The One Room Problem

Many ideas to fix the one room problem have been discussed:

Please turn off split command or make it a vote.
some proposals
Why did they do it and why can't it be turned off?
Vote to split Teams - All Welcome into 2 smaller teams rooms?
Only one teams room

The latest pot idea is about GoogleFrog 's idea of splitting the teams room at game start or end by WHR and hiding rooms to which players are not split. I'm wondering if this is still GoogleFrog 's preferred option.
If a room is split in two visible rooms at game end, people will all gather in the one larger room. If it is split to invisible rooms, a too small room can die, especially as many players who have just played do not want to play another game. If you try to prevent this by a very high split threshold, the split will happen too rarely. If the split happens at game start rather than game end, the split is too unexpected for the players.

All those problems can be fixed by not focusing on the time of game start or end. We should focus on the time when a game is running and further players are looking for a game as this is the case for most of the time. We have to provide a solution for those waiting players before the running game ends. Currently, players who wait to play join the big room because that is the best chance for getting into a game. But the running game prevents the start of another game. One solution is to just allow a start vote among the waiting players of a running teams room. (The waiting players of a room include more than the waiting list. The waiting players of a room are all players in the room who are neither playing the actual running game nor in the spectator section of the room. Maybe change the waiting list such that all players who join a running room as players are added to the waiting list and only when the game ends, they are moved to the player list as far as possible. Ideally, players who are in the room and spectating the running game but not in the spectator section of the room should be clearly notified about the start vote. But even if this is not done, it would still be much better than now.)

Another solution is to prevent joining a running room if you are neither going to spectate nor play the running game. Then your best chance to get in a game is to go to another room. Do you know any non-Spring RTS where people can join a running game room neither to spectate it nor to play in it, but to wait for the game to end to start another one? This doesn't make any sense! If they want to play, force them to go to a free waiting room to play. When a game starts, merge its waiting list players to that other waiting room. And when a teams game ends, merge all their players into that waiting room. Then, players do not miss a chance to join the next big game by being in that waiting room.

GoogleFrog

quote: I'm not sure that is how it would go in practise. There will be some range of sizes where the waiting list is the difference between people making a new room, or just sitting in this one. But below that, and the new game will have trouble getting off the ground, while above that, I expect people to eventually make a new room. What is to stop people spectating the running game, then joining it in a frenzy when it ends?

If the waiting players are in the range of not being enough to start a new game, it does not matter much where they wait, as long as others can join them. The point is that even if they were enough, the current system strongly incentivizes against eventually making a new room. If they spectate and then join in a frenzy, that's fine, too. The point is that they don't need to do that to get in the next game because when a team game ends, it would be merged to the waiting room. And more importantly, a game could be started there before the running one ends.

Whatever solution you go for, please keep in mind most people just want a lobpot to jump into, so please don't hurt the poor lobpot!

People keep telling me that the lobpot preference is an illusion based on a room snowball effect and it being the shortest path to at least getting a game. But over at BAR (literally the most similar game to ZK on the net) it doesn't look that way. Due to their population, there is any size of room you want, and yet there is more rooms above 8 players than below by a significant margin. If you measure by number of players in those rooms, its way more skewed. Maybe 4x players in large room compared with small rooms! People prefer the pots, rightly or wrongly.

I play over at BAR more than ZK now, just so I can get a lobpot game at all, even though I prefer ZK and mention ZK and how good it is over there whenever I can.

kindof on topic:

i know it sounds crazy but completely random balance is the only possible way to fully avoid smurfs and stacks but you need to play ininite games for it to average out the chances the teams are even. and even then it would still be possible that in every game ever played all the good players randomly end up on one team.

While I don't mind the big game lobby, I do think it's incentivizing a lack of match diversity which forces players into a binary of huge matches (8v8 - 16v16) or 1v1 with not much in between until the off hours when player counts dwindle.

Zero-K has 5 unique flavors, give or take, with accompanying play styles at each of the team sizes (1v1, 2v2, 3v3, 4v-8v, 8v-16v).

