Re: [hlds_linux] A few more TF2 quickplay answers
I've been running a 24 man Vanilla server since late 09 and what I've learned through this server (and my many other servers) is there is no shortcut to a great community. Recently we've turned on Quickplay and I'm having second thoughts about it just because my server is now filled 100% of the time, hard to find a slot! We also have a fair amount of (good) custom maps on our server, and we also run a weekly event (Alpha Test Tuesdays), to test new custom maps people are working on (and we let anyone test free of charge!). Sure during the times we are on a custom map the server may not fill up as readily - but that's when having a good community comes into play. Put up a steam group for your server, and actually invite people you see coming back now and again. Over the last year or so we now have enough people in our group to keep the server ready to go all hours of the day (mostly). Also it's a broken record but TF2 is designed for 24 players, so with the glut of new servers I can see it might be harder to fill up a server that has increased_maxplayers, especially on de_jeepathon2k or whatever custom map you're playing. What I'd like to know about the quickplay system is how the grading goes. I know I can see how well we're trending, but are there any plans in the pipeline to have more server reporting tools re: quickplay, available? I'd like to see how I rate with other servers, how much further we have in CRUSHING THE COMPETITION IN FUN. On Mon, Jul 11, 2011 at 3:53 PM, Sir Jake can_kic...@hotmail.com wrote: Very good points, another thing that would be wonderful to see is having the score board it self support 32 players not sure why this was not put in years ago. As many people here have said 24 slot servers just fail after any type of roll or map change as sometimes half the server can leave in just a few minutes and then it just dies off. I noticed this a lot when we tried our servers with only 24 slots. Date: Tue, 12 Jul 2011 01:32:19 +0300 From: i...@ics-base.net To: hlds_linux@list.valvesoftware.com Subject: Re: [hlds_linux] A few more TF2 quickplay answers I see a slight problem in one thing. While the custom map is on, any custom map, unless your server is extremely popular at any time of the day, it will lead to drop of players aka lack of players. Not everyone wants to play custom maps or download a new one because they still have slow connections, some of them. Situation regarding people's online connections has improved in past years but thats still the case for some. But anyway, as the quickplay does not drive traffic to these servers that do not run particular maps on, it's an issue at late time of the day and early on when the servers are just filling up. This isn't a major issue right now, but after couple of months, it could be. At this point, either the server has to change through configs to run regular maps or stay empty untill more people are getting into their games. Would you join to empty server, from which you need to download a map to play or a cp_dustbowl with 22/24 players on? I'll give an comprehensive example. Got 2 servers running custom maps, the one that is very popular and the other that is not as popular as the other. Also i have 2 quickplay enhanced ones that fill up first and stay populated last. (now that things have actually little quite since the first peak when it was 24/7 full for all). So the ones that run custom maps, empty first and get filled up a bit later as soon as map changes to some quickplay supported than the ones that are running settings that quickplay is wanting (unless the regulars play late, like friday, saturday). If you see where i'm going, it's pretty frustrating to change mapcycle so that you get traffic driving in, despite how much reputation the server has. 6 000 000 reputation is more than enough but it still doesn't make me any happy, no matter how much there is if the players aren't getting in as long as there are custom maps at certain time of the day. This is not a huge issue now but quickplay makes people wanting to have run basic maps to get their servers filled. So who will want to run custom maps, no matter how good they are if that results to empty servers. It's pointless to make every community map official too. I know this quickplay is there to make people more happy as some people run pretty bad server mods and such but how about adding some options to it. Like into the quickplay search window. Allow custom maps and Allow more than 24 slot servers. It's more harder to get 24 slot server running custom maps to stay populated than 30-32. I know over 24 slot isn't exactly preferred but what can you do. People want what they want. Quickplay is great to fill up servers but i'd like to see that only as addition to existing way - if you have basic regular players on a server, it gets filled but quickplay could be used to fill up the rest of the slots. It works
Re: [hlds_linux] A few more TF2 quickplay answers
