Solution for increased gameplay in xlink, can you add this?

Kai Beginner Joined: 15 Dec 2008 Posts: 15

Anyone who has ever played on xlink knows that not being able to play your favorite game because of the lack of people playing it on xlink is a big PROBLEM. Others argue that this isn't a problem, but rather a reality that certain people only play certain games and not the ones you want to play. Any sane person can realize that there isn't a LOT you can do to fix this problem, but there is a LITTLE and I have a request for an idea that can help solve a little of this problem.

I think that the player finder tool should be expanded/fixed to better serve people's ultimate goal of finding people to play games with them. Asking people to play the game in messenger mode doesn't amount to much...

1. You should be able to search for people who have certain games who are ONLINE. Who cares when they were last online, I want to know the ones that are online now because now is when I want to play whatever game..etc...

2. on the search results of such a search, you should be able to click someone's name and be able to message them somehow to alert them of your request to play a game. You can call this messaging "pm-ing" or whatever, but the point is to communicate to this other online person that you want to play the game and see if they do too...

3. Better yet! You can invite them to your game. (xbox live ring a bell?) And no they don't need to be on your friends list in order to invite them. That's stupid and ineffecient, considering that its a pain in the butt to get someone on your friends anyways, since you have to get them to add you as well.

4. another great tool would be to see history of played game on xlink, and recommendations from the xlink program on the high activity times & days of certain games on xlink. The xlink program should log or remember the amount of people playing certain games and the amount of private arenas and the amount of people in those arenas 24/7. Using this information, the program can then display trends in gameplay activity. This gameplay activity can be used by gamers who are looking for when people play the games they like.
ie:
Farcry Evolution
Avg of 10 people playing on thurs 10PM GMT

You can even put this information in chart/graph format. Basically the point is that there should be a tool to utilize all the gameplay traffic played on xlink kai, so users can use this to determine when they should turn on their xboxes to play their favorite games.

Conclusion:
I think all this additional functionality to xlink would HELP if not SOLVE the PROBLEM of lack of people playing games you want on xlink kai. I also think these additional tools on xlink are far more efficient than scheduling games on sites like http://www.playerurl.com and prestige's old scheduling site. What a hassle it is to schedule games, get other people to signup, and constantly check a schedule hoping for your favorite game to be scheduled to play.....

on #4 I was going to make something like this myself, but it would be much more complicated for me to do it as an outsider than it would be for an xlink developer who already has internal access to this information.
Thanks for reading the post, and I hope you can add this functionality for the betterment of xlink kai.

Posted: Tue Dec 16, 2008 4:16 am

There good ideas but in the end it comes down to the fact that these things cant be done in hours or overnight. They require the server and every orb to be updated in order for the new coding to flow from the server to your PC.

Its too time consuming and i proberly would expect it to overload the server if it was put in place from too many users using the commands at once

Just my 2 cents

Kai Beginner Joined: 15 Dec 2008 Posts: 15

The player finder tool can already find users who are currently online who have certain games (those are the ones with last seen in 0 hours). The additional functionality I speak of in #1 wouldn't be take any more bandwidth than the tool already does.

I wouldn't think it takes much bandwidth to simply log the users who are in all the different rooms either. Xlink already does this on a global level on the homepage where it shows how many people are logged in. This feature where it can display trends in gameplay activity really requires NO bandwidth. Its simply a tool that analyzes and display saved information that's already been collected. Its not LIVE.

Where would this intensive server load come from? At a glance it would seem it would take less bandwidth than the chat does to add this functionality.

Quote:

these things cant be done in hours or overnight.

