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  • What makes a server popular?

    The reason I ask this is because the clan I am in has seen a sharp drop in player base recently.

    2 or 3 months ago, it was packed, 50 slots out of 50, a good portion of the day. Now, however, we are lucky to have 30 people on at its peak. Originally, we had few rules...No Team Killing & No Flying Commanders. Everything else was within the scope of the rules. 98% of the clans members are over 21, and in most cases over 30. The majority of clan members pay for and have admin rights to the server. We run a full map rotation on the vanilla BF2 maps, all vehicles, and unlocks allowed. Our server is Ranked as well.

    Since we did allow base attacking and artillery, we thought that might be causing a problem. So we tried the solution of "No Base Attacking". That didn't seem to work...still saw a low number of players.
    We were a Streaming Punksbusted server....removed that as well, still no dice. Removed a couple of the less popular maps, like Songhua Stalemate, and things picked up slightly.

    I haven't mentioned the clan name or the server itself since I don't want it to look like I'm spamming for players, but I would like to know what you look for in a good server so that hopefully we can attract more players.

  • #2
    Re: What makes a server popular?

    The insomnia server with 24/7 mashtuur city, is like a midnight bar club. and it says (base raping is allowed). They have absolutley no people in the server during the day. and at like 9-4am they have 40/50 slots filled up. Have you tried making a day where you just do 24/7 map that is a fav? like Karkand? or Jalalabad, or even Mashtuur city. And your punkbuster, thats a good thing friend, considering those awesome cheaters who find servers. =D

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    • #3
      Re: What makes a server popular?

      Dont over manage server
      keep the rules small
      No bad language, no glitching
      and make and check PB screenshots, that way you keep the server clean

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      • #4
        Re: What makes a server popular?

        There's a lack of good 24/7 Dalian servers. Have you looked into making an airmaps only server?

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        • #5
          Re: What makes a server popular?

          Originally posted by Sloi
          There's a lack of good 24/7 Dalian servers. Have you looked into making an airmaps only server?
          Boo!!

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          • #6
            Re: What makes a server popular?

            Go back to the working formula. If anything, you might have found a competitior, check them out, maybe they have a bigger server. What you can do, is increase in quality of service. Start with absolutely no lag (as much as humanly possible), create a good playing field with as much freedom as you can, if it means allowing baseraping, its a go. Create an environment where you have as less made up rules as possible so people would be focused on PLAYING the game, rather than watching out for loophones of justice. Get your admins act up, make them play the game and have fun and not overpolice the server. Kick for bad behaviour or obvious hacks. Keep it as close to "battlefield 2" as possible. Because you seemed to be at that place before the drop.

            Get back to the working formula, I suggest you set up a meeting with your fellow clanmates and figure out what that working formula was.

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            • #7
              Re: What makes a server popular?

              admins that arent power tripping asshats, popular maps.

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              • #8
                Re: What makes a server popular?

                host AI X mod on the server, that'll get you many more people including alot of my friends who need a good server.

                but some of the main reasons for loss of people is players encountering glitchers, hackers or abusive admins, even punkbuster is annoying when it randomly decides that pbstrkA or K isnt loaded... so check into that

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                • #9
                  Re: What makes a server popular?

                  Nothing kills a server's population faster than teamstacking.

                  I would suggest randomizing players at the start of every round.

                  Another good way to increase the population of your server would be to hide the server pings, that way it shows up as 0 ping on BF2's search console.

                  Team Alacrity, and (core) are two good examples of servers than do both of these. As a result, they get players from all over the world playing on their server 24/7, and the best part is that they stick around.

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                  • #10
                    Re: What makes a server popular?

                    I think it comes down to rotation, rules and admin/clan member conduct.

                    Don't feel as if you have to do a 24/7 Karkand to get players, but also don't be afraid to play Karkand or other popular maps (Wake, Oman, etc) more frequently in your rotation.

                    As for rules, put as many as you want but hold clan members to the highest standard and make sure enforcement is equal across both teams. Usually less rules is better as far as popularity goes, but what good is a popular server that none of your clan members want to play on? Avoid changing the rules at all costs...people tend to want consistency and you will get regulars. If the things they could do yesterday are suddenly illegal today they will go somewhere else.

                    Last, admin conduct is a no-brainer. Don't kick peopel to take their vehicle. Don't kick people for hacking just because they kill you a few times. It's pretty much common sense, but try to make sure your admins check their egos/emotions when they get ready to kick or ban someone.

                    P.S. A descriptive server name might also help you attract people. When people look for a server I think the first thing they see is server name. If the name is something like "clan monkey boyz [MB] server" nobody is really going to know what to expect when they join.

