What is acceptable lurker behaviour?

[Ruff_Hi]

Yeah, those are two separate scenarios; the unspoiled, single team follower, and the spoiled all-team lurker.

but can the player / team tell them apart? If they cannot, then unspoiled information may appear to the player / team to be spoiled.

[regoarrarr]

but can the player / team tell them apart? If they cannot, then unspoiled information may appear to the player / team to be spoiled.

My recommendation is that any dedicated lurkers note such thing in their forum signatures which many of them are already doing

[Yazilliclick]

My only problem with the signle team lurker giving advice is that it's still unfair metagame wise to the others teams in their evaluation of the abilities of the team with several dedicated lurkers. I think regardless of what threads they're watching they should follow the same rules and a team should have to rely on their own wits.

[Imhotep]

I find it completely unacceptable that a lurker points out stuff to the player. Might as well play "The Internet" vs. other players then. Granted, theoretically everybody could do the same and try to attract competent and dedicated lurkers - but there is a point when the player is not playing according to his skill any longer, but "pimped up" by the knowledge of others.

[Kristian95]

for what it's worth I agree with Imhotep!

[SevenSpirits]

Do you think it's distasteful that the team membership isn't official, or are you just unhappy with the possible team size? If the latter, how many people per team do you think is too many?

[Kyan]

In our team (rbpb3)'s thread, we have stated that we would like anyone who is a dedicated lurker to put it in their sig to try and avoid spoiler issues. Not that i foresee anyone taking up this golden opportunity

[Krill]

More than anything, this is something that there is no wrong or right answer to, given the "No spoiler" rule.

[Yazilliclick]

Do you think it's distasteful that the team membership isn't official, or are you just unhappy with the possible team size? If the latter, how many people per team do you think is too many?

I would say both. I'm not against largish teams (5-8 players) but beyond that it's a bit ridiculous unless the game is specifically being marketed as one for large teams. I'm definitely not for undeclared team members essentially which team specific lurkers basically seem to be. In a game around diplomacy and metagaming you need to know what you're up against and that includes knowing who's on the other team so you can judge skill to some degree.

[Krill]

That's a decent point.

TBH I think that teams larger than 3 players are a little...weird? At least, in games that are intended to involve single player civs. That makes the diplomacy a little unfair, the smaller teams are kinda disacvantaged.