Improving game scheduling and communication - ideas.

[Gocha]

It’s the second time I write this down, I completed the post and the site sent me back to the log in screen … god… you have NO idea how much effort I putted on that post… not gonna do it again as detailed.

During the last few weeks I’ve seen some things that make me think players, especially new ones, have problems getting to know how to Schedule games and contact players.

The problems that I’ve seen:

1.- How to I Schedule games?
For me that already know a few people in here and know who I have to contact if I want to play pool, chuchu, Monaco, quake, etc. it’s easy to know when to connect and everything else, but for some new players it can be hard to get how to find people online and when.

I propose:
- Adding an explanation on the game schedule section where the “forum rules” are that says a few important things like: how to check the confirmed players on an event, how to confirm your participation on a game, how much time in advance you should look for people, things like that. It would help to have a way to tell people they should have realistic expectations about the amount of players on the community, maybe a way to show how many players every event has on average, or some other thing that helps them get that not every event at every week has 10 players.

2.- How to contact other players? Improving dreamcast now
Sometimes I see people that I don’t know on a game at dreamcast now, but by the time you put the game, turn on the dreamcast, dial up and get to the lobby the other player disconnected because he saw no one online (Eg: last week found a guy online on chuchu, I logged to check on him and he was new, first time connecting, had no idea about the discord and had no dreamcast keyboard, I guided him a little and he joined the discord and forum, nice guy)

I propose:
- A way to contact players on dreamcast now, the best way could be to have a direct msg or chat on the site, but I have no idea how hard it would be to implement. Another way could be adding a second line on the dreamcast now players card under the name, a line to add contact information like discord username and forum username (obviously optional), so if someone catches you online he/she can msg you and see if you want to play.

Please share your ideas in here so the admins and programing sages can check if any of the ideas are useful and possible to implement, after all, all I want is for this community to keep growing strong. I could write much more, but I'm sleepy and have to wake up early tommorrow, so now it's your time to write.
Do you agree with some of my ideas?
Do you disagree?
Do you have your own ideas or problems on the matter that I didn’t address?
Please feel free to share your opinion.

(Man… this post was so much longer and carefully written with cursives, titles and subtitles, everything… so sad the forum deleted it while trying to post it, so I got to ask too how to “fix” or avoid disconnecting from the forum after a while of inactivity)

[deluxux]

I'm sorry the post you wrote got deleted! That's happened to me before now i copy and paste before i click the draft or submit button.

I think all players need to go back to lobby after each "match" "level" "race" to check for other players, if you have a full room check DCNOW in the least, maybe someone is in lobby we can split up so everyone can play.

I think the random games on wednesdays is kinda lame, who is online Wednesday and what do they want to play maybe set a poll weekly?

I think DMZ/PF is a huge issue with getting more players on, not only do you need to get a computer just for the Dreamcast and modify a USB modem now you need to mess with the internet settings and the console settings if you are used to the ps4 it's a culture shock.

[dcdingo]

I have to say, I like the idea of a discord/username link on DCNow. Maybe as an addition, having the ability to set a kind of 'status' (I'm looking for...quick game...just browsing) - like you said, don't know how hard that would be to implement.

[pcwzrd13]

I think the random games on wednesdays is kinda lame, who is online Wednesday and what do they want to play maybe set a poll weekly?

They're not random. Every game is played in a regular rotation. The reason for this is so that everyone gets a chance to play every game. If I did a poll, only the most popular games would get played. It would be AFO and Monaco every week. That would suck because even the least popular games have some fans. When I first joined this community, no one ever played anything other than PSO for the most part. I started Game Night to change that. I consistently host every Game Night so that you can be guaranteed to find a player on.

That being said, if you haven't been around the community as long as I have, you can't really appreciate how far we've come. We had 5 games and maybe 3 regular players back in 2010. lol Now we have almost 3,000 players on DC Now which is amazing. Of course you're not going to see them all online at once and let's face it, the vast majority only play PSO (curse your overwhelming popularity PSO! ) but just the fact that we've come this far is awesome. On a good Game Night we can see 10-15 players which would have been bonkers 10 years ago.

Regarding the topic, there are many ways you can get a game going but if you're going to play outside the regular schedule, it's best to plan ahead of time rather than just waiting on a game for someone to show up (not to say this never works but rarely). Make a post in the Game Scheduling section at least a day ahead of time, post in the chat, Discord, Skype, social media, or whatever you use. You'll be able to get a game going if you're patient.

