Interview on Ranked Servers

[Vuk]

You folks have probably seen this ?

http://www.planetquakewars.net/content.php?article.56

[Tempus]

Good god, they're going the EA Battlefield route. "Trusted Servers", stats, and unlocks.

Not a good sign at all...

[UnDeaD77]

At least they are open to the community. This could mean they possibly could approve community based maps for ranked play.

[ScratchMonkey]

"Trust" is in the eye of the beholder. Better to decentralize stat collecting and let independent groups (like leagues) operate their own trust networks. A good architecture would allow a server to report stats to several such networks, and those networks could decide which servers to trust for their stats.

[FBmantis]

Thankfully there is no unlock system though...its just stats and virtual ranks. Thus hopefully the playerbase will be more receptive to 'unranked' servers.

One thing I hope is like ET is servers having the ability to transfer maps to the client. There was one server I played on for a while because new maps were often being added and there was no hassle to the playerbase to find them...it auto downloaded everything and you loaded right in after being done. If that ability is still there it should be a much bigger draw then official stats and ranking ... I'll bet that ability is gone though.:/ If not because of competition to ranked servers then because of the sheer size these maps may be.

[UnDeaD77]

Originally Posted by FBmantis

Thankfully there is no unlock system though...its just stats and virtual ranks. Thus hopefully the playerbase will be more receptive to 'unranked' servers.

One thing I hope is like ET is servers having the ability to transfer maps to the client. There was one server I played on for a while because new maps were often being added and there was no hassle to the playerbase to find them...it auto downloaded everything and you loaded right in after being done. If that ability is still there it should be a much bigger draw then official stats and ranking ... I'll bet that ability is gone though.:/ If not because of competition to ranked servers then because of the sheer size these maps may be.

I'm wondering how large the maps will be. 100+ MB? I miss that auto-download feature so much. Old ET you'd never get bored, because there was always some new map to download and play.

[ScratchMonkey]

Oh yeah, UT2004 had the auto-download feature. And you could redirect the download to a separate web server, so it wouldn't lag those playing on the game server. (This was inherited by Tribes Vengeance, a UT engine derivative.)

If the maps are particularly big, it would be nice to integrate a torrent client so that other players would push the map to you.

[deathknight]

Originally Posted by ScratchMonkey

"Trust" is in the eye of the beholder. Better to decentralize stat collecting and let independent groups (like leagues) operate their own trust networks. A good architecture would allow a server to report stats to several such networks, and those networks could decide which servers to trust for their stats.

I think stat collecting and such leads to less team work. I'd like to see them collect only the stats that are team based like objectives taken, defended, times you have revived teammates, etc.

Your suggestion would work I think if they had a robust anti-cheat system in place tho.

[ScratchMonkey]

The issue of trust is independent of client cheating. It's a question of whether the entity collecting the stats trusts the game server operator.

The stats collector needs to track which servers supplied which stats (perhaps through a PKI system) so that it can invalidate stats retroactively if a server operator has been discovered to be faking stats. This creates pressure to run a "clean" server. Few will want to play on a stat-padding server if it means their stats might get revoked en masse.

You still need a robust anti-cheating system for the client.

[millipede777]

Originally Posted by Tempus

Good god, they're going the EA Battlefield route. "Trusted Servers", stats, and unlocks.

Not a good sign at all...

The unlocks aren't like Battlefield at all. You unlock them over the course of a campaign (just 3 maps) and then they get reset so the playing field is level. The only way it would be anything like BF with persistent unlocks is if the server you're playing on has an XP save mod running. Even then, the unlocks would only remain on that server. The "trusted" servers are only better (if you care about stats) because they report your game stats to the central server. Since I don't care about stats at all, and I doubt that many other people here care either, playing on trusted servers doesn't matter at all.

Originally Posted by ScratchMonkey

Oh yeah, UT2004 had the auto-download feature. And you could redirect the download to a separate web server, so it wouldn't lag those playing on the game server. (This was inherited by Tribes Vengeance, a UT engine derivative.)

If the maps are particularly big, it would be nice to integrate a torrent client so that other players would push the map to you.

The map downloading for UT204 was great. I hope they have something like this. Anything better than Battlefield 2 would be nice. Getting kicked from the server with the generic kick message because you don't have a map sucks. It doesn't even tell you what map it is so you can go find it.

It looks a whole lot better than the system Battlefield uses to me.