At first I thought... five minutes! No way! I have to wait this long to get my butt kicked in the next round? This stinks. I wan't my butt kicked immediately. But then I found other things I could do between rounds like fix my clothes dryer. Worked out great.
Hope so. Can the player count be raised a bit without hurting response time? I couldn't get in for a short time either due to full server.
I hear ya, but I am kind of pained to raise the player cap because I think the games will suffer. 48 feels like the right number for this open format. I think there is an appetite to do them more frequently so it needs to be kept really simple to setup, get in game & play. There is a few things I've picked up to apply to the next one, mostly to streamline things; Putting a designated admin on each side; I admit the restart was a bit fubar, but c'mon I am playing too and no-one refuted it when restart was requested after a player d/c. I would have voted it but I felt it would waste more time and be inconclusive. Hopefully this will help out in those kind of situations. Getting in-game quicker; Trickster had the right idea with liberal use of slap on district warmup. Effective and hilarious. Server will be started ~20 minutes before the event. Steam event notifications will lead you directly there. Lowering comm vote time; People were joining up quick enough & commanders seemed to have enough time. May as well shed a minute. Just enough time to smoke a ciggy and pour another drink. Shutting down earlier; "You don't have to go home but you can't stay here". I think 4 (5 if they are short) commander rounds and then a conquest map is about right. Then shut the server down and everyone who is in the mood to play more or spec chat about the rounds can go seed the pub servers.
Well, we had several people that couldnt get in because of the cap. Doesn't feel right to tease a great set of games just to make someone kiss the doorknob.
Yeah but.. Edit: should probably explain... I might be tempted to going 52, but not more. However, assuming there is enough demand for it I would alternate the times significantly to suite people of different geographical persuasions. Lots of people I spoke to couldn't play because the timezone mad eit crazy late/early. That way people from everywhere should be able to play once a month at least and those of us civilised enough to live in west Europe should be able to make either.
Well, im not/was advocating going 64 here (it would not fill up to that point anyway), but was thinking adding 4 or so slots, which funny enough, is exactly what you posted.
We could leave it at 48 but PW protect to keep out newbs. Holy shit there are a new group of newbs who are completely lame. They won't take instruction and just crawl around as scout. I'm sure some joined the pug. One was on my squad. I spent a few hours today training and of the six newbs playing only TWO wanted to learn how to play. Bobiskris (not a newb) joined and we pounced them for a couple games before I offered to show them how to play. Two immediately spawn as scout and when I say - Go as Engie with upgrade skill, they both say "No we want to just run around". I think it would be more fun if we chose a map that enables teams to fight more and removes some of the exploiting of an early rush. Something like Money would be fun - the one with the wall turrets. Everyone meets on bridges and center to duke it out on foot. Then later game fights with hordes of tanks.
No. God no. In the past half year, this has actually been one of the better pugs we've had. I had my doubts when A-z-K said "Just pile everyone in and let things happen," but it honestly worked out amazingly well. Better than when we had captains picking, better than when we had pre-randomized teams, better than we had the server passworded. Either it was a amazing stroke of luck, or A-z-K really does know what he's doing, and based off what I've seen, I'm leaning more towards the latter.
Pugs should really just be a set date/time because a full game is fun no matter what, we don't need team captains and all that bullshit when there's like 50 people playing.
I do love a good grueling cage match, but turrentmoney isn't impossible to rush on, and the way fn rushes (he seems to be your favorite one to complain about) is to take a squad of rev engies and grens and just blow everything up so those ml turrents aren't gonna do shit.
And you wonder why Empires is dieing. Not only is it this elitism, but you happen to be quite new to the game as well and aren't in a position to call anyone a newb. That is essentially what a PUG is, that's why it's called "Pick Up Game". You agree to all play at a certain time and everyone plays. I don't understand where all this scrim team and password elitism comes from.
No I am pretty useless but learning. Last time I screwed it up and just managed to piss everyone off because I over complicated everything. It sounded good in my head, but in practice one thing goes slightly wrong and everything falls apart. The Security vs Lawliet ones were excellent & team picking and all that good stuff did add something to the experience for me. But this is something much easier to pull off. Definitely no passwords though. I was happy to see a couple of randoms in game, new players need to chance to see the game like this to buy into it, it is ashame these kind of games do not happen daily anymore. I seriously doubt we are going to struggle with having too many new players, if we do I would be pleasantly surprised but I don't want to lock anyone out unless it becomes a problem. I should doubt it because the server will only be up when the event is starting. Anyway I'll probably announce another one for the 7th in a week or so. It will be fancy dress, the theme is superheros & supervillians. Prize for best costume will be 2 tickets to see the "The Beauty & The Beast on Ice" followed by a champagne reception at one of over 150 participating restaurants (Winners must be willing to spend a minimum of $500 on their meal).
Seems you're always going to have a small percentage of players that are going to want to go loner in these games. Maybe boot them from squads and let them roam? If not in a squad then at least you're not waisting your breath/time trying to get them to aid your plan. I figure they're either going to learn to team play better eventually or get board and find some other game. A few more slots at 52 sounds good. Only a few mentioned trouble getting in. If player numbers go higher, then maybe it's time for two servers limited to 32-36 each? And before you go beating up JGF too badly, he is one of few who I've seen regularly over the past several months spend a lot of time and patients trying to teach noobs the basics. Me included. Just don't get in the comm if you don't know what you're doing... it makes him cranky. :D
