Recently I have been playing a resonable amount of Counterstrike, that add-on for half-life. I get sick and tired of being kicked from servers because of my poor ping, having a poor ping, and not being able to find a half-decent server. It usually takes me 3 tries to get on a good server that is willing to let me play. I get sick of trying to find a decent server. Thats when the idea came. Why not have the server pick the player? Why couldn''t a server request a player to play on it? That way the servers would always have several people in them, and there wouldn''t be the hassle of finding a server that would allow your ping. Imagine this: You start up CS. You refresh the list of servers to look for a good one, but at that moment, a message pops up asking if you want to join this certain server. Of course you could decline if you wanted to find your favorite server, or if you didn''t want to join for one reason or another. Here''s how it could work behind the scenes: The server has a maximum number of players, and an optimim number of players. If there are fewer players on the server than the optimum, it asks the players if they want more players to join, say, every 30 minutes. When the server gets a request to get more players, it connects to a master server where there is a list of player servers. It would randomly select one of the player servers from the list, and connect to it. Once it connects, it could randomly select and ask a certain number of players on that player server if they wanted to join the server that is running the game. The player servers would be places where 32 or so people connect to get requests to join game servers. There would basically be 3 types of servers. The game servers would actually run the game, the master server would keep a list of all the player servers, and the player servers would keep lists of the players who want to join a game. The users would still be able to pick a server out of a list like they currently do (a la CS), but they could also get requests from servers who want people to join. This could also fix the ping problem (of not being allowed to play because of too high of a ping). When the game server finds players to play on it, it could have certain flags, in case the game server only wants players with high speed connections, or something of the like. So when the game server searches for a player, it would only ask a player with a high speed connection (or a ping of such and such). That way servers that only want people with low pings get people with low pings. The people with high pings would only get requests from servers that don''t care if they have a high ping. What do you people think of this idea?

The server doesn''t need to do anything. It can have a "min ping" value that''s sent to the main lobby when it''s started up. The client can check your actual ping vs it''s min and let you know if you can connect before you try. It wouldn''t be an invite. It would just automatically list only the servers which you meet the ping requirement for.

If you modify the client to ignore the min ping limit, the server kicks you off as it normally would.

Ben
http://therabbithole.redback.inficad.com

I think the concept of having the server ask the player is neat. That way the player doesn''t have to find a server. I suppose that way of checking pings would work, but I think it could be a bit more interesting if you didn''t have to search for a server. Anyone else?

Anyone else? I thought it was a neat idea.

To err is human. To really foul things up requires a computer.

It could be an option you could turn on or off, or set a maximum numer of servers that ask you. That way if you don''t want to get asked, you aren''t. I think KalvinB''s idea would work too, but it would have to entail more than just ping. For example, in CS you can try to connect to a server that has a fine ping and a few empty slots, but they won''t let you play because of your ping. When you try to connect it gives no indication that that server has a ping restriction. Its almost the same when you try to connect to a server that only has so many public slots, and they are all taken. It looks like it would be a fine server to play on but all the public slots are taken. It would really be nice to know all this info before you try to connect to the server.

There is already a solution to this in Tribes and Tribes 2. It''s called a "Filter". YOU define a set of criteria for which kind of game, how many players, max ping value, if there are buddies in the game, etc. Then when you have the filter applied, only the games matching the criteria are listed, and you choose like normal.

Todd M. Gillissie