Hoping a Quakeworld newswriter will make a news post about this.

Qirex, a Division Ninety Nine player from Germany, has been working on a pickup bot. Finally he has delivered and it's looking smashing so far!
I'm super excited that we now can begin testing it. Hopefully it will help with improving activity for everyone. Also potentially make it easier for people to find some action and stop some of the server idling involved in "waiting for an eight player" with the constant "don't know if it will work but lets try .qw spam". Thirdly hopefully this will also attract some of the none-IRC players to come join us on IRC!


It's very easy to use the bot. You have to join the #Div99 channel on Quakenet and write in channel !add , with your preferred mode. Example " !add 2on2 " will sign you up for the 2on2. Typing !remove 2on2 will remove you from the 2on2 signup.
Currently there are all the three modes. 1on1, 2on2 and 4on4.
To see who has signed up for what type !who.
Remember to !remove yourself if your plans change!

For more help on the bot type !help in #div99, or just come try it out for yourself =)

It's open to everyone, and I hope you all start using it in combination with your other ways of finding games. Typically there are 3 popular ways of finding games. Qtv, .qw msg through the serveme bot and in game server browser. Lets make this the fourth! =)

Leave Qirex feedback here if you find some oddities, or just want to say a big thanks to him, like me, for putting his time into our community!

Thanks Qirex! q=p
https://youtu.be/vgJkLniLpfU?t=390

Nice one!
We (Suddendeath) actually had a similar channel bot back in the days, with intermediate success/usage. I hope you get the ball rolling on this one!

Although perhaps under-developed, there is the ingame IRC support in EzQuake. I wonder how many actually using that...

An idea would be to have this bot in #quakeworld instead, or create a channel like #qwpickup the way that cpm has #cpmpickup.

Even though cred is all to you guys in Div99, I don't see people connecting to #div99 just for the bot purpose.

<3

Many thanx to qirex and oc!

I would like to suggest one feature.

Since I got back to quake i have been thinking in a way of making it be LESS waiting and MORE quaking. The first thing that comes to my mind is to schedule the games.

For example, when I want to play soccer with friends, we always schedule a time to go to the soccer field to play. If we dont have enough people (enough people is at least 12 ppl for a 5on5), we just dont go there, and reschedule for another day. As we are close friends we usually do it using whatsapp or phone calls, but cant we use the same approach/concept to play our must loved game?

We could type "!4on4 26-06-2015 20:00" and be signed up for a game at a certain time instead of a instant match. Even better, as some of the players doesnt use IRC we could run a webapp or use a Google Calendar to schedule games and ppl just answer their invitations for games.

What you think about all that? I remember i brought this idea months ago for american players to play in US servers, but nobody seemed to like it.

I'm not one to criticize something we haven't tried, so I don't mind trying. But it's totally up to Qirex if he wants to continue working on the bot for something like this.

However it has been hard to get people to show up to planned events. Even if they sign up for it, some will put showing up way down on their priorities. And it's close to impossible to force people to come.
Like we saw in our Spawnfraggin Draft where people were totally aware of when to play, but did not show up. (There were other reasons that stopped the tournament as well..) Or in d99 now, we moved our prac day again, to Thursdays 19:00 cet but still it was just me and Qirex in the channel.

I think anything we do in the summer season is extra specially hard to get going in general. Most seem very content to wait for a mix to start or perhaps they, like me, just settle for it?
If I could get 8-12 people to commit to actually showing up for things, it would be easier to get things going, and doing something along the lines of your suggestion. But I don't see any evidence of us having it, like the tournaments we had this spring shows. The active people were suffering because of the 'cloud' people.

But ye, d99 pracs.. Thursdays 19:00 cet @ #div99 - everyone is welcome to join in, I make fair teams - we use mumble, but not requirement. Be there everyone.

I understand what you're saying. But what im talking about is a system where people can say if they will show up or not, avoiding the waiting game on the servers and freeing our time for other things.

For example: today is saturday, i got a few things to do and some free time to have some entertertainment. If we had this kind of system, I could check for ppl signed up to play during the day and adjust my life to it, instead of staying 7 hours waiting for a game like I did last saturday. And if no games were scheduled I could schedule one for the best time of the day for me and check the signed players minutes before it happens, again avoiding the QuakeWaiting and possibly having a good game going.

That's the point where it gets hard I think.
If even for EQL where you usually have date and time for the game is hard sometimes to get your team up, imagine for a pick up.

I think all these ideas are valid, but in this case, I would probably fall in the list of players that added and might be not showing up, as I wouldn't bother to update my stats all the time that my plans have changed.

For example, now I really feel like playing tonight, around 20 CET or so. But soon I'm going to barbecue and soccer with friends, and maybe I stay longer, maybe we do something else and then I don't show up. And as far as I know, I think that case applies for the majority of the community. Not to mention other cases, like I'm home but I prefer at this moment to play Fifa or Quake Live instead, or then decide to go out with my girl for dinner, or watch a movie, or simply don't feel like playing with the current players that added into the mix.

But still, it's hard to say that an idea is bad if we never tested it before. Although from my side, I would hardy have the discipline to use it proper.

Also, most of people work and can only play on evenings/night. I'd say there is a range that goes from 19:00 to 01:00 of people playing during the week, now with the summer maybe starting a bit later... Not everyday of course, but during those times is the highest chance of get a game on.

There should be three possible answers for a game invitation: yes, no or maybe. You can always answer maybe if you feel like your plans may change. And even when you are sure about showing up or not, you can also change your answer minutes before or even fail. Nobody will blaim you for life if you do it once in a while.

I suggest start by using a google calendar. No need to develop and it has a quite easy way do integrate with IRC.

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