Lobby hosts could really have more control over players on the room aside from just being able to kick them.
My suggestion is for a checkbox option named “Free will”. It always comes enabled by default, and when it’s on everything works no different from how it works currently. When disenabled by the host, it would unready every player, make everyone unable to change teams and colors and grant the lobby creator a few more powers:
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Ability to force players to a certain color, as well as forcing for random colors.
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Ability to force players to a certain team, as well as forcing for random teams and no teams.
This would be specially useful for when setting up for custom scenarios. I’ve lost the count of the amount of times that I’ve been stuck on a lobby without the game being able to start just because someone couldn’t figure out what they’re supposed to set for team and/or color.
But would honestly be as much appealing for pretty much every other situation as well. It would make easier for hosts to balance teams on RM lobbies; it would prevent the annoyance of having to deal with players who enter “random teams” lobbies and the like, and refuse to attend the lobby rules; it would make easier to coopt your friend, who lost the virtual jankenpon, into playing hunter, because you wouldn’t need to hear all their whining before they finally choose the hunter spot.
And if you, as a lobby host, don’t mind using it, just leave the option at its default. Or if you’re a lobby guest that wouldn’t like to be forced into a certain color, just avoid joining lobbies with “Free will” off.
6 Likes
People are joining so YOU can play too, why would you want to control what team they are or what color they pick?
For the things listed, you explain it to them. Do you want them to never learn how to pick colors?
If they don’t listen to the lobby rules, kick them. Forcing players doesn’t seem to be the right thing.
A similar suggestion: it would be great if tournament admins could set up settings for players ahead of time. That would prevent those awkward Admin Wins when players accidentally pick an incorrect civ and prevent restarts when the players launch without getting the settings right.
4 Likes
It’s not really that simple, specially with custom scenarios, as I mentioned.
There are many maps that require specific color and team settings, and it’s often very time consuming coordinating 7 players simmultaneously, when you add newcomers to the equation it only gets worse. Being able to set everyone correctly off the bat would make for much more enjoyable and efficient lobby experiences. It even make easier to teach people how it’s supposed to work when you just have the whole thing already setted up, instead of having to confusedly go back and forth with settings and needing to re-explain everytime a person joins a lobby.
And if it happens to get in the way of learning how to pick a color and/or a team in a lobby (which is pretty unreasonable, let’s be honest), there will always be “free will” lobbies and the ability for players to create their own lobbies and get to know it themselves at any time.
I’m just gonna say that I found genuinely funny how you elaborate on top of the need of other players to get to play and having the proposed control isn’t right, but the best you can suggest to deal with the struggle on building consensus when setting lobbies is kicking people.
Controlling lobby seats = bad
Kicking people when they struggle to figure the seats rules = just fair
2 Likes
Nope i never said that. I said explain it to them. If the choose to not follow, instead of forcing them, kick them.
And that, yeah. It just feels so natural to have it, that it actually bothers me to realize it isn’t a feature already.
Ok, and why people who join a lobby can’t pre-agree about the host setting up seats (when the host already sets everything else, and people already commonly do this agreement with no problem)? Why it “doesn’t seem to be the right thing”?
The proposal is to make it optional, and you could just don’t join a lobby/don’t use it as a host if you happen to not want it, just like you wouldn’t join/create a bamboo nothing lobby if you dindn’t want to play bamboo nothing.
It’s literally just a suggestion to make lobby organizations less unnecessarily time consuming.
But look, I won’t stay here repeating myself any more than that.