Conquer Club

Concise description:
Have the waiting games list start with the games that have been most recently joined at the top of the list and the least recently joined at the end.

Specifics/Details:
When a game is joined by another player, it sends the game to the top of the list. I'm not sure what this would entail tech-wise but it would obviously cause a lot of refreshing. Games created soonest would still start at the top of the list but would be bumped down as soon as another game had another player join it.

How this will benefit the site and/or other comments:

• Bring the more popular/active games to the top of the list, in turn causing all games to fill faster.
• Send the unpopular/stagnant games to the bottom of the list where they belong, counteracting clogging of aforementioned list.

That could potentially be abused big style. All someone had to do was drop their game and rejoin it to bump it to the top. I thought of it right away, so I am sure it would be common practice.

Shannon Apple wrote:That could potentially be abused big style. All someone had to do was drop their game and rejoin it to bump it to the top. I thought of it right away, so I am sure it would be common practice.

Hmm, could you program it so you couldn't do that? Do you think people could also just have agreements like "You bump my game, I'll bump yours"? Considering this, there would have to be something that not only made games that were dropped go back down on the list, but something that prevented the game moving up if anyone who originally joined a game dropped it and re-joined it.

I've really got to consider evil a lot more when I make a suggestion it seems.

Funkyterrance wrote:I've really got to consider evil a lot more when I make a suggestion it seems.

Haha, too trusting.

As I understand it, when a game is set up it goes to the top of the list of all the games available to join. When people use Game Finder with certain settings - Classic Map, escalating spoils?= the most recent game created to those settings tops the list and older games are at the bottom. This involves a separate processing task for every search.

How about the CC Computer was set to sort by whatever settings a person fed it and add a sort out by
-date started in reverse order, or
- by the number of vacancies?
(6 player game 2 people joined, 4 vacancies, comes behind 4 player game 2 people joined, 2 vacancies?)

something like that??

Fewnix wrote:As I understand it, when a game is set up it goes to the top of the list of all the games available to join. When people use Game Finder with certain settings - Classic Map, escalating spoils?= the most recent game created to those settings tops the list and older games are at the bottom. This involves a separate processing task for every search.

How about the CC Computer was set to sort by whatever settings a person fed it and add a sort out by
-date started in reverse order, or
- by the number of vacancies?
(6 player game 2 people joined, 4 vacancies, comes behind 4 player game 2 people joined, 2 vacancies?)

something like that??

Yeah I've wondered about similar things in the past and I do suppose that this here suggestion could be one of the options(fullest game first?). However, one question would be: "Which one is the default?".

But yeah, pretty much an entirely new suggestion could come out of your post if it hasn't been suggested before.

Seems to me the easiest way to do it would be to give each game n number of "bumps" where n is the number of players in the game. The game would go to the top of the screen upon creation, then would get bumped again when the second player joins. However, the game has now used 2 of its "bumps." So if player 2 drops, that game isn't going to get bumped again until it has 3 players in it. I think that would solve the problem and the biggest form of "abuse" would be to start a quads game and have 1 player from your team join every 24 hours or so. But you'd have to coordinate invites. I.e. abusing this would be kind of difficult.

But I'm not really in favor of this as the default option. I would love, love, love a Game Finder revamp that includes sortable options including the number of available slots. I suppose if it wasn't too hard to code, then I wouldn't mind (i.e. lower priority) if you could sort by "most recently joined." Then if it was just one of many sorting options, I don't think you'd have to go through the trouble of stopping abuse.

agentcom wrote:Seems to me the easiest way to do it would be to give each game n number of "bumps" where n is the number of players in the game. The game would go to the top of the screen upon creation, then would get bumped again when the second player joins. However, the game has now used 2 of its "bumps." So if player 2 drops, that game isn't going to get bumped again until it has 3 players in it. I think that would solve the problem and the biggest form of "abuse" would be to start a quads game and have 1 player from your team join every 24 hours or so. But you'd have to coordinate invites. I.e. abusing this would be kind of difficult.

That would work.

agentcom wrote:But I'm not really in favor of this as the default option.

The reason I came up with this, which may be obvious, is due to the recent changes to the waiting games list seeming to have a mixed review. I personally am happy with the new changes but thought that maybe this idea would appease a greater number of people as it's sort of a compromise/middle ground between newest games first and oldest games first.

Funkyterrance wrote:

agentcom wrote:Seems to me the easiest way to do it would be to give each game n number of "bumps" where n is the number of players in the game. The game would go to the top of the screen upon creation, then would get bumped again when the second player joins. However, the game has now used 2 of its "bumps." So if player 2 drops, that game isn't going to get bumped again until it has 3 players in it. I think that would solve the problem and the biggest form of "abuse" would be to start a quads game and have 1 player from your team join every 24 hours or so. But you'd have to coordinate invites. I.e. abusing this would be kind of difficult.

That would work.

agentcom wrote:But I'm not really in favor of this as the default option.

The reason I came up with this, which may be obvious, is due to the recent changes to the waiting games list seeming to have a mixed review. I personally am happy with the new changes but thought that maybe this idea would appease a greater number of people as it's sort of a compromise/middle ground between newest games first and oldest games first.

Perhaps ... after some initial hesitation, I'm whole-heartedly in favor of the change now. I think it's a great thing for the site and the benefit comes mainly at the expense of certain people engaged in questionable tactics. Don't get me wrong, I've joined a handful of those games, so I'm not trying to cast stones here. But I would not have wanted to be on the other side of our team if I was a new recruit. I remember trying to search out team games that I could join way back in the day before I had any friends and I got into a couple of games like these.

I think that the people who truly enjoy those types of games, as opposed to just enjoying the points from them, will like the new format as their games will now pose a challenge because people have to search them out.

[/soapbox]

So, as far as this suggestion goes, I'm indifferent. I don't see the relatively few "bumps" really encouraging people to join many games. Also, (and this is just an educated guess/impression), I'm not sure that there's much desire to revisit this system so soon. As to the efficacy of the suggestion, the n-1 or n-2 bump would probably get some people excited, but that brings me back to thinking that I'd rather see a searchable gamefinder where you can sort by slots remaining. And I think that a gamefinder update is long overdue.

Yeah if this doesn't happen I won't be at all heartbroken because I think the new system is really cool as it is. Just thought I would test the waters and they are evidently pretty chilly.

As agentcom stated, I think having some sorting options available once a search has been done is something that we'd all like to see.

As far as this goes, even if you look past the evil and the bumping issue, I guess I don't see how this would help the situation.