When you're voting in a comm, there often isn't much to judge people on; we don't have any stats or anything on them, and there often isn't even enough time for people to say whether they want it or not as they set up. So, one thing we can do... why not have a 'deline comm' checkbox on the voting menu? When you have it checked, your name appears in red on the candidate list, and nobody can vote for you. That will help avoid people voting in someone who doesn't want to be comm, and can help totally new players avoid being voted in, too.
The people that don't want com are sometimes the best coms out there. People who are too thrilled to be com often wet their pants when they pop up in the HUD view and have to take several minutes changing themselves, wasting valuable research time.
What happens if everyone just says they don't want to be comm? It would be better just to say they don't want to.
I was thinking about this. If everyone doesn't want to be comm, though, then I think it's better for everyone to know this. I suspect there's a good chance that one person will end up saying 'fine, fine, I'll be comm' and uncheck their box when they see the whole list go red. If everyone absolutely refuses to be comm, though, then the game starts with nobody in the CV, just like if nobody votes now. We can't force people to comm; if people strictly refuse to let anyone make them comm even after they've seen that the whole list is red, they'd probably just step out of the CV if we forced them to spawn there anyway.
that really isn't a better situation. I think that in about half, yeah, about half or one third of all games that I play on 30 - 40 player servers, there isn't someone who WANTS to be commander. but in these situations, after seeing that their team is going to be no decent commander, one player decides that he needs to be commander. In other words, in every start game phase, the decent players have to assess the situation, decide if they're gunna comm or not. If we give players the ability to decide "i'm not commanding, end of.", then this isn't going to happen. instead, players that otherwise would have looked at their team and then decided that they need to comm will just decide that they don't feel like commanding, and instead just pick the "not commanding option" and when the map starts realise that actually they have a TERRIBLE commander, and they wish they'd just commanded in the first place. so in my mind, here are the two evils you have to chose between: -you have the hassel of typing "i do NOT want to command" -you have games which are totally ruined when a new played ends up commanding and your team has a noobie commander for the first 5 minutes, not just condemning the team to likely another 25 minutes of suffering before they lose, or whatever.
Imagine, if you would, that the only person who doesn't say check that box is emp_recruit, who happens to not know how to check that box? Good luck winning that game.
I was voted com once. I felt that I could be a good com, However once tanks start waring my FPS drops to unplayable levels. Thus I am currently a poor canidate for com. Thus It is my responsibility to avoid the com chair as a less then satifactory com. I promote any tools that can help some one like myself avoid causing frustraition to my team. I dare you to say that the team is better off with a com of 3 fps then a willing noob.
If nobody wants to be the Comm, the entire team's PCs get infected with a trojan virus that eats the boot sector at next reboot. That'll learn 'em. If you don't want to be considered for Commander during voting, the current work-around is to not join either team during the vote. Go spectator or stay unassigned until the vote is over and the match starts.
Hmm. It could be checked by default... or instead of a "decline comm" it could be a "run for comm" box. That's why this is such a good idea! With this system, people can easily look at the list of names that have turned red, and say "oh, there's nobody good running for comm. I'd better uncheck the box..." The way things work now, we get bad comms in the first five minutes because everyone thinks someone else can do it. This would make that situation less likely, not more, since bad comms would have the option to opt out, and when they don't, it would rapidly become obvious that no good people are available, encouraging good people to comm. Currently, it's much harder to see what's going on, so it takes longer to realize there's nobody good running. With only 60 seconds to decide, anything that makes it clearer is a very good thing. (Another option would be to make it turn your name red, but still let people vote for you...)
I vote for this wholeheartedly. Those of you in this thread who are arguing that this will make for games where nobody wants to comm, it's gonna happen anyway. You voting somebody who doesn't want to comm into the CV isn't going to force them to command. They can still get out of the CV and let someone else decide they need to comm.
Some players decide to agree to be a comm when they actually spawn in the CV. The problem is about players not wanting to take the command function, not about an ability to put a 'dont vote for me' flag beside Your name at the voting. Interesting thing is that in BF2 almost everyone wants to be a commander, but in NS and Empires it's often a big problem to convince ONE of MANY good players on the server to be a commander. Why commanding is not fun? Why we are trying to make a new feature in the GUI for players NOT wanting to be a commander? Vessboy has a lowend hardware, I can understand that, but others? Maby we are trying to solve a wrong problem?
Yes, opting in or out of commander would be a good idea. Zombie Master has a similar system which works well.
I vote for this wholeheartedly. It would be nice to actually be able to chose a team after mapstart, instead of having to go to spec untill the vote ends.
Commanding IS fun. However, the fun is cut short when your entire team spends half the game questioning your research choices and double-guessing your every strategic decision instead of listening and trying to help. I think that, more than anything else, makes people not want to command.
