Hi there, I'm playing Wesnoth since some years and always passionately followed development and new features: first of all, let me thank you for the great job you're doing to make the best open source game even better.
After many releases, I think the pre-game environment still lacks some crucial features to attract more players and allow a more pleasant gaming experience. In my experience, the impossibility to know who you are playing against, their skill and their reliability level is a plague who ends ruining at least 50% of games. I hope this is the right place to propose some server changes who will help players develop a better connection with other players, without damaging the freedom and "easy-going" style of the game. Here are my ideas: 1. Confirmation on game start Problem: Unexperienced hosts forgot to ensure everyone is ready before starting the game. Since players will appear in game list before they picked up their leader, this causes many games to be aborted on first turn because of premature game launch. Solution: Add a "ready" button that every player will have to be pushed by each player. Host will not be able to start the game until all players will be ready. 2. Friend and trust system Problem: Actually, login is very easy and straightforward: you only have to provide an username and you'll be ready to play. This makes identity stealing a big issue. Solution: Allow users to register. Like in many IRC networks, everyone can join by simply providing an username, but registered nicks are protected and can't be used by other. While in game, registered users will have a distinctive mark (like having their name displayed in a different color). 3. Leavers and noobs Problems: It is true that everyone must be free to leave the game at will, but it's also true that, especially on long games, quitting and kamikaze playing ruins other player's experience. Solution: Allow the host to start rated games at will and display ranking and statistical informations on people who's joining the game. There's nothing new to invent: the ELO rating system will just fit with a minor adaption: since numerical rankings are not user-friendly, they can by divided in a scale and displayed to users as text (by example: 1000- peasant, 1000-1100 farrier, ..., 1700-1800 knight, 1800-1900 lord, etc...). About the statistics, % of games won, no. of games played and % of games played to the end will probably be enough. That's just a draft, of course. If you like them, I'll be glad to prepare a more detailed blueprint for your approval and, since I'm an expert developer, realize them. The idea is, anyway, to start by implementing them in a simple way and, if welcomed positively by players, develop them more deeply with more functions, controls, statistics, etc... Greetings everybody Gabriele -- GPG Key Fingerprint: DAD1 E3E3 C3E9 36FB C570 F405 9B5F 7108 A1D0 2FFF _______________________________________________ Wesnoth-dev mailing list [email protected] https://mail.gna.org/listinfo/wesnoth-dev