I'd love to know how your server is filling. Quick play is enabled on mine but it will never see players. I believe Valve has servers in New York which I'm losing out to (mine is in New Jersey). On Tue, Jul 12, 2011 at 2:51 PM, doc drga...@gmail.com wrote: I've been running a 24 man Vanilla server since late 09 and what I've learned through this server (and my many other servers) is there is no shortcut to a great community. Recently we've turned on Quickplay and I'm having second thoughts about it just because my server is now filled 100% of the time, hard to find a slot! We also have a fair amount of (good) custom maps on our server, and we also run a weekly event (Alpha Test Tuesdays), to test new custom maps people are working on (and we let anyone test free of charge!). Sure during the times we are on a custom map the server may not fill up as readily - but that's when having a good community comes into play. Put up a steam group for your server, and actually invite people you see coming back now and again. Over the last year or so we now have enough people in our group to keep the server ready to go all hours of the day (mostly). Also it's a broken record but TF2 is designed for 24 players, so with the glut of new servers I can see it might be harder to fill up a server that has increased_maxplayers, especially on de_jeepathon2k or whatever custom map you're playing. What I'd like to know about the quickplay system is how the grading goes. I know I can see how well we're trending, but are there any plans in the pipeline to have more server reporting tools re: quickplay, available? I'd like to see how I rate with other servers, how much further we have in CRUSHING THE COMPETITION IN FUN. On Mon, Jul 11, 2011 at 3:53 PM, Sir Jake can_kic...@hotmail.com wrote: Very good points, another thing that would be wonderful to see is having the score board it self support 32 players not sure why this was not put in years ago. As many people here have said 24 slot servers just fail after any type of roll or map change as sometimes half the server can leave in just a few minutes and then it just dies off. I noticed this a lot when we tried our servers with only 24 slots. Date: Tue, 12 Jul 2011 01:32:19 +0300 From: i...@ics-base.net To: hlds_linux@list.valvesoftware.com Subject: Re: [hlds_linux] A few more TF2 quickplay answers I see a slight problem in one thing. While the custom map is on, any custom map, unless your server is extremely popular at any time of the day, it will lead to drop of players aka lack of players. Not everyone wants to play custom maps or download a new one because they still have slow connections, some of them. Situation regarding people's online connections has improved in past years but thats still the case for some. But anyway, as the quickplay does not drive traffic to these servers that do not run particular maps on, it's an issue at late time of the day and early on when the servers are just filling up. This isn't a major issue right now, but after couple of months, it could be. At this point, either the server has to change through configs to run regular maps or stay empty untill more people are getting into their games. Would you join to empty server, from which you need to download a map to play or a cp_dustbowl with 22/24 players on? I'll give an comprehensive example. Got 2 servers running custom maps, the one that is very popular and the other that is not as popular as the other. Also i have 2 quickplay enhanced ones that fill up first and stay populated last. (now that things have actually little quite since the first peak when it was 24/7 full for all). So the ones that run custom maps, empty first and get filled up a bit later as soon as map changes to some quickplay supported than the ones that are running settings that quickplay is wanting (unless the regulars play late, like friday, saturday). If you see where i'm going, it's pretty frustrating to change mapcycle so that you get traffic driving in, despite how much reputation the server has. 6 000 000 reputation is more than enough but it still doesn't make me any happy, no matter how much there is if the players aren't getting in as long as there are custom maps at certain time of the day. This is not a huge issue now but quickplay makes people wanting to have run basic maps to get their servers filled. So who will want to run custom maps, no matter how good they are if that results to empty servers. It's pointless to make every community map official too. I know this quickplay is there to make people more happy as some people run pretty bad server mods and such but how about adding some options to it. Like into the quickplay search window. Allow custom maps and Allow more than 24 slot servers. It's more harder to get 24 slot server running custom maps to stay populated than 30-32. I
Re: [hlds_linux] A few more TF2 quickplay answers
Like I stated before this server has been running since late 09. In that time we have held weekly events and have made a real effort to invite people who are fun to play with and will bring in others who are like minded. There are no shortcuts to having a popular server and while quickplay helps, what helps even more is having a solid admin team or a group of friends or regulars willing to sit in the server during its slow days. One of our weekly Events is friday night frags and it's a time where we play the stock popular maps of team fortress 2, nothing else changes from any of the other day but we put out a group events and we all make an effort to be there at the same time. Having a good community goes a very very long way insuring a popular and fun server, unfortunately like I said there are no shortcuts to this. At least that I found out! On Jul 12, 2011 1:36 PM, Ryan Morrison rddt...