What features Xonotic is lacking

Hey there comrades here I'll list a few things Xonotic is missing in my opinion.

1) Ability to add people as friends so you can see if their online and maybe make a tab where you can message your friends no matter on which server you are.

2) Matchmaking. Although this probably isn't a priority right now it would be nice to see in the future for more balanced matches.

3) Optimizing the game. Also not a priority because it would take huge effort to do this and the game runs pretty good on minimum hardware (this 10 year old laptop).

4) Advertising the game. I made a post on this and got a lot of interesting responses.

5) Fix the fucking DM. I'm a new player and totally agree with other peoples perspectives, the DM maps are designed for a lower amount of people and currently are really chaotic. I currently don't play DM at all it's not really enjoyable.

6) Team balance. Teams should at some point be automatically balanced instead of the vote system or maybe have it so the team which seems to be in disadvantage (with lower KD in the match and/or lower amount of players) should have the ability for a vote from one player count as two votes.

Note: I'm a beginner and it wasn't really hard to just jump in and start playing after a few days you will have understood some basics of the game and somewhat how it works. I do think there should be an option tutorial or something tho for beginners to learn quicker if they wish to and not force them to do the tutorial when launching the game for the first time. Also these points are my opinions combined with other peoples opinions from my previous post so keep that in mind.

Writing on the forums is less effort than writing code so here is my view:

1) A little known feature is that the filter in the server list searches for both server names and player names. So if you have a particular player in mind and know his current name, you can find him. A true friend list might be strange in xon since players can change their names at any time. Also it's a lot of effort to implement.

2) Reportedly even popular games take whole minutes to find a good match, in xon it would be hours, you might as well idle on a server. An easier improvement might be to build teams according to ELO or some other metric at the start of a match - players who press join during the countdown would not be put onto a team immediately (as happens now) but onto a waiting list - at the start of a match the algorithm would attempt to make decent teams from the waiting list. 2 issues: a) ELO is deeply flawed and even if it wasn't, scoring in some modes is b) some players disable stats.

3) This is actually happening - i am writing a QC to rust compiler so we can move to a sane language and a different engine. Well, at some point this week i am gonna start. Sigh.... I have an actual deadline to meet at uni so it's not just empty words.

4) Tell your friends

5) If it was up to me, I'd remove the DM server from recommended and only have votables there. DM is only good for getting a server started when there are few people, then everybody sane can move on to real modes. An algorithmic solution would be to guess the size of a map and show bigger maps when there's many players. AFAIK there's no function to easily parse a map and look at its geometry and items. Just getting the available weapons on the *current* map is incredible PITA because stuff's initialized in a fundamentally braindead way and i just don't wanna go anywhere near this until we have a sane lang and architecture.

6) Same as 2) but at least during a match you have a person's current score to judge their skill.... unless one team is getting fucked so hard even strong players have low scores. It's also kinda a people problem - just ask strong players to switch, some care enough to do it but they might not always even notice it's imbalanced.

5) If it was up to me, I'd remove the DM server from recommended and only have votables there. DM is only good for getting a server started when there are few people, then everybody sane can move on to real modes. An algorithmic solution would be to guess the size of a map and show bigger maps when there's many players. AFAIK there's no function to easily parse a map and look at its geometry and items. Just getting the available weapons on the *current* map is incredible PITA because stuff's initialized in a fundamentally braindead way and i just don't wanna go anywhere near this until we have a sane lang and architecture.

Actually mapinfo generation code already determines the size of the map and filters them a bit (tdm for maps with diameter > 4096, duel for maps with diameter < 16384). Diameter is the distance between the max and min entity origin.

This only works for maps without mapinfo ofc, if mapinfo is present the list of gamemodes is taken from there.

5) Fix the fucking DM. I'm a new player and totally agree with other peoples perspectives, the DM maps are designed for a lower amount of people and currently are really chaotic. I currently don't play DM at all it's not really enjoyable.

There is nothing wrong with DM other than minority of people expecting it to be organized and peaceful. Maybe you're not into it, but quite a lot of other people are. DM in arena shooters has always been like this, ever since Quakeworld and UT99 times and most of us enjoy it just the way it is. Among all of the vanilla gamemodes, it happens to be the most popular gamemode. So it must be doing something right.

I know the mod is frustrating if you get nothing done, but if you're at top of your game and in control - it's the best feeling ever. Here's an hour of domination if you're interested:

5) Fix the fucking DM. I'm a new player and totally agree with other peoples perspectives, the DM maps are designed for a lower amount of people and currently are really chaotic. I currently don't play DM at all it's not really enjoyable.

