All Waiting Games Get Scrapped After 28 days

[chapcrap]

I think this will frustrate more people than any good it will create.

Who is it going to frustrate? Any player can make a game, this is not stopping them. It does not stop them from inviting players or anything else. All it does it free up the waiting games list. How can having 7272 games waiting to start be good for the site?

This player who is now a freeium has 8 games waiting to start which are the oldest games waiting to start. He cannot play all of them if they all filled today so why have them on the board? Game 12961564 This game criteria produces 16 results from the same players, all on the first page of the oldest first games. Only 1 person, not 1 team but 1 person has joined the games. This suggests that the games are not popular and should be scrapped? They can either invite players, use callouts or just wait for the unsuspecting players like ruthless1704 to join them. By not scrapping unpopular games, we are allowing farming.

If you're already in a game, you can play it. The freemium would be able to play any games he was already in. So, that's wrong. That's actually a point in opposition to the suggestion.

Also, having a lot of games waiting can be good, because then there are options for people. If we want exotic settings and maps, then we need to be able to let them fill and if they don't, then so what? That was the point of reversing the game order on the Join A Game screen, so that these games would go to the back and people would have to search them. I prefer it the other way, but I think the current way is probably better for most players and for the site. However, I see no real benefit coming from having the games dropped other than that there would be less pages on the game finder.

[koontz1973]

If you're already in a game, you can play it. The freemium would be able to play any games he was already in. So, that's wrong. That's actually a point in opposition to the suggestion.

Not really, it will allow every premium to make 100 waiting games the day before they go freeium and play them over the allotted 4 allowed for freeium. This would allow everyone to get an extra month or two of premium if they time the games right. That alone should be a huge plus for this to happen then.

[Metsfanmax]

You all are going to need to do better than this to make a change to the implementation. Saying things "it makes us look busier" (which isn't necessarily how it will be taken -- people might see 100 waiting games and think no one plays here) is not enough to go on. There's too many small benefits in either direction here.

[koontz1973]

You all are going to need to do better than this to make a change to the implementation. Saying things "it makes us look busier" (which isn't necessarily how it will be taken -- people might see 100 waiting games and think no one plays here) is not enough to go on. There's too many small benefits in either direction here.

Yep, going from one extreme to the other has the same problems but in reverse, this is why when chapcrap said the month, I thought that it was the better time frame. As for reasons why, here are the ones I can think off:

• Will mean a smaller waiting games list.
• Should make the site look busier as we have less games waiting to be filled.
• Reduced the load on the server.
• Reduces farming - whilst the amount of farming games reduced would not be great or deter, any amount must be good for the site.
• Freeium members cannot play like a premium for more than a month - when premium members go freeium, they can start 100 games and wait for them to fill. If a player starts 10 games a week, he can play as premium for 10 weeks. Turning a 12 month membership into a 14 month membership.
• Players come and go, one problem with players joining these games is that they may go for whatever reason. The longer the game stays waiting to start, the higher the risk of a player leaving the site and forcing the others to sit through 3 days.

There you go Mets, 6 reasons for this then. The last three are pretty valid reasons for this.

[Metsfanmax]

[*]Reduced the load on the server.

Substantial server load comes from active games, not from waiting games.

[*]Reduces farming - whilst the amount of farming games reduced would not be great or deter, any amount must be good for the site.

Why does it reduce farming? What's stopping the person from just re-creating the 'farming game' after the 30 days are up?

[*]Freeium members cannot play like a premium for more than a month - when premium members go freeium, they can start 100 games and wait for them to fill. If a player starts 10 games a week, he can play as premium for 10 weeks. Turning a 12 month membership into a 14 month membership.

The original premise of the argument was that these games weren't filling anyway -- so if that's the case, why do you think these players will get extra games in practice? Also, having more than 4 active games is only one of many benefits of being premium, and if someone pays for premium, it's not clear to me that we want to disallow them from carrying extra games over. If we did, we could just automatically force them to drop all waiting games upon losing premium status.