@gmail.com wrote: I'd love to know how your server is filling. Quick play is enabled on mine but it will never see players. I believe Valve has servers in New York which I'm losing out to (mine is in New Jersey). On Tue, Jul 12, 2011 at 2:51 PM, doc drga...@gmail.com wrote: I've been running a 24 man Vanilla server since late 09 and what I've learned through this server (and my many other servers) is there is no shortcut to a great community. Recently we've turned on Quickplay and I'm having second thoughts about it just because my server is now filled 100% of the time, hard to find a slot! We also have a fair amount of (good) custom maps on our server, and we also run a weekly event (Alpha Test Tuesdays), to test new custom maps people are working on (and we let anyone test free of charge!). Sure during the times we are on a custom map the server may not fill up as readily - but that's when having a good community comes into play. Put up a steam group for your server, and actually invite people you see coming back now and again. Over the last year or so we now have enough people in our group to keep the server ready to go all hours of the day (mostly). Also it's a broken record but TF2 is designed for 24 players, so with the glut of new servers I can see it might be harder to fill up a server that has increased_maxplayers, especially on de_jeepathon2k or whatever custom map you're playing. What I'd like to know about the quickplay system is how the grading goes. I know I can see how well we're trending, but are there any plans in the pipeline to have more server reporting tools re: quickplay, available? I'd like to see how I rate with other servers, how much further we have in CRUSHING THE COMPETITION IN FUN. On Mon, Jul 11, 2011 at 3:53 PM, Sir Jake can_kic...@hotmail.com wrote: Very good points, another thing that would be wonderful to see is having the score board it self support 32 players not sure why this was not put in years ago. As many people here have said 24 slot servers just fail after any type of roll or map change as sometimes half the server can leave in just a few minutes and then it just dies off. I noticed this a lot when we tried our servers with only 24 slots. Date: Tue, 12 Jul 2011 01:32:19 +0300 From: i...@ics-base.net To: hlds_linux@list.valvesoftware.com Subject: Re: [hlds_linux] A few more TF2 quickplay answers I see a slight problem in one thing. While the custom map is on, any custom map, unless your server is extremely popular at any time of the day, it will lead to drop of players aka lack of players. Not everyone wants to play custom maps or download a new one because they still have slow connections, some of them. Situation regarding people's online connections has improved in past years but thats still the case for some. But anyway, as the quickplay does not drive traffic to these servers that do not run particular maps on, it's an issue at late time of the day and early on when the servers are just filling up. This isn't a major issue right now, but after couple of months, it could be. At this point, either the server has to change through configs to run regular maps or stay empty untill more people are getting into their games. Would you join to empty server, from which you need to download a map to play or a cp_dustbowl with 22/24 players on? I'll give an comprehensive example. Got 2 servers running custom maps, the one that is very popular and the other that is not as popular as the other. Also i have 2 quickplay enhanced ones that fill up first and stay populated last. (now that things have actually little quite since the first peak when it was 24/7 full for all). So the ones that run custom maps, empty first and get filled up a bit later as soon as map changes to some quickplay supported than the ones that are running settings that quickplay is wanting (unless the regulars play late, like friday, saturday). If you see where i'm going, it's pretty frustrating to change
[hlds_linux] A few more TF2 quickplay answers
Just a few more answers to commonly-asked quickplay questions: All of the quickplay deal-breakers are tested on the client at the moment of quickplay searching. You can flip them on and off and start/stop receiving quickplay traffic. The reputation system is an input to the quickplay scoring system, not the other way around. Doing quickplay-illegal things does not affect your reputation. If you have a thriving community playing custom maps, you are building your reputation. If you suddenly turned the server into a quickplay-eligible one, you would be just as good of a quickplay server as a server who had been vanilla the whole time. But to repeat: the reputation system still needs some tuning, and is only a small part of the total quickplay score. It's mainly designed to help avoid sending traffic to really terrible servers. Quickplay, with its minimal set of options, is currently targeted at totally new players. However, we know that some experienced players use it and have had fun playing maps they haven't played in a while. (Or just beating the heck out of noobs.) Sometimes it's just fun to spin the wheel. We have considered a medium search mode, somewhat of a cross between the raw server browser and the one-click-no-options quickplay. No timeline or promises, of course. We get *huge* value out of good server operators. While we do want to control new players first impressions of the game, the goal is to have new players find all the diversity out there and get into a community so they can kill each other in the way they most enjoy. Having a set of servers with known characteristics is good, to ensure that if you want to play you can always find a server with a good ping, etc. But keeping all the traffic on generic servers that we have to maintain and host is not really a huge win for us. I would post these answers to the FAQ and just send a link, but the details are of course subject to change without notice. :) Hopefully most of the big quickplay questions are answered. I'm working on a lot of game server related stuff, so I'll probably be on these lists again. Cheers, Fletch ___ To unsubscribe, edit your list preferences, or view the list archives, please visit: http://list.valvesoftware.com/mailman/listinfo/hlds_linux
Re: [hlds_linux] A few more TF2 quickplay answers
I see a slight problem in one thing. While the custom map is on, any custom map, unless your server is extremely popular at any time of the day, it will lead to drop of players aka lack of players. Not everyone wants to play custom maps or download a new one because they still have slow connections, some of them. Situation regarding people's online connections has improved in past years but thats still the case for some. But anyway, as the quickplay does not drive traffic to these servers that do not run particular maps on, it's an issue at late time of the day and early on when the servers are just filling up. This isn't a major issue right now, but after couple of months, it could be. At this point, either the server has to change through configs to run regular maps or stay empty untill more people are getting into their games. Would you join to empty server, from which you need to download a map to play or a cp_dustbowl with 22/24 players on? I'll give an comprehensive example. Got 2 servers running custom maps, the one that is very popular and the other that is not as popular as the other. Also i have 2 quickplay enhanced ones that fill up first and stay populated last. (now that things have actually little quite since the first peak when it was 24/7 full for all). So the ones that run custom maps, empty first and get filled up a bit later as soon as map changes to some quickplay supported than the ones that are running settings that quickplay is wanting (unless the regulars play late, like friday, saturday). If you see where i'm going, it's pretty frustrating to change mapcycle so that you get traffic driving in, despite how much reputation the server has. 6 000 000 reputation is more than enough but it still doesn't make me any happy, no matter how much there is if the players aren't getting in as long as there are custom maps at certain time of the day. This is not a huge issue now but quickplay makes people wanting to have run basic maps to get their servers filled. So who will want to run custom maps, no matter how good they are if that results to empty servers. It's pointless to make every community map official too. I know this quickplay is there to make people more happy as some people run pretty bad server mods and such but how about adding some options to it. Like into the quickplay search window. Allow custom maps and Allow more than 24 slot servers. It's more harder to get 24 slot server running custom maps to stay populated than 30-32. I know over 24 slot isn't exactly preferred but what can you do. People want what they want. Quickplay is great to fill up servers but i'd like to see that only as addition to existing way - if you have basic regular players on a server, it gets filled but quickplay could be used to fill up the rest of the slots. It works like this but only after the certain penalties. Just some thoughts that came out 1:32am to my mind. -ics 11.7.2011 19:24, Fletcher Dunn kirjoitti: Just a few more answers to commonly-asked quickplay questions: All of the quickplay deal-breakers are tested on the client at the moment of quickplay searching. You can flip them on and off and start/stop receiving quickplay traffic. The reputation system is an input to the quickplay scoring system, not the other way around. Doing quickplay-illegal things does not affect your reputation. If you have a thriving community playing custom maps, you are building your reputation. If you suddenly turned the server into a quickplay-eligible one, you would be just as good of a quickplay server as a server who had been vanilla the whole time. But to repeat: the reputation system still needs some tuning, and is only a small part of the total quickplay score. It's mainly designed to help avoid sending traffic to really terrible servers. Quickplay, with its minimal set of options, is currently targeted at totally new players. However, we know that some experienced players use it and have had fun playing maps they haven't played in a while. (Or just beating the heck out of noobs.) Sometimes it's just fun to spin the wheel. We have considered a medium search mode, somewhat of a cross between the raw server browser and the one-click-no-options quickplay. No timeline or promises, of course. We get *huge* value out of good server operators. While we do want to control new players first impressions of the game, the goal is to have new players find all the diversity out there and get into a community so they can kill each other in the way they most enjoy. Having a set of servers with known characteristics is good, to ensure that if you want to play you can always find a server with a good ping, etc. But keeping all the traffic on generic servers that we have to maintain and host is not really a huge win for us. I would post these answers to the FAQ and just send a link, but the details are of course subject to change without
