I have noticed a somewhat similar trend on my servers. But I have regulars and admins that connect day in and day out. I find that before, my servers were always full for months at a time with no break in player numbers unless an update was released.
Now, since quickplay has dropped or something different is happening, it's normally only full on after 4PM EST. Even if regulars and admins are on ALL DAY LONG, upwards of 9 people in some cases, quickplay will still not direct players to my servers. For example, two of my servers have had 10 players on for the past three hours, consisting of all regulars and admins, and a couple from the server browser. None from quickplay. For the past three hours, of course, my server has been in the "player threshold" for quickplay to kick in, but it will not. I don't know why and I am not too concerned, the server will get full later on with or without quickplay because of all the people who know the servers and know they're good to play on. The problem I have is the lack of information provided by Valve about this system. You have people constantly worried about their servers standing when we're not even sure if there is a standing. I see servers that stay full all day and not a single player had been connected for longer than 45 minutes. I see servers that have users disconnecting with less that 15 minutes of play time that stay full all day, and then I see servers that are filled to the brim with people who have been connected for hours at a time and everybody stays for at least 30 minutes, but as soon as 2AM rolls around, the empty out with no resistance from quickplay. We have plugins and things we look at to gauge quickplay, but Valve is totally silent on how the system works. We don't even know if these things are halfway accurate or if they're logical to how things are working at all. Hell, it was revealed a short couple of months ago that server communities like Nightteam and and Saigns were exploiting the system so that they could trick quickplay into thinking the server was ALWAYS in a good standing and should ALWAYS receive quickplay players even though everyone hates the servers and disconnects from them as soon as they connect from quickplay. Obviously there is something wrong here. The problem is, Valve needs to give more information about how the system works so that everyone can get a good idea of how to obtain quickplay players fairly and without the need to use false methods. As for me, I must be doing something wrong. My servers have a big regular playerbase, whom are almost always playing on my servers, yet quickplay ignores them all throughout the day until the clock suddenly strikes 4PM or beyond? Stupid, isn't it? On Wed, Apr 25, 2012 at 6:21 PM, Cameron Munroe <cmun...@cameronmunroe.com>wrote: > The fact is dan that I played tf2 before quickplay was here. It was > already stress full enough on learning all the nicks and nacks of tf2. > Lotusclan was the few places which I knew had people on it. > > However, new players use the first and simplest thing, i.e. quickplay, as > it is already a new thing. > > Many players who "play to win" play on the same server or community that > they have grown into. It gets annoying when you join another server as a > pro sniper and get banned for "aimbotting." > > I stuck with what was a fun and enjoyable game play environment, though > there were many hackers I just found ways to get them banned with the > server plugins. > > I could also just turn on the setting to join when the server had a slot > available, and wait +/- 5 mins, just enough time to grab a soda. > > I could, and tried to join other server but as stated before was banned or > kicked for ""hacking"" though I wasn't or their were crazy amounts of > ""special"" plugins that ruined the whole game play. i.e. rtd.....=\ > > It is hard to find a server that you know you like from a title, as it is > just a title with a ping statement at the side. Not much info bro. > > I am not saying people are incapable, but rather that people stick with > what they know even if they know it is wrong. Their have been many studies > and people will knowingly argue a invalid point as that is what they know > as "true". > > Correct, but what is happening is that valve is taking players and > ""forcing"" them onto there servers meaning more community servers will be > empty, therfore lowering their ranking even more and slowly killing them. > > I fully agree with you there, but Valve doesn't care about that and throws > new players to Valve server that have the lowest ping with quickplay, its > not like they look for the lowest ping server in the area. > > This is not a happy accident, but rather a change to the ecosystem. I.e. > putting up a new route that has 10 super fast lanes to Valve and a old 3 > lane route to the tf2 community. > > > > On 2012-04-25 14:41, dan wrote: > >> On 25/04/2012 22:12, Cameron Munroe wrote: >> >>> Many players find a server that works and then stick with it. I even did >>> it, I played on Lotusclan and didn't even care to explore, until of course >>> lotusclan started going nuts that is, and many other players are the same. >>> I also only found lotusclan servers because of a friend otherwise I would >>> never have gone to them. >>> >>> People like to stick to what they know. >>> >> >> I'd agree with you that people join servers from their history and/or >> favourites, but that precludes this idea that broken quickplay is the >> issue. >> >> I doubt very much that all, but the very casual player only use one >> server though. >> >> Your own description seems to suggest that you stuck to what worked >> for you rather than what you know. >> >> No server can take more than 24-32 people at a time can it? No matter >> how good it is or whether you know about it or not. >> So you were either very lucky that the server was never full or you >> would have had to play on other servers. >> >> Your story also suggests that in spite of you saying you only knew of >> lotusclan because of a friend (doesn't sound like much of a friend to >> me if he said join lotusclan but :) ) when it mattered you could find >> another server. >> Some seem to believe that new players are incapable of this, as >> though finding a server requires a phd in computer science or >> something. >> >> You were proclaiming, perhaps not completely seriously that the user >> base were some kind of addicts incapable of resisting the urge to join >> Valve's servers because Valve had somehow trapped them via quickplay. >> It might make the plot of a comic, but I don't think it's very >> realistic. >> >> Besides, what could anyone do anyway? If you're 1 out of 1000 servers >> that are within 50 ping limit of a bunch of players, those people have >> 1/1000 chance of being picked if they made the chance of joining each >> server equal. >> >> And, if there aren't 24000 players in that local set, not all the >> servers will get players with the best will in the world. Some servers >> are always going to be empty and all servers are going to be empty at >> some times. The former because there are more servers than necessary >> and the latter because people eat, work and sleep. >> >> There has to be a bias towards servers that are populated (and >> towards ping) which will throw those odds more. >> >> In short, you have no real chance of getting players on a server and >> most of the time our servers aren't needed - anything that happens to >> buck that trend, is probably just a happy accident. >> > > -- > -- Cameron Munroe > > http://www.cameronmunroe.com/ > http://www.munroenet.com/ > http://www.gaming-servers.net/ > > ______________________________**_________________ > To unsubscribe, edit your list preferences, or view the list archives, > please visit: > https://list.valvesoftware.**com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/**hlds_linux<https://list.valvesoftware.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/hlds_linux> > _______________________________________________ To unsubscribe, edit your list preferences, or view the list archives, please visit: https://list.valvesoftware.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/hlds_linux
