The thing is, most weeks it benefits us to have a cushion. Having 4 reserves most weeks means we get 8-10 players, which is what we're shooting for. This was the first time I can remember that it became a problem. But I'd like to prevent it from being a problem again down the road. I'm not sure what I can do about that, except maybe the permanent slots idea. But THAT'S arguably not fair to people who are new to us. Sigh. I'm going to think things over and hopefully come up with the best compromise soon. I'm still considering whether or not to rotate players every game instead of every other. We may just do both depending on the week. No, what they should do if they really want to do objectives is give me a minute to find another guy. Running 3-on-4 objective games is not any kind of reasonable test; it doesn't tell you anything about how the map and gametype really play, and it frustrates the outnumbered team. What happened was that we dropped a guy (not one of our regulars) and the leader started the game anyway. I don't mind that for slayer, even though I'm probably going to lose; at least we can compete. But the oddball game we played last had a score of something like 200 to 2 when I dropped out. What exactly is the point of that? Which is nothing personal against Cyborg, who is a friend of mine. I just want to head off any more of that. I'd much rather take however long it takes to even up the teams than play uneven objective games. Hell, I'll even back out to give the lobby even numbers if that's what it takes. There are better solutions.
I don't have a lot of time currently to say a lot on any of this, but I'll go through and address these last few things said by Unrivaled and Juanez. The downside is exactly right. We would like to keep a solid 4v4/5v5 lobby, and if there are constantly people switching in and out the time between games would be longer if we can even get the right number of people. I would not endorse this idea for TCOJ, for a larger and far more popular group, this might work, but not here. You disproved this idea already. For the 6v6, what if they don't leave? There have been many games where people just show up until the end, only leaving in the last one or two games. Its too unreliable unless a set time (as in when we get to a certain slot) was set for some to leave, thus kicking them out so the rest of us can play 4v4's. I could see this working in theory, but I don't like the idea of kicking anyone unless they actually need to go anyway. As for the 2v2 separate lobby, I wouldn't mind too much. However, people join TCOJ for the 4v4's and 5v5's and to get destroyed by Nutduster (statement is comic relief). Its something to consider in the situation that there are more times like last night's, but I don't know if a habit should be made of it if the concept is utilized at all. I understand this, but most weeks not everyone shows up either. Besides, how else to you determine a medium sized lobby's attendees when more people want to show up than it can hold? You pick and choose, this process just streamlines that process. I think there was a rule added that made it so there should only be 10 minute games? I would be okay with amending that down to 8. Unrivaled, you have a point, but in 2 games you can get so much more testing done. With this running only once a week, it's rather helpful. Oh, alright then. I guess I won't be seeing you at FFC again. Yeah, I'm not sure what will happen, but its worth a discussion. I'm curious though, how would making the lobby an official FH thing any more fluid? I'm not seeing and change, honestly from my conceptual view. I do appreciate the suggestions and comments, both of you. It's always good to hear what others think, and I'll consider everything you have said. Nutduster, I think that all of this has provoked a needed discussion about the lobby. I know I'm a crappy co-host (not being able to post anything on this subforum and all) and I feel bad about that, but I'd like to try and make it up to you by helping construct any necessary changes to the current formula.
Hey ND, sorry about that game. I didn't realize you guys lost a player until after the game started. Only once you quit did it occur to me that I could have and should have just ended the game immediately. Sorry it was so frustrating. Next time if I'm missing something like a frustrating game for the other team, feel free to message me/the other team and we can just end it. And like you said, I'd rather get a real test out of each slot anyway.
****, I join to get destroyed by TMR Legend and his legendary suppressor. I think I win one confrontation out of a thousand once those yellow blobs start flying. The current rule is 12. I would consider 10. 8 is simply too short for CTF games, especially on larger maps, unless we want a lot of them to end in 1-1 ties. You're welcome to, and anybody else here is welcome to make suggestions. (Sorry about you not being able to post - I asked Shock to update that but he's been hard to reach.)
I wasn't sure if you didn't realize it or what - you're right, I should have just messaged you. I get obstinate when it comes to uneven objective games (I do the same thing in matchmaking too) - I start racing around the map, trying to take on three guys at once, and end up just making myself mad. If it comes up again, I'll just send you a message and we'll either find a guy, or if you like we can run something else. I think either of those are better options. Ordinarily I would have hung in til the end anyway, but since it was the last test of the night and the game was nearly over, I decided to protest-quit. Not very mature, but when did I ever claim to be that???
