A Queue for Games with Short Deadlines?

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It's not an inherently bad idea but it does feel a bit like a bandaid.

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Micro's draining mods is likely to be more of an issue than this queue would be. Micros cater to both fewer people and a shorter Real time game length. These dames only have the Real Time game length issue.

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To go back to my bandaid point; I think the queue system has shown a bunch of flaws. Mods in a given queue more or less have a monopoly on signups for a given period, this means they aren't encouraged to respond to player demand more or less at all. If there were no queue we'd see more games not fire, but we wouldn't need to make specialized queues for everything either because the games players want to play would fill.

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your alternative is basically a "let mods put their games in signups when they're finished and people can sign up for what they want"?

In it's most basic form. I'm not sure moving the whole site to that system at once would be a good idea, but I think thinking about it more, perhaps refining it a bit, and then trying it out on a smaller scale has merit.

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You just don't have list mods approve the final player list, like large themes are run. Then list mods would only need to approve signups starting which is less time sensitive, it moves the more strenuous task onto the game mod.

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I don't think we should replace a queue. We're trying to offer a greater variety of games with this plan, not change the type of games that we offer.

If you think we need to replace a queue due to thinning out the other queues, fine, think so, but there is absolutely no way to say for sure without trying it out first. If, in the end, we find out we need to replace a queue, we can think about it then, not NOW. Don't try to solve hypothetical problems that lie ahead, but have a backup plan for if they come.

Actually, if you look at the effects opening the open and micro queues had, I think its easy to draw that conclusion without opening a third new queue.

Yeah, micros and speed games aren't really the same niche at all. I'm not convinced underutilized queues are a huge problem, outside of cases like the Open queue where the mods only joined to get experience and probably don't want to be there in the first place.

I do think a speed queue would be very likely to draw a large audience who only plays speed games and nothing else. Which...strikes me as a bad thing, but Mina does kind of have a point. This is the mode most sites play in, so you'd think it'd be the sort of thing the biggest dedicated mafia forum would have?

It's not that they are the same, it's that they would both be demanding on mod supply.


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.

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I feel like the micro queue would be one of the worst queues to remove. Large normal is at the top of my list.

People make the argument that micro sized games could be run in other queues miss the fast that the same is true of blitz speed games.

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I understand it's not setup like one in some ways atm, but I think they still count in everyway that matters for this? (other than maybe needing a new listmod I guess?)

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This is a great idea. I don't agree that another queue should be removed to accomodate a certain number of games in each queue. The arguments for "dilution" are entirely arbitrary.

I think currently we have 3 opens, 10 micros, 10 mini normals, 3 mini themes, 3 large normals, and 10 large themes (approximately). It won't cause any damage if we add the new queue and seven games run at a time and instead we wind up having 2 opens, 9 micros, 9 mini normals, 2 mini themes, 2 large normals, and 9 large themes. The "dilution" is really a non-issue.

But if we have to delete a queue, it should probably be the open queue as there's the least demand for it. Micros are unique in that people may specifically want to play with fewer player slots in the game and no other queue offers that experience.

I don't think the issue is how many games are running concurrently. It's how long games take to fill, and the toll on the users willing to moderate.