Autojoin function

[pinkyandthebrain]

Firstly thank-you for all the work you are doing at them moment trying to keep this site ticking over so we have somewhere to hang out to fight the boredom of confinement!

I was wondering whether at some point it would be possible to have a feature on the game set up which doesn't allow autojoiners to join. With the massive increase in players it has become a bit frustrating to play games with large amounts of players like werewolf, as when you think you have a full table you actually have absentee people that auto joined several tables at once (if this makes sense?) but aren't actually at the table to hit accept. And thus we can go around in circles for a bit before a game can start. I don't personally use it but perhaps others that do would feel differently.

Thanks

[ZanaFromMars]

In addition to this, when the table administrator kicks a player that auto-joined, this same player can be back on the table in a few seconds...

While people that register normaly can not go back to a table they've been kicked from... That's really problematic.

Thanks in advance

[Een]

Thanks for the feedback!

I was wondering whether at some point it would be possible to have a feature on the game set up which doesn't allow autojoiners to join. With the massive increase in players it has become a bit frustrating to play games with large amounts of players like werewolf, as when you think you have a full table you actually have absentee people that auto joined several tables at once (if this makes sense?) but aren't actually at the table to hit accept. And thus we can go around in circles for a bit before a game can start. I don't personally use it but perhaps others that do would feel differently.

Well the situation is not really different than for manual join. Someone can join tables and leave the computer for whatever reason. There is no reason to presume that the player is less likely to accept in automatic than manual: the accept screen is the same for everyone, and if they are away they are away. And of course for games that play with a lot of players, it happens more frequently.

Still, some games at peak hour have started to look like high frequency trading (really, it's hypnotizing to display 6nimmt in the lobby at peak hour and just watch). We have made some tweaks to slow down a little the auto-joining and make it more smooth for manual users. This should make things better and allow more tables to start by being more understandable on the manual lobby side. But we still want everyone to play together, whatever their favourite way of joining games.

In addition to this, when the table administrator kicks a player that auto-joined, this same player can be back on the table in a few seconds...

While people that register normaly can not go back to a table they've been kicked from... That's really problematic.

This is not the intended behaviour, we'll check this. Thanks for telling us.

[Een]

In addition to this, when the table administrator kicks a player that auto-joined, this same player can be back on the table in a few seconds...

While people that register normaly can not go back to a table they've been kicked from... That's really problematic.

This is not the intended behaviour, we'll check this. Thanks for telling us.

This has been fixed now

[pinkyandthebrain]

Thank you for the tweeks - the people I play WW with were all getting quite frustrated that people were joining and leaving multiple tables in the blink of an eye without ever being listed on the left as "players around the table". Hopefully it is much smoother now!

[upthebooks]

I want to upvote this. the auto-join on large games like werewolf is incredibly frustrating espeically paired w/ the lagging with so many people online. what happens is you get five people autojoining and then quitting bc a game started but then that game doesn't start bc they had the same issue and they autojoin again my table to quit again bc another table false starts ad nauseum.

In order to get around this, on werewolf games in particular, I now have to severely limit rep, level, and language to try and get some normalcy and then manually invite people who don't meet those but who won't auto-quit. Simply adding a box where host can block auto-joiners would solve this.

thanks

[LongBeachGamer]

Hi Een, thanks for this feedback. What I am seeing as a lowly table host is that people on "Automatic" are joining every available table of the game type that they select (perhaps there is a small delay between joins). This is very different from a "Manual" player who is more likely to only join one table and wait for it to start. The evidence for this is the table population as the game starts on WW: before the large influx of Automatic players, we would see tables start at population=1 and steadily grow to population=12 and then start. A potential fix would be to limit the number of tables an Automatic player joins to the first qualified table with the most players.

I believe this change would address the bulk of the problem but there may also be issues with game preferences with players on Automatic mode. If the Automatic player selects more than 1 game they would like to play but has a strong preference for 7 Wonders over WW then it increases the probability the Automatic player would decline to start a WW game. I'm not sure how to easily address this, but I'm also not sure how much this is contributing to the problem we are seeing.

Thanks for the feedback!

I was wondering whether at some point it would be possible to have a feature on the game set up which doesn't allow autojoiners to join. With the massive increase in players it has become a bit frustrating to play games with large amounts of players like werewolf, as when you think you have a full table you actually have absentee people that auto joined several tables at once (if this makes sense?) but aren't actually at the table to hit accept. And thus we can go around in circles for a bit before a game can start. I don't personally use it but perhaps others that do would feel differently.

Well the situation is not really different than for manual join. Someone can join tables and leave the computer for whatever reason. There is no reason to presume that the player is less likely to accept in automatic than manual: the accept screen is the same for everyone, and if they are away they are away. And of course for games that play with a lot of players, it happens more frequently.

Still, some games at peak hour have started to look like high frequency trading (really, it's hypnotizing to display 6nimmt in the lobby at peak hour and just watch). We have made some tweaks to slow down a little the auto-joining and make it more smooth for manual users. This should make things better and allow more tables to start by being more understandable on the manual lobby side. But we still want everyone to play together, whatever their favourite way of joining games.

In addition to this, when the table administrator kicks a player that auto-joined, this same player can be back on the table in a few seconds...

While people that register normaly can not go back to a table they've been kicked from... That's really problematic.

This is not the intended behaviour, we'll check this. Thanks for telling us.

[Een]

Hi Een, thanks for this feedback. What I am seeing as a lowly table host is that people on "Automatic" are joining every available table of the game type that they select (perhaps there is a small delay between joins). This is very different from a "Manual" player who is more likely to only join one table and wait for it to start. The evidence for this is the table population as the game starts on WW: before the large influx of Automatic players, we would see tables start at population=1 and steadily grow to population=12 and then start. A potential fix would be to limit the number of tables an Automatic player joins to the first qualified table with the most players.

I believe this change would address the bulk of the problem but there may also be issues with game preferences with players on Automatic mode. If the Automatic player selects more than 1 game they would like to play but has a strong preference for 7 Wonders over WW then it increases the probability the Automatic player would decline to start a WW game. I'm not sure how to easily address this, but I'm also not sure how much this is contributing to the problem we are seeing.

Yes, with the current volume we have to rethink some features. That's on our minds.

Quick note, if a player from the automatic lobby joins a lot of tables of the same game, it means that there is a lot of tables of the same game with the same options. So there is some strange behaviour too on the manual side: why create so many tables with the same options, instead of joining an existing table with these options? Maybe because, following player requests, we have put the create feature at the top and thus made it easier to create a table than to join? And so maybe if there were no automatic lobby players joining, a majority of tables would stay empty with just their creator? Taking the extremes there, but I think you'll get my point: there is some humanity in all this

[Een]

We introduced a tweak today so that when one game has a high frequency of games being created, automatic lobby doesn't join manual tables anymore (automatic lobby players are matched between themselves).

For now, we have seen some unexpected improvement... for the automatic lobby!

Any feedback on the manual side?

[DoctorPelusa]

We introduced a tweak today so that when one game has a high frequency of games being created, automatic lobby doesn't join manual tables anymore (automatic lobby players are matched between themselves).

For now, we have seen some unexpected improvement... for the automatic lobby!

Any feedback on the manual side?

Maybe a bit unrelated, but have you considered giving small cooldowns (a few seconds) to people rejecting matches, before they're able to auto-match again?