ff.pickup community idea

[Hardy]

Originally Posted by yfni

Hardy can make it work technically btw. After abba he might be the next best thing from sweden.

I will only try to make this if the interest is high. Right now it looks 50/50

[zE]

playng with + 100 ping sucks a bit :<

[the_cake]

I'm for linking channels and having separate command names for each location, ie !addus and !addeu. Give the players a choice to decide where/when they want to play.

[Mikael_hs]

zE; you shouldnt get 100+ ping to an eastcoast server.

[yfni]

Although support is there on both sides I agree with hardy that you need a near unanimous decision by people that matter for it to work. And I agree that it's not going to get it.

I think its main flaw is my inability to let everyone see its benefits. Some people read the first line and have their opinion ready before they actually understand it.

It's sad really because this could have potentially filled the entire clock with pickups. Luckily euro is seeing an amazing increase in new players. So bright future ahead. Best of luck to USA as well.

[VinnytheBoss]

sounds like a great idea. I agree that if everyone merges together, it will make this game look like there is a larger community base. Hell, that is half the reason most of the TFC'ers dont want to come over to the 'dark side'. Simply becuase we have 45 idlers and they have 90 idlers at times.

I would think this could be beneficial in more ways then one.

[Elmo]

welcome back btw vinny

yeah maybe, i don't speak to many of the tfc crew but the ones I do speak to its usually a case of still having a crappy PC that cant run FF

but you did say "hell that is half the reason" ... i got the other half lol

[VinnytheBoss]

LOL thanks elmo...ill be good i swear..

[Elmo]

whoops I had the wrong expression there - only just noticed lol

=

[Hammock]

Before I cancelled my internet for a few months, I looked forward to weekend mornings to play in the EU pickups.

I always had a blast, and it's not that difficult to adjust to the ping, and most of the time the guys were flexible with what classes and positions I played because of it (and I was almost never forced to play engy even), as well I got to play many maps the NA's refused to play. I played between 190 - 250 ping and concing was still doable, just took a few games to figure it out.

There was even 1 game where there were 3 NA's on one team and we won!

The channels should just be merged, condense the two communities, and get people used to playing everywhere, and you'll find the games have a far greater chance of being unpredictable. NA pickups had become quite stale, often knowing the outcome of the match before you even joined the server, that in itself is not very fun (even if you know you're on the winning team).

But alas I doubt it would ever happen, you get the people who need everything their way or will throw hissy fit tantrums and start side pickup channels to split the community and make things even more boring and predictable.

If the channels ever did merge though, I'd take the EU's pickup channel anyday. I love that system. 3 maps get nominated in irc, 3 maps are voted on in irc, and the winning map is played in game. I mean seriously how simple does that sound? Why can't NA do that? Instead we let the teams form up wait on average 10-15 minutes for everyone to get into the server, then pick a map. I got sick of our 30 minute pickups averagely taking 50-60 minutes to complete, going from a few pickups a night to one every couple days because of that (plus the previously mentioned knowing who was going to win before the game even started thing).

Unfortunately there are definately a few people who refuse these sort of ideas and the ideas like the pickup draft because....well because they're selfish and don't really care about the community, and they will do everything in their power to undermine any valid attempt, which is seriously a sad case indeed.

[RnZ]

I support this idea 100%, sometimes i play in usa pickups and its fun and not that hard to play with 120 ping. Playing over and over again with the same people in your own channel gets kinda boring sometimes, bringing the two channels together gives the upportunity to play with new people and its also nice for "the outside" to see a more active channel.

[squeek.]

Unless I'm confused about the idea, this wouldn't be moving both channels into one channel on one network, but instead making the PickupBot allowing adding from both networks to the same pickup. The channels wouldn't appear any more active (in terms of idlers).

Hammock: The nomination system is in the Gamesurge channel as well, but people are literally refusing to use it. If the channels were merged, I'm not sure anything would change (pickups run by US admins would likely intentionally disable in-channel voting).

