Feature Request - Computer Hardware Rating

[glintingember]

I think that it would be awesome if there was a way to determine a person's "hardware rating" prior to starting a game, similar to how the player's score and ping are listed beside their name inside of the in-game lobby area. If that would be too time consuming, then even a note about their hardware inside of their user profile would be helpful (we could just ALT-TAB out of game to check quick).

By hardware rating inside of the in-game lobby I mean some range of integers between say 1 and 99, with 1 being the best and 99 being the worst for game performance, or some other rating system that's equally as simple and easy for a person to quickly quantify. How to calculate this value is something else entirely, but I'm sure we could find or create an algorithm that could emulate heavy FA resource consumption and apply an integer rating to it.

There is a potential of scope creep with a feature like this, because you could add a setting in the in-game lobby that forbids anybody with a hardware score of < X from joining the game or auto-kicks them, etc; but having just the value (or their hardware information available) would be immensely useful for those of us that have good hardware and desire fast game play.

I'm suggesting this because it's rather irritating when somebody's definition of a "fast PC" is an 8 year old "gaming" laptop that quickly turns your game into a slideshow.

I apologize if something similar has been requested before.

Thanks for reading and keep up the great work!

[Voodoo]

Thats goes too far in the player's privacy.
The ping is already displayed in the lobby.

[glintingember]

Ok, so what if the hardware rating wasn't visible to anybody, but instead there was an option in the in-game lobby to restrict computers from joining the game that don't meet certain hardware criteria?

For example, player crustyComputer2003 attempts to join a game, but is denied and an error message gets displayed stating that hardware requirements are not met and are enforced on this particular match, but inside of the in-game lobby the players in there don't even see that somebody attempted to connect at all, thereby protecting crustyComputer2003's privacy because the message was only displayed to him or her and no connection attempts were actually initiated to the game lobby.

[ToejamS]

I dont see how that interferes with anyones privacy. Its just a number representing the speed of their cpu so that games arent lagged out. I can see how this could cause problems, dealing with ping nazis is hard enuf but there will be a new class of division set by people who dont understand the exact hardware requirements and will exclude people from games their pc is quite capable of playing. Its a double edged sword.

[Ze_PilOt]

I've tried playing a seton again, going to -3 after 15 min (and by 2 players, 1 seton veteran !) is unplayable.

But it seems that they are used to that. I will never be, and I will look into implementing this as soon as possible.

[Voodoo]

Yes thats one reason why i stopped playing setons.

[Kryo]

a number only wont be enough. As toejams pointed out, if someone has 55 of 100 or sth like that, noone will know what this means. will he be able to play 3v3 on 10x10km map? what about 3v3 no air on 40x40 map? what about 6v6 on 10x10 map? what about 4v4 on 20x20 map?

of course you can always compare to yourself and others but still it will be annoying sometimes.

[glintingember]

a number only wont be enough. As toejams pointed out, if someone has 55 of 100 or sth like that, noone will know what this means. will he be able to play 3v3 on 10x10km map? what about 3v3 no air on 40x40 map? what about 6v6 on 10x10 map? what about 4v4 on 20x20 map?

of course you can always compare to yourself and others but still it will be annoying sometimes.

I agree in that at first a number wouldn't make much sense, but after a while people will figure it out, provided that the meaning of the number doesn't change in a way that makes past ratings different/inaccurate. I mean, when I first started playing online games I had no idea what ping was good or bad for a given game, but figured it out after a short while by playing games with people who had different ping times. I also had no idea what SIM meant when I first started playing Supreme Commander, but after a couple of days I understood it perfectly after playing with people who were using craptops. I'm not sure that there's a number system that we could use that doesn't involve a learning curve of some sort.

We can always explain it to people who don't understand, and this would take some work, but we could put up a table that has examples of what kind of hardware falls where, and we could also construct a table that articulates something to the effect of "a system rating of X can play a 40x40 with 1000 units and 8 players with an average SIM of X". Gathering the information for those tables using standard measures would probably prove to be challenging, however. I really don't think that those aforementioned tables would be necessary though.

Of course on smaller maps with less units older hardware works fine, and the person who is hosting the game would probably be aware of that and not need to enable hardware restrictions, or even bother looking at what the hardware ratings are for that matter.

Why do I think that just a number would be sufficient for this purpose? Well, the number could be sort of like the Windows Experience Index, but a bit more accurate by using a larger number range, and configured specifically for FA, where you can get at least a general idea of the hardware that's being used and how FA will play.

As for a number not being enough; if we include too much information people will get confused, so it's best to keep it as simple as possible but still meaningful.

[glintingember]

I've tried playing a seton again, going to -3 after 15 min (and by 2 players, 1 seton veteran !) is unplayable.

But it seems that they are used to that. I will never be, and I will look into implementing this as soon as possible.

Seton is one of my favorite maps, and is one of the reasons I like the idea of having a hardware rating or hardware restrictions.

Thank you for investigating this!

[noobymcnoobcake]

I think a better option would be a vote kick menu (like disconnect menu) when a computer falls below -2 sim. Guy who gets kicked stuff is given to team and game can carry on at normal speed because everyone else's computer is at +3

The reason this is a better idea is it will stop the super computer only guys that stop people joining even 1v1 game with computer that cant run it at +7