I really doubt its based on the server ranking at all. Today we went through and changed all of our servers to use the -fork mechanism (previously we were starting them all individually - scripted anyway). This has meant that the address of the server has changed (IP and port), as the options for -fork don't fit into the same way that we were previously allocating IPs / ports for each instance to listen on. For us here in Australia, we're coming into the peak period now and our servers are just as full as they are at any given time before we made the changes today, so given that all of the servers would appear as "new" servers according to the master servers, it would appear that ranking has no bearing nor how long a server has been around for as to whether you get players on your servers.
From my observations of the utilisation of our servers, when we had 130 servers running, we were getting around 400 players peak playing Left 4 Dead. So if you assume that all of those servers are only 4 players (some will be versus mode though with 8), thats 520 slots, so roughly 80% utilisation. We bumped up the number of servers we were running (to 192 currently) and saw a player number increase, but still around 80% utilisation of the available slots during peak periods, so I doubt you'd ever get a situation where you could have the servers all full at the same time (even if the demand for servers is high). We do have our servers attached to a Steam Group so users could easily be direct connecting to our servers, but I know from a few comments from our players that most of the time they are just letting the game automatically find them a server, as they are hitting our servers the majority of the time as we're probably running more than 60% of the servers here in Australia currently as far as I can tell. Its certainly not based on latency either, as our servers are running in 2 locations (that are around 60ms apart - opposite sides of the country) and the game pushes me to servers in either location randomly when neither place has all of the servers busy. You probably just need more servers in your location. Its possible that some of the ones in your area aren't setup correctly to show up in the matchmaking system or something similar. ics 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
