id,summary,reporter,owner,description,type,status,priority,milestone,component,resolution,keywords,cc,phab_field
6148,Making the Game Lobby more accessible,Langbart,,"In the last 3 months there have been 21 users on IRC 0ad who simply wanted to know how to play online, it seems that the GUI layout is not clear enough on how to join the game lobby, listed below are links to the IRC logs where users have reported the problem:

Summarised the most common questions:
> how to play 0ad with friends?\\
> how can i create a multiplayer game?

* likshman (19/Jan/21)
* Nickdevries (19/Jan/21)
* Dynamofox (21/Jan/21)
* mjslick (22/Jan/21)
* astrozador (22/Jan/21)
* w00z1t (22/Jan/21)
* ringolero (25/Jan/21)
* GUY (30/Jan/21)
* Taiowa (5/Feb/21)
* Exorelico (13/Feb/21)
* tipo (16/Feb/21)
* asasa (3/Mar/21)
* efdfeff (8/Mar/21)
* bluewarrior (20/Mar/21)
* Tobi (20/Mar/21)
* alexroses47 (20/Mar/21)
* manuel_ (21/Mar/21)
* christianp (25/Mar/21)
* Nabil (5/Apr/21)
* Jaunixd (9/Apr/21)
* morimoto (15/Apr/21)

On [http://irclogs.wildfiregames.com/%230ad/2021-04-15-QuakeNet-%230ad.log 15/Apr/21] a user nicknamed `morimoto` suggested via IRC 0ad to create a patch for this problem.

A possible solution could be to move the `Game Lobby` to the main page and all other things to `Single Player` and `Rest` (see image below for clarity).
[[Image(ticket:6148:frontpage.jpg, 600px, center)]]

PS: In this video (@23:24min) titled [https://archive.fosdem.org/2020/schedule/event/gamedev_spring_steam/ Spring & Steam, an Odyssey] (1/Feb/20), the presenter highlights the fact that users want to press as few buttons as possible to start a game and suggests implementing a feature where you only have to press one button and immediately start a random game with another user.
> Very important [...] you really need very few clicks to get into a game.
[[Image(ticket:6148:fosdem_ingame_lobby.jpg, 600px, center)]]
",enhancement,new,If Time Permits,Alpha 25,UI – Game setup,,,,