A status that you can set to indicate if you want to ladder or not

[TheLastPhonePhreak]

Sorry for the wordy title, I couldn't exactly figure out a way to describe it. Since ladder games (especially TBD ladder) are kind of hard to come by, my suggestion is that in the hangar deck or something, there should be a setting that you can toggle that will notify others as well as the server that you are "available to ladder" and then when the necessary amount of players required to get said ladder game started are online and have their ladder status set to available, the server will just autojoin you into the ladder server.

One obstacle is that an individual might want to play both bladder or tbd ladder, or prefer one over the other, so there should be some sort of way to indicate such preferences.

I think this could really help with the competitive scene of alti and I am hoping that it will be implemented. Any suggestions or modifications to this idea are, of course, welcome.

[yankinlk]

+1characters

[Ribilla]

I like a way of indicating you are up for ladder, but I think the auto-join might put people off. Perhaps just have your name a different colour on people's friends lists so they know to PM you when games are starting.

[yankinlk]

Originally Posted by Ribilla

I like a way of indicating you are up for ladder, but I think the auto-join might put people off. Perhaps just have your name a different colour on people's friends lists so they know to PM you when games are starting.

I was voting for a way to let anyone know im up for ladder whether im friends or not. The community is small enuff - a few players makes all the difference too ladder. the way it is now, whether you are up for ladder or not - if yer a friend u get a spam message for ladder. If a friend gives me a reply - im not interested in ladder - i usually remove them so i don't spam them ever again.

[TheLastPhonePhreak]

Yeah i think that only having your friend list be able to see if you're available to ladder would be a limiting factor, there needs to be a more public way to interact with those who have their status set to avaliable to ladder. Possibly you could just do it with console commands: like /listdtltbd and /listdtlball (dtl meaning down to ladder, of course these commands are just examples), which would reply "there are x players looking to tbd ladder at the moment." Then, when the required amount of players have signified that they are looking for a ladder game, your console could alert you with "There are enough players to get a (blank) ladder game going" and maybe it could give you the option to chat with them or allow you to whisper them temporarily as if they were on your friends list. Maybe you could communicate on a separate chat channel for "available to ladder" people.

[Aki1024]

Originally Posted by TheLastPhonePhreak

Yeah i think that only having your friend list be able to see if you're available to ladder would be a limiting factor, there needs to be a more public way to interact with those who have their status set to avaliable to ladder.

Could altitude support chat rooms inside the game where a group of people can talk in a similar way as PMs work now? If your interested in bladder, join #bladder.

Ladder's servers got an upgrade recently that allows them to state to the other servers when a game ends on a ladder. Perhaps they could broadcast on this channel as well.

As for programming it, if Nimbly's resources isn't available, perhaps the game could use an IRC server and tie into it. Or the channels become supported by servers, which state which channel it helps manage and broadcast messages too (much as they already handle their own room+teams chat).

[strato]

as much as this sounds as a good idea in theory, most people tend to just spam their friends list, and will probably disregard the "ladder status"

[Solqom]

Good idea, but imo it should be more like auto-join. You right click on on the ladder server and click "Auto-Join when 10/12" or something like that. Once there are the required amount of people ready to join, it pops up with a message saying "12(or more) players ready to play ladder, would you like to join the ladder server now?"

[Boko]

I think we need to look at simple solutions, because I can't see a major integration of ladder into alti.

I like the #ladder (and maybe #upforladder because the first would get cluttered?) idea

[Aki1024]

If the server could keep a running list of everyone who either got spec'ed by a game start, or was in a non-tournament game, then adds this to the number of people currently in the other game (assuming that number is sub 12), it could advertise that the other ladder is not only open, but there is enough active players to start a game.

As this thread is also about getting a first room of TBD going, any players who have been in a non-tournament game within the last x minutes count towards the number of interested parties. I'm still a bit fuzzy about how the server tells these players enough people are interested in a game, get in here. Can servers PM players? Could the auto-join feature be used in a case like this? Or perhaps does this idea tie with the channels idea to broadcast roll call?

Joining the ladder game seems like the most intuitive way for players to state they want to play.

[bummeln]

This seems like something that could be solved more easily, though a customizable status would be really nice for many other reasons.

All that should be needed for this specific issue would be a way to register your readiness and way to communicate that status. A way I see to do this is in the ladder rooms set a command for '/ready ball/tbd' adding you to a list of ready to ladder players for the next hour or until they go offline and when anyone else invokes the same command it sends a whisper "## players are now ready to play ball/tbd ladder." to everyone on the list.

Not sure if a server can send messages outside of itself but this should definitely be able to be done by a bot.