ok, this has proboly been mentioned a fair few times but it is about time that some ACTION is taken NOW against this serrious problem.

I HATE IT (with all my might ) when you enter a room to play a game and someone is in there, they are either not there or they refuse to play you...and all you want to do is play a game!

My soulution: When someone clicks the rack of balls, the other player in the room must click the rack of balls within 2 MINUTES of the first person or they are booted from the room as they are obviously not going to play.

2 minutes is good enough in my eyes as that is ample time to make a phone call, go to the toilet or get a drink.

I think that Funkypool needs to get out of the planning stage with things and start doing some action. I understand that it isnt easy to chuck in another feture but some projects like this one for example should be fast-tracked.

agree or disagree?

i agree 100%

maybe they do not want to play becuase the member that clicked their room is a high/low rank.

so to be honest if they dont want to play its becuase you rank doesnt match theirs.

but on the other side i do agree becuase 2 minutes is enough time to do what they need to do.

yeah.....that too but a polite 'your too highly ranked for me' would work...

or how about 2 minutes to respond? so if the other person types something, then they 2 minute clock stops, then both players know that each other are there...

You tried that? Does not work.

I'd just say dry your eyes and look for a game elsewhere.

lol aflumpire,

were you not one of the ones that wanted a 'boot' button so you can boot people from your game if you didnt want to play them if they're a low/high rank and they wouldn't leave?

either just leave the game (after waiting a minute or so) and find another or create one stating the rank you would like to play.

Remember how the game used to be, it started as soon as the second player entered.

Obviously this was unsuitable for a few reasons and hence why it was changed to the current system.

If someone doesn't start a game, you can simply leave for another room or create one of your own.

If it happens that the person has had to go to attend to something else, they are logged out after a time anyway.

However game rooms with non-playing players are certainly not desired, so a compromise could be that if a player enters a room, and clicks the rack button to start a game, if the other player doesn't respond in the game time (which is their choice of course) then they are bounced out to the chatroom.

There is, after all, no reason to be in a game room unless you want to play a game.

That would keep everyone happy surely

Edited at 15:32 Fri 21/03/08 (GMT)

My solution:

Go to a different room.

It actually helps a lot.

From previous experience, i've had a room with 800 plus on it and people of lower rank enter, fair enough i created another room with a similar name, and the same member continued to join.

I don't care about my "precious rank" now though. It's only a game.

why give people a time limit in their own room- if they dont wanna play you then go elsewhere-

even spinners suggestion does nothing for me- if i create a room to play some pool and then someone bells me i should be able to chill on the phone in my room until i am ready to play- just my opinion....

You can still do that if you create a private room

true but then nobody can enter the room unless you invite them- what i meant in my last post was if i create a room intending to play somebody but then im waysided for ten minutes by something that i shouldnt be booted from my own room

but that is exactly my point...

if your not going to be there for 10 minutes then why should there be a game room with 'waiting' next to your name when your off doing something else?

in my eyes it just keeps the game moving...there is nothing wrong with my idea except to those few people who refuse to move foward into the future.

In my opinion you shouldn't be hosting a room.

yes but i disagree with your point.. i am of the opinion that i should be able to wait in a room if i so wish that i created in my name without being booted from it...
its called a different point of view

why?

I wouldn't object to such a timer at all, but I disagree in this being a big problem. If you join a game, hit the rack button and nothing happens, you do have the perfectly good option of simply returning to chat room or move on directly to another game.

Keep in mind that this site and the game is maintained exclusively by Nick, on a voluntary hobby basis - which means we can't really expect a lot of upgrades to happen in a hurry.

Isn't that precisely what he suggested?

Quite frankly, the simplest solution to all this would probably be to add a simple, shorter idle timer for game owners, returning them to the chat room a bit faster than the otherwise 15 minutes logout timer. 2 minutes would be good.

But again, there are other more important issues on the to-do list for this game imo. Everything that can rather easily be fixed by players adjusting their use of the game should not be prioritized - which I'm sure is the case anyway.

SAME!

If it annoys you that much, like someone else mentioned...YOU create the game!

Ta-daaaaaaaaaaaaaa

I have however joined a room and the owner hasnt responded and ive asked if my ranks too low (cos am crap ya see) they have then sed yes..and ive sed sorry and left. Maybe you cud pm them and ask if theres a reason for no response. Dunno.


~Paula~

no reason for that then.....