Hydra free zones.

[Firebringer]

I don't allow hydras in my games you should play the games I mod

You mod games?
Next you are going to tell me you play mafia.

[Firebringer]

Are you like completely incapable of making substantive contributions to things?

Want to talk about your personal problems? We can PM man, I am here to talk.
You are obviously hurting if you want to lash out at everyone.

[Firebringer]

The old system of allowing moderators to decide whether hydras were to be allowed in their games made a lot of sense on paper, and in theory it was supposed to create space for both players who liked and did not like hydras. In practice, it hasn't really worked. I think it would be nice if there were some sort of system which could create a place that was hydra free for mini themes. Maybe a restriction that one game has to allow hydras and one game has to not allow hydras in the queue at the time. This is not without precedent. We currently only allow one bastard game in queue at a time.

Wouldn't this require hosts who might actually want to have hydras in game to now force them to not have them? Essentially saying 'You gotta do no hydras if you want to run your game right now", so they wait till other hydra game finishes the queue to join.

I mean if more people want non hydra games. And saying their is an actual strong demand for it. That should mean mods would be filling that demand, but most mods are like most players. They don't mind hydras in their games.

So thats what you have. I don't think you can force a cultural change like this without outright banning their use. Which will create other problems.

Its like when I said I hated Closed games and wish there were few. The reality is that majority liked closed, and thats what we have. If more liked open. THats what we wouild have.

[Firebringer]

There are a couple of key points here.

First, this change would not force people to not have hydras if they didnt want them. It would just split the queue into two.

Second, even if it did do that, I think in general most people would agree that moderators can be forced to do things they dont want for the good of the players. This is why we review games for normalcy, for instance. I can't run a cult in my normal game even though I think cults are great. We routinely ask moderators to conform to certain requirements of the queues. This isn't any different from any of those other requirements.

Third, your example of closed games doesn't really work because what I'm suggesting here happened with open and closed games! Open and closed games both used to be run as mini normals or themes, until it was realized that this system didnt work and then the open game queue was created. People wanted to regularly have the option to play both open and non open setups, so that is why we have an open queue and an open forum.

Like your example is literally proof that what I'm suggesting has been done before and worked...

Okay, going into this.

1) You are implying that again, their is enough demand for Non Hydra games to demand 50/50 split in the Mini Theme queue. I can't name the last Mini Theme that had 0 hydras. You see a problem with this?

2) Normalcy in a normal games isn't being argued here. There are standards for games. This is a change on player structure, not in actual setup.

3) This suggests there was a high enough demand at one point to cause this to happen though. If you only have 1-2 Open games every few months in the Normal Queue, I don't think there would be enough demand for people to want to create a separate queue for it. [Though open queue does feel pretty slow at times]

My suggestions are this:
Mod non hydra games yourself, to help increase their prevalence.
Ask your favorite mods to make their games no hydra games. Just a simple request.
Seek out like minded players and join a game in a group so that you ensure no hydras are in it.

[Firebringer]

I think its unreasonable to suggest that I should have to round up a group of friends and then forcefully exclude people from a game they /inned for each time I want to play a mini theme.

Especially when shifting the queue slightly would work perfectly and not be nearly that violent of a solution.

And asking a mod to make a game before it enters sign ups to make their game a "Non Hydra" Is also unreasonable?

[Firebringer]

Consider me officially on board for a second for the sake of argument TSQ.

Lets say that list mods decide not to change their policy though. Would you say my suggestion might be somewhat able to mitigate your problem?

Like, I wouldn't mind having it so we do 3 sign ups at once and 1 of those could be designated "non hydra" or something as such. I just don't see a portion of the site is anti hydra as you. I see anti hydra talk outside of games in GD and other areas, but not in the games themselves.