  • Everyone plays a 10v10.
It doesn't matter where you put the player limit. If you allow games up to 20v20 then the issue arises when 50 people want to play. We hit a limit at some point.

The problem with two 10v10s is that this situation is inherently unstable. We've assumed (and it seems like a good assumption, even though it doesn't hold for everyone in the room) that everyone wants to play the largest game possible. Individuals can put themselves in a better position by switching games if their game is smaller or of the same size. I think we had two 12v12 rooms a few months back as an experiment and this dynamic was observed.

If we're to get to a situation like two 10v10s rather than a 16v16 and eight people missing out, then I think we need some technical help. Hence the waiting list split system. It is important that the system not have any avenues of abuse by which people can make large improvements to their own incentives.

For example, if the 40 players were split into two 10v10s rather than a 14v14 and a 6v6, then something has been "taken" from the players that were there first, and they are liable to kick up a fuss. We tried this ages ago and it happens often enough to disrupt the room. There is a decent chance of at least one of the rooms being force-exited in an attempt to play a larger game. With what I wrote above, the people in the smaller game have two choices:
  • Play the game.
  • Leave and hope to get into the big game next time.
The players in the 14v14 are not available, probably for longer than it takes to play a 6v6. Kicking up a fuss doesn't impact the running of the main room.

The numbers are open to compromise and optimisation. 6v6 may be too small to make viable rooms from people expecting a huge game. 14v14 may be too large to make good waiting lists. We would try to tweak the thresholds such that most split games are played, and then ideally they would seed a room from there. Maybe the size limit of the rooms could even change dynamically, but they would have to do so before the game starts to reduce confusion, and only to create a split-off game.

On limiting games to 8v8.
  • I think the benefits have to be large to offset the loss of large-game-spectacle that many people enjoy.
  • Seeding a new room manually is difficult. The benefits of 8v8 may be large enough if we had a waiting list system to auto-seed. It would be worth trying this temporarily when such a system exists.
+7 / -0

2 years ago
quote:
I want to try a technical solution.


If you want to force room limits for players then you have to also limit spectator count as well in room. Only then you can force such things. But it will be costly mistake in end.
If 5 players from 100 players complain about 16 vs 16 then radical change is needed against other 95% players? This big rooms have been in top since i have played ZK.
+1 / -0
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