As everybody knows, these formats have the problem of free-time to play alignment of all the players involved. This is particularly a problem for the game creator, because he can't leave the game after it is created, so if no sufficient players join within a reasonable amountof time, he'll have to leave and risk losing the game due to it starting after he is away.

This narrows the pool of players mostly to ones who know each other and can arrange them in advance or to the hugely popular WGWF. Also the games tend to be of very few players precisely due to fear that they won't fill up fast.

I propose having a 'Ready'/'Not Ready' flag that each player can change back and forth while the game is in Open status. Only when the flags of all players are set to Ready, does the game begin.

To improve playability even further I also propose an option to vote for a pause when the game is already under way.

Not sure if I'd want to join a five-man real time game with four other players two of which where on pause. I'd have no idea when it starts up. 

Agree it would be nice to do something but not sure what.

Litotes wrote:

Not sure if I'd want to join a five-man real time game with four other players two of which where on pause. I'd have no idea when it starts up. 

Agree it would be nice to do something but not sure what.

The game starts only when all players are Ready to play.

The pause would be a vote that one of the players would set up for a selected amount of time, just like voting for surrender or termination of a game. If not all players agree to the pause, the pause does not happen.

I don't know what you meant by two players being on pause, everyone would be on pause, and whoever is on his turn would not be able to make any moves while the game is paused.

It should even let players join above the game size until the size is reached of that many 'ready to play' players and the rest of the field who's flags are not set to 'ready' are ejected from the game as it launches with the players who are ready to go.  I think it is a decent idea as it would get a lot more large player count multiplayer lightening games going.