As far as i know, lobby does not care about the pings of other players, only the lobby host ping matters. How the servers is actually searched, i dont know but by default lobby requests 75 potential candidates for server and chooses servers that are under 250ms. While i have tried search servers or join them with lobby system during evenings (that is 8-5 hours ago when the players count on Steam is the highest according to these stats http://store.steampowered.com/stats/ ), it constantly fails to find any server. Not even if i have default server box next to me online and running 5mins prior to the search. It stays empty while i get no server where to play on. Even joining to existing game throws me up on servers with 130ms pings all the time or a lot worse. If one server is found with lobby connect, its either huge luck or pings suck (over 150ms).
Yet i do know servers in this country are free at that time and there still is no go with any of them. Lobby search does not find them even if i set that cvar which controls the default ping to 100 or lower. Infact that decreases a possibility to find a server. This originally keeps me still wondering how the hell that system actually works? I was hoping someone from Valve would explain this but i guess that is never going to happen. Things might be ok in US because the most servers are located in that area but its not looking good here in Europe. The time that searching server fails is the prime time gaming period here, aka 18:00-24:00. -ics Richard Eid kirjoitti: > I've had my server up since the demo, and then, on release day(night). What > I notice is that the Matchmaking system is working how I believe it was > designed to work. During the day, when most people in my region are most > likely either working, at school or otherwise occupied, my server generally > sits empty, though not always. When prime-time rolls around, it stays full > until ~2AM local time. > > To me, this makes sense. During the day, the demand for servers in this > area probably should be low. Like I said, the occasional Campaign or Versus > match happens, but that's rare. If everyone in this region is off doing > their real life thing, then why should Matchmaking drop people in when the > probability that they will all have high pings is greater? > > During the night-time hours, why shouldn't it be full? It's when everyone > has finished their daily tasks, homework, chores, etc. They now have time > to sit down and play. > > According to what ics said, we should all pretty much be thrown into the > servers hosted by Valve if we choose to use Matchmaking. Remember, there > are ~5,000 of them and they've all been running longer than any of ours. > Today's peak in Left 4 Dead players was/is 26,155. Assuming that no Versus > matches took place and everyone went Campaign mode during that peak time, > that means that close to 77% of those players would have been on a Valve > server. I don't even remember the last time Matchmaking put me on one of > those, so I can't imagine that they're being given preference over servers > that are closer to me, geographically speaking. > > Furthermore, when I choose not to use a search_key to drop myself into my > own server and just let Matchmaking do its work, the ranks I see on those > servers has never been consistently high. I've been on servers ranked lower > than 10,000 and servers as high as 3. > > The rank is just an arbitrary number that only denotes the number of players > served. At least, that's what I've noticed. It's never had a bearing on > whether or not I'll end up in a higher ranked server. > > There was a recent discussion on the list here about the Server Browser(not > L4D specific). If you read through that, you'll get a feel for how the > server browser does it's searching/querying. While Left 4 Dead's server > browser is different, I can't imagine that it, or that Matchmaking system, > for that matter, would operate much different. > > My guess is that Matchmaking does a quick Geo-locate of all the members of a > lobby, then queries servers that will be equally sufficient for each member, > with exceptions. Because players come from all corners of the globe and > play at all times of the day and night, there will always be that case where > the whole lobby might have a great ping/route to the server, but one person > might ping high to it. In that case, there are tons of other factors > besides their geographic location that come into play. The obvious factor > being connection quality. > > Or not. > > -Richard Eid > > > On Mon, Jan 19, 2009 at 5:32 PM, Cc2iscooL <[email protected]> wrote: > > >> A lot of those extra servers have some type of sv_search_key set, but I >> usually have at least 3-4 of my own public servers that are empty during >> the >> day at any given time. >> >> On Mon, Jan 19, 2009 at 3:29 PM, ics <[email protected]> wrote: >> >> >>> Not really for this list but this includes issues for running a server >>> and i'm pretty sure some of you are thinking why your servers sit on >>> empty while some people complain that there are no free servers to play >>> >> on. >> >>> I am wondering how lobby system picks the servers that it keeps >>> assigning people? Random? Based on some ranking system? Right now there >>> is a rush time on Steam network Passing over already but this seems to >>> have impact to L4D and finding a server. It's PAIN right now, atleast in >>> this part of the world. I checked the servers count, there are over 5500 >>> servers that my server browser found in-game. Only _half_ of them have >>> players and still i just spend 30 mins trying to get into one free >>> server. Alone, with other people and so on. Different guy hosting lobby >>> but no. >>> >>> Ive been monitoring servers in my country out of interest (23 total for >>> L4D) and only 3-4 of them have players per day. 1 has players almost all >>> the time, the other has players most time of the day and then the few >>> random ones. This leaves 19 free servers and the goddamn lobby system >>> seems to ignore these and 3000 other free servers completely and doesnt >>> let me play on any server or it gives me a server with high ping from >>> around the world if it for some reason happens to find a server after >>> all. I dont know how the system works but i would say that this is a >>> major issue. >>> >>> Now, i've been tracing the thing and looks to me as if the servers that >>> have been there from the start, are the ones that are given to players. >>> For those who just started hosting servers, they are sitting empty and >>> no players are on them because lobby seems to ignore these completely. >>> In my opinion, the system doesnt assign nearby servers to you, it uses >>> Valves own ranking to do that. So if that in-game ranking which shows on >>> "server banner" is used, the system fails to give free servers for those >>> who need it when there are lots of people. >>> >>> World wide server rank #225, Total players served 5945. These are the >>> stats that most popular server in this country gets and its almost all >>> the time full. The 19 others which have no players at any time are just >>> sitting there, ready to serve but lobby system does not assign people to >>> these servers. Why is this? If i where to host a lobby and lobby selects >>> server according to my own ping, it should throw me in to one of these >>> servers, right? No, doesnt seem to work that way. Anyone got more >>> "inside" information about how the system really works? Game seems to be >>> unplayable right now at this hour of the day and the past 3-4 hours too. >>> >>> -ics >>> >>> _______________________________________________ >>> To unsubscribe, edit your list preferences, or view the list archives, >>> please visit: >>> http://list.valvesoftware.com/mailman/listinfo/hlds_linux >>> >>> >> _______________________________________________ >> To unsubscribe, edit your list preferences, or view the list archives, >> please visit: >> http://list.valvesoftware.com/mailman/listinfo/hlds_linux >> >> > _______________________________________________ > To unsubscribe, edit your list preferences, or view the list archives, please > visit: > http://list.valvesoftware.com/mailman/listinfo/hlds_linux > _______________________________________________ To unsubscribe, edit your list preferences, or view the list archives, please visit: http://list.valvesoftware.com/mailman/listinfo/hlds_linux
