I don't know why I bother clicking play anymore

Another argument for no-elo lobsterpots (well the same one, just with more emphasis). Let people do the gimmicks somewhere that those who actually want to play competitively can quit without consequence and move on to something more to their liking.

No elo means no obligation to stay in a game where other players are killing your fun.

He didn't want to play a fairly small game where one of his allies wasn't being a team player? You might be able to overlook that in a 15v15, but not at this scale.

The one good thing was that @Omoiyari at least announced his intentions, so esainane could at least cut his losses quickly.

I'd suggest that compromising lobsterpot balance is a smaller price to pay than you think. If you've got a large enough portion of the team playing in a way that is demonstrably likely to accomplish less than a take and hold expansion game (ramps, trollcomms, nuke/super rushes etc) then team balance has already been broken.

The reason to play a lobsterpot should be because it's a place you can easily get casual games where your skill or lack of it is unlikely to count for much. Anyone doing it to increase their rating is there for the wrong reason. If anything, it is having it elo enabled that defeats the point.

I've been thinking for some time that the way forward is to remove elo from lobsterpot and ideally any attempt to balance the room by elo. This reinforces the point that it is a casual room where actions do not have consequences and skill shouldn't matter greatly in the outcome. Let it be a place where anything goes but let it also be a place that like-minded individuals can ditch freely to play a game more to their liking.

Why is it that the competitive team player (call us the tryhard community if you like) should routinely be expected to carry someone who doesn't share that motivation? We're penalised if we do try to carry because we'll probably fail since the team is playing a man down most of the game.

However, we're also multiply penalised if we decide we're not going to bother and resign. Firstly the team goes on to lose anyway and we suffer whatever prestige impact we feel from losing some WHR. Secondly even if we do resign, we probably won't even get the sort of game we want to play anyway. Thirdly if we make a habit of it we may even be reported for breaching the code of conduct never mind that a "do what I want" player is similarly in breach. It's simply harder for a moderator to demonstrate beyond reasonable doubt that the "do what I want" player's behaviour was worse than legitimately bad judgement.

The other day, I saw a fairly well populated Zero-Wars room running alongside a well-populated lobsterpot. That gives me hope that where the incentives are sufficient, one room culture can be broken.

No-elo lobsterpot means we would have a completely casual sandbox room running alongside (hopefully) a competitive teams room, 1v1 matchmaker and say, Zero-Wars. This is 4 completely different experiences (vs the 3 at best we have now with one of those being quite unsatisfying for a portion of the community) which between them provide space for "tryharders" to do their thing and "do as they wants" to do their thing without one set of players regularly sabotaging the other (whether by accident or design).

With a UI addition like a first page "quick battle" button that directs people straight to the sandbox, those who don't really know what they're doing can be diverted away from swimming with the tryhard sharks in their competitive room. This would mean the competitive room should only be entered by conscious choice. That in turn has the advantage that if complaints are received about someone's play in the competitive room, a moderator can more easily judge whether there was intent to breach community standards.

Zero-K ends up with a more balanced social contract and hopefully less forum and in game rage as a result. That sounds like a significant prize.

the_green_squig, Pluk actually broke the one room culture completely in his ZW game today by capping the player number to six :) Gotta give him muh respeccc for that one.

There were several people who were unhappy about this and tried to increase the max players though. Pluk didn't budge, moar respeccc!

Anarchid it's still a WIP, and from what I saw Turtle write there's at least one big change to come that will completely change how the map is played atm. Getting the balance perfected is hardly a task to tackle right now, as long as the map's playable and no dumb unit shits on it all by itself.

Being good at ZK doesn't directly translate to being good at ZW. Your wave was pretty garbage, as is to be expected from someone trying out the map for the first time(s?). "Crab is op" is a misconception when you're not even trying to counter it with, say, Racketeer or Juggle or Ulti or Viperhalberdcyclopsgrizzly...