I wouldn't want to prevent anyone from playing their preferred flavor.

There are probably other players during peak hours who would want to do a 3v3, like me, instead of joining the lobster pot but it requires more effort to setup and since it requires extra effort from 6 individual people with no guarantee it will result in a 3v3, it basically doesn't happen despite all 6 people ostensibly wanting the match. Spectating the lobster spot is both lower effort and higher guarantee of being able to play sooner.

So I think the goal should simply be to facilitate the desire for match diversity that is already present in the community but is suppressed due to inconvenience. I suspect the greater fun of playing at different match sizes more consistently would also boost player retention.

I really like the idea of getting the waiting players into a queue.

Maybe it's as simple as popping a dialogue box everytime someone joins a currently running lobby or as a spectator to queue for Teams MM while they wait? Or putting all of the waitlist into "Teams All Welcome #2" automatically like Brackman suggested?

quote: All solutions that I suggested would leave the jumping into a lobpot intact.

quote: Another solution is to prevent joining a running room if you are neither going to spectate nor play the running game. Then your best chance to get in a game is to go to another room. Do you know any non-Spring RTS where people can join a running game room neither to spectate it nor to play in it, but to wait for the game to end to start another one? This doesn't make any sense! If they want to play, force them to go to a free waiting room to play

As far as I can tell, the above (2nd) proposal prevents someone joining the lobpot with the intention to play the next round, and instead force them into a new room (likely smaller and not neccessarily a lobpot)? Players would only get to play in the full lobpot if the first room finished before the second room started? That seems bad for lobpots. Or have I misunderstood?

quote: Currently, players who wait to play join the big room because that is the best chance for getting into a game.

Just saying BAR is strong evidence this isn't why people are joining the lobpot. They join lobpot because lobpot :D

However, if I understand your first idea correctly, it's something like making it easy to say "hey let's start a new room instead of waiting, who is with me?" and making it easy for others to say "sure!". That sounds reasonable and less likely to stifle those who are just there for the lobpot. I thought there was some feature like this added at some point, could that be adapted? What happened to that feature?

Maybe people are sometimes hesitant to go to a new room individually because the new room might fizzle. A solution might include indicating the minimum size of the new room so it won't move you unless a specified number of other people also vote?

Another possibility would be to make some visual indicator come up (without having to click out to check the list constantly) that shows "similar room available" with a join button.

malric I mostly agree, apart from the idea that the current system favours lobpot. In BAR, there's no problem with getting a small room going as there is many permanently available, and the result is still players heavily choosing lobpots. They are popular because people like them. But I agree with making it as easy as possible, for those who want to, to coordinate to start a small room. That's a good thing! Just suggesting that it would be smarter to do this without making the most popular room-size harder to play.

what about removing the lobby and adding more buttons to the matchmakig section?
something like big games with no-elo, big games with elo > xxx, big games with ?? ...

quote: what about removing the lobby and adding more buttons to the matchmakig section? something like big games with no-elo, big games with elo > xxx, big games with ?? ...

That's an interesting idea. Keep the ability to make our own custom rooms but switch the default "Big Teams All Welcome #1" lobby to be accessible only through the Matchmaker Menu with a warning that says "match currently in progress for 14 minutes 32 seconds". When the match ends only then would the matchmaker put you into the lobby. This should incentivize clicking to queue into multiple game types simultaneously while waiting.

We wouldn't be losing any functionality this way as you could still manually spectate the match while queued up by finding the in progress game in Custom Lobbies tab. It's just that spectating wouldn't automatically be done and only the Matchmaker Button puts you into the playable lobby, not the spectating. This has the added benefit of automatically rolling over the waiting players above 32 into their own room without having to consciously organize it. Or if there's 8 people waiting for "Big Teams All Welcome #1" it shows all 8 waiting and it's just a single button click to be simultaneously queuing for Small Teams.

This is just a rough draft but this could be the non-destructive way of facilitating more match types with just User Interface suggestions.