What makes a server popular?

[(TM)KillJoy]

Re: What makes a server popular?

I flip-flop between Infantry Only and Helos maps. So, here's what I look for. First, ping, of course the lower the better, and when I see a server with a ping of zero, I don't even try it. (I don't agree with trying to do this on purpose)

Second, size. For IO, the mid-size city maps are best. 32 players on a 32 player map is ideal. 32 players on a 16 player map is a nade spamming, cluster-****, and getting killed from who knows where. 32 players on a 64 player map is too much running. So, keep it to 32 on a 32, and in the city. (Karkand, Sharqui, Mashtuur ...in that order)

For the Helos (air), 32 players on a 64 player map rox. A 16 player map just doesn't work, and 60 players on the same map is just another cluster-****. You get 10 players trying to get the same vehicle, a higher percentage of asshats, TKer's, whiners, and wacked-out Admins. There are people that like this, but I avoid it, unless of course, I'm in the mood to join in; which is rare. Dalian, Daqing, Oman ...in that order (I'm into Helos, not jets). You gotta have rules, just keep them to a minimum, and let people know if its ok to attack uncaps. A server will empty quick, if all your doing is spawning in to get raped. When that is happening, I will either quit spawning until next round, or go find another server. Better to have most players having a good time, than a few having fun, and the rest mad and leaving.

[CobraBall]

Re: What makes a server popular?

First, stacking can easily go both ways.

Second, not all clan members have admin and autobalance is turned on for the server. This means that unless their team has more members it will be hard for them to switch themselves.

More often than not, I find myself on the losing end of a stacked team on BOB's server. I spoke up about it today and suggested a randomization and the admin replied that I could shut up or leave. Then we switch maps to Sharqi and the teams are skewed such that the round ends up lasting about 5minutes before MEC had every flag. Then the admin realized that maybe a randomization wasn't such a bad idea and he turned the randomizing on.

Don't get me wrong, I love BOB's server, but I get tired of ending up on a team with nary an officer, while the other team is full of Trashed, GT, SI, and EK colonels, captains and generals. Losing games 0-250 tickets isn't much fun.

[DR Kop]

Re: What makes a server popular?

More often than not, I find myself on the losing end of a stacked team on (Insert XXXXX here) server.

I feel your pain mate.

More often than not these days I see frantic switching, lame joining as soon as things go the shape of the pear for a team.

Randomization and the inability to even try to switch sides would be the best way to go. I don't even understand what EA was thinking by giving people the ability to switch...Madness......Pure Madness.

[FPS[VT_NERD]]

Re: What makes a server popular?

More often than not, I find myself on the losing end of a stacked team on BOB's server. I spoke up about it today and suggested a randomization and the admin replied that I could shut up or leave. Then we switch maps to Sharqi and the teams are skewed such that the round ends up lasting about 5minutes before MEC had every flag. Then the admin realized that maybe a randomization wasn't such a bad idea and he turned the randomizing on.

Don't get me wrong, I love BOB's server, but I get tired of ending up on a team with nary an officer, while the other team is full of Trashed, GT, SI, and EK colonels, captains and generals. Losing games 0-250 tickets isn't much fun.

I definitely understand. The only people that are ever purposefully moved to be on the same team are people w/ [gT] or eK tags or random people who join our TeamSpeak. If you've ever played with a group of people, it's more fun to play with them than against them.

I dunno who SI is, but them and FAV tend to work their way onto our team when given an opportunity. We definitely don't move the good non-clan members to the same team, ever. I think our regular players know we're good and the high-ranks do everything in their power to switch onto our team. Unfortunately, there's nothing I can do to automatically prevent this behavior.

As for the admin telling you to shut up or leave, I really don't have much to say without seeing the chat log. Your version of "suggested" may or may not have been interpreted as a suggestion and the person talking to you may not even have admin or even be in the clan (I can see the logs after midnight CST). Of course if it needs to be looked into further I can do that (preferably via PM or our server praise/kick/ban/suggestion/complaint forums @ bandofbrothersgaming.com).

The bottom line for us is: we don't want to play the same side 2 rounds in a row. I don't want to be stuck on the USMC carrier in Wake for 2 rounds because randomization didn't switch me. I don't want to be USMC on Sharqi and get capped out 2 rounds in a row. I don't want to get raped by the J10 for 2 rounds in a row on Dalian. I think you get the idea. So you will never find a time that the BoB servers randomize every round.

If someone were to find or make a Python modmanager script that would randomize teams on map change and switch teams between rounds on the same map we would be using it immediately. Until such time as this script becomes available, it's totally dependent on who has admin and to a lesser degree whether that admin has the sufficient permissions to turn on randomization (most, but not all, can do this).

It has been a pet project of mine, but I don't know Python and going is very slow for me.

I feel like I've hijacked this thread onto the issue of obtaining a modmanager script for randomization so I'll try to stay on topic and/or STFU.

[CobraBall]

Re: What makes a server popular?

I definitely understand. The only people that are ever purposefully moved to be on the same team are people w/ [gT] or eK tags or random people who join our TeamSpeak. If you've ever played with a group of people, it's more fun to play with them than against them.

I dunno who SI is, but them and FAV tend to work their way onto our team when given an opportunity. We definitely don't move the good non-clan members to the same team, ever. I think our regular players know we're good and the high-ranks do everything in their power to switch onto our team. Unfortunately, there's nothing I can do to automatically prevent this behavior.

