Have you ever made use of this feature?

[1eyedjack]

In one of the more recent manifestations of the Windows client there was introduced a feature in your profile to indicate that you are "seeking a game" (alongside the "be right back" option). Selecting this option appears to have the effect of changing the background colour of your name as visible to others in the lobby, and allowed others to filter lobby names by that flag, presumably the better to target invites.

 

I don't recall ever using this feature. If I did, it never resulted in an invitation to play. I don't know anyone who has ever used the feature. I couldn't find the feature in the web-based interface so perhaps it is on the way out. I could be totally wrong, and the feature is still there in the web interface and others have been happily using it all this time.

 

Anyway, I have no gripe about having available features that I don't use, but it got to me to thinking that with a small change this could be made a more useful feature: Simply change the description from "Seeking a game" to "Seeking a team game".

 

If you are just "seeking a game", and you are not right bothered with or against whom (pretty much a requirement for the existing flag to be of any use to you anyway), then there is a simple solution: Find an existing table that is not full and sit down at it.

 

By contrast, if you are "seeking a team game", and you are not right bothered with or against whom, there is no corresponding simple solution (that I can determine). Use of this flag for that purpose may facilitate it.

 

That said, there will be better solutions to this problem, which would require more programming effort. Over the years this has been a significant gripe of mine, but seemingly a low priority. Probably rightly so, but I wonder whether it will ever be escalated. Sometimes low priority changes never get looked at, however longstanding the problem, because other, often new concerns, always seem to slip in at a higher priority.

[matmat]

i've clicked it on and off many times in the past.

 

I don't find it overly effective. I think the idea was good, as was the implementation, but it never seems to have caught on with the crowd.