There is nothing wrong with DM other than minority of people expecting it to be organized and peaceful. Maybe you're not into it, but quite a lot of other people are. DM in arena shooters has always been like this, ever since Quakeworld and UT99 times and most of us enjoy it just the way it is. Among all of the vanilla gamemodes, it happens to be the most popular gamemode. So it must be doing something right.

I know the mod is frustrating if you get nothing done, but if you're at top of your game and in control - it's the best feeling ever. Here's an hour of domination if you're interested:

Well I guess you're right I've just heard other people complain about this on the forums and I could relate to this a lot. Btw how do you get that crosshair which the dude has in the video?

1) Ability to add people as friends so you can see if their online and maybe make a tab where you can message your friends no matter on which server you are.

Well, considering the current era, this isn't a feature of a game, rather a feature of a platform like Steam or Lutris. Conventionally it needs an account system and a chat server (then TOS and a Privacy Policy), but players are identified by public key instead (and I appreciate that).

2) Matchmaking. Although this probably isn't a priority right now it would be nice to see in the future for more balanced matches.

It seems a lot of modern game players like to do this because the only effort in getting a match is pressing a button. 
But literally never have I had a great experience with matchmaking systems. This extends to FOSS games that have matchmaking, and not proprietary games that have psychologically abusive systems in place. It has been a universally frustrating experience where players have low social investment with one another. Or you just get weird match-ups with high standard deviation in (measured) skill between players.
Often matchmaking systems is about skill which requires a controlled environment, not random dedicated servers that have various settings. On that end, I also disagree with matchmaking systems because often it accompanies other systems that disincentivize playing on user hosted servers with varying configurations and the creation of server communities.

3) Optimizing the game. Also not a priority because it would take huge effort to do this and the game runs pretty good on minimum hardware (this 10 year old laptop).

What is your current frame rate, and what is your target frame rate?
Most often the problem with frame rates occur on unoptimized maps e.g evilspaceremix.

5) Fix the fucking DM. I'm a new player and totally agree with other peoples perspectives, the DM maps are designed for a lower amount of people and currently are really chaotic. I currently don't play DM at all it's not really enjoyable.

I tried resolving this on my server by categorizing maps by estimated player capacity. E.g duel maps like Fuse are okay-ish with up to four players. Anymore it becomes a clusterfuck. Bigger maps like Vorix are ok 8 players. 
So to elaborate on the idea, if there was a recommended player capacity value in the .mapinfo and the server selects the map roster based on current player count. That'd be nice. I already do some special overrides on the .mapinfo so the usual remark that "every map has to be updated for that" doesn't bother me. (To add, I don't think every server should have the same exact map pool.)

6) Team balance. Teams should at some point be automatically balanced instead of the vote system or maybe have it so the team which seems to be in disadvantage (with lower KD in the match and/or lower amount of players) should have the ability for a vote from one player count as two votes.

You should say which point should the team be balanced. If you mean mid-match where the player counts are even, then its unfair to suddenly play and contribute to the team with 8 points, but get shuffled onto the team with 3 points.

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There's some parts I agree with. Overall my impression is that you're clearly thinking of an ideal, but not considering other things beyond that. Before I get characterized as some regular/pro who's dismissing new player feedback, consider the situation with apparently ideal systems and unrealized consequences.

For example, to use Discord, which is widely regarded as a popular, convenient, free service, you agree to a binding arbitration and waive your right to go to court in the event of a dispute with the company e.g mismanagement of your personal information. Most people will brush aside with the misconception that TOS/EULA could be thrown away in court and click accept without reading, but this is the case under US law that such a clause is separate from the document that it is contained in.

None of the consequences, I believe would be as hyperbolic as this, but it's just an example of those kinds of things that people should think beyond surface level of.

On the subject of matchmaking: the most important benefits of matchmaking can be implemented without implementing matchmaking (and all of its bad parts) itself. Martin-t already mentioned skill-based team balancing, but there's a few other things.

For one, you can generally queue for multiple modes at once, so you can start playing whichever is ready first. Secondly, some games offer a warm-up mode while you're waiting in the queue. Both of these can be solved by allowing players to connect to multiple servers in a limited mode (not loading any of the assets, but receiving some notifications and having access to the chat), all while letting them do other things (minimizing the game, playing a local game, connecting to a more populated server - whatever).

It'd be even better than regular matchmaking, as players would have freedom to communicate any of the details about how they want to play. For example, if a large group of players has a large server list intersection, they can decide to go to the one they like the most instead of having the automated system choose the most popular mode all the time (leaving less popular modes even less popular). Another thing is, of course, players decide for themselves how many other players they prefer to play with.