No, I understand, it's cool. I understand you all wanting to play together, afterall it's your server. But when you're all playing on the same team together, and you possess 70% of the talent in the game, it's not much fun for the other team. Maybe I'm just a whiner, I don't know. I could careless about winning the actual rounds in this context, but I'd like to go into a round knowing that I at least had a chance. I'd rather have an awesome fight going down to the wire rather than *either* team raping.

As for the admin telling you to shut up or leave, I really don't have much to say without seeing the chat log. Your version of "suggested" may or may not have been interpreted as a suggestion and the person talking to you may not even have admin or even be in the clan (I can see the logs after midnight CST). Of course if it needs to be looked into further I can do that (preferably via PM or our server praise/kick/ban/suggestion/complaint forums @ bandofbrothersgaming.com).

Nah, it's not a big deal. I'm not looking to make an issue out of it. I don't think I was offensive nor did I use any coarse language, it's pretty irrelevant.

The bottom line for us is: we don't want to play the same side 2 rounds in a row. I don't want to be stuck on the USMC carrier in Wake for 2 rounds because randomization didn't switch me. I don't want to be USMC on Sharqi and get capped out 2 rounds in a row. I don't want to get raped by the J10 for 2 rounds in a row on Dalian. I think you get the idea. So you will never find a time that the BoB servers randomize every round.

I understand that too. Though I think with randomization, you stand a pretty decent chance of playing both sides on a map, especially if you play more than two rounds. The odds that you'd end up playing the same side even twice in a row are less than playing different sides. I realize for the most part that the teams aren't purposely stacked, but when it does happen w/o randomization, there's pretty much nothing one can do about it until it plays out over attrition(people coming and going). That or an admin randomizing by hand.


But yeah, sorry for the hijack. Great server, I play there under "slags83".

[FPS[VT_NERD]]

Re: What makes a server popular?

I understand that too. Though I think with randomization, you stand a pretty decent chance of playing both sides on a map, especially if you play more than two rounds. The odds that you'd end up playing the same side even twice in a row are less than playing different sides. I realize for the most part that the teams aren't purposely stacked, but when it does happen w/o randomization, there's pretty much nothing one can do about it until it plays out over attrition(people coming and going). That or an admin randomizing by hand.

Randomization works by taking half the people in the server and switching them. We're probably never going to have more than 2 rounds per map so basically you have a 50% chance of being team switched in randomization.

If 24 people out of 48 are swapped then 24 people are of course left alone. That should also equate to 12 people per team who do not move. If I just played as USMC on Wake then I now have a 50% chance of playing that side again. The odds just aren't acceptable IMO and if I randomize teams myself I always do it on map change so that nobody gets stuck two rounds on the "bad" side of a map.

But anways, Iron Weasel needs help with getting his server popular

[Iron_Weasel]

Re: What makes a server popular?

Well, VT, we're actually getting a fair amount of people in now.

A lot of it has to do with implementing some of the suggestions from you guys, and I've been "promoting" it via the Game Monitor in my sig and other methods.

[Dairuka]

Re: What makes a server popular?

Team Randomization is only good on.

A. 24/7 servers.
B. Servers that play multiple rounds of the same map. 3 rounds with team randomization would be optimal.

I believe there is also a BF2CC function out there that prevents certain clan-tags from being switched by team randomization or auto-balance. So you may want to do some research into it.

[Tiglath]

Re: What makes a server popular?

Set the map rotation so Karkand is played every other map. It is amazing how quickly this map will fill a server.

Disable map, mutiny and kick votes. There are always people who will try to use these to get their way or just to be a pain in the ***.

FF off!

I and the rest of my clan always play on the same side. If you are going to do this then you need to make sure your clan mates know and understand that when your clan/team starts to dominate rounds then you will need to have some clan members "sit out" a round or two. Pub players will typically try to jump on the side of the clan so you will need to make sure someone is moving players around.

For what it's worth, we (dA!) do not have the best reputation (Dairuka bite your tongue) but our server is full or close to it.

[Berrern]

Re: What makes a server popular?

First, ping, of course the lower the better, and when I see a server with a ping of zero, I don't even try it. (I don't agree with trying to do this on purpose)

I totally agree with you here.
I never enter 0-ping servers either, as I have to sit through the loading just to see if my ping is playable. I always pick a low-ping server instead.

[waaah_wah]

Re: 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.

Well retarded admins obviously make a server more popular... Just look at da! servers

[Iron_Weasel]

Re: What makes a server popular?

We haven't increased the number of rounds per map yet, but will probably do so in the next few days. The team randomization isn't completely finalized yet either, it's still in the experimental stages.

[Rifocs442]

Re: What makes a server popular?

Team Randomization: Agree with the party who wrote 3 rounds a map with randomization on, would be better than 2 rounds a map for the reasons given "stuck on the carrier 2 rds in a row on Wake; capped out on Sharqi 2 rds in a row as USMC; etc.".

Hidden Ping: Agree that I never even attempt to join a server with a Ping showing as "0" (zero). I go for a server that I know has a (relatively) low ping because the ping is showing... Unless the server is the only one with players and the map you want, or you've been to the server before and know you have low lag, why would someone take a chance to load up a server and THEN find out that your ping is high and you have excessive lag ?