Grunt 70

Good arguments in all cases....but I voted for two passworded servers...hmm...wondering now if one open and one passworded one is the right approach. Sounds good in theory but in reality it doesn't play out as well as it sounds...

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Taxi

In my opinion the quality of gameplay is much more dependant on good leadership/organization then on requiring a password or not. Everytime I play with some good TG, ST, or other leaders, missions are played out in an organised fashion, VON use is extensive and it is just a bucket load of fun (to me at least). I reckon having people play a few times in these conditions does more to their desire and ability to play tactical than all SOP's together (those are necessary as well off course). It's just that with more people on the server you also need more leaders and there aren't always enough good ones around.

Yesterday I saw TG and ST taking first two places in the browser list with a combined total of 70 players. That made me smile and strengthened my conviction that the majority of the ArmA community wants to play tactical as long as it is not too hard to attain for them. I think being the 3rd ranked server is out of the window when the password is putt back on the large server.

Tempus

Speaking as an outsider, but one who has been around this community for several years and seen this question asked many times with other titles...

Passwording both servers will greatly restrict the growth of the TG ArmA community. Period. If we had that policy when CS was the only game in town, TG would have been dead by now. If we had that policy when BF2 was the only game in town, TG would have been dead by now. Luckily, those games stayed open and allowed for the growth of the playerbase that has enabled TG to be able to support ArmA today. Closing this title may be a tempting solution for the short-term, but it will definitely affect the long-term growth of both the game and the TG community as a whole.

I suggest either hold PW nights a few times a week, or only passwording one server. However, the latter option may yield some uneven populations on the server, often in unexpected ways....

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-- Suits are what you wear when doing things you shouldn’t want to do anyway.

FROM THE TACTICAL GAMER PRIMER.
3) Support game play in a near-simulation environment. Where the focus of play would not be solely on doing what it takes to win, but doing so utilizing real-world combat strategy and tactics rather than leveraging exploits provided to players by the design of the game engine.

ednos

CS:S and BF2 haven't had the problems with blatant cheating. They may be more common in those games, but they're a far smaller percentage of the players. ArmA also has very poor administration tools (if you thought BF2CC was a pain in the ass...) and also requires a lot more organization to prevent complete chaos (even PRM can be played, if not well, with organization strictly on the squad level). We need a password a large percentage of the time, I'd say, and we need to change the password every now and then (monthly, perhaps). The alternative is having significantly more coverage from the administration, which I'm not sure is even possible.

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The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt. ~ Bertrand Russell
I have a tendency to key out three or four things and then let them battle for supremacy while I key, so there's a lot of backspacing as potential statements are slaughtered and eaten by the victors. ~ Magna Centipede

tHa_KhAn

@Tempus,

Good perspective. However, with the lack of admin tools and the ease of changing game files a server can be ruined much faster than other games. The other thing to note is that in ArmA any player can end up with admin powers. That alone can create issues with open servers.

The one thing as an outsider that would be hard for you to have seen is the fact that ArmA is really the worst pickup/pub game. It requires far more organization and teamwork to get anything done. Any mission is easily ruined by one player, not just the experience, but the actual possibility of completing the mission. The time investment needed to play ArmA is high even for one mission and it stinks to have one guy waste an unrecoverable asset or blow the cover after an hour investment, just because he was bored. Not saying a password solves that, but it keeps people who go "Look, large population I wanna play" from joining.

Also, to note is that we had two passworded servers and had good growth at one point. The catch was is we had popular missions with certain restrictions running. Most nights had comparable populations. And I think we did the opposite as far as password night, we had unpassworded nights and days on the weekends. This allowed the regs to have decent games during the week when time was limited and open games when there was more time to teach on the weekends.

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Gen.Joe

Repeating what Krako said, the major problem with leaving one passworded and the other not, is that you're going to get all the regulars and TG members in the passworded server, and all the new guys who want to have a good experience in the unpassworded server. In the end, the regulars have a good time, but the new guys have ArmA completely ruined for them because the server is filled with smacktards and no one is willing to lead anything.

