So sometimes, big open games take a long time to fill, and you might want to invite a lot of people. Problem is, if you invite a lot, they decline, and there's no invite pending or open seat, then the game starts with less players than you'd want.
I'd prefer a tourney-like invite process where the invited players don't take up a seat, and so you can invite a bit more than the total number of places, making the game fill faster and minimizing the chance of it starting with less players without your knowledge (which is particularly significant if it's a team game...)

+999999999999999

Yes, cool idea!

How big is 'big'? Sounds like a useful feature, essentially # of invites X can be > # of open seats Y, and first Y players to accept or otherwise join are in

In lieu of a new feature for this though, if lots of invitees decline, say you want a 20 player game, perhaps create 40 open seats, invite 30, leave 10 open, then start when you have 20 players joined

Edited 6/11/2023 14:25:03

To prevent games starting without knowledge of the host you can either invite RaffleBot or a deleted account.

To prevent games starting without knowledge of the host you can either invite RaffleBot or a deleted account.

Yes, that's true. But think of how it goes with team games. Uneven teams means the game would become a practice one. And, well, uneven teams suck, unless you specifically intended them, for instance by challenging yourself or creating a custom scenario for that

In lieu of a new feature for this though, if lots of invitees decline, say you want a 20 player game, perhaps create 40 open seats, invite 30, leave 10 open, then start when you have 20 players joined

Sure, it is a possibility, but it isn't a particularly good one, again, especially for team games, where you want to invite a very specific number of players so that it's evenly divisible into teams of say, 5 players. Then, if you log off for the night, you might find that it was 19 players before, but now it is 22, so you have to get 3 more to join or 2 more to decline, which is a hassle and a headache, which would be easily avoided with my idea, I think. I don't think there's any obvious drawbacks to tourney-like invites to open games, and it avoids all of the problems that we have by not having them.

Edited 6/11/2023 16:28:28

it would actually also be nice to have a way to make sure that you as host start the game when you want (within a certain amount of time since the game was filled, otherwise you can abuse this).

That's exactly what this advice is for:

To prevent games starting without knowledge of the host you can either invite RaffleBot or a deleted account.

Get your teams sorted out and then kick RaffleBot/deleted account when you're ready to start

If the teams are uneven, don't kick RaffleBot/deleted account until the teams are in good stature

I personally use an alt to do this, and just have the alt decline when game is ready to start, but RaffleBot invite/kick works fine too

We're not saying your idea is bad, we're saying your idea can't be done with the game how it is, the above technique can be leveraged to ensure the game doesn't start until whatever conditions you want in place can be confirmed including even teams, then start at the timing of your choosing

We're not saying your idea is bad, we're saying your idea can't be done with the game how it is, the above technique can be leveraged to ensure the game doesn't start until whatever conditions you want in place can be confirmed including even teams, then start at the timing of your choosing

Yeah, I get it. I'm not saying it's a bad contribution, I'm just saying that these solutions are cumbersome and somewhat impractical, and that's why I believe a system change would be beneficiary. But of course it's a good thing to talk about how it can be set up best with the current settings

Yeah, sorry I didn't elaborate more, the RaffleBot/alt invite is a bad workaround to the problem, just thought it was worth mentioning for people unaware or it.

Aaaand a team game I just hosted started with 1 person fewer now because one person declined at the last minute, making the game uneven. It's really annoying.

Edited 6/14/2023 09:17:36