I think my conclusion still holds: The people that want this already have this. The people that don't want this won't get anything out of it. Therefore, we'd be right back where we are right now, just with a lot of unnecessary effort wasted.

[yfni]

Originally Posted by squeek.

The people that don't want this won't get anything out of it.

That's where you are very wrong...

The americans that don't want this will get the euro's playing in their pickups... more than that they are doing now. So expect more pickups or bigger pickups.

And the euros that don't want this will get more americans playing in their pickups..same idea.

That's what they will be getting out of it.

(And there will be no merging of channels except by means of the bot. So the channel will appear more active only be the number of pickups being played and eventually by the influx of new players)

[RnZ]

i liked the one big happy family channel idea better

[wakka]

This is a very good idea, I think to dismiss you cannot be considering everything as a whole.

For the people who just want to play and don't cry about lag which in Europe is definitely the majority of people it makes playing pickups in the morning and late at night very possible.

To sum up, there is no disadvantage to anyone who disagrees with this idea as they wouldn't have been getting a pickup at that certain time anyway.. so the advantage is that they now CAN, high ping or not.

Active pickups are necessary for attracting more and more people into irc to play the game.

[[AE] 82694]

From a guy that doesn't do pick up's because of the time it takes, I don't see an issue, I Idle in both channels when ever I fire IRC up, so I can play in either pick up if I like. So why go through the hassle of changing crap that isn't broken.

[Dr.Satan]

I like the idea, and think it's a good concept, but I agree with Squeek and others who have pointed out that it's not really different that what we have now. I think it would be kinda cool if the EU or US pickups could !notice US/EU and it would notice the other channel, cause i think sometimes people who would play in the other chan aren't idling in there and miss pickups.

Also though, is it a problem of there not being admins around to start pickups, or something different?

[yfni]

Originally Posted by RnZ

i liked the one big happy family channel idea better

YouTube

YouTube

yes that would be sweet

[Hammock]

Hammock: The nomination system is in the Gamesurge channel as well, but people are literally refusing to use it. If the channels were merged, I'm not sure anything would change (pickups run by US admins would likely intentionally disable in-channel voting).

Ah I didn't know this, everytime the pickup thing started, it just put 3 random maps in. I figured because it was 3 random maps that nobody used it.

Well then, we just suck, cause the way the EU guys use their channel is far superior to our lazyness.

I think my conclusion still holds: The people that want this already have this. The people that don't want this won't get anything out of it. Therefore, we'd be right back where we are right now, just with a lot of unnecessary effort wasted.

I don't think you're 100% right on that one. I'm sure for some people this statement holds true. But honestly I never joined the EU pickup channel because I couldn't be bothered to spend the time to set it up and join them (lazyness was a big factor). It was only out of frustration with ours that I got fed up and went looking for something different.

So there'll definately be people that don't want this, but I think there will definately be people who take advantage of it.

But I don't see the bots linking the channel working so well, communication is a big factor, and I've seen many times people ultimately ended up joining a pickup because the person was poked and prodded enough to !add. If you can't talk to everyone then both sides really are flying blind.

If it was just one channel, with 1 bot and everyone was in it together you'd definately get a better sense of a "Larger community". If people were split in channels, there's no chit chat after a game, people on each side might sit there wondering if the other side is going to start a pickup. You could get two pickups started at the same time (theoretically anyways), and people might only add to 1 and not the other, or might add to both, and if/when both filled up the numbers aren't adequate in one, cause the guy is playing in the other.

The only thing that might be needed then to streamline things again, is to have the bot perform one more function. To provide a voting system that tells the admin howmany NA's or EU's the pickup has, then determine's the server.

So at some point, people might type 1 for NA, and 2 for EU, the admin maybe even could have put 2 potential severs in instead of the standard 1, then after everyone has entered their 1 or 2. The bot will pick either a EU server or East Coast Server, or west coast server (all depending on what kind of numbers you get). The admin still having the option of manually setting it because he's fully aware of the numbers he has.

[yfni]

actually never mind..