Another thing this game needs is a strict distinction between different players who are on the server but aren't playing. A single "spectator" category is not informative. There are people who are waiting for their turn to play (whether it's because they're on a duel server or they just want teams to be balanced), there are people who are AFK, finally there are people actually spectating the game (an endangered species).

Btw how do you get that crosshair which the dude has in the video?

There are multiple settings you can tinker with in the menu: Settings -- Game -- Crosshair

1) Ability to add people as friends so you can see if their online and maybe make a tab where you can message your friends no matter on which server you are.

Well, considering the current era, this isn't a feature of a game, rather a feature of a platform like Steam or Lutris. Conventionally it needs an account system and a chat server (then TOS and a Privacy Policy), but players are identified by public key instead (and I appreciate that).

2) Matchmaking. Although this probably isn't a priority right now it would be nice to see in the future for more balanced matches.

It seems a lot of modern game players like to do this because the only effort in getting a match is pressing a button. 
But literally never have I had a great experience with matchmaking systems. This extends to FOSS games that have matchmaking, and not proprietary games that have psychologically abusive systems in place. It has been a universally frustrating experience where players have low social investment with one another. Or you just get weird match-ups with high standard deviation in (measured) skill between players.
Often matchmaking systems is about skill which requires a controlled environment, not random dedicated servers that have various settings. On that end, I also disagree with matchmaking systems because often it accompanies other systems that disincentivize playing on user hosted servers with varying configurations and the creation of server communities.

3) Optimizing the game. Also not a priority because it would take huge effort to do this and the game runs pretty good on minimum hardware (this 10 year old laptop).

What is your current frame rate, and what is your target frame rate?
Most often the problem with frame rates occur on unoptimized maps e.g evilspaceremix.

5) Fix the fucking DM. I'm a new player and totally agree with other peoples perspectives, the DM maps are designed for a lower amount of people and currently are really chaotic. I currently don't play DM at all it's not really enjoyable.

I tried resolving this on my server by categorizing maps by estimated player capacity. E.g duel maps like Fuse are okay-ish with up to four players. Anymore it becomes a clusterfuck. Bigger maps like Vorix are ok 8 players. 
So to elaborate on the idea, if there was a recommended player capacity value in the .mapinfo and the server selects the map roster based on current player count. That'd be nice. I already do some special overrides on the .mapinfo so the usual remark that "every map has to be updated for that" doesn't bother me. (To add, I don't think every server should have the same exact map pool.)

6) Team balance. Teams should at some point be automatically balanced instead of the vote system or maybe have it so the team which seems to be in disadvantage (with lower KD in the match and/or lower amount of players) should have the ability for a vote from one player count as two votes.

You should say which point should the team be balanced. If you mean mid-match where the player counts are even, then its unfair to suddenly play and contribute to the team with 8 points, but get shuffled onto the team with 3 points.

---

There's some parts I agree with. Overall my impression is that you're clearly thinking of an ideal, but not considering other things beyond that. Before I get characterized as some regular/pro who's dismissing new player feedback, consider the situation with apparently ideal systems and unrealized consequences.

For example, to use Discord, which is widely regarded as a popular, convenient, free service, you agree to a binding arbitration and waive your right to go to court in the event of a dispute with the company e.g mismanagement of your personal information. Most people will brush aside with the misconception that TOS/EULA could be thrown away in court and click accept without reading, but this is the case under US law that such a clause is separate from the document that it is contained in.

None of the consequences, I believe would be as hyperbolic as this, but it's just an example of those kinds of things that people should think beyond surface level of.

My FPS is 60 but it sometimes stutters a bit (on low btw) target would probably me 120 fps or more but that's not achievable probably on this old laptop so I'm okay with 60.

1) A little known feature is that the filter in the server list searches for both server names and player names. So if you have a particular player in mind and know his current name, you can find him.

Would it be possible to have the filter field show "server or player name" in darkened text as a hint that disappears when you start typing?

Maybe only somewhat relevant (as it currently isn't trivial to run it that way and compatibility is not 100% there), but if you run Xonotic through the FTEQW engine, you can have a build in XMPP/Jabber chat and friends list that will also allow you to see if our friends are playing FTEQW based games and join them with one click. It also includes an IRC client to join a matchmaking group chat.

To be honest most of time i enjoy DM. That's just how i used to play AFPS back then. I never really was a fan of CTF. Even in Q2, Q3 and UT99 i spent most of my time with just playing deathmatch or CA. I get that some maps are too small and sometimes it MIGHT be "random" but often enough it's a good game. As you said it depends on the map and if people vote for a too small map then it's their fault.