Kicking lagging players

CanuckSoldier · December 18, 2002, 14:18

If there are any Firaxians frequenting these forums I strongly suggest that in the next patch they give the host off a MP game the ability to kick any player at any time during a game. As it is, a player's game has to be non-responsive for atleast 30sec before the host can kick him/her. But it is very distruptive to a game for players to lag for 5-10 sec at the begining of each turn(in simutaneous play). The occasional lag is understandable. However, I've had entire games collapse from people leaving from the waste of time of waiting for one player to connect each turn. Now, I do screen players as much as possible before hand. I play only direct IP games. I open a room in Arcade to screen out the low pingers and dialup people and only give out my IP to players under 250ms, more often less. On top of this some players still fail to connect properly to the setup screen. But even after all this selectiveness, I still have people hang games up and there is nothing I can do in game.

Pease help.

zulu9812 · December 23, 2002, 15:16

Yes, us dial-up users are just scum aren't we?

CanuckSoldier · December 23, 2002, 16:27

Through no fault of your own :-)

zulu9812 · December 23, 2002, 16:52

Right, you're gonna wish you hadn't said that. I don't find you funny. Rather than helping people like you to relegate dial-up users to a second-class citizenship of the internet, I feel that Firaxis should be concentrating on making the game playable for dial-ups. Your attitude stinks.

CanuckSoldier · December 23, 2002, 17:36

Apparently you lack any sense of humour. I to do hope that Firaxis makes the game playable for everyone. But there is a limit that even a perfectly coded game can do for bad lag. This game is not a First Person Shooter, were it doesn't matter if a few packets get lost along the way, those games just use logic routines to "guess" instead. In TBS games like CivPTW, every packet MUST arrive in order, any dropped packets have to be re-broadcasted to the host, and the game locks until this is done....every turn sometimes.

This is not new to the Civ world. Civ2MGE had many problems with bad lag. There is no panacea for programmers to deal with bag lag caused by any source, not just dialup. I've had fine games with players with a solid 56K connection after the 1.14f patch. And lousy games with players with "high speed" connections, many other factors are involved.

I understand, fully, your dialup problems as I waited 7 years for high speed in my area. But a far as my attitude, maybe you should step back and reload a bit, I'm not responsible for the internets problems, but as a game host I am responsible to make the game as fun and enjoyable for all the players as I can. And if this means asking a lagging player to leave rather than see the game fall apart that the group spent 30mins just to get going, so be it. And most people that are asked to leave understand fully without any bad feelings at all. But on the rare occasion when a player won't leave I do want the option to kick them without waiting until they lag for 30seconds.

Merry Christmas

zulu9812 · December 23, 2002, 17:44

Like I said, I don't find you funny. And, like I said, you shouldn't be asking Firaxis for this feature. You should be asking them to lessen the lag.

Merry Christmas

CanuckSoldier · December 23, 2002, 17:47

Did you read what I said above, Firaxis isn't responsible for the state of the internet, there game code can only solve so many problems. At any rate, I guess we agree to disagree then, I prefer to ask for both.

And a Happy New Year.

CanuckSoldier · December 23, 2002, 18:09

Is there any other opinions out in Civ land on this issue other than mine and Zulu's? I'd be interested in hearing what the rest of the community has to say.

Cheers

Crousto · December 24, 2002, 11:01

If there was the possibility for the host to kick a player at any time, I'm pretty sure that some morons would kick you just because you're beating them. That may be the reason for the absence of this option in PtW.

CanuckSoldier · December 24, 2002, 13:23

They could easily work around that by only being able to kick a player if he/she is "red".

ThePlagueRat · December 25, 2002, 10:38

Sometimes people fall out before 0-AD,
and all cities are left in a rubble. That's quite annoying.
It should be an AI-takeover instead perhaps?

It seems like people play for 3-6 hours and then just drop off,
without no organized savegame comeback or anything.

That's too bad.