Devs are there any plans to improve league management?

[Dazl]

Now that I’m involved with leading hami raids I’ve noticed the big hole in league management, the ability to make someone already on a team the team leader. When you lose a critical team leader and the “New” team leader doesn’t even notice, it can be problematic. Sure if the league is not full you can get creative and make it work, but this seems like an odd over sight when it was coded. The ability to swap people around on a full league would be nice too, but I don’t want to ask for to much.

[TheZag]

If this can work im certainly on board.  I could be wrong but i think a league is another one of those things that isnt supposed to be possible and moving a player isnt just the league leader moved them.  Its more like a command was sent that quits the player from their current team and invites them to the new team with an auto accept.  At least this is how it seems since the old team has all the players 'move up' one slot and the moved player is always at the bottom of the new team.  Its possible that a change team leader could be issued in the same manner.

 

Dont expect anything regarding leagues and teams to happen quickly though.  Im sure they would test extremely thoroughly to ensure any changes dont break teaming,  assuming that anyone is willing to fiddle with the group code to begin with. 

 

 

[Dazl]

12 hours ago, TheZag said:

If this can work im certainly on board.  I could be wrong but i think a league is another one of those things that isnt supposed to be possible and moving a player isnt just the league leader moved them.  Its more like a command was sent that quits the player from their current team and invites them to the new team with an auto accept.  At least this is how it seems since the old team has all the players 'move up' one slot and the moved player is always at the bottom of the new team.  Its possible that a change team leader could be issued in the same manner.

 

Dont expect anything regarding leagues and teams to happen quickly though.  Im sure they would test extremely thoroughly to ensure any changes dont break teaming,  assuming that anyone is willing to fiddle with the group code to begin with. 

 

 

This would make sense if an existing team joined an existing league. However if you create the league from scratch it would seem the league leader should have greater control over it. Sure I understand that this has been a long standing issue not fixed on live, so maybe not here but I had to ask 🙂

[Greycat]

My understanding - as far as devs answering "are there any plans to..." is that, frankly, you won't get an answer 'til it's on test, simply because they don't want to say "we'd like to" or "we're trying to," then have it not pan out - either as intended or at all, both to avoid general disappointment and some people taking any random thought a dev might say as an absolute promise it'll be in the game ASAP. A character browser on live, for instance, was talked about, prototyped, then they found the way they were trying to do it was murder on the server resources, IIRC, so it never made it live.

 

(Just to address the title on its face.)

 

I *think* some of what you're talking about might take a little stretching (to get specific to the comments,) but I'm sure they're aware of plenty that could be done better, if they can find a way / time / someone to do it. :)

[BlackHearted]

It would be /really/ nice to be able to make someone team lead as the league leader....  league interface is hella janky sometimes and it can be a PITA when leading large events.

[Oklahoman]

On 10/15/2021 at 11:43 AM, BlackHearted said:

It would be /really/ nice to be able to make someone team lead as the league leader....  league interface is hella janky sometimes and it can be a PITA when leading large events.

 

There are a number of bugs with league management that would be so very helpful, including @Dazl's suggestion.

 

If you right click on a player in a full league there is an option something like "Mark character for league swap" - and as far as I can tell it does nothing. The only solution with a full league is to have someone drop, move people around, then reinvite.

 

The wandering league star has plagued us for ages. Nothing like discovering after you zone in that you aren't the league leader anymore.

 

Teams can swap, too, so the carefully designed team 3 you just created is now team 2.

 

Someone who crashes out of a league may not be able to get back into that instance at all, even if they relog.

 

Sometimes, someone joins and doesn't get sidekicked up to the team leaders level. You either have to move them to another team in the league, or have them drop and reinvite. Hopefully they notice is sooner rather than later.

 

There is some weird alignment bug where you can't invite some people to the league if anyone on the league leaders team is out of zone.

 

But I have also heard tell that particular section of spaghetti code is especially scary, and we may just have to work with it, lest the whole thing break.

[krj12]

Yeah, the things that most bug me about league management:

1.   Losing the league star

2.   Some persons joining the league are "locked" and cannot be moved to a team

3.   Persons joining the league join up to team 6, and you have to keep moving people to pare it down to the 2 or 3 teams, depending on the trial.

4.   Total randomization of the league structure if you lock the league for queing.  Not to mention, the increase in the number of disconnects when you do it.

5.   Some team leader decides to zone for whatever reason, and now you cant move anyone to his team.

6.  Inability to specify the team when you invite someone.   You have to invite first, then move.

7.  Inability to move someone until they zone.

 

 

Edited October 19, 2021 by krj12

[Hedgefund]

I don't lead big leagues, but as a "consumer" I'd sure love to see that annoying bug fixed where, from the league list, it looks like you're a team but if you click the "team" tab you see that you're not on a team. 

[TheZag]

@Apparition recently discovered a work around for one of the league bugs.  When you cant invite people while in the instance or trial,  make sure teams are full in order and the only team with open slots is the last team of the league.  So if your league has 21 members and invite wont work and you have 7 people on 3 teams,  fill team 1 and 2 with eight players and leave team 3 with 5 players and invite should work again.  Its not ideal,  especially when it leaves the last team with very few members.  But its a workaround and you can move the people back after you invite.

[Veracor]

The majority of problems with leagues are caused solely by what is generally called the "teambug," where someone joins a team but didn't actually, and doesn't show on the team's list but they do on the league list and they don't get sidekicked.  This is almost always caused by the person previously solo-queuing for a trial or task force to fast travel to a contact and not using /teamquitinternal after arriving.  If you invite a teambugged person, you usually get a "BlockingAccept" error on first invite followed by "Unable to join your team" as they join it anyways, but not always.  However, if the league leader themself is bugged, that's when you see the common issues where the league star is jumping around or a seventh team shows up on the league when it fills.  If you are LFG queuing to Apex or Woodsman or something before forming up your league, you must use /teamquitinternal before inviting anyone or you're going to have a bad time.