Passwording both servers might be a good idea, but we need to put a [PW at tacticalgamer.com] type tag on the server name to attract people who actually want to join up, but then again any new players wont have any idea that tactical gamer is any different than the standard evo server. Ah nevermind, I could go all day with this, but i'll just end it here

Taxi

Hmm KhAn, I'm not sure if I can agree with you there. The last couple of nights the server population has on average peaked at about 35 players. Honestly I can't remember I ever saw such high server populations on ArmA at TG. I reckon it about tripled, I don't think this thread was started because the were close to 30 players each night:
http://www.tacticalgamer.com/armed-a...every-one.html
I can imagine there are many good arguments to have one or both servers passworded, but I don't think equal server populations is one of them.

I could imagine seeing enjoyable/tactical gameplay with having the server passworded and each time there is a bunch of good leaders you trust allow them to throw off the password, but I would expect that's not really possible from a practical POV.

AMosely

I voted for one passworded just because I think its a good compromise, but would support both passworded.

I'll also mention that I support a passworded persistent server - by persistent I mean ongoing mission(s) with respawn as opposed to strict co-op.

Magnum50

my 2 cents... torned between two choices... both have positives and negitives...

On the one hand, keeping them both open means more players more times on... but it also means the occasional a55hat can come in and ruin a game... but in the 10 times or so I've played on a open server 8 were fantastic...teamwork and tactics, the other 2 ruined by just 1 player.

On the other hand, passwording the servers mean less chance of finding people online and playing, but when you do better games with people you know.

So like I said, torned... but my question/point... We keep opening all our servers to "bring in new people"... why should us SM's bother to re-new our membership. (sure we should to support our servers and keep them up), but the question comes up, especially in these troubled financial times...WHY?

and like someone said, if one is open and the other not... the open will be abused, while the passworded hardly used.

IMO

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jex

lol not so clear cut is it

Personally I don't really care if players get the short change on one server - why would that concern me considering I wish to play with like minded people in a tactical environment. Yes good games can be had on public servers but it can also be ruined. I don't really want to have to work at a game, I have a job that takes care of the work aspect. When I get home I want some good games.

If the PW server is full, then that means we have 20 or so people who have visited the site and found the PW which means they were impressed enough to be bothered to find out more - great that's what we want.

It seems people think that the other server will have more idiots on it. Well if that was the case we would have that now on both servers and I don't think we do that much.

We can also promote the other server, and TG, by playing good games on the other server and then giving players a heads up that we have a PW'd server for even more tactical gaming.

It only takes 4 players willing to SL/FTL on one server for it to be a good mission. I've posted this up before but I'll say it again, the better played missions are those with willing SL/FTL'ers. A server that has these slots filled up will play out ok and those that don't follow orders will be kicked/shot. getting good games on a non PW'd server is not difficult.

There is also the SM's to think of too. They pay for the servers and quite frankly, if I were an SM, I'd be wanting a PW server so I could be gaurenteed a decent nights gaming.

i think this really needs to be a team effort though. We need to police the servers to some extent and work as a community to keep our way of playing. People can always join another server if a tactical one doesn't suit them.

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Jex.

Predator19

you raised some good points but i think the majority of them can all be resolved by passwording the server and having public nights and broadcasting the website on the server.

how many public nights per week would have to be determined in order to get the best balance but i think that it would be the way forward. what does everyone else think?

ednos

How about having "public nights" during the week and passwords Friday and Saturday?

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The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt. ~ Bertrand Russell
I have a tendency to key out three or four things and then let them battle for supremacy while I key, so there's a lot of backspacing as potential statements are slaughtered and eaten by the victors. ~ Magna Centipede

jex

Sounds like a good compromise. That way people get to play on the servers and if they like what they play during the week then they should join the forums and find the PW there.

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Jex.

tHa_KhAn

I did not mean to imply the recent past. The summer last year leading into the fall there was plenty of activity after the US release. No one had a problem finding the passwords and joining. We actually had two very distinct servers. Then the servers began to change their missions and purpose and population dwindled. It is the working in game VON that has more to do with a resurgence of the game than anything. I personally could not play the game for months because of hardware configuration after the first beta patch was applied to the servers where VON caused blue screens(Yes I know there was a work around, but was not 100% for me).

Most of the opinion depends on when and who you play with. I've not seen anything new that amazed me as far as organization and teamwork. The same problems exist that always existed on a public server. I'm also not suggesting that a password fixes these issues. I feel the best is to have public/open days with two passworded servers which has been mentioned before

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Krako

I like the idea of having a ''no password nights''. friday, saturday sounds fine to open up the servers.

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