Suggestions for a Casual/Party game queue

You might have seen a couple of comments on the forums about it,
but we're looking to start a casual matchmaking queue that runs party game modes.

The devs that work on TMM are very eager to put the code time into it, and the far-more-skilled-than-i-am Creative team aready have a couple party game modes "fixed" for their inclusion into the queue.

This post is to ask for suggestions to this list, which has everything I can think of which could be included.
Of course, this queue would be unrated. I rather it didn't show your rating at all too.


Final Rush Pro
Phantom X
Wave of Death
Claustrophobia
King of the Hill
Murder Party
Zone Control
HardFFA
Gap of 64 ACUS
Labwars
Scout Wars
Chess
Crazyrush
Shared army
Generic survival?
New faction mods?
Special win conditions?


This is everything I can remember.

It's important to note that it was quite common for maps, which contained their own scripts, and mods to be combined. So it's possible for us to do something like Gap of 64 ACUS, with the claustrophobia mod that makes the map shrink. If you do have any combinations you would like to see, make sure you also suggest those here too.

Many party ideas look quite aggressive... Would it work to give all these games the same time limit?

Sometimes we don't have time or desire for a game that can be drawn out sometimes. I would be more likely to play if I know it is 30 minutes max for example.

Maybe the shared armys mod.

I'd like to submit Rainmakers, but I'm not sure if it is casual enough
edit: it is 30 mins tops on default settings

A work of art is never finished, merely abandoned

I'd think that new/casual players probably have no idea what all these weird mods and game modes are and would stay away from the queue.

@ludmilla said in Suggestions for a Casual/Party game queue:

I'd think that new/casual players probably have no idea what all these weird mods and game modes are and would stay away from the queue.

Hidden rating helps a lot for them though.

@valki it would also lead better players not to cue cus imagine u are a 1800 playing phantom with a bunch of 300s. Would that even be fun? Either its no fun for u or no fun for the 300s.

Provided whatever game mode had a spotlight in the news which explained what it was and how to play it, it could encourage new players to try it out. For example, I've never played a phantom game (and have only seen a couple of casts of phantom games) so I'm put off joining one as I'd be relatively clueless and probably face alot of anger from the players when I play badly. Similarly I won't even consider various other mods since I've little idea of what they do.

I expect it would in part come down to how it's marketed/pitched - if it's promoted as something for new players, to let them experience different types of game modes in a non-competitive setting, with experienced players encouraged to be helpful and play for fun, I suspect new players would be more likely to queue into it.

@spikeynoob People would just tab out of the game to look up the other players in Aeolus to find out their relevant ratings

The same thing people did in TMM when the TMM rating was disconnected from player skill (e.g. when I was reset to "zero" and the same thing for Jagged and lots of others)

Love it can't wait.

Might add a checkmark of "I'm new" so "new" can show as their score In game so other players can help the new players.

Love it can't wait.

Might add a checkmark of "I'm new" so "new" can show as their score In game so other players can help the new players.

@arma473 i agree, i was speaking to what might happen if rating is not shown. Sorry for not making that clear.

Also i remember when i first got faf i saw the chess mod. It seemed pretty cool and might make for some fun shorter games.

This is a great idea Biass. I think it could be taken in a different direction to solve a different problem of keeping the game fresh, we could have a rotating game mode per week. It would be similar to hearthstone's tavern brawls. Obviously can't implement a new game mode every week, but it could cycle through a large enough list to keep things fresh.
Just food for though.

@aulex yea that would be fun. It would also solve the issue with not knowing how long a game will be.

just a thought:

We could implement new end goals to the game like:

Most score or mex output after 30 minutes wins.
Kill all enemy factories to win
1st who builds an experimental wins. (excluding monkey lord)

End game conditions based on unit count is easy to implement.
Sadly i don't play pvp so i don't have any good ideas.

Obviously i would like to see some player vs. AI games
Or every player can choose his favorite AI (mod) as allied player. 😄

@aulex I was thinking the same thing. League of legends also does something similar to this where they have a few rotating game modes throughout the year. It keeps the game fresh and those game mode usually get more play then game itself when they available. Maybe have something like a phantom x week, murder party week, or any other game mode week once a month. Perhaps some type of reward could be added at the end of every rotating game mode week to keep players wanting to play said game mode. This being an avatar or something for most wins or something.

Crazy rush needs to be in there too

Could do when you queue you can add vote for game modes like "30 min game" or perhaps vote for what type of game

We’re gonna have to figure out some way to opt out of the longer games since not everyone is gonna be down for a 1.5 hour phantom.

I liked the idea of FFA on asymmetric map gen which Sheikah demonstrated a while ago. It would be awesome if LabWars worked too. Afaik it’s kinda busted.

Maybe something with unit restrictions or resource income mods. Like "navy only and everyone gets 2x resources". Or maybe infinite resources. Some game modes like that which simplify the game could be casual fun while also maybe helping people learn certain other aspects of the game I.e. how to spend mass other than clicking next upgrades.

I remember a starting condition in FA where everyone spawned with a set of units and no engies nor an Acu The units were all you've got and you needed to micro them well to win.