Current state of hosting games

I'd like to start a discussion about hosting ZK games and all the various restrictions in place on the hosting of these games.

The following commands are restricted for moderators: !togglecbal, !minrank, !maxrank, !minelo, !maxelo

!togglecbal toggles clan balance, meaning we cannot currently change whether we want clan stacks in our host or not. Rest of the commands are self explanatory, we can't create elo/rank restricted rooms.

Then there's the matter of being unable to kick whoever we want from our rooms, under threat of unwritten rules.



Personally, I have a problem with all of the above and wish we could host unpassworded elo restricted rooms and kick unwanted players. It is a truly radical idea that player game hosts should have control over their rooms, unseen in any other game RTS or otherwise. Could you imagine a world where players could decide for themselves? It's scary, isn't it.

quote: !togglecbal toggles clan balance, meaning we cannot currently change whether we want clan stacks in our host or not.

This was implemented recently and I wasn't keen to expose it to users until it was verified to work on the main server. There is a bit more work in exposing it the right amount and ideally making the current state visible through lobby. It might happen though if I or somebody else gets around to it. On the other hand policy might change so that that doesn't happen. Idk.

As for the rest of this, this conversation has been had before and I doubt the consensus position of the moderators has changed.

For reference:

- All arguments of the form "oh but some other RTS does X" are totally irrelevant unless you take into account the differences in their community compared to ZK (in terms of size and culture). I have no doubt that people will attempt to make such arguments in this thread anyway but they will be dismissed by quoting this post.
- The ability to arbitrarily kick people can be (and has been) used to effectively disallow people from playing multiplayer ZK. This is not something the moderators are willing to accept whoever happened to randomly seed the main host on a given day having the power to do.
- The min/max commands are liable to be misused in more or less the same way.

The topic of room moderation isn't included in the CoC.

To give an example, having your own blacklist of who you don't want to play with would not be inherently disrespectful, if said blacklist is based on past anti-social behavior, trolling, etc. But its not something hosts are currently allowed to enforce on unpassworded rooms, if I understand current policy correctly.

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I find the lack of ability control over a lobby I host to be quite an annoyance, and that the majority of players that want to use it for its functionality are punished because of the minority that abuse it instead of them being individually punished.

Examples I've had of missing this functionality is trying to play 2v2s with my brother, I host a game and have to state in the room title I want 2400+ WHR players and then explain to low ranked players that enter why I don't want them to play (it just wouldn't be a balanced or fun game for anyone involved). I've played high ELO 2v2s in my own hosted games and had specs after the game commandeer the room with their commands, changing the max players and I've been powerless to stop them and had to give up the room and remake (and then they followed... https://zero-k.info/Forum/Thread/29969?postID=218502#218502)

"But rANDY, just make a passworded room!" - This means I have to message every prospective player the password (annoying for people who don't want to play), and may miss players coming online that would like to play, and people with password filter on would miss seeing the battle in battle list. It also stops spectators coming in to watch.

"Just use !proposebattle, rANDY!" this is a tool that is not as good as hosting a game, it relies on all your potential players watching the chat and a slow moving chat, it needs the players to be online when the link is first sent out, it stops specs that don't meet the requirements from watching.

esainane hosted a game with proposebattle last week with a minelo setting, I loaded up ZK a few mins after he had done so, so couldn't see the link in the zk main chat. I had to ask him to type it again, but clicking his new !proposebattle link didn't help me join his battle room. When we finally got a game going and esainane disconnected/crashed part way through, he could not rejoin his own battle room for the next game.

Lobster pot may be the default game as a result of there being too many artificial and unnecessary barriers to players hosting the types of games they want and having the power to enforce. If individuals abuse these functionalities, please punish them instead of the players that wish to use them normally.

quote: Another approach could be to add a moderator action that restricts a player's access to commands such as minelo. Then perhaps policing its use would be possible.

I for one am not particularly keen to adjudicate the grey areas even with this tool. Nor am I keen for a constant procession of people who meant well when they used minelo etc. but nevertheless caused a situation where a certain group of people were persistently unable to play.

quote: I have never seen the lobsterpot in anything but the autohosts.

I have seen this happen. I have definitely seen it happen at points in time when a non-autohost room allowed the host considerably more power than they would have in an autohost.