I don't expect you to add this functionality right now! lol Smile

1 more comment about the player tool:
"Tool can be used to quickly add players in your region to your contact list..etc.." -it says something like that, but its not really that easy to do.
1. the results aren't clickable and you have to copy and paste the names it finds into your contact list, or retype them yourself
2. you can add these people to your contact list, but it doesnt' do you any good since you can't see when they're online or send them a PM since they havent' added you either.
3. PM-ing 200 people randomly isn't really effective either, so I think an invite users with this game feature would be better

Kai Spammer Joined: 11 Dec 2006 Posts: 1221

FARCRY.co.nr wrote:

4. another great tool would be to see history of played game on xlink, and recommendations from the xlink program on the high activity times & days of certain games on xlink. The xlink program should log or remember the amount of people playing certain games and the amount of private arenas and the amount of people in those arenas 24/7. Using this information, the program can then display trends in gameplay activity. This gameplay activity can be used by gamers who are looking for when people play the games they like.

Not a bad idea...

Kai Lover Joined: 21 Nov 2007 Posts: 956

They´re good ideas....

lol I don´t even want to imagine this in South America

Kai Lover Joined: 23 Dec 2007 Posts: 911

[1up]SgtLegend wrote:

Its too time consuming

Does this mean you wont help?

Team XLink Administrator Joined: 21 May 2004 Posts: 4061

Some nice ideas here.

Don't know if they are all workable but I'm sure some here will know.

Posted: Tue Dec 16, 2008 12:47 pm

No TT i would love to help out but we also forget that prestige and MeanMF are working there best to sort of Orb issues, the PS2 issue with 7.4 and arena group issues.

Yes im negative against these ideas above but issues prior new ideas have to be resolved before discussion of adding more time consuming things

Kai Lover Joined: 23 Dec 2007 Posts: 911

Well, what about take apart a forums guts and making it into a mini messenger to show if someone is online or when someone schedule a game that it would show up as a forum topic, that would be the easiest way of doing it but as of making it built into kai that would take time.

Nintendo Specialist Joined: 23 Jun 2004 Posts: 1889

-SA-[TT] wrote:

Well, what about take apart a forums guts and making it into a mini messenger to show if someone is online or when someone schedule a game that it would show up as a forum topic, that would be the easiest way of doing it but as of making it built into kai that would take time.

This might result in a forum flood of bogus topics. Maybe an email?

There used to be a calendar system built into an old tournament making site where u could schedule a match, and it would show up to everyone on the calendar.
The old x1 site had this also i think.

@ main topic lol

Yeah your ideas are good farcry (clever xtag too :\)
4 is a really good idea but as the SGT said, fixing current problems with the prog are top priority. Once those are fixed then devs can add cool bells and whistles.

You cant but icing on cake batter (well technically u can but thats not the point) you have to make sure the base is complete before you add icing.

I should have used a better analogy but i love me some cake. :}

Team XLink Spanish Moderator Joined: 20 May 2007 Posts: 91

some are good ideas indeed, i have had some ideas like these myself and thinking if P releases an API to some of the data maybe some of these and my ideas could be develop as external widgets or current client enhancements

one idea is a bridge between what you are playing in kai and the popular social apps, like 4 example a facebook status updater that will change your facebook status to something like "playing Halo 2 on Xlink Kai" and i have more ideas, but i think some of this ideas could be develop i we have some sort of API, using the popularity of social sites like facebook, myspace, hi5 twitter could bring many gamers from around the globe to know of Kai being a great medium for free big time advertisement.

im currently looking @ webui stuff to try to figure out some of it as i have lots of ideas for lil but useful addons to the client ,but hacking it takes time, and maybe not all the people would like to have a top news scroller on their client
which displays the latest xlink forum posts Smile

but maybe as skin for the ones that would want it will work, just my 2 cents...
keep it up xlnk

Kai Lover Joined: 23 Dec 2007 Posts: 911

building the forums into the main webui, I'm sure Ive mentioned that but didn't explain it fully. I think it would be a marvelous idea.

Posted: Thu Dec 18, 2008 10:47 pm

What i dont think we get is that prestige has not only his wife to look after now but his new baby. Ghostmata i like that idea you have of setting it up but it all comes back to when and how the senior admins/coders can intergrate these featutres.

I wouldnt expect to see anymore new features been added to Kai at the moment anyway coming up to xmas and the new year.

@ TT: Having the forum apart of the webUI would be easy to do but it wouldnt be worth the hassle as you can just type the address in a new tab anyway.

