That's a pretty good idea. Why not let players predefine on their personal settings page which settings they consider as standard settings? Then, when they open a game settings page, simply highlight all deviations in bright red colour.
Even better, you could kill two birds with one stone and use these settings as a players personal default settings during the game creation process.

@Fizzer

I think it is pretty easy to say what is standard and what isn't. Just let people chose their standard settings and which they would like a warning on. That way you solved the problem of what is standard and what isn't.

Perhaps specific settings that can be used to game the system should be highlit if they fall outside certain thresholds. For instance, if neutral armies in non-distro territories are <2 or >3, if a bonus has been changed to be <50% or >150% of default, if multi-attack is on, if offensive luck is higher than defensive luck, things like that.

And on a side note, a lot of players will announce the settings they 'think' they set, but alas, it will turn out to be false because we were not 'smart' enough to double check. Why not make more Auto games with Europe map? 3 v 3 Europe map seems to be the most common. The settings usually aren't that different, there is usually a standard 3 vs 3 europe map in the open games area quite often. Maybe i'll just make this into a new idea to vote for

More precisely, what I think would work better is that during the join screen, the settings, or the more common settings, should be automatically displayed. More advanced settings can still be checked

Honestly, I don't think just having the settings page pop up automatically solves the issue. Warlight has a lot of settings now, and it's become very easy to miss something if you quickly glance over the settings as many people do. Granted, this can be solved by simply being more careful and taking more time to read through the settings window slowly, but that is not a good reason to not implement what I consider a much better solution: highlighting the non-standard settings.

I really see no harm in having the settings page pop up every time before you are allowed to join a game?
Just put the "Join" button at the bottom of that page. If people still decide to blindly join games without bothering to read the game setting first, so be it, but at least they can no longer claim they did not agree to the game setup. There could even be a 30 second timer until the "join" button becomes active if you really want to encourge players to read the settings.

diablolicus - sometimes people join before you so i normally join and then check over settings.

"For example, some people consider multi-attack to be non-standard, but others prefer to only play in multi-attack games."

In this case, it would still be helpful, as the player who prefers the unusual settings can see whether the game has the settings they want.

(Not sure if any of this has been said before, uservoice isn't letting me click 'more' on comments.)

I like the idea to consider any variation from the template used to create the game to be a non-standard setting. For games created with a template, you could just highlight the name of the template used, rather than all the settings that are different from a default "custom game." Yes, people can still create crazy templates with odd settings which will not be highlighted, but at least the fact that the game is using a template will be highlighted. It's on you at that point to see exactly what they have changed.

Another option would be to only do that for "built-in" templates like the strategic settings. User-made templates could still have all non-standard settings highlighted. I think this is the ideal solution, but I'd settle for just highlighting the template name.

First, let's talk about the "default settings" you guys are mentioning.

By this I assume you're talking about the "Custom Game" button. The Custom Game button is really just a shortcut to selecting the Normal Template and checking the Customize Template box. There's actually always a template at play during the create game wizard, it just may not be obvious.

Now, you could consider any setting different from the Normal Template to be a non-standard setting. This is effectively what you guys are proposing. But if you did that, then all of the Strategic 1v1 games would have tons of non-standard settings, such as 3 starting locations instead of 4, manual distribution instead of auto, lower luck, etc. Virtually any game, even those that tried to use normal settings, would have tons of things flagged as non-standard.

Maybe instead you could also consider any variation from the template used to create the game to be non-standard. This solves the problem for Strategic 1v1 games and all of the games created using the built-in templates. But what if someone makes their own template with wacky rules and creates a game based off that template? No settings are changed from the template, so nothing would be considered non-standard. This doesn't work either.

Maybe you could come up with some hybrid solution that tries to measure how far the game settings are from the closest built-in template, but this feels hacky to me and I'm pretty sure there'd be a ton of edge cases where it produces unexpected results.

I totally agree with Perrin. The default settings are whatever is set when you create a new game, without changing any settings.

"It's obvious that if someone overrides the India bonus to be worth 100 instead of 4, that's pretty non-standard. But if they override it to be worth 3 instead of 4, that's pretty normal. There's no clear cutoff between standard and non-standard."

What's the downside to highlighting the changed bonus, even if it's a fairly common change like setting India to 3? Personally, I think this is important information that I wouldn't want to miss before joining a game!

