[SUGGESTION] Multi-duel

In a duel server, there are two players, and maybe N>=2 spectators. Maybe the duel server can have an option to run multiple duel matches simultaneously, so that the spectators don't have to switch servers to play?

It's just a thought. There are clearly some issues to be thought about, such as server load, and whether to synchronize match ending times to facilitate a pairing shuffle, or to let all the duels end independently. A quick and dirty solution would be to Ctrl+C Ctrl+V a map so that the map contains two copies of itself, and then controlling the player spawns by putting the four players in four different teams, two in each copy of the map.

It would be possible, but there are some limitations in the engine itself that would be very difficult to overcome (e.g. real-time lights).
Other than that, the way I imagine something like this working is: the 2 duelers and their projectiles are visible only to eachother (and their spectators), the items are spawned separately for each group of duelers and of course only usable/visible them.

Such a system would be very time consuming to implement though, for little gain (there's no shortage of duel servers).

(there's no shortage of duel servers).

Yeah, thanks Mario for your duel servers

Sounds like it would cause a lot of lag.

Better invest the time to implement a proper version of rocket arena, which btw features multiple arenas per server and could actually bring some players to Xonotic.

... the benefit of this would be... to be able to switch from speccing one duel to speccing another duel with a keystroke, without having to connect to another server? Is that the benefit, or did I miss something?

... the benefit of this would be... to be able to switch from speccing one duel to speccing another duel with a keystroke, without having to connect to another server? Is that the benefit, or did I miss something?

Well in Rocket Arena 3 each server had 3 arenas (iirc), one for big matches (e.g. Afterslime), one for 2v2 (e.g. Opium) and one for 1v1 (e.g. Stormkeep). So you could kill time in the big arena until you find someone who plays 2v2 with you for example. It was a round-based clan arena mode though, I do not see it working like that with matches where you are stuck for 10-20 minutes.

Oh that sounds like a real benefit indeed. Having some ffa fun while waiting for a duel that you signed up for to be ready... good idea! Also sounds like quite some effort to code that :o/

3 completely separate maps played at the same time would go a bit beyond realistic capabilities of this game.

Rocket Arena (if they even do this, never tried it) was most likely built around the idea, with all the core systems supporting it in the beginning. introducing such a system into Xonotic would be both a huge undertaking and would take a lot more resources, both from the server and clients.