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 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
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