Hi all,
Our first round of
big changes is out today, and I wanted to give some additional details about those changes that might not be fully covered in the just posted
blog entry from Dominic.
Today's changes are all about ring games. Specifically, how players find and join ring game tables has been totally revamped. You will no longer see individual ring game tables in the lobby, but rather it will now look more like Rush where you see a table name in the lobby, but each name represents potentially lots of individual tables. When you join that game and buy in, we find a table for you.
The good news for everyone is that it should now be a much cleaner looking lobby, and it should be easier for players less experienced with the lobby to find and join games.
The bad news for some (but good news for most) is that there is no longer table and seat selection in ring games.
The main idea here was to take as much of the "work" out of starting tables and keeping them running as possible. In detail:
- We start tables as soon as enough people that can't currently be seated (either because there are no running tables, or all running tables are full) have bought into the game and are waiting to start playing. This generally means that nobody will have to start a table heads-up. Most games will only start running when we have 3 or 4 players. It's worth noting that there isn't any kind of segregation going on. All players have a fair chance of sitting with any other player(s).
- If you don't like your table, you can request to be moved. There's a new checkbox on the table called (suprisingly enough) "Request Move." When you check it, your interest in moving will be noted, and as soon as there's an available seat to move you to, you'll get moved. This means it may not happen immediately (or at all, when there are no other tables running).
- As people come and go and tables start getting short handed, we will actively merge tables together when possible to keep as many players playing at full tables as we can. This should keep games going longer, and be more fun for the majority of players who don't like playing short handed.
There are some pretty obvious ways people will try to "game" this new system (read: continue to try to table select). We have a few ways we prevent this:
- There is a table max of 6 per game (just like each Rush stake has a max of 4).
- Every time you enter a specific ring game, a 30 minute timer gets created and starts ticking down. You can only have so many active timers per game, and when you hit that max you can't enter that ring game again until one of those timers clears. This will prevent players from joining and leaving their tables over and over again hoping to table select.
- There is very little ratholing possible. There is now a 2 hour rathole timer, and it works across the entire game/stake level. So if you buy-in for 40BB (the new minimum at regular tables, up from 35BB) and double up, then leave the table, if you try to buy back into that game/stake level, you'll be required to buy in for 80BB, even if you wouldn't be sitting at the same table.
Other changes you'll see today -
Heads-Up:
There were three main problems with heads-up for us -
- The lobby was very intimidating and confusing for new players, with a whole bunch of single players sitting around now playing each other. This could have been solved with the above ring game changes.
- Table selection (or, really, bumhunting) is worse at HU than any other form of poker. This was at best half-solved with the above ring game changes. The new behaviour would have been: join game, get matched up with a player you don't want to play, leave, repeatx7, go do something else for 30 minutes. Every once in a while a good player would hit the jackpot and find a weak enough player they're willing to play. So not much changes here unfortunately (other than making it a bit more annoying to try to find the weaker players).
- Our data shows that the more a new player in their first month plays heads-up, the less likely they are to return in their second month. Dramatically so. This would not have been fixed with the ring game changes above.
So the decision was made to simply remove HU ring games from our offering. This decision wasn't made lightly. After all, we do make a decent amount of revenue off of this game type (these changes definitely can't be classified as a "money grab"). We simply believe heads-up ring games are a very negative game to offer for the overall poker economy on Full Tilt. I'm sure it can work somewhere, in some form, and maybe someday we'll come up with a way to do that. For now, though, it's gone.
Stud/Draw/Mixed Games:
This needs less of an explanation, but these have also been removed. Simply put, we didn't have enough players still interested in these games (especially after the note about nosebleeds below) to continue to offer them as ring games. We'll still spread them as occasional tournaments, and I hope to be able to bring more fun non-hold'em games back in the future, but for now it's more important that we have a clean and simple offering of the games that actually run.
Nosebleed Stakes:
Also gone. They had their own set of issues, but mostly these games simply didn't fit with what we were trying to do anymore. And with the new system not allowing you to watch individual tables, the spectator factor was gone as well.
What's next:
As Dominic mentioned in his first post linked above, the entire rewards program will be changing. There are a fair number of ideas in this rewards change that (as far as I know) haven't been tried before. Lots more info to come on this.
We'll also be giving SNGs the same treatment as ring games at some point, hopefully this year. Once that happens (or maybe even at the same time), we'll be able to revamp the lobby itself, making finding and joining a game even more user friendly.
And, of course, more!
Sorry for yet another tl;dr post, but there was a lot to get through.
Leave your feedback on any of this stuff here in this thread, and we'll be sure to read, discuss, and provide answers to questions when possible.
Last edited by Shyam Markus; 07-28-2015 at 03:54 AM.