Elite - How a typical play session goes

[slugish]

I have a few issues with the Elite gametype being used for competitive play, but I will save that conversation for another time and another thread. Instead, I would like to give everyone an example of what a typical play session for me is like.

I play mostly late night/early morning, starting anywhere from 10pm to 12am. (East Coast U.S.) I am usually online until around 6-7am EST, though I am not playing shootmania the entire time. I look for a populated Elite server to join in North America... if I get on before midnight, this is usually possible. If it is after midnight, I usually have to play on Euro servers. The typical setup is that there will be a handfull of servers with at least 6 players, and a server or two with less. I join one of those servers and wait for it to populate, playing 3v2, 2v2, etc until there are six players. Once the server is full, I usually get to play about one map with no problem, then someone will leave in the middle of the map. Sometimes there is someone spectating to take their spot, but usually it is back to uneven teams for awhile. At the next map change, there are often more than six people there, and I lose my spot or get it stolen before the next map begins. I don't like to argue with people about stealing spots, so I leave and find another server and begin allover again. Later, due to inactivity in North America, I end up in Euro servers, where people bash me for playing with high ping(120-140ms). After a short while, I get frustrated and quit playing for the night. Occasionally, I get really lucky and am able to play multiple maps with the same players, but that is rare. A "usual" play session for me lasts roughly two hours, and during the time I am able to play "maybe" 2-3 maps with full teams and without interruption. I would estimate that I spend less than half of that time playing at all.

To summarize:
Problem: Not enough North American players online.
Cause: New game, lack of advertising in the U.S., the North American competitive pc fps scene has decreased significantly in recent years due in part to console popularity among other contributors.
Solution: I hope this works itself out on its own. I take every opportunity to "advertise" Shootmania to my old competitive friends, and hope others do as well. I also appreciate IGN's publicity for this game in NA, but it is going to take the effort of other entities as well.

Problem: Spot Stealing
Cause: A handful of elitist jerks. Most players are well mannered and mature, but a few hop from server to server stealing spots and ruining the game for others.
Solution: Disable the ability to steal spots in Elite mode, or at least make it an option that can be set in the server config file.


*Note: It sounds like I am bashing the community, but that is not the case at all. The vast majority of players I have encountered online have been very respectful, more so than in other FPS games I have played in fact. Unfortunately, the setup of the gametype allows for those few players to negatively impact the gameplay to a greater degree than in other games. Likewise, I do not intend to bask Euro players, it is a select few that cause problems. I also see North American players treat Euro players the same way in American servers.

I am not necessarily bashing the game, but I would love some input from others players. Do you guys experience the same issues each day?

[Eole]

Thank you for your support. We are aware of these problems on Elite and tried to implement a few solutions to counter them.
Server owners can create Elite games in "Free mode". With this it's possible to play while there's at least one player in each team. The attacker will have its armor points set to the number of defenders on the other sides.
About spot stealing it's now impossible for an outsider to take the place of a player who's already in ready state in the line up. Not optimal but it helps a little.
Hopefully with the development of the future matchmaking system, these problems should be strongly mitigated.

[TuElite]

My advice would be to form a team and to organize scrim with other teams as much as possible. That's the only way to get good games going on right now.

[jYuekz]

Hey slugish! I agree that these things are problems and for the first one we definitely need more word of mouth.

For the 2nd one, maybe some sort of rotation script would be really cool. I'm not sure if the game devs would have to do it or not but I think it'd work. Imagine 9 people in a server 6 randomly play the first game, then on next map the script would look at who played the game and randomly sub out people with 0 game plays for 3 people that already played. After the next map 3 people will have played twice in a row and they automatically get subbed out for the first round of subs so that after the 3rd game, everybody played 2!!

Something like that. Of course this should be a server option or something. Definitely not mandatory.