The Micro Queue, One Month Later

[GreyICE]

So, 1 month ago, Hoopla bravely volunteered to take over the new Micro queue, and moderate it. The queue was a controversial addition to the site, and its failure was predicted by many. So how is it doing?

On Tuesday, November 7th, Hoopla started taking moderator /ins. The first game, Micro Madness, modded by OhGodMyLife, filled 40 minutes later. Since that time:

24 games have launched. Of them, 9 player and 7 players have dominated, with 3 8 player and 3 5 player games launched. Overall, it's a fair spread (although no 6 player mafia setups have launched - guess 6 is just not popular). By my rough estimate, 2/3rds of the games have been open, with the remaining 1/3rd mostly Theme with a few normals thrown in (normals have started to pop up more). Normals and themes seem to be exclusively 9 player, probably because lower player counts really don't invite mislynches from the uncertainty that closed setups brings (which is probably skewing our count towards 9 player games).

In the same time, 5 Theme games, 4 Open games, and 5 normal games have launched, making the Micro Queue easily the most popular queue on the site. I don't claim it will remain at these levels, but so far I think the experiment is going practically as well as planned.

What are people's impressions?

[GreyICE]

Three seems to be working very well. Games are filling at a decent pace, without it feeling like all three games need just 2 more people to fill, and if 2 people from 1 game moved to the other, it'd fill. If you think about it, Normal/Theme queues have 26 player slots open simultaneously, while the open queue has between 21-27 at any given time. I admit 3 different 9P games can feel a little draggy when it hits the queue, while 5Ps seem to fill near instantly, but such is life. Wish we had a way to convince more moderators to run 5Ps, because the demand is clearly there. Perhaps offer some sort of benefit to mods who run non-9P setups (bump em in the queue?). This runs into the problem of Hoopla being a human being, not a mafia management robot.

One setup was terminated from the list for taking too long to fill.

[GreyICE]

Wish we had a way to convince more moderators to run 5Ps, because the demand is clearly there.

One awkward solution is that if Hoopla waited longer to ask people what they wanted to run and just asked when they were almost up you'd get more people just going "oh...er...vengeful".

I actually laughed

But that might actually work...

[GreyICE]

Hold on, I think I missed something important somewhere. There's such a thing as a good 5P setup other than Vengeful?

I suggested 2 VT + town doublevoter + 2 Goon, nightless. I don't think it's as good as Vengeful, but it's still reasonably balanced and has no obvious glaring flaws, so it may do for an "alternative" 5P setup.

With four votes to lynch? You may as well call it Dictator Mafia (not to be confused with DICTATOR Mafia, which has already been run).

Or DICKtator mafia, which is a 3 person setup with Mastermind of Sin, Shea, and XRECKONERX

[GreyICE]

That 5P setup can only end in tears.

I think I like it.

[GreyICE]

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.

Don't sweat the details, am serious.