Traintown
My feedback
2 results found
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468 votes
AdminFizzer
(WarLight Creator, WarLight)
responded
Teammates leaving a game is certainly frustrating. Allowing another teammate to enter orders for them is definitely a possible way to address that problem.
We could use some feedback on the following potential issues with this feature:
1. In teams of more than 2 players, who gets control of a player that’s left? Just first to click the button, or assign a team captain or something?
2. Could this slow down real time games? Imagine if one person has to enter orders for 3 teammates that have left plus themselves.
3. Would this encourage someone to boot their teammates, just to take control over them?
4. It needs to be very clear who is playing who for every turn. If someone that’s under control starts sabotaging their team, like gifting stuff to an enemy or attacking teammates, it needs to be clear it isn’t really them and you shouldn’t necessarily…An error occurred while saving the comment An error occurred while saving the comment Traintown
commented
1) There are many ways this could happen, and it could be possible to even do more than one and have the game creator choose the type in the settings (or possibly even disable it). First to click a button could work, but really isn't any better than assigning it randomly (except in games where the team is truly playing as a team and they agree on who should play that person), so you could just do that. Assigning a team captain could be quite problematic, as that would probably be through some sort of voting system, and that could result in everyone voting for themselves. You could give it to the person with the highest "skill", calculated however you want. If you were to do it this way, I suggest a formula that takes into account both win rate and games played in that team game type, weighted more heavily towards games played. You could also give it to the person who has been committing their orders fastest on average, so they have the most time. You could even have it rotate through the remaining team members, having a different person play that person each turn. Also, if more than one person gets booted and more than one team member is remaining, the responsibility should probably be distributed among them.
2) This can definitely slow down real time games. Unless someone is already playing slower, or it is early game and people are still going full turns and getting booted, there will definitely be slower games. There probably isn't much to do to overcome this. Having the option to disable it would at least allow people to play at the current rate all the time in certain games. It could even be disabled by default for real time games (if it is possible to be different for both real time and multi day). Some sort of message asking the players to have patience might be nice.
3) If there is no penalty for booting teammates, it certainly could, though I doubt it would be particularly widespread. There are any number of ways to penalize someone. It could be very tangible in the game, such as halving the number of armies that player gets, or penalizing card drops in games with cards, or lowering attack and defense kill rates for that player, etc. However, in larger teams than 2, that could very easily become unfair for the third player on that team, so it might need to be a penalty that doesn't actually affect the outcome of the game, though that would probably be less effective. If you have made some kind of player rating system, you could automatically decrease the points for that players rating. You could have a statistic for how many times the player has booted a teammate, and make that statistic available to be filtered in open seats. For this idea I would also suggest a time limit of probably 90 days, after which they are cleared, so people who might have accidentally booted someone don't get forced out of games with a minimum team boot setting of 0 for forever.
4) It could be as simple as putting the current player next to the player name in the same way you do AI takeovers now. However, I think there should be some sort of warning as well. If one player takes over for the rest of the game, there should be a popup on the turn the player takes over that indicates that he will be playing for the rest of the game (unless he gets booted). If you do some sort of rotating system where the player controlling gets changed each turn, you should have a summary of who is controlling them in a prominent place, possibly also a popup, although I think closing a popup every turn would probably get annoying. It could be a menu option as well, though I don't think that is prominent enough to the players who are new to the game and won't have discovered it.
5) I don't think that using it too much would make team games less valuable. It would likely make team games with random teammates a lot more interesting to a number of people, me included. I have stopped playing team games altogether because my team has been burned too many times by players getting booted. I am sure there are many other people out there like me who don't play them. Additionally, you could limit it to games made by members, or give it a high level unlock, if you think it would be used too much. Also, I think it should be disabled for the 2v2 ladder, in order to continue to encourage finding a good teammate, and to reward those who do.
6) It certainly could. I know in my case, I got burnt out on players getting booted though, so it can't really be any worse, especially if given the option to disable it in the settings.
Traintown
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28 votesTraintown
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This was written to be a part of my original comment, but apparently there is a 5000 character limit, so yeah...
You didn't specifically ask this, but I want to include it as well.
For real time games (at least when real time means 15 minute turns or less): Add on extra time for the player to do the booted players orders. I think that the player should get +2/3 boot time for each player he is controlling, but no additional bank time.
For multi day games: There is no need to add extra time. Make sure vacations for the player controlling don't result in the player being controlled by him not getting vacation and losing control of him.
For both: Consider making it so that playing as the other player is just like playing a second turn in a row, with the same deployment, attack, and confirm orders (for real time, the boot times could be included in this). If the players don't select who controls the booted player, make sure the controlling player gets a notification at the beginning of the turn he gets selected, so he knows he may need to make quicker moves, or start sooner. If the players do select who controls the booted player, make sure they have a small amount of time at the beginning of the turn in real time games, so choosing doesn't infringe on the time needed to play the turn.