Stop losing new potential players, change the district select menu

[Pitounette]

With the current district policies, selecting the main 'graphical' district buttons as a silver player will put you in a silver district. This works fine, until new relatively new players who aren't aware of the 'advanced' tab unknowingly join an empty district, sit in it for an hour and stop playing the game because they think it's dead.  This has become much more of an issue with the dwindling numbers we've been seeing recently.

 

I know this because I have personally talked to these people and taught them how to use the advanced district select tab.

 

Sure, both tabs have their place with the basic selection screen giving you information on the gamemodes and the advanced tab giving you info on threat/player count, but a simple UI tweak could easily combine these two.

 

While I understand this isn't the only thing holding back newcomers (high barrier of entry, learning curve), it surely does play a role.

 

Have a look at my suggested implementation: (imgur album)

[Mina_]

Moved topic to Game Suggestions.

[RCooper]

Totally agree it is not rare to see new players in empty servers

Also the game shouldnt put bronze players  by default in silver district for obvious reasons

Edited March 10, 2019 by RCooper

[vsb]

the UI is hardcoded and cannot be easily changed

[Pitounette]

1 hour ago, BXNNXD said:

the UI is hardcoded and cannot be easily changed

I reckon the change itself shouldn't take longer than 2 hours (besides tests) provided UI assets are available

This is something a junior dev could easily knock out in a single day

 

The only issue I could see arising is the kind of data the clients receive for the district list (aka do clients only get the district's title, threat & player count or does it get some more metadata such as game type and map) but even that is a non-issue imo

[WhiskeyTangoFoxX]

12 minutes ago, Pitounette said:

I reckon the change itself shouldn't take longer than 2 hours (besides tests) provided UI assets are available

This is something a junior dev could easily knock out in a single day

 

The only issue I could see arising is the kind of data the clients receive for the district list (aka do clients only get the district's title, threat & player count or does it get some more metadata such as game type and map) but even that is a non-issue imo

You seem to very clearly not be familiar with this game's notorious spaghetti code. There is no doubt in my mind that if LO would want to do this it'd be a huge headache and would end up not working at all or properly. A lot of things that we consider simple (and some that are simple in other environments) can be incredibly convoluted and complex in APB's code and could have far reaching unforeseen consequences if changed.

 

That said, I do agree that something needs to be done about district selection, but your proposed solution is more working around the core issue. Instead of making it easier for the player to pick the correct district, the automatic district selection should behave more like a player does; i.e. pick the lowest threat district with the highest pop possible.

 

Obviously all of this becomes obsolete if district phasing works out in the end.

[Pitounette]

I've personally dealt with atrocious spaghetti in the past but it's still hard to imagine this would be such a daunting task.

 

As far as better handling of automatic district selection, what about the event of a district being full? A human would like to wait to get into it rather than joining a new empty district which wouldn't be trivial to handle.

 

Anyway, what's this district phasing you speak of?

[vsb]

2 hours ago, Pitounette said:

I reckon the change itself shouldn't take longer than 2 hours (besides tests) provided UI assets are available

This is something a junior dev could easily knock out in a single day

 

The only issue I could see arising is the kind of data the clients receive for the district list (aka do clients only get the district's title, threat & player count or does it get some more metadata such as game type and map) but even that is a non-issue imo

we've gone years without 3 fc map selections because the district select UI is so fixed in place

 

there's a reason the transition to scaleform UI was only ever half finished

 

2 hours ago, Pitounette said:

Anyway, what's this district phasing you speak of?

https://db.apbvault.net/tracker/5032674

 

basically seamless transition between different instances for optimal matchmaking

 

 

Edited March 11, 2019 by BXNNXD
typo

[thelinux]

Could add something like a warning message until this can be changed with appropriate time investment. Just a pop-up message, shouldn't be too complicated to implement.

[Bergurson]

Top that, a solid case that needs some changes. :x