Krono

Sounds like a winner to me, then I only need one competent individual that can read, and we're golden...

Oops, I should have mentioned this in the OP, but with every game I have macro text on standby: 'HARDCORE ELE TD! This game will be EXTREMELY challenging! Please vote Competitive Mode & Very Hard difficulty! If that sounds too tough, please leave now!' Then I paste it into chat for EVERY new player that enters the room, so that noone is taken off guard and everyone has a chance to leave (except the 8th player since the countdown starts right away). So no, everyone is informed, everyone gives consent by staying in the game, and even then most people vote incorrectly or just faceroll the defaults. It's not something that should be a problem, but many players either don't understand the voting, don't read anything in the lobby chat, or just don't give a flying fruit. Unfortunately with B.net 2.0, you can't have an individual game that stands out like you could in WC3: 'ELE TD MAXIMUM DIFFICULTY!' etc. Therefore, we still need a solution for getting together elite caliber games.

Seems to me, this last update has broken the game for high level/competitive style players. Taking the ability for the host to be the primary decision-maker has completely eliminated high level play, which REQUIRES 8 players, all on competitive mode, in VH difficulty. Those are the settings for the 'big leagues' so to speak, and with current game settings, it's no longer even possible to have a big league game unless you have a group of 4 or more players to get a majority vote. I have a small group of gamers, several of whom including myself were avid wc3 ELETD'ers, who have been slowly developing our SC2 ELETD skills. We have stayed together in difficulty levels, and always have a reigning 'champion', the guy who has attained the highest level on the highest difficulty, started at medium, and worked our way up to Very Hard. In any case, what we quickly realized is that the ONLY way someone can ever be in a game that we consider 'real' is if it's set to competitive and Very Hard. Going through these forums, I now agree with that more than ever, who gives a flying fruit if you can get an infinite fruit loop (excuse the pun) on very easy? Seriously who gives a HOOT!? The ONLY thing that matters to the big boys, is what you can attain on Very Hard / Competitive in a game that starts with 8 players (for the fastest possible timers and for other players to throw a wrench and keep 'interesters' honest, a necessary balancing presence) In the games current state, now that the host can no longer dictate settings, random players will rarely agree to Very Hard and rarely agree to competitive mode, so someone wanting to play a 'big league' game, has to leave the game, rejoin a new one, BEG for proper settings, probably fail, leave the game, restart a new one, etc... Essentially, the ONLY way to play a 'big league' game right now is to either control 4+ players directly, or play by your damn self, which is no fun and doesn't really qualify as a real game anyway without 7 other people trying to F you up. I.E. If you want to set a 'fruit record' the ONLY way it counts is in a game with 8 players, VH difficulty, Competitive settings, how the heck can you set one of those up as of now? Very unhappy with this latest change, and to me it just 'n00bified' the public ELE TD games on B.Net. ____ TL;DR New game settings that disallow the host from choosing settings has led to all n00b style public games, no longer possible to set up elite contests unless you personally know and invite 7 other players to try to get a game going. Please either revert to options for Host to set game settings or some other method to generate more elite contests, as those are the only ones that 'count'.