QFTbadasp wrote:
We care by evaluating everyone's needs and acting in a way to best meet those needs. Upon doing so, it's clear that our group is largely west coast and having a server there will provide the best ping to the greatest number of people.
The only people I'd consider a Dallas server for are Heavy and Rockso. They're the only two people outside the west coast that played with us consistently. Hirschigrad would play with us for about 10 minutes, get bored, ask if we would want to play something else or if he should start a server, and then leave. RU played MW2 once and never played again. Rimmer never played and probably doesn't even know what we're playing.
It seems that anywhere but the west coast would be a selfish choice for server location, as it would be catering to a select few who rarely play the game. Of course, Heavy and Rockso are the exceptions here as mentioned previously. From talking to Heavy he does not plan on getting the game, but then again COD has a penchant for making people do things against their will (e.g., buying map packs). I'm not sure about Rockso so I'll ask him next time I see him.
This can be turned into a deterministically fair algorithm. For all players who pick up the game the variables are:
TimePlayed in MW2 (as a heuristic for the approximate time they will play in Black Ops)
List of player distance from each possible server (in this case 2+)
You do a graph traversal of each player, building a sorted list of server distances and then weight each player by timeplayed. You then get a list of numbers for each player and try to build the biggest number for the entire group (that's where the algorithm comes in and I don't have a non-bruteforce one off the top of my head, it might actually be exponential).
Interestingly I know Heavy and Rockso have both played a 'shit ton'. Their votes would weight very heavily. Badasp is right though hirsch, your vote counts for 'shit all' in this system, which is as I said mostly likely deterministically fair for those concerned. My favorite part is that rimmers vote counts for nothing
It's really not a big deal though. I think it's a great idea for CTC to set this up and definitely appreciated. If you want to play on another more central server, it's as easy as picking another one. I'm sure if it does end up being west coast and Heavy/Rockso pick this up we'll do just that when they play.
).