Re: [hlds_linux] A few more TF2 quickplay answers
Very good points, another thing that would be wonderful to see is having the score board it self support 32 players not sure why this was not put in years ago. As many people here have said 24 slot servers just fail after any type of roll or map change as sometimes half the server can leave in just a few minutes and then it just dies off. I noticed this a lot when we tried our servers with only 24 slots. Date: Tue, 12 Jul 2011 01:32:19 +0300 From: i...@ics-base.net To: hlds_linux@list.valvesoftware.com Subject: Re: [hlds_linux] A few more TF2 quickplay answers I see a slight problem in one thing. While the custom map is on, any custom map, unless your server is extremely popular at any time of the day, it will lead to drop of players aka lack of players. Not everyone wants to play custom maps or download a new one because they still have slow connections, some of them. Situation regarding people's online connections has improved in past years but thats still the case for some. But anyway, as the quickplay does not drive traffic to these servers that do not run particular maps on, it's an issue at late time of the day and early on when the servers are just filling up. This isn't a major issue right now, but after couple of months, it could be. At this point, either the server has to change through configs to run regular maps or stay empty untill more people are getting into their games. Would you join to empty server, from which you need to download a map to play or a cp_dustbowl with 22/24 players on? I'll give an comprehensive example. Got 2 servers running custom maps, the one that is very popular and the other that is not as popular as the other. Also i have 2 quickplay enhanced ones that fill up first and stay populated last. (now that things have actually little quite since the first peak when it was 24/7 full for all). So the ones that run custom maps, empty first and get filled up a bit later as soon as map changes to some quickplay supported than the ones that are running settings that quickplay is wanting (unless the regulars play late, like friday, saturday). If you see where i'm going, it's pretty frustrating to change mapcycle so that you get traffic driving in, despite how much reputation the server has. 6 000 000 reputation is more than enough but it still doesn't make me any happy, no matter how much there is if the players aren't getting in as long as there are custom maps at certain time of the day. This is not a huge issue now but quickplay makes people wanting to have run basic maps to get their servers filled. So who will want to run custom maps, no matter how good they are if that results to empty servers. It's pointless to make every community map official too. I know this quickplay is there to make people more happy as some people run pretty bad server mods and such but how about adding some options to it. Like into the quickplay search window. Allow custom maps and Allow more than 24 slot servers. It's more harder to get 24 slot server running custom maps to stay populated than 30-32. I know over 24 slot isn't exactly preferred but what can you do. People want what they want. Quickplay is great to fill up servers but i'd like to see that only as addition to existing way - if you have basic regular players on a server, it gets filled but quickplay could be used to fill up the rest of the slots. It works like this but only after the certain penalties. Just some thoughts that came out 1:32am to my mind. -ics 11.7.2011 19:24, Fletcher Dunn kirjoitti: Just a few more answers to commonly-asked quickplay questions: All of the quickplay deal-breakers are tested on the client at the moment of quickplay searching. You can flip them on and off and start/stop receiving quickplay traffic. The reputation system is an input to the quickplay scoring system, not the other way around. Doing quickplay-illegal things does not affect your reputation. If you have a thriving community playing custom maps, you are building your reputation. If you suddenly turned the server into a quickplay-eligible one, you would be just as good of a quickplay server as a server who had been vanilla the whole time. But to repeat: the reputation system still needs some tuning, and is only a small part of the total quickplay score. It's mainly designed to help avoid sending traffic to really terrible servers. Quickplay, with its minimal set of options, is currently targeted at totally new players. However, we know that some experienced players use it and have had fun playing maps they haven't played in a while. (Or just beating the heck out of noobs.) Sometimes it's just fun to spin the wheel. We have considered a medium search mode, somewhat of a cross between the raw server browser and the one-click-no-options quickplay. No timeline
