A Queue for Games with Short Deadlines?

[Faraday]

It's intensive to mod a game of that type well, I'd say a backup mod is definitely required (ala large games) and that they should probably have the same experience as a large theme mod? Especially if there's no actual number limit (not sure why we'd cap it at mini size, for instance? 14-15 players would work fine for a faster game I think)

[Faraday]

I would avoid official Normals in such a queue, should it exist - having the NRG spend time on a game that's only going to take a week is a waste of their time, IMO.

I don't think it's a waste of time, per se, I just think there's probably enough games to review as is, given it's a fairly small active pool of volunteers.

[Faraday]

I do think games need to have day phases be at least 5 days long still, 48, 72 hour day phases are way too short. There needs to be room for discussion, especially considering time zones. Hitting the 5-8 day period for day phases is probably right.

Why are they too short if there's a demand for them?

[Faraday]

My worry is about the supply of these games from mods. I don't want us to create a dead queue. We already have low supply for Micros, and I think this would be like that only much, much worse.

It'd probably still attract more people than large normals do, for sure.

I mean if thsts your only worry, the only.real way to answer it is by trying it. I think you could attract new players or people who've played here before but found our deadline system too slow.

[Faraday]

In regards to Large Normals, I was talking about mod supply, not player demand. Regardless, there's a reason we consolidated large normal into the mini normal queue (or merged them if you will).

Right but still, if that is still your biggest worry surely a trial would be a way to test that out? There's no real way to know how interested people would be, other than that - and it feels like it doesn't really cost a lot (some effort?) to try.

[Faraday]

1. To what level of quality should we hold these games? Are they more like Marathons where any mod can do it with no supervision or do we require some sort of experience and game review?

Running them like Marathons would be a mistake and result in quite a few poor/bad games. Game review should probably be strongly encouraged or probably enforced (ala Large Theme queue).

In fact running it like the large theme queue seems like a fairly reasonable idea?

[Faraday]

Mini Themes and Opens have basically totally crashed and I haven't really looked into why, though I should now. Some of it is bound to be substitution (i.e. Mini Normals instead of Opens and Mini Themes).

Most opens are fialry forgettable and I think a lot of players tend to dislike them, really.

As for themes, it could be that a lot of the more popular themes have been done, or just...I guess people are playing mini normals more? I think N has done a good job of injecting life into that queue personally, and with the updates to the normal roles it might have piqued interest.

[Faraday]

And speaking anecdotally I think you could probably get some new blood for fast games, there are players who play elsewhere who might play here if there were shorter deadlined games. Not sure how long they'd stay etc, but still.

[Faraday]

My problem is the more obstacles you put between wanting to mod and getting to mod the fewer people will mod. That's usually an acceptable price because it improves the quality of our games. I agree we shouldn't run a new queue like marathons, but at the same time I think requiring stuff of people running a game that will last a week will make it difficult to maintain a mod supply after the novelty wears off.

1 game modded + a required backup doesn't seem too draconian for this, though. A lot of people coming off their first normal may want to jump into the queue to get a nice quick game modded and you have those who just find that modding takes too long.

I also think we would need to replace a queue to make this one work. We've spread ourselves pretty thin across different games. The micro queue would be the natural queue to be replaced (for two main reasons: (1) it's already closest to running short games with small numbers and (2) it's a queue that overlaps heavily with other queues.), but a larger reshuffling might work.

The micro queue is active enough and doing well though, right? I'm not sure why we need to replace one? Isn't it like, okay if some of the queues aren't as active? Does it really matter? (I guess that's what you mean by spread ourselves pretty thin)

[Faraday]

If you guys are insistent on keeping queues, you could consider doing a poll for top game preferences and giving queues to the top 5 + newbies or something, refreshing every 6 months or a year.

So if say the large theme queue wasn't voted you'd just have no large theme games? (I can't imagine that happening, it'd probably just mean "no open games", or something)

[Faraday]

Except there is a big chance that these games will be pulling out of a different pool of (potential) players/mods.

I think this is why I'm more for it, I remember a lot of questions about our deadline speed and such being answered as "that's not how games are here", and like that's cool but there's no reason games can't be like that here

as well

, especially if it turns out there'd be some sort of demand.

More simply put, we cannot offer queues for every single preference.

Right, but trying to cater to as wide a variety of people as possible within those preferences is surely a good thing. It'd definitely appeal to a wider range of players, than say having an open and normal queue would (where there's probably a lot of overlap)

[Faraday]

Does it really matter if it slows down the other queues a bit if people are enjoying the games?

[Faraday]

Well it "matters", but don't the positives outweigh the negatives?

[Faraday]

I'm not sure "they're awful" is a good reason though as some people like them

We can't offer a queue for every single preference

But, more seriously, if like we're not going to trial it I don't see how you're going to find out if it'll work, as I don't think there's a way to allay your fears without actually finding out? So we're just going to have to wait for the queue system to be revamped or something? Alright, 2017 speed queue here we come.

[Faraday]

work to fold more small games into Minis,

I do think this would be a mistake though, mostly because people could technically run them before -- but didn't. If you're queining for a while you're probably going to want to run as big a game as possible, I think? (Or at least that's what it seems like?). I dunno, I suppose in theory it's the easiest one to fold into the others but in practise it's actually doing pretty well and so removing it and making micros less visible doesn't seem like a good thing.

[Faraday]

Anyway, if a trial were done, what do you think would be the metric of success we'd define it by? What would mean we'd keep the trial around? What would mean we'd get rid of it?

Well I was kind of hoping you'd just keep it if you went to the effort of making the queue! Presumably popularity is the only real way of measuring it, if that;'s by number of player slots, or by number of games ran I'm not sure.

[Faraday]

Relevant:

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so you're saying it's happening