"For example, some people consider multi-attack to be non-standard, but others prefer to only play in multi-attack games."

Even people that prefer multi-attack have to realize that it is not the most common way to play Warlight. And I still don't see the downside of highlighting this setting. Remember, this would also help people who do prefer multi-attack -- the highlighting would make it easier for them to tell at a glance if the game is set to multi.

"My fear is that if WarLight tries to define what's standard and what's non-standard, it might do more harm than good. If it gets it wrong and calls something standard when it isn't, people that only look at the highlighted options will miss it."

Warlight already defines what is standard by allowing you to create a game without changing any settings. You seem to feel that highlighting a non-standard setting implies some sort of negative connotation; I don't feel that way at all. It simply makes it a little easier to see what has been altered. And it goes both ways: it helps players see settings that they want to avoid, but also helps players see changed settings that they do want to play with.

Initially I thought highlighting non-standard game settings was a no-brainer, and I always wondered why it hadn't been implemented a long time ago. However after reading Fizzer's comment I can now see why he hesitates to do so. Especially the part about neutrals convinced me, there really are no one-size-fits-all standard settings.
How about some workaround:
Why not force players who want to join a game to take a look at the settings first? Players should be required to actively accept the game settings before they are allowed join. As it is now, I can click join / decline without even reading the game settings. It would be better to have the game settings page automatically pop up when I click "join" and I should have to click a second time some kind of "Yes, I have read and understood the game settings and agree with them"-button on the bottom of that game settings page.

I disagree Fizzer.. when you create a game, there are certain Parameters already selected.. those are clearly the 'standard' parameters.. in a MD game.. the 'standard' parameters are 2 days vtb, 3 days db.. non-standard indicates that it has to be actively changed, either in the making of the template, or in the creation by the game host. I don't think It'll be possible to realistically indicate a single outrageous bonus increase when all bonuses in a map are changed due to reasoning you pointed out.. and personally, the fact that the bonuses have their own seperate area is close enough to a highlight Imho to make it noticable..

And if Warlight standard; as the game creation mechanic shows it; isn't acceptable enough to the majority of players, why not make it Individual? put a section under settings where you can change what your standard games are, RT and MD.. It won't be perfect, but it could be a step in the right direction to get people's eyes attracted to where it needs to be..

Personally, I only glance over the settings in most of my games, and the difference between Yes and No, is often missed by my blind eyes.. no matter which one is deemed standard, a highlighting would indicate which it was instinctively.

Imho, anything that requires you to click *customize template* either from selecting it, or when creating the save to the template, is non-standard... with the exceptions of the base statistics of cards. *Ie, if a card is turned on, but the settings on it are unchanged, it should show up normal without having been highlighted*

The difficulty with this one is just trying to figure out what "non-standard" is. For example, some people consider multi-attack to be non-standard, but others prefer to only play in multi-attack games.

It's obvious that if someone overrides the India bonus to be worth 100 instead of 4, that's pretty non-standard. But if they override it to be worth 3 instead of 4, that's pretty normal. There's no clear cutoff between standard and non-standard.

Initial non-distribution neutral armies is normally at 2, but in a Cities style game it gets set really high, such as 15 or 20. This is normal for a Cities game. But in a non-cities distribution, 15 or 20 neutrals would be very strange and definitely non-standard.

A 5-day boot would be standard for me, since I'd prefer a game go long than get interrupted by a boot. But to others, waiting 5 days is an eternity and would consider that non-standard.

My fear is that if WarLight tries to define what's standard and what's non-standard, it might do more harm than good. If it gets it wrong and calls something standard when it isn't, people that only look at the highlighted options will miss it.

Prince, you still have to read settings. This would just make reading them easier and with many games it could be done more quickly and could make it easier to see changes you wouldn't as easily notice that are critical. Especially useful for games where a small amount of changes from default are made. A quick glance and you see what changed and know all the settings without having to critically look at everything to avoid an error. I would think it wouldn't be hard to implement either.

So you don't think this would be a useful addition? Many hosts do mention this in the title or description, but there are also many who don't. For me, this would be a big improvement.

People should read the questions of the exams thoroughly before answering them :P

Thoughtful game creators can state this settings in the personal message.