Suggestions for a Casual/Party game queue

ThomasHiatt

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.

Valki

@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.

SpikeyNoob

@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.

maudlin27

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.

arma473

@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)

veteranashe

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.

veteranashe

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.

SpikeyNoob

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

SpikeyNoob

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.

Aulex

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.

SpikeyNoob

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

Uveso

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.

Terminal

@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.

veteranashe

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

Askaholic

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.

Tagada

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.

Jip

@tagada It is called Chess

There is also a mod where you have a fixed income - that may be interesting too for this queue

FtXCommando

Phantom is just not an option when you cannot control for the cpus of players. Games will get SUPER laggy when you get a new player that has a cpu from 2002.

biass

I'm just going to go down the list of suggestions in order:

valki said in Suggestions for a Casual/Party game queue:

Would it work to give all these games the same time limit? I would be more likely to play if I know it is 30 minutes max for example.

This is a very valid concern. I'm not sure If there is much we can do without making edits to the games themselves, but it will be something I will ask people to look into.

spikeynoob said in Suggestions for a Casual/Party game queue:

Maybe the shared armys mod.

Added to the OP, good suggestion.

jip said in Suggestions for a Casual/Party game queue:

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

This would be classed under generic survival.

I'm personally not sure how I feel about generic survival compared to WoD or Final Rush. This would be the only mode without any form of PVP element involved unless we made a leaderboard for it.

If it was decided that survival would be in, Rainmakers would indeed be included there.

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.

This is very easily resolvable with some basic inforgraphics. The unranked nature of it also reduces anxiety.

spikeynoob said in Suggestions for a Casual/Party game queue:

imagine u are a 1800 playing phantom with a bunch of 300s. Would that even be fun?

Phantom is an assymetric social game. Skill may have an influence on the outcome but it is far inferior considering all the added variables. It was a hot choice for clans with large rating spreads because of this.

maudlin27 said in Suggestions for a Casual/Party game queue:

face alot of anger from the players when I play badly.

arma473 said in Suggestions for a Casual/Party game queue:

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

This is supposed to be a consequence free, inherently laid back and casual experience. I would argue that people tryharding in wave-of-death are probably not going to be the people to play the queue at all.

Of course, this is going to be marketed towards the less serious player, of which we have a large demographic.

veteranashe said in Suggestions for a Casual/Party game queue:

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.

This would be a stretch goal, I cannot promise a solution that requires programming.

spikeynoob said in Suggestions for a Casual/Party game queue:

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.

Yes, also added.

aulex said in Suggestions for a Casual/Party game queue:

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.

This was the plan as far as I know, but I didn't mention it because again, we can't promise programming related solutions.

uveso said in Suggestions for a Casual/Party game queue:

We could implement new end goals to the game like:

This is a solid theoretical, but we would need to get concrete ideas first.

veteranashe said in Suggestions for a Casual/Party game queue:

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

Of course.

The vote will proabbly not happen. It doesnt seem like it would be worth the dev resources.

askaholic said in Suggestions for a Casual/Party game queue:

It would be awesome if LabWars worked too.

Added, it would be easy to repair. As well as scoutwars and etc.

Regarding phantom, it's pretty common to be played with larger player counts, on larger maps. This does not actually need to be the case and smaller styles, as well as options that enforce an average game time (like phantom reveals) would be what we use.

Treos

I’m only just seeing this discussion from 9 months ago, but I love the suggestions on shining a light I some of the party mods.

With regards to the question of what mods people would like to see combined: I think having the option to mix Claustrophobia and Murder Party would be great.

That would a) allow players to basically set a time limit on a game, and b) potentially address one challenge of Murder Party where actually getting your army to your target opponent can be tricky (depending on the map) while others are trying the same. (Claustrophobia incentivizes establishing yourself in the center, which would expose you more when adding Murder Party.)