[*]Players come and go, one problem with players joining these games is that they may go for whatever reason. The longer the game stays waiting to start, the higher the risk of a player leaving the site and forcing the others to sit through 3 days.

This is valid, but we could also solve this by dropping people from waiting games if they haven't logged in for, say, two weeks.

[koontz1973]

Substantial server load comes from active games, not from waiting games.

Point taken.

Why does it reduce farming? What's stopping the person from just re-creating the 'farming game' after the 30 days are up?

Nothing, but you get the same problem of the game not filling. Right now, if you have a game and noobs join it your defence against it being farming is that they joined knowing what it was. But with invites you cannot defend yourself.
Game 12961564 If these two players started to invite the players then it would be a good case for farming. They have to leave them for the unsuspecting player.

The original premise of the argument was that these games weren't filling anyway -- so if that's the case, why do you think these players will get extra games in practice? Also, having more than 4 active games is only one of many benefits of being premium, and if someone pays for premium, it's not clear to me that we want to disallow them from carrying extra games over. If we did, we could just automatically force them to drop all waiting games upon losing premium status.

But what yo can do like this game is choose games and settings that whilst are OK, are not so popular as to be able to fill them all at once. Like this one. Game 12720446 For me I tend to play between 10-20 games now. So going freeium I can make these games and when one game finished below what I like I can invite, live chat, callouts, PM or wall players to join a certain game. So I get to carry on my premium level of games for a couple of months.

As to forcing players to drop them when going freeium, that may cause more problems as most players do not think about when they go freeium and may be a day late in renewing. Your way would then force them to find all the games they where in and re join them.

This is valid, but we could also solve this by dropping people from waiting games if they haven't logged in for, say, two weeks.

This is fine but again the month. That is the time we have for invites not going out. But I would counter that this is a stop gap. A solution to a small part of the problem that needs fixing as a whole. You may solve this point but you do not solve any of the others. The original idea solves them all at once.

[Metsfanmax]

Why does it reduce farming? What's stopping the person from just re-creating the 'farming game' after the 30 days are up?

Nothing, but you get the same problem of the game not filling. Right now, if you have a game and noobs join it your defence against it being farming is that they joined knowing what it was. But with invites you cannot defend yourself.
Game 12961564 If these two players started to invite the players then it would be a good case for farming. They have to leave them for the unsuspecting player.

I do not understand your statement. What does the invitation process have to do with this? If anything, I feel like dropping the games periodically would actually encourage that farming because people might send out invites rather than having the game get deleted and starting over.

But what yo can do like this game is choose games and settings that whilst are OK, are not so popular as to be able to fill them all at once. Like this one. Game 12720446 For me I tend to play between 10-20 games now. So going freeium I can make these games and when one game finished below what I like I can invite, live chat, callouts, PM or wall players to join a certain game. So I get to carry on my premium level of games for a couple of months.

That's a design choice. If we wanted players not to be able to carry over games from their premium time, we would have fixed that a long time ago.

As to forcing players to drop them when going freeium, that may cause more problems as most players do not think about when they go freeium and may be a day late in renewing. Your way would then force them to find all the games they where in and re join them.

I'm not necessarily advocating that we make this change; I have no real problem with the design decision. My point is that given that it is intentional, I have no motivation to try and discourage freemiums from getting those extra games. This point isn't going to resonate with me unless someone proves that's actually a problem.

This is valid, but we could also solve this by dropping people from waiting games if they haven't logged in for, say, two weeks.

This is fine but again the month. That is the time we have for invites not going out. But I would counter that this is a stop gap. A solution to a small part of the problem that needs fixing as a whole. You may solve this point but you do not solve any of the others. The original idea solves them all at once.

It's not a stop-gap; it's a good thing to do in either system. And since this is the only argument of yours that I agree with, I feel like it solves all of the problems ;P