I'm not whining on here but going to clear this up and make an easy solution. Most times Nut you jump online 5-10 mins after the lobby is stated to start. After you jump online you usually start sending out invites with a minute or two and we normally sit in the lobby for a good five mins before we start. I had zero connection issues. I was simply setting up my custom gametype and saw you popped online. Then I realized my capture device was not set up so I have to go offline to set that up. I figured I had 2 mins for I didn't think you wouldn't of gave me that time. But turns out I should of been more ready to accept that invite ASAP because order of sign up apparently meaned nothing last night. Anyways, a simple fix is send out invites in order of sign up and give that player atleast a couple mins to join. That player could be in the bathroom or doing something that only takes a min or two. Spamming invites to everyone you can think of that wanted to join is no way to handle things, it's very lazy, and it's sure to screw some people over here that have been very loyal to your server and always stays to the very end and helps test even unscheduled testing. Code is a good thing to live by, without code, we're nothing but animals. Edit: With the lobby growing popularity, I also saw this coming.
I was on at 7 on the dot last night. I try to be there on time whenever possible, and I am rarely more than 5 minutes late. But I get off work at six; I have to get home, make and eat dinner, and get a little face time with my wife. I am seldom gonna be early; that's just how it is. We could push the start time back 15-30 minutes, but that will make it even harder to keep players in until the end, and would mean that sometimes I'm going to have to bail early because I really can't be online much after 10:00. Hulk, I've already apologized for this here and on your profile page. I acknowledge that you should have gotten priority and that I shouldn't have invited in all of the reserves when it seemed like you were online (if intermittently). As far as I'm concerned, that's sufficient. If you want to keep beating me up about it, sorry to disappoint you, but I'm bowing out.
I was glad to get an invite and thought I played well and had actually scored for our team on that CTF game... was I intentionally booted or what? It was kind of hard to tell what happened... afterward, halo wouldn't even recognize any friends as being active in Halo but I was still connected to Live. anyways, thanks for the games I was happy to fill the slot to help test.
No issues with starting the lobby late, pretty understandable. On top of that you run your lobbies very professionally and I think that's why most enjoy your lobby (including myself). I don't want any apologies but was just stating on how to fix the problem. Only reason I posted that is because you guys were looking at it like it was no big deal, especially Gorilla. I put ALOT of time aside to produce those vids for your lobby and I believe that contributes some to you growing popularity because people know they will get a video of there map with the testing. I have recieved over 1,000 total views on the videos of your guys' maps within the last week or so! To not be given that 2 minutes for me was a blow to the gut (not intentional, I know). Anyways, that was the main fire behind my last post. I'll stop bitching and put on my big girl panties and move out. No hard feelings here.
Lobby rules update. After some thought, I'm changing the way the lobby is going to run. Slightly, not hugely. This is not open to debate. I mean, you're welcome to debate it, but I'm not going to change anything: this is what we're doing. We will take sign-ups for 10 players. Used to be 8, now it's 10. The initial party cap will always be set at ten, and initial invites will be sent to those 10 players only. If you are online when Audience or I starts putting the lobby together (7:00 or very shortly thereafter; sorry guys, but I have a day job, a wife, and a life) you will get an invite. You will have a reasonable amount of time to accept. If you're not online, you will have up until 7:09 and 59 seconds to get online, and if so, you get invited and given the same priority - though less time to accept. We will also take sign-ups for up to four reserves. At 7:10, if we have less than a full party, ALL reserves will be invited. First come, first serve. If we already have 4v4, we may not invite reserves. We may, at my discretion, cap the party at 8 some weeks, even if reserves are invited in. It just depends how many people I think we can get. Anybody who says beforehand that they think they will be more than a few minutes late will be put in reserves. No exceptions. We hope we can work you in; we make no promises. Anybody who says beforehand that they have to leave earlier than 9 PM will also be put in reserves. No exceptions. I understand that people have lives and stuff going on, but we have to give priority to people who plan to attend the whole lobby; it is too hard to work with players coming and going at random times. It's hard enough to do it in the casual way we usually do it (just replacing people when they have to leave); it's impossible to schedule it in advance. So if you