P.S. Messaging on DC Now is not possible the way it works now. It would need a complete overhaul and user accounts rather than just linking to Pi MAC addresses. Kazade doesn't have a lot of spare time these days and spends most of it on his Dreamcast game engine, so that's unlikely to happen any time soon.

[Gocha]

Regarding the topic, there are many ways you can get a game going but if you're going to play outside the regular schedule, it's best to plan ahead of time rather than just waiting on a game for someone to show up (not to say this never works but rarely). Make a post in the Game Scheduling section at least a day ahead of time, post in the chat, Discord, Skype, social media, or whatever you use. You'll be able to get a game going if you're patient.

Yeah PC, I'm aware on how to schedule games and I usually have no problems with it, this is for the new players to have a better experience, after all I had a few problems when I started, hey! I had to fight with nails and fangs to get some chuchu games haha but not every player has the same dedication, the thing I'm suggesting is to help flattening a little the learning curve by tweaking some of the text on the sites.

P.S. Messaging on DC Now is not possible the way it works now. It would need a complete overhaul and user accounts rather than just linking to Pi MAC addresses. Kazade doesn't have a lot of spare time these days and spends most of it on his Dreamcast game engine, so that's unlikely to happen any time soon.

What about adding contact information on your dreamcast now card? it is probably much easier than adding a whole chat system to it which I knew was a dream, but something to keep in mind for far future improvementes, also a message suggesting using the same username at the forum and dreamcast now could be useful when you set up your dreamcast now information. We could even not change anything on the site, just add the contact information on "()" on the username name label.
Eg:
"Gocha (discord:gocha#0956)"

[pcwzrd13]

Yeah PC, I'm aware on how to schedule games and I usually have no problems with it

I know you do. I was really just explaining it for new people that come across the thread.

What about adding contact information on your dreamcast now card? it is probably much easier than adding a whole chat system to it which I knew was a dream, but something to keep in mind for far future improvementes, also a message suggesting using the same username at the forum and dreamcast now could be useful when you set up your dreamcast now information. We could even not change anything on the site, just add the contact information on "()" on the username name label.
Eg:
"Gocha (discord:gocha#0956)"

You can already do that. Just edit your username to include it. I will try and pester Kazade to add a Dreamcast-Talk link though. I mentioned it to him before but he's a busy guy. lol

[247]

your observations are good but i want to point out a few things

when i bought my pi, i read on the instructions that dreamcast talk was the best place to look for people wanting to play online, so i went in here and asked on the live chat if someone wanted to play, it worked. Now most of the times i don't even need to write things on here because i know that folks on here plays almost regularily at certain hours. I also was a little skeptical at first (due to it's non open source nature) but got to install discord at the end and i know that some folks prefer to hang on there, so i go there to ask

of course that's no guarantee that it will work, lots of times i ended up giving up after long time waiting for someone to come, but still it's the best way to reach people to play

as for dcnow i agree with everything you said but if it was doable then it would already been there

[Gocha]

Just checked, the maximum number of character is way bigger than what anyone would normally need to fit some extra information, so this could be an option if people like it, doesn't make much sense if I'm the only or almost only one using it, so let's hear what people thinks about it. Again, it's an option, it's not like I'm gonna get offended if you guys don't like it or think there are better options or even think is not necesary at all.

[Gocha]

Today I found 2 more players connecting for the first time, both trying to play worms but had no idea about the usual DMZ problems that they could find, I told them to come here and to the discord and I was able to chat with them and solve some DMZ issues, since one of the had no keyboard on the DC.

I'll try to put together a small guide that includes a link to your 2017 tutorial pcwzrd, which already contains most of the useful information like configuring your name on dreamcast talk and how to activate the DMZ. If you guys like the results (and after you help me fix a little the broken english on it lol) we could put it on a place where is really easy to find for new players, I could also make a spanish version for spanish newcomers.

[DreamcastUK]

I always load up Dreamcast now and when I see people on Pod or Monaco I check to see if anyone is about if not then I just go to discord and have a chat with people like I did last night, I spoke to them and found out which game they were on and joined them.

I can't always meet for the regular meetups so just use dreamcast now and discord, that might help you