 

Teambugged league members can be fixed by moving the person to a new team and back, or kicking and reinviting them if the league is full.  It gets particularly annoying if the teambugged person is also on hide mode, as you won't be able to reinvite them via /sea if they are not in your immediate area to be targetted (PSA: Don't put yourself on hide mode when asking to join league content).  Interestingly, "teambugging" never seems to happen to anyone who gets invited to a small league and consequently gets put on a fresh team by themselves.  I'm not sure of the mechanics behind that.

 

There are some other things to be aware of with leagues.  When you join a league (and thus a team in it), you get placed on the end of two indicies that function similar to linked lists.  The league's index (the raw join order) will determine where the person appears in the team's list in the league view unless they are a team leader, who will always show at the top of their team, while the team's index will determine where the person appears in their team in the team view if they aren't the team leader.  The team's index determines who gets the star next should the team leader leave, so the league leader can modify this for each team (including their own) by shuffling people off the team and back on again.  This is useful if you're running a Hami or MSR, as it allows you to keep the low level people low on the list so that they don't auto-exemplar people if team leader disconnects.  However, the league's index can only be modified by kicking and reinviting people, which might not be an option due to being in an instance.

 

The league's index is primarily the cause of teams themselves shuffling around in the league view.  This is because the team orders of 1-6 are determined by the team leaders' raw join order to the league.  So if the third person who joined the league is leading team 3 and the fourth person who joined the league is leading team 4, and the fifth person who joined the league is next on team 3 and team 3's leader disconnects, team 3 will become team 4 and team 4 will become team 3 because the new leader of team 3 is further down the list on the league's index.  Additionally, inviting people to the league will attempt to fill up the slots on the team whose leader has the lowest index on the league, followed by the next team leader.  Typically this isn't an issue since the league leader is usually #1 in the league index, but if they disconnect or if the league star was passed to them for whatever reason, their team will not be #1 despite the league view being hardcoded to display the league leader's team as #1.  This is one reason why I prefer to create my Hami leagues by inviting the targetters first and their "substitutes" should they drop, so that team orders don't shuffle much if they do.

 

Another thing that tangentally interferes with leagues and indicies are people not being in the zone and people being mixed alignments in a coop zone.  If a team leader leaves the zone, you can't move anyone onto their team unless you invite people directly onto it by filling up the lower-number teams.  If someone is not present in the zone and there are mixed alignments in the team, the team leader (league or not) cannot invite people while in a coop zone until the absent person comes back or gets kicked.  The league leader also usually cannot invite people of the opposing alignment if they are in a coop zone and the person asking to join is in an opposing zone.  The exact specifics of the alignment problem are unresearched, as it is usually just solved by being a Vigilante and sending a "Come to zone for invite" tell to redsiders that ask to join while in a redside zone, and also by keeping Hami raids in the same zone instead of running both Hive and Abyss.

 

Leagues also have issues with the turnstile system.  If you launch a 24-person iTrial as a closed full league, you may have noticed that 5 people almost always mapserve at the start.  This is because when the event launches as a closed league, the league is broken apart and each player is sent to the instance, and the mapserver for the instance rebuilds the league as it comes in.  This results in the fastest-loading player to become the new league leader, with it then filling out the rest of team 1 followed by team 2.  However, a bug in how closed leagues are handled by this process causes the 8th slot in team 2 to not fill, with the next 4 people then taking up leader positions on the remaining four teams, and then finally the five slowest loaders can't be placed anywhere and get kicked out.  If the league leader is not fast enough (or didn't get the star) in moving people off of teams 1 and 2 and onto teams 3/4/5/6, it will result in up to 5 mapserves.

 

This mapserve issue does not happen with open leagues of any size, however open leagues can stay in the turnstile queue for several minutes before the event launches and it also prevents the ability for the league leader to kick a griefer or leecher (because nobody in an open league "owns" the event), and so should only be used on iTrials like DD where sabotaging badges can't really be done.  Note that if you launch as an open league, the team leader that loads in the fastest gets the league star (as opposed to whichever player loaded the fastest), but otherwise the league is kept in the same order and with no mapserves.  If you want to run a large closed league for something like the instanced MSR, it is recommended to launch it solo as a closed league and then advertise from inside of it and invite people that want to join.

 

There is one other thing involving leagues.  As above, if someone mapserves upon entering an iTrial due to slow loading on a closed league, they are removed from the event and need to be reinvited to the league to get back in.  However, if the person successfully joins the iTrial and then leaves it in any fashion (exit door, SG portal, game crash, etc.) they MUST use the LFG window's "Rejoin" button to get back in.  If they send you a message wanting to get back in, you must tell them to do this.  If you send them a league invite instead, it will forever lock them out of the iTrial AND bug them in such a way that they need to completely log out and back in again before joining other content.  This is why I always ask "Is there a Rejoin button in your LFG window?" when someone asks to get back in but I'm unsure if they successfully joined the iTrial in the first place.

 

Uhhh, it just occurred to me that I've been at this league stuff for a while.  Maybe I should be writing a guide on it, lol.

 

Edit: Forgot to mention that the Search window (/sea) will identify teambugged people in a league if you uncheck the "League mode" setting in the top right.  It will show them as not being in a team.  Much faster to use this than to go through each team view individually.

Edited October 21, 2021 by Veracor

[Albion]

@Veracor I was going to quote you but it became a frightening task  so to sume it up: do write that guide.

[Dazl]

Now to be clear devs I'm not asking you to fix the whole mess, I would just like to be able to make someone a team leader as the league leader.

 

Now back to digesting Veracor's post 🙂