know you can only play an hour, somebody who can play all three has priority over you. Sorry. And if this inclines you to simply not mention you have to leave, and then disappear mid-lobby - believe me, it will only take that happening twice before I notice. As is our usual policy, if we don't fill up the main slots reserves will be bumped up to claim them. With priority given to anyone who can attend the whole lobby. All games should be 10 minutes long, or 10 plus 1 minute of overtime for CTF. If you forget and start a game with a longer timer, I may ask you to end it at 10 minutes. Try to be aware of this and change the game settings in advance. We need to keep things moving and get tests in for everyone. Since we now will be aiming for 10 players, it's critical to start as close to on time as possible, and get through the games efficiently. However, if your game has rounds (e.g. one flag) you can extend to a max of 12 minutes, so 4 rounds of 3 minutes each, maybe. It's too hard to compress a round-based game into a hard cap of 10 minutes or less. Anyone with a small map that won't support 5v5, let me know when you sign up. You will be given special slots at the END of the lobby only, and when we get to your turn we will ask people to vacate (voluntarily) to get down to the number of players you need. If no one else wants to leave, I will volunteer. I want you guys to get to run the games you want to run. Finally, we will use unrivaled's idea of doing one game per person, and then running two full rotations so everyone gets two tests, as long as they stay until 10. We will do this... for now. It will last unless I get the impression that people are bailing because they're satisfied to only test their own map once. If that becomes a problem, we will go back to the old model of 2 tests per person, back to back, and that will be the end of the experiment. All this will be added, in abbreviated form, to the FAQ.
Not that I know of - you must have lagged out, I guess. We thought you dropped. Glad you could join us though!
Fair enough. I understand what you're saying and to be clear as possible, I was completely in the wrong. I just didn't see it coming and have developed some bad habits - but that's not an excuse for it. And I really appreciate what you've been doing for us with the videos, and more. Though as you may have noticed, part of why we're popular is that I don't give anybody preferential treatment - not even myself. I'd boot myself from the lobby if I thought it would get better tests for the rest of you. So basically what I was hoping was to somehow get EVERYBODY in last night, and I figured with unrivaled and Audience both saying they had to leave early, I could rotate you in before eight. It was trying to make the best of a bad situation, one that I caused to happen. It won't be happening again though. I just posted a new thread about how we're going to do things going forward, and while the tone is possibly abrasive and dictatorial, I think it will prevent any more misunderstandings or instances of me-being-a-dumbass.
Somehow forgot this - one last thing, sign-up threads will now go up on Friday at 1 PM EST every week. First come first serve, no permanent slots or pre-reservations (for now at least). I should be in my office in front of a PC nearly every Friday at that time, so look for the new threads at that time exactly. It's as fair as I can make it.
On occasion I can get on a bit sooner than you, Nutduster. I can get more active about gathering everyone if I notice you aren't online. So just to reiterate: if you have signed up and start getting invites from me, it's the same lobby.
But since this seems to be picking up stem and its hard to slow down a railroad once it gets started. I can only see the problem of too many people wanting to play getting worse Another thing you could do is give people Strict 15 minute time limits. Giving them time to do whatever they wanted. If the wanted to test 2 maps they would have to do a 8 minute game and a 7 minute game or just spend the whole 15 minutes on a single map. This way if we had 5v5 it would end the lobby at 2 hour and 30 minutes and give people and after lobby option to furture test Another thing you could do is limit the gametype changing score options to the same as matchmaking. Ie 3 flag caps 150 koth normal oddball. extraction has 2 extraction points and play to 5. though some custom game types would not work like one flag and mini games.
This would help enormously, Audience- thanks. Sometimes it's very hard for me to get on before 7. Any slight hitch in the routine - like if I just get stuck at work 5-10 extra minutes - can make me a little late.
Yeah, I'm usually getting some work done as well before hand, or eating at lightspeed before I'm in Halo for hours, but I can try to make sure I get on a few minutes beforehand or at 7 so that by the time you're on we are close to or all ready. I'll also try to get more of my things done before the lobby on Tuesdays. I've been pretty bad about that.
Well you can disregard a few things i said in the other thread. I do think these updates are a very good way of doing things. [br][/br]Edited by merge: Also i am curious. how do you double post without getting edited by merge