small games, big games

The split on start is fail because:
- people never know if the game is going to be split or not, eventually they end up in a different kind of game than what they expected.
- split makes a medium game on a map selected for big game, because the map is selected before the spilt. You end up with playing one of these huge crappy maps that are selected for big games, and don't even play big game. So it is double fail, you get small game on huge map, while what I want is big game on small map.

See also http://zero-k.info/Forum/Thread/2768

What would be wrong with small team host and big team host?? There are plenty of players who like only small games.. so... join it!

and one host for unlimited player amount... I don't see a problem with that.
And how you measure the 30 % player loss...normally when it splits for e.g. 22 players.. after the two splitted games finished there are only 14 players or less left....
Just put a big team host and a small one

The current system might work to maintain player numbers but I doubt there will ever be growth.
The step from one 15v15 game to two (or 3) such games is just too big.

How many potential new players are lost when they see there are only large games?
A culture of small games has to be cultivated for there to be new space race.

This problem is closely related to the disable game slowdown for lagging players thread.

Obviously, the problem emerges from the culture of everyone automatically joining the biggest room with most players and hanging in there. Then people complain about the unsatisfying huge games.

Therefore is it again the culture that needs fixing and making people to learn new behavior:
"goto biggest available room. If unable, start a new room" instead of "join biggest room."

This suggests that limiting the room sizes may be a viable option. Whatever the solution is, you need to 'drive it in' so that even the thickheaded learn how the new system works. Copious amount of information and advice will reduce the Great Confusion And Resistance what such changes will always provoke in people. In the end, they will see it was the right thing to do.

Sotha781

Go to the biggest room would work fine if there was a simple vote command to ask the waiting players if they want to start a new game.

Maybe this is the "manual juggling" we need? Let players call a !newgame poll among players waiting in rooms.

!newgame FFA, !newgame smallteams, !newgame 1v1, !newgame big teams, etc.

manually initiating a juggle. Every player waiting for a game gets polled. Yes and no override your stated juggler preferences, abstaining uses your juggler preference.

So let's say we have a bunch of players waiting for game to end. I call "newgame FFA". So your juggler settings are just "auto-join this type when somebody !newgames one". People who hate the juggler can just turn their auto-join stuff all off, but they can still say "yes" if somebody calls a !newgame that they'd like.

Following Tandstickor's comment, maybe self hosted games could have an option to be found by the quickmatch system if desired by the host.

Juggler never had this issue, because it always runs check when any game ends.

So if you opt in for team game, join some some small with 1 person, when big game ends it moves you there (merges both games for future split by elo).

Licho - that was not my experience. This may have been an earlier version of Juggler, but I was getting juggled into small games, then something happens to prevent the small game from starting (player can't sync, long/slow download)... then the big game begins and the rest of us are left in an unplayable situation. Then somebody says "screw this" and leaves and the we've got a 2v1 of leftovers.

I loved juggler, but experiences like that hurt. Manually selecting games, the same fear and problems exists - "I don't care what game starts, I just want to get into the first game that *does*... and I don't know which that will be".

then you could not join later to spectate, which is an awsome feature btw.