Let what needs to be finished by prestige and MeanMF first and get issues that NEED to be sloved now and then work together on these great ideas. For now keep adding them and one day soon we might see them in what i always wish for the next generation XLink. I hope its released one day soon with alot more advanced features

Kai Lover Joined: 23 Dec 2007 Posts: 911

not what i meant, what a meant was combining the forums to the ui, i would explain how but you would cover it in a lot of doubt

Kai Spammer Joined: 11 Dec 2006 Posts: 1221

-SA-[TT] wrote:

what a meant was combining the forums to the ui

What use would that do?

PS: Niko! You stole my signature quote!!!

Kai Lover Joined: 23 Dec 2007 Posts: 911

[DC][)ragonfire wrote:

What use would that do?

To help people who don't know much about computers, to get to know each other through the forums that or to help them without even changing the window Razz

I would explain but it will take while to do so.

Kai Lover Joined: 21 Nov 2007 Posts: 956

[DC][)ragonfire wrote:

-SA-[TT] wrote:

what a meant was combining the forums to the ui

What use would that do?

PS: Niko! You stole my signature quote!!!

What is we make an alternate chat client?

we let people into rooms and allow them to be in more than one room at once, that way, they can still play while looking for more people to play with

I know you guys are busy, just giving more ideas

how did I steal your quote lol?

Kai Spammer Joined: 11 Dec 2006 Posts: 1221

-SA-[TT] wrote:

[DC][)ragonfire wrote:

What use would that do?

To help people who don't know much about computers, to get to know each other through the forums that or to help them without even changing the window Razz

I would explain but it will take while to do so.

TT, there is a forums link in the general chat Wink

Niko, my google quote was in ur sig yesterday Evil or Very Mad

Kai Beginner Joined: 15 Dec 2008 Posts: 15

[1up]SgtLegend wrote:

What i dont think we get is that prestige has not only his wife to look after now but his new baby. Ghostmata i like that idea you have of setting it up but it all comes back to when and how the senior admins/coders can intergrate these featutres.

Heck.. I'll do it myself. Why does prestige or [fill in name] have to do all the work? They don't! Just give me the tools I need and I'll help. Wink

I was already trying to do it myself by as an outsider, which means making a TCP sniffer.. and doing it the "hard way." That was kinda the point of me making this thread. Why reinvent the wheel, when people are already working on one.

Oh, Legend you need the see that new movie with Jim Carrey. It's called "Yes man." LOL! Smile

Team XLink Developer Joined: 28 Nov 2007 Posts: 2338

FARCRY.co.nr wrote:

I think that the player finder tool should be expanded/fixed to better serve people's ultimate goal of finding people to play games with them. Asking people to play the game in messenger mode doesn't amount to much...

That thing has been broken for years...

FARCRY.co.nr wrote:

1. You should be able to search for people who have certain games who are ONLINE. Who cares when they were last online, I want to know the ones that are online now because now is when I want to play whatever game..etc...

Sounds like a nice and easy way to stalk people if you ask me

FARCRY.co.nr wrote:

And no they don't need to be on your friends list in order to invite them. That's stupid and inefficient, considering that its a pain in the butt to get someone on your friends anyways, since you have to get them to add you as well.

That's kind of the point of a friends list, random people can't spam you with invites/PM's, you wouldn't be able to do anything about it.

FARCRY.co.nr wrote:

The xlink program should log or remember the amount of people playing certain games and the amount of private arenas and the amount of people in those arenas 24/7.

Holy load of data! (the current err.... logging of stuff is enough strain on the main server as it is...)

FARCRY.co.nr wrote:

I wouldn't think it takes much bandwidth to simply log the users who are in all the different rooms either. Xlink already does this on a global level on the homepage where it shows how many people are logged in. This feature where it can display trends in gameplay activity really requires NO bandwidth.

The amount of data going in an out of the databases is crazy, its more server load than bandwidth use.

Sorry if it looks like I'm killing your ideas here, they're good, but some of them are just not practical. Sorry to rain on your parade...