Seeding new lobbies

Problem:
Many players prefer waiting for a spot in a full game room instead of starting a new one. The result is long wait times, and difficulty in seeding secondary lobbies despite recent changes (like smaller lobby sizes and smarter queue logic).

Below are some mechanics and UI suggestions that may further promote and incentivise seeding new games. Sweeping changes are not simple. But maybe we can settle for starting a conversation to begin with.

------

“Apply for New Game” seeding Mechanic:

- When a lobby reaches full capacity, a highly visible “Apply for New Game” button appears for idle/waiting players. This goes away if the lobby drops below 75% or the next lobby fills up.


- Players who click it are not moved immediately. They are added to a seeding pool for a lower population TAW room. They can still opt out unless the game they were waiting for begins with them in it.


- Once 10+ players apply (for example), the system moves them into the secondary lobby. Maybe some day players can set their game size preference, but it complicates things at this stage.


- If a secondary TAW game starts before the first room restarts, any remaining waiting players in the main room are offered to transfer, but only if space is available. Eg “11 people are going to war in TAW2. Join the cause! or I'm scared”

--------------------

---

UI & Flow Simplification:

- Players only see the core button and a simple message. All logic is hidden unless they interact.


- Transfer prompts appear only if relevant and contain info on the next game (so people know if they want in)


- Rewards and reward messages should be visible and FUN if implemented.

--------------------------

Optional incentives & limits:

Players who risk seeding a new or low population TAW room receive a reward: XP, cosmetic unlock progress, rank points, or community badges. A "Seeder", or "Early adopter" badge could be cool for example.


Limit: Max 3 rewards per day (to avoid abuse), with messaging like “You can earn 2 more seeding rewards today.”

-------------------------

We had a similar system to what you (both of you) are proposing. At the end of a large game, it said something like "Do you want to play a smaller game of similar skill?", then if enough people voted yes for the poll-like item that appeared the voters would be split off into a new game. There was probably something to do with splitting off people who were close enough in skill, but I recall the bounds being quite wide. Here is what happened:

• People clicked the button to see what it does. There were a range of comprehension skills behind this choice.
• Sometimes the threshold would be reached and people would be split off into a new room.
• The new room lacked the buy-in for the game to actually start. People didn't realise what their team would look like and it seems like many didn't really understand what the button was going to do.
• The players who were split off left or filtered back to the old room.

People who would want to use the feature were taught to never press the button, because it very rarely worked. So it didn't take long for the system to effectively do nothing besides waste time with an extra vote. There were also a lot of demands for the ability to opt-out of seeing the option entirely.

These systems have to be durable so that they can build enough trust for people to actually use them. For someone to use it, they have to be reasonably sure that it is going to give them a better game than they have at the moment (even if what they have at the moment is waiting for a whole game to end). You have to imagine how the system is going to fail in the face of messy player interaction, rather than looking at the ideal case.

Hopefully, this may all be moot. The current !split threshold is 32/22 and it has not been used so far. It seems like new hosts are seeded before that threshold is met. I'd like people to report on how this is going though. The reason split require 32/22 is that the new games need to be large enough to survive, and the split has to offer at least some people something. I saw a suggestion to split at 32/32 (ie a full 32 player room), but that won't work because enough people are going to want to filter back into one or the other game to cause a cascade back to one room. A 32/22 !split gives the rooms 10 extra players of hope.

UI and culture quirks may drastically affect the outcomes of things like these

in or near the join button there could be:
- number with players currently in
- avg rank color currently in


also, in my opinion something like split should not disrupt the currently active players, just the excess ones that are waiting to play, maybe spectators too.

Maybe now would be a good time to run a round of Planetwars?
With the extra PW-spice some players might be interested to play in matches that they would otherwise ignore as too small.
Maybe they will enjoy it and continue to join smaller rooms even after PW has ended.