                    P.P.S. Put a game-monitor (or similar) image in your signature. There's no shame in getting a bit of server promotion here while making legitimate posts and answering questions. There's even a server promotion subforum where you can put a post all about your server and why people should join it .

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                    • #11
                      Re: What makes a server popular?

                      make a European force server, i believe their is only 3 now

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                      • #12
                        Re: What makes a server popular?

                        Definitely either a 24/7 Karkand I/O or a 24/7 City Maps (Karkand, Sharqi, Mashtuur) w/ Vehicles. Those rotations are sure to fill a server up as long as the server isn't "over-adminned". If you put in place too many rules like no bhopping, no dolphin diving, no clay spamming, etc, then people will come on start doing them and be kicked. Nobody wants that to happen. Just keep the rules plain and simple. The only rule I would maybe put in place is no baseraping.

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                        • #13
                          Re: What makes a server popular?

                          And we have got a troll on our hands.

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                          • #14
                            Re: What makes a server popular?

                            All good ideas that I've received, and I'm actually surprised at most of the answers. I figured I'd probably get a bunch of 10 year olds giving me a bunch of asinine responses.
                            Kudos to you guys for that.

                            Now, let me address some of the points that were brought up:
                            1) PB screenshots - We have 2 people who review them on a daily basis and ban people as needed.

                            2) Hackers / Glitchers - Clan members are on the server almost all the time, and since the vast majority of us have admin rights, anyone caught glitching or proven to be hacking (via screenshots or other methods) is banned on the spot.

                            3) Admin Conduct - We allow all players access to any vehicle as long as they are courteous. If someone gets in an attack helo and crashes repeatedly, we ask them to please allow someone else to use that particular vehicle. If they follow our request, great. If not, we don't punish them for it. Last night, as an example, we had a player who was a Captain who kept raping our team with an F-18 / J-10...he went something like 65 - 1 on Dalian and then 80 - 3 on Daqing...we let him keep on playing without accusing him of hacking or anything else.

                            4) Teamstacking - We try to avoid this and keep our members balanced on each team. Pubbers, we usually just let them go on whatever team as far as auto-balance will allow them. Although, I think we may look into randomizing the teams at round start.

                            5) Map rotation - With the exception of Songhua Stalemate, which isn't in the rotation at all, we run each map with 1 round per map.

                            That aside, we have had a small increase by reverting to the "old ways" where we allow anything but the two rules I mentioned in the first post. We do have a small base of about 6 - 8 regulars who play, but random people who join the server usually only stay for a round or two at the most, so we don't usually get feedback from them.

                            I'll talk to the other members and see if there's a way we can implement some of these suggestions.

                            Comment


                            • #15
                              Re: What makes a server popular?

                              Originally posted by Iron_Weasel View Post
                              All good ideas that I've received, and I'm actually surprised at most of the answers. I figured I'd probably get a bunch of 10 year olds giving me a bunch of asinine responses.
                              Kudos to you guys for that.

                              Now, let me address some of the points that were brought up:
                              1) PB screenshots - We have 2 people who review them on a daily basis and ban people as needed.

                              2) Hackers / Glitchers - Clan members are on the server almost all the time, and since the vast majority of us have admin rights, anyone caught glitching or proven to be hacking (via screenshots or other methods) is banned on the spot.

                              3) Admin Conduct - We allow all players access to any vehicle as long as they are courteous. If someone gets in an attack helo and crashes repeatedly, we ask them to please allow someone else to use that particular vehicle. If they follow our request, great. If not, we don't punish them for it. Last night, as an example, we had a player who was a Captain who kept raping our team with an F-18 / J-10...he went something like 65 - 1 on Dalian and then 80 - 3 on Daqing...we let him keep on playing without accusing him of hacking or anything else.

                              4) Teamstacking - We try to avoid this and keep our members balanced on each team. Pubbers, we usually just let them go on whatever team as far as auto-balance will allow them. Although, I think we may look into randomizing the teams at round start.

                              5) Map rotation - With the exception of Songhua Stalemate, which isn't in the rotation at all, we run each map with 1 round per map.

                              That aside, we have had a small increase by reverting to the "old ways" where we allow anything but the two rules I mentioned in the first post. We do have a small base of about 6 - 8 regulars who play, but random people who join the server usually only stay for a round or two at the most, so we don't usually get feedback from them.

                              I'll talk to the other members and see if there's a way we can implement some of these suggestions.
                              I don`t know about the majority of BF2 players but I hate 1 round servers. For some people it takes half the timelimit to load the bloody map in the first place, and some want to play on both sides during the same map.

                              in PR 1 round per map makes sence, but not in BF2 imo.

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