Ability to join a server one tier below yours (premium only?)

[chernobyl]

Currently, server that are below your skill level are invisible to players of any tier. With regards to T4 players especially, this limits the amount of truly skills matched play time you can have, for most modes other than CA.

I would like to suggest an update that would allow players to see and join servers 1 tier below their own, but perhaps forcing a handicap so as not to skew the skill level of the server. (I think 75 would be a good start.)

Perhaps making it a premium-only option would give players more incentive to subscribe.

Right now, it almost feels like being punished for taking the time to get good at QuakeLive - aside from spawned, unrestricted servers, I rarely see more than 3-4 populated servers on any given day.

Thoughts welcome.

[pikaluva13]

Yes, without a handicap. When we were in tier 2/3 there was no handicap, and we had to play against the better tier 4 players. (We never complained though. <<)

[matte]

Maybe you should try in the customize settings to set game state to All populated
because there are alot of server that dont show up otherwise whilst the teams are full.

[NEPHIREM]

Shouldn't there be a "NO" option available in the poll?

On the other hand, I guess "NO" counts as "something else".

[megaman3]

OP says he rarely sees more than 3-4 populated servers on any given day, being a t4 player.

Well, right now is tuesday afternoon, which is probably the moment of the week with less players so it's the perfect example. His location is US, as he plays there though he has a Somalian flag.
- 21 populated public servers and 5 private servers.

Every single time I've done this it always ends up in posters blatantly lying about the game's activity, believing they will somehow fool the devs that have that info and more than we do.

[Dr_Mr_Ed]

You also checked his location at about 2pm Eastern. Chern was on at 9am Eastern. As a fellow NA player, I can vouch that mornings here are dead. There's usually literally 5 active servers across all game types, and a couple of those have 1 guy on them rather than an active game. I can probably screenshot tomorrow.

All this aside, I'm sure allowing unrestricted down-tiering again will not make most people very happy. Maybe the forced Handicap option would be interesting to try, however. The -25 per tier would be cool, I'd love to play Tier 1 with a 25 HC for grins.

EDIT: here's the current game state 8 total matches appear, 6 are unranked. 4 of them have only a ghost server owner there. So we've got 2 unranked CA games, 1 T4 insta CTF on a silly map, and 1 FFA game with 2 people on there. OP's point is that as T4, there are times that your options are quite limited, and opening up to lower tier games would provide additional options.

http://s18.postimage.org/rr58pkpzd/fewgames.jpg

[megaman3]

He said any given day and without specifying time. If there were 26 servers at that time and day then on weekends at peak hours it probably exceeds 50.

Besides you shouldn't be playing quake in the morning of any week day anyway, but if he is desperate he could create a new account just to roflstomp.

[killamatic]

Quake is dead. Keep your monies to yourself, and enjoy the death throes.

[chernobyl]

With all due respect YMCMB, you're using a single sample, and you didn't specify the skill level of those servers. Do your checks at a few times per day, over many days, and you'll get a better idea of what I see.

This is my game browser setting:

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/23313355/Images/settings.jpg

And this is what I see:

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/23313355/Images/matches.jpg

I don't play in Texas (terrible lag) and my ping in any CA server is higher than my ping to European servers, and I also don't duel, but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt. 5 populated servers, 2 full.

Based on my experience, this is also highly unusual, there are usually 1 or 2 populated servers at this time of day, one being the sampler match in Texas.

I'll do this test again this afternoon; it would be nice if a T3 or T2 player could do the same so we can see the difference.

My idea is just a way to see more available servers without having to muck around with the skill rating system. Lower tier players can join more difficult servers without restriction and sometimes messing up the team, why not the other way around?

[FlashSoul]

No. What we need are tiers that adapt to the online population of a given region, not a system which allows to destroy skillmatching.