Server Login-Queue

Laosh'Ra

<b>motivation</b>
well, one the one hand it is great to have so many new players. on the other hand it can be annoying to find all servers either full, empty, or high-pinged due to their location.
only option left is to refresh every now and then, hoping to find an open slot.

<b>idea</b>
so how about adding a login queue? there would be one queue for every server and it fills up with people trying to join a full server. i have no idea how much work this is (optimising the game comes first ofc), but i guess it's quite possible considering UWE made the engine by themselves.

<b>example</b>
to give you an example: you attempt to join a server which is full (16/16). you will be added at the end of the queue for this server, a popup-window displays how many other people are waiting in line. as soon as one person leaves the server, the first one in the queue is allowed to join, the rest will move one up in the queue (the number of people waiting is reduced by one). if a person gives up on joining (e.g. the queue seems to long) they can cancel their attempt and try a different server or whatever. they will also be reduced from the queue then.

<b>advantages</b> (from my personal point of view)
-fair: first to wait is first to join
-you get an estimate of how long (how many people waiting in front of you) you have to wait until you can join
-no need to constantly refresh the serverlist all the time

<b>disadvantages</b> (from my personal point of view)
-effort to implement it
-people will probably go afk (or alt-tab) and check back every now and then. this is not a problem if they do it at a resonable rate, but some people might end up afk ingame (since there is a ready room, the teams don't really suffer from this; idle-kick could do the trick to prevent people from going afk too long just to keep their slot)
-people might tend to join the queue instead of filling up other low-populated servers (but if the queues fill up a lot, people could easily get impatient and look for another server)


i'm not experienced with this, so i don't know what the costs and risks are. if the idea is miserably bad for some reason, fine with me. i just thought i'd share it in case it is not.

Khyron

There is sort of a way to do this already, through steam. You can get in a pseudo-queue by joining a friend's game.<ol type='1'><li>Once you've launched NS2, bring up the steam overlay by pressing shift+tab.</li><li>In your friends list, right click the person who's game you want to join.</li><li>Select "Join game". It wll instantly start connecting to that server without further prompts if there are slots free.</li><li>If the server is full, a small window will appear showing information about the server. At the bottom there are two options. The default option is "notify me when a slot is available" and the other option is "automatically join server when a slot becomes available".</li></ol>Notes:<ul><li>You can bring up the join game prompt before launching NS, but from my experiences I've found that it will wait for a slot then launch NS2 but stay at the main menu whereas if you are already at the main menu before you use the join game, it will actually connect to the server.</li><li>Instead of clicking "join game" you can select "view game info" to bring up a similar window showing who's on the server, what their scores are and how long they've been connected.</li><li>Rather than add every person to your steam friends list, you can just join a steam group for NS2 in your region. For example, I use <a href="http://steamcommunity.com/groups/ns2au" target="_blank">Natural Selection 2 Australia Community (NS2AU)</a>.</li></ul>

IronHorse

<!--quoteo(post=1965272:date=Aug 20 2012, 01:02 PM:name=Laosh'Ra)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Laosh'Ra @ Aug 20 2012, 01:02 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1965272"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec--><b>motivation</b>
well, one the one hand it is great to have so many new players. on the other hand it can be annoying to find all servers either full, empty, or high-pinged due to their location.
only option left is to refresh every now and then, hoping to find an open slot.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Did you see that twitter feed about implementing a gather feature of "picking up a game" ?

Laosh'Ra

well yea, but i have no idea how exactly it will work. and you might still want to join a very specific server e.g. if it is the only one running a certain mod.

well, it's not like i demand this to happen: i just wanted to share the idea in case it makes sense to UWE.

Juri

Cant wait for any kind of server queue mechanism

Khaze

I'd love a server queue. Until the server numbers become much higher, there's always going to be that one server that's perfect for your needs, that you're willing to wait for to get in. As it is, you have to sit there, hitting refresh over and over, hoping you don't miss it when a spot opens up.

Kok

Its definitely a must !

Namm

Regarding empty servers not filling up; why not be able to pick a secondary server? If it's an empty server that have been picked as a secondary, the queuing mechanism could be made to detect when let's say a third of the empty server's slots have been filled up by queuing players - which then auto-joins en masse at the same time. No more wasting time trying to fill empty servers and playing 1vs2 games.

The server to which you are standing in line to join could even have an auto-suggested secondary server. When trying to join a full server, a message box could pop up, asking if you want to wait for an open slot and if you accept joining the suggested secondary server. If the suggested secondary is also full, its secondary server is instead suggested and so on.

Laosh'Ra

they are working on a "pickup" system in the server brower which will hopefully solve this issue.

still, with an exploding playerbase (45000 free games!) and people having certain requirements which servers they want to play on (ping, mods, whatever) i'd still love to see this feature.