Lobby Decisions - How to start a game?

hate that one. I can see it go awry more often than the proposed Neutrino model. people will just bully each other into pressing ready without the game having been properly setup or balanced.
a human element needs to be present to introduce the notions of patience, comprehension, and listening.

@bgolus : Your proposal is a good compromise i think. It doesn't get rid of the problem of 1vs1 to FFA/TEAM while loading but it make it obvious and keep the overall thing fluid and simple.

I agree.

Is your issue simply the 30 second cooldown being sped up to 5 seconds? It could be changed to a 15 second start time regardless of forced start or all ready start to prevent that "human element" issue.

I don't see the bullying being an issue. If the people pressure you into making decisions, then that person can always leave.

I think he was just trolling... that's what he does apparently.

That's not a problem I feel like we should be solving with this style of lobby. Explicit game types is an issue for open lobbies to handle. For now if you want a 1v1 game, create your own, don't change it.

I'll just chime in here to say I fully agree with everything @Cola_Colin has said thusfar. Force start may mean AFKers, and so long as the host has the power to kick, it requires everyone to actively indicate their readiness.

Also, as already mentioned, once pre-rendering makes it back in, having an obvious indicator of render readiness per player would be exceedingly useful.

This looks like it solves averything and doesn't go into any crazy voting situations. The host is still in control, it is easy for the host to spot an afk player, and hosts can't easily trick people into playing a different game than advertised.

no for me it's really the human aspect being removed.

First, thanks for asking about that.

In my humble opinion the best solutions would be:

1. Each player should be able to set a Ready State but not able to revoke it once given. If all players are ready then a Countdown should take them into the next phase. Let's say 10 seconds.

2. The Host may have the priviledge to start a game, overriding the Ready button of the other players. This will prevent inactive players to freeze the lobby. Once the Host overrides and starts the game, a countdown may give the opportunity to other players to make the final adjustments to their setup (colors, commander's skin, sharing armies, etc). In this case 30 seconds seems reasonable. If players will like to speed up, see point 1.

3. Once a Countdown is in act, the Lobby should be locked and only players already registered with the game should be able to re-join in. This would prevent a player to jump into a game and feeling unprepared, allowing legit players to re-connect in case of connection issues.

4. A Kicking option may be advisable. To be a bit more fair, it could be conditional so that at least two players in the Lobby should agree on. Something that would refrain the Host in abusing on that faculties.

Important. If the Host drops, or disconnect, there should be a way for the remaining players to start the game by themselves. See point 1.

I am actually fine with the Host being able to change settings on the fly. Aside the fact the alternative is worse, it makes little sense for a Host to start a game that he doesn't like. If he changes the settings, it is usually for valid reasons.

From what I have read, ColaColin's suggest seems fine and doesn't have any big problems with it.

However they way I would like it is a little different.

• The host can press Start Game at any time
• If everyone is ready it starts
• If people are not ready it comes up with "player is not ready" and then gives you the option to kick them, force the game to start, or wait for them.

It would also be nice to freely kick players as well as the ability to place them in teams/rearrange teams.

What do people think?

That's very simple to fix.

As soon as one player set a Ready status for himself (click on the Ready button), the Host can't change the settings of the game.

If the Host would like to change the settings, all other players need to agree, 'cos one single player, pressing on Ready, can freeze the settings. So the Host before to change settings has to verify that everyone agree, and un-check their own Ready button first.

In this case a Kicking option may be useful, for getting rid of inactive players. To make it a bit more dictator proof, a player could be kicked out if he receives a total of two Kick (from two different players). That way the Host still needs to get some consensus before changing settings.

No I prefer chronosoul's approach.

Why not have two different lobby modes, "dictator" and "democracy". Host locks in choice when making a lobby, and it's shown in the browser. Then you can choose to take part in either sort of power balance.

or make a Putsch and overthrow the leadership.

Or challenge the Host in a 1vs1 for overthrowing his leadership, while the Lobby *patiently* waits...

1. I see the ready state as being informational for the host, not explicitly required for starting games, which is why I'm in favor of being able to revoke your ready state. The host can always force the game's start.

3. Fair point.

4. This goes in to the "different kind of lobby" comment I made earlier. For the current "host" driven games we have now this doesn't fit. For an open lobby voting becomes more important.

Right now the "host" is fake, it's simply a player with elevated privileges for that lobby. We had a bug where when that player left another player wasn't elevated, but that should be fixed. Games with real hosts have to handle a painful migration step.

For future work, yes, I would agree with this idea. For something we get done in the next 24 hours, no.

All players must be ready.
If anything changes (player added, player removed, settings change), everyone un-readies.
If the host wants to start without everyone being ready, he can kick them.

Thanks for addressing the points.

It's indeed awesome that you guys at Uber take the time to inquiry about those stuffs.

Looking forward to see what you will end up with.