neinteractiveliterature
"random game" end of queue option
Please add an option to the dropdown menu along with "waitlist me for my top choice" and "do nothing" for what to do if you cannot sign up for any games in your queue. The new option should be to sign up for a random game that has space and that you can sign up for.
Possible language:
I'M FEELING LUCKY! Add me to a random game that has openings and fits in my schedule
It occurs to me, you could also have an empty queue and just check this, and the site will just fill up your schedule with stuff. I would never do that, but hey, if you want the fates to decide your schedule, you can.
Intercon signups in two clicks!
Another note I just thought of for the true Schedule Filler attendee case this is optimizing for. Once all the games are full, if the Schedule Filler attendee has an open spot on their schedule, they do still want to waitlist for something rather than just stopping there. So selecting an option that only looks for open games will still be a disadvantage in the final round vs. the way more labor intensive approach of "add every single game to my queue" and then select "waitlist me for my top choice if they're full".
So based on this I suggest making the "I'm feeling lucky" option look for open games and sign you up, and if there are none, then it signs you up for a random waitlist that doesn't conflict with your schedule and per day limits, and only after there are none of those either it gives up. (assuming that's possible, not way more work, aren't good reasons I haven't thought of not to do it, etc. as always!) Thanks!
Hey Kevin, can you tell us more about these attendees who want this, and do you have a feel for how many there are? The way you described them initially, it was people who don't want waitlists and are happy to take any game as long as they get in. But now it's sounding like perhaps they do want waitlists?
Also a reminder there's nothing keeping these attendees from putting themselves on as many waitlists as they please after signups are over.
Oh sure, and that's a good point, they can manually add themselves to waitlists after the last round wherever they want to.
(As always but especially here) please feel free to disregard this additional request as more work for marginal gains. I'll still be delighted if just the first portion of the request is added, and I think the benefit of just the first part is high, both for this particular type of minmaxer and for the casual attendee who might be amused and entertained to have a random signup made for them, and use it as an excuse to not spend too much time on making and managing very long queues.
(Here's the clarification of reasoning for the second part of this request just for the record, though I'm fully prepared to call it overkill. We're assuming I'm one of these players for ease of example phrasing.)
My goal statement: I want to be in as many games as possible, and minimize my chances of downtime.
Right now, the way to do this is to add every single game to my queue, so that on the open signups round, I never have a situation where I could have gotten into a game but instead have nothing because that game wasn't in my queue.
Adding every game to my queue is a lot of work! I'm feeling Lucky option handles this case nicely. I can check that button and know that I didn't "leave any games on the table" that I could have gotten at open signups.
Buuuuut ok, at the end of open signups, there are still almost certainly some slots that I don't have any games. In those cases, I want to be as high on waitlists as possible to maximize my chances of playing. So I want to make sure I didn't leave any "waitlist ordering priority" on the table either. Every time it was my turn on the snake being run in the final round, I want to know I grabbed a high on the waitlist spot, rather than letting it go to someone else and coming in at the bottom of the waitlist after open signups are done.
The way to do is not to use the initially described I'm feeling Lucky option but to go back to adding every single game to my queue, and using the waitlist me for my top available option selection. Back to lots of work for me!
If instead, the I'm feeling Lucky option also grabs you a waitlist whenever it can after it's exhausted available player spots, I can just use it and know I'm leaving no player spots or waitlist priorities that were available to me on the table. My goal is back to met without having to make hundreds of clicks.
I'm inclined to say we should keep it simple for the first time to see how widely it's used. We should be able to check for that, and if anyone actually goes to the trouble of adding every game to their queue.
My gut says folks say they want this feature, but actually don't, because most folks have more preferences than they think they do. If I'm playing a game until 3am I don't want a 9am game the next morning, I have opinions on masking, I have opinions on boffer vs non, hey you signed me up for an unlimited signups game and now I feel like a signup round was wasted, etc. And once we take those folks out, how many players are actually left?
It's also worth noting here there's nothing preventing us from adding a "import every game to my queue" button. (I think "import all my favorites to my queue" would be more widely used, but anyway.)
Working on this and I realized we have an unanswered question around bucket selection. If an event has, for example, gendered character buckets, how do we decide which bucket to put the user in when signing them up for that event randomly?
My suggestion, for now (to keep things simple) would be to only randomly select events that have a single bucket which is counted against a user's maximum signups. This should also prevent the system from automatically signing a user up for, e.g., volunteering for Ops.
@nbudin I always figured we'd behave as if the user clicked "No Preference"
@nbudin I always figured we'd behave as if the user clicked "No Preference"
Also a possibility! @vogon999, how did you envision this going?
I think I agree act like it's a no preference selection, and yeah make it only things that count against your signups - I expect a social meetup or an ops shift people can grab any time isn't what they want with that. Thanks!
Obviously if that doesn't make sense I defer to your judgement of what works! And also rereading this thread makes me again happy that we're just opening things up after round 5 rather than trying to do a system which continues to be fair up and down an infinite snake draft at the end :)
Another thing: it looks like due to some of the inner workings of the signup system, it's only going to attempt to sign people up for events that have limited slots. I think this is probably ok, since if they wanted to be in an unlimited event they can just switch to that one, and it doesn't matter if they did that in the signup round itself since it's unlimited and therefore can't fill up. Does that seem ok?
By the by, it might be nice if rather than tossing I'm Feeling Lucky folks into a random open game, to put them in the game with the most open slots. Just to make it less likely that they'll take a slot away from a person who specifically wants that game, just because we processed their signups first.
But really do whatever's easy, since I still have major doubts about this feature.
Hm, if I knew every round would have at least one empty slot at the end of it, I would suggest that could be solved by processing the I'm feeling lucky picks at the end of the round. But I'm not sure that will always be the case and then you might be losing your place in line by picking it?
But really do whatever's easy, since I still have major doubts about this feature.
Given that, I'm gonna stick with pure randomness, because it's much easier than this suggestion.
Agreed on whatever's easy! I think a random game pick is solid utility for people who would otherwise go oh man I had better add every game to my queue so j don't lose out on playing something, but trying to make it any more than that is I think one of those slippery slope things that ends in asking nat to train an AI to choose games for us or something :)
I'm planning to do some analytics between each round and see how many people are actually using this feature. I'll update here once I've got data on it.