why we dont get new players

Sorry, won't be done because current playerbase is valued higher than all the leaving newbies (as leaving newbies won't immediately swarm the forum with 9001 baw threads).

quote: Sorry, won't be done because current playerbase is valued higher than all the leaving newbies

I assume the communism is there also to help current playerbase and not the newbies?


I dont think there is any single lobby/server mechanic that specifically favours old players over newbies.

The reasons few people come to this game is
1) No marketing - only those who search for some specific terms will find ZK
2) Old age - Spring engine is old as fuck, and so is ZK. The graphics are far behind the newer RTS games. People see screenshots and leave before they get the chane to enjoy the gameplay. ZK is no Dwarf Fortress, its not unique enough to go viral.

The reasons few people stay is
1) No decent singleplayer. There are very few scenarios that barely fit into a campaign, and the "skirmish" AI is primitive as fuck. Singleplayer is where people fool around and learn the basics of the game, get used to the interface. Being a dumb nab in a multiplayer room is embarassing and many people prefer to avoid that by first getting some experience against AI.

2) No decent built-in tutorials. Shadowfury made some great video tutorials, but they are not viewable or referenced anywhere in the lobby, so you gotta search youtube to find em.

3) Only as #3 in the list is the lack of matchmaking. Of the people who learn about this game and want to play, very few will ever reach the multiplayer lobby and try to play multiplayer. But once there, nabs these days are not used to manually picking rooms, and certainly not used to managing the hostbot by sending it chat commands.

quote: 15v15 all day with a lineup of people waiting to just play/try it.

People tend to gravitate towards the biggest room. I dont see how you can blame it on anyone but those people themselves. Its their fucking choice, how can you possibly blame it on the server or whatever else? Maybe they dont fucking want a 3v3 if they instead join a 10v10.

Admittedly, lack of self-organising skills is not unusual among clueless nubs who have no idea whats going on.
Hopefully the matchmaking will alleviate that somehow, although there is a problem that having a "looking for game" screen sit in front of you for 5-10 minutes is extremely discouraging. It is much better to sit in some room and watch the action, waiting for the next game.


Ideally, i'd want the hostbot to split the room once there are over 16 people. Add a room option "maxplayers" so that you can play a clusterfuck if you want. Let it reset after every game or two so that if no one is actively managing the room it reverts to default behaviour.

quote: easier/possible to turn that room full of 30+ players into a set of reasonably-sized matches, for whatever a reasonable max is determined to be.

Try determining the reasonable max to be anything less than 10v10 and wait for the reaction.

quote: I assume the communism is there also to help current playerbase and not the newbies?

Look at the forum: a lot of people hate communism and blame it for ruining the game etc. It would be the same with a sensible room limit.

Large games don't inherently favour old players but clusterfuck is a terrible place to learn, often becomes laggy, nobody plays properly, and the actual games have lengthy lobby interludes of pointless votemaps. In general it gives newbs a really bad impression of pretty much everything.

I agree with your points that no tutorials, no marketing etc. suck balls, and I think everyone else would agree too. But these things aren't simple to do. Meanwhile enforcing small teams is a few lines in config, and could easily be done, but won't be because clusterfuck playerbase would baw despite there being a ton of benefits that has.

From what I have gathered, a big issue with large teamgames is that people are trying too hard, rather than just messing about. I think there needs to be a "messing about" gamemode to keep people who like this game playing, even if they don't feel confident in their competitive skills or are just tired and want a bit of zaniness. It just seems like 10v10+ isn't it, going by all the admin reports and complaints about communism.

quote: You keep saying that big games are bad, but all i see is your personal opinion.

Larger games:

• have higher Elo variance.
• make the already performance-hungry game even more so.
• take more time to start (lobby voting).
• are preferred by trolls and make them effective for cost (one troll ruins game for more people).
• unit balance deviates more (most units are balanced for 1v1).
• cannot be handled by the colour spectrum (hard to tell people's colors apart).

They harm development:

• it puts constraints on what can be done. Smaller games can't have nice things if they don't scale.
• testing properly becomes difficult. Some bugs only really happen in dense games and getting 20 people to join a testing room on their own volition (like they would a regular room) is not easy.

Then there's personal dislike reasons:

• incentivize passive playstyle due to the ease of porc and eco, and are thus usually either a cheezy rush or a porcfest.
• are often played on very small maps like Icy or trololo which makes them retardedly cramped.

And there's things that I mentioned earlier about not being nub-friendly:

• hard to learn introspectively: too low personal influence on outcome
• people usually don't care and won't give advice
• laggy, troll magnet, votespam in lobby (already mentioned above)

quote: Can you prove that the number of people retained by forcing small rooms is going to be bigger than the number of active players who will leave?

No. [Spoiler]

quote: Joining the biggest room is clearly a free choice.

Sure but that's not how humans work.
[Spoiler]

quote: Stop making excuses for lobbying for your personal interests under disguise of caring about some helpless minority which for some reason is uncapable of voicing their opinion.

That wasn't even supposed to be disguised. I personally think small games should be enforced for reasons above, and being crappy to nabs is just one of them. I felt like emphasizing on this particular reason because of the thread title.

If 15v15 games were played on proper map sizes (20x20 or larger) then then there would be normal unit play and everything would be fine. People who can't run a game that big due to pc limitations can go play small teams.

Set the limit -- to hell with clusterfuckery. Let them leave if they refuse to play anything less than 6v6 (or whatever the limit is set to). Trying to appease everyone leaves nobody happy. Optimize for the group of players who aren't hyper-vocal shitheads. Rebuild with a playerbase who self-selects for reasonable game sizes, and foster healthy competition.

[/dream]

SnuggleBass
that sounds like a good idea

People keep talking like "if you dont like big team games, then go play smaller team games" as though that is an option while the big 15 v 15 games are going on.

Instead what it seems like is there is no other game going on. Till enough people get tired of the massive team games on "super speed metal", or "10 v 10 on icy run" or the lagfest of dsd on 15 v 15.

Then when enough people actually LEAVE THE GAME, and it gets down to 7v7 ish, then normal games start to emerge.

A method of "troll till players stop playing so we can have a normal game" is REALLY BAD FOR PLAYER BASE, and keeping players of course.

What are you saying, Icy run cluster 16 vs 16 is the most epic game ever :D.