Server browser improvement: player lobby & server seeding tool (/lite match making)
Bicsum
Join Date: 2012-02-27 Member: 147596Members, Reinforced - Gold
Join Date: 2012-02-27 Member: 147596Members, Reinforced - Gold
Hi,
I would like to suggest a new server browser feature / server browser overhaul.
Problem:
Currently you often have a situation where you want to have quick match, but every server is either full or empty.
So you are either constantly hitting the refresh button, hoping you will get a slot on a full server or you will try to seed a server yourself.
Other players in the server browser may see you trying to seed a server, but will probably consider a 1/XX server as empty and keep hitting refresh, because they don't want to waste their time, hoping they will get a slot on a full server, even though there are would be enough players doing this, who could easily seed a server, if they would just knew of each other.
Solution:
Add a player lobby to the server browser, including a chat and a sever seeding tool.
Think of how blizzard games manage(d) to do this.
In addition to this, add the ability for players to suggest a server to seed or better: let them select servers they want to play on (e.g. like this:)
Players may mark themselves with the slot count they want to play on.
Result:
- More low slot count servers would be populated, since seeding them would be easier.
- players would have a common interface to talk to each other, giving eath other tips, etc
- players could show case their player model / their stats
- the community would feel more alive
Is that a cool or not?
Edit
I would like to suggest a new server browser feature / server browser overhaul.
Problem:
Currently you often have a situation where you want to have quick match, but every server is either full or empty.
So you are either constantly hitting the refresh button, hoping you will get a slot on a full server or you will try to seed a server yourself.
Other players in the server browser may see you trying to seed a server, but will probably consider a 1/XX server as empty and keep hitting refresh, because they don't want to waste their time, hoping they will get a slot on a full server, even though there are would be enough players doing this, who could easily seed a server, if they would just knew of each other.
Solution:
Add a player lobby to the server browser, including a chat and a sever seeding tool.
Think of how blizzard games manage(d) to do this.
In addition to this, add the ability for players to suggest a server to seed or better: let them select servers they want to play on (e.g. like this:)
Players may mark themselves with the slot count they want to play on.
Result:
- More low slot count servers would be populated, since seeding them would be easier.
- players would have a common interface to talk to each other, giving eath other tips, etc
- players could show case their player model / their stats
- the community would feel more alive
Is that a cool or not?
Edit
Comments
First about the lobby idea: I would suggest to make another topic about that as it's a different topic and there is a lot to say about it as well. (e.g. there have been experiments with an embed discord chat in the menu in the past)
Above is a draft of the originally planned new server browser.
Some issues that draft already tries to solve is how messed up the filter options and game mode tabs are. Specially the reactions towards the last build have shown these elements of the browser desperately need a change.
The seed idea is actually kinda hidden inside the play now algorithm: It tries foremost to create as many around 12 players servers as possible while distributing the players to regionally close and well performing servers.
An idea I have in this matter to move play now directly into the server browser as "highlighted entry" that the player auto connects to in 10-20 seconds if not canceled (by hitting a cancel button or joining another servers before or turning it off via the options).
About the favorite system there is actually a change pending to make it able to unlike servers (so you can hide them at the button of the server list etc.)
Beyond that the skill row needs a little redesign to make it more useful to most players. (Having only one server without a double arrow down is not helpful)
To add onto that the details window should imho be repositioned so it shows up as soon as you select a server.
There are some more ideas beyond that but the ones I listed are the ones i will most likely focus first on when starting to work at the server browser in the future.
Well, maybe, but that isn't helpful when you're the only one clicking it. The point is to seed a server from 0 to 12 or better 14 players immidiately.
You don't know what you get when you click "play now". I, for example, dont want this server to be a >20 slot server in any case, which is why I never use it.
I don't understand, can you elaboerate?
You click on server browser and are automatically connected to a server after 10-20 seconds?
So, a blacklist?
I'd just go for numbers here. Average skill on the server with more infos on hover (skill discrepancy / wanted skill level by the admin / the effect you have on these numbers when joining etc.).
That way you know what you get.
True, hover info is neat.
There's some other one floating around as well, I cannot find it right now.
This is a suggestions thread for features on the server browser. I think I've got most of it covered with this mockup, but perhaps someone out there has a golden idea. Again, suggestions, no discussion about other stuff please... This is also my final attempt to try and get the devs and community together again. I won't be looking into this thread that is for the devs and you lot to do.
Soo... GLHF and let's hope WPGG, okidoki lads N lassies. Have a good one o/
Ah yes, here it is! Thanks @GhoulofGSG9
I just realized my "no bot" and "performance" filters aren't working on the mockup, someone should make a bug report for that................
So the issue with Play Now is that it's not granular nor transparent enough, I think. More options and more feedback would be good. It would be great as well to be able to know that there are 12 people looking for a server and have them all join together, but it's technically challenging to do that with what we have available currently. (Which as Ghoul said, is why seeding is factored into the ranking algorithm for which server to join)
To be honest, I haven't tried it yet, but like you said, I didn't know about it being more advanced.
This is what I was thinking of:
Region might also be changed to #Lobby. Like, you could have a #Europe-lobby, but also a #Gather-lobby, a #%Clan%-lobby, a #Siege-Lobby, #Rookie-Lobby etc.
Can't the hive-server be the backend for this?
At the moment, you may get assigned to a server that has only spectator slots available or you can get assigned to servers, on which you do not have the minimum required play time.
Is it possible to query the servers shine plugin config from the server browser? If it isn't, maybe you should integrate some of the plugin features into vanilla. Even better would be to eat Shine and Shine Epsilon alltogether.