Re: Ranked Server? Frank Discussion.

**Boot** · 08-02-2006, 02:59 AM

I haven't been on server much lately, and while it's summer up here the days are longer and the kids are up later... the house quiets down later and I still have the mandatory RL items to handle. By the time done with them it's usually time to catch a few hours of sleep before the day starts over.

Ranking the server won't change my schedule, but I fully intend to be back into BF2 when the days get darker. I'd be very surprised if I was the only one.

**thebleakaffinity** · 08-02-2006, 03:57 AM

As far as seeding the server vs. pub raiding goes, I think it's kind of unfair to expect four or five people to sit on the server and try and seed it during low population times. Some people have limited time to play, and if they'll have more fun going on a pub raid with other people rather than seeding the server or staying on late with only a few people on it, then it's not their duty to try and keep the server up.

**Calvin** · 08-02-2006, 04:42 AM

It almost worked tonight Bleak!

Started out w/ only 3, but quickly ballooned to 6 peeps at about 2AM

**thebleakaffinity** · 08-02-2006, 04:47 AM

lol, yeah, we had a good turnout, and lots of knife and shock paddle action.

**Snail88** · 08-02-2006, 06:18 AM

Originally Posted by JMJ

Warnings, kicks, bans, selecting maps and map sizes, contacting people for "poor" play outside of the game, kicking non-SM's to make room for SM's, you name it. It's a job that takes effort, and on top of that people no longer like you

If it was ranked you wouldnt have to worry about map size lol But yea, you admins do a hell of a lot and i really dont want to deter you guys from haivng fun as well.

**asch** · 08-02-2006, 08:37 AM

Originally Posted by undead77

As a bf2 admin myself, having to kick people off the server that are not in a squad is seriously a pain in the ass. It really is. 2 warnings then a kick. Now mutiply that by about 4 or 5 people, havng to do that to. It's really hard to concentrate on the game.

And if I'm not mistaken, if EA heard that your ranked server was kicking people for not being in squads, then they would take action against the server. EA does not support kicking people for not being in squads.

**BigGaayAl** · 08-02-2006, 09:00 AM

I'll just add my experiences from last night, while you keep in mind it takes me about 10 minutes to load the game. I connect to TG as a m8 of mine is connecting as well. Shongua stalemate, I start a sniper squad. Calvin joined me immediatly with whom I had good rounds on the last tacmod. My friend is disconnected because he went for a smoke (his fault off course). Near the end of the rounds he comes back. But this time he's gone to the toilet. As he comes back he is disconnected again as I am because a booster map came up.

What I have an issue with here is: the maprotation.

Is it just me or is it vanilla map / booster map / vanilla/booster and so on???? The last 3 times I connected, I always played half a map and then got kicked. Basic curtousy would say that you put a few vanilla in succession and then a few boosters.

Face it no-one is going to force anything to buy anything. Is the maprotation conceived with forcing booster packs in mid?

I know I'm whining a bit, but these experiences are really very frustrating and totally keep me from playing some vanilla maps on TG 1.

Question to the admins: Please add the maprotation in a sticky somewhere so that I know wether and when I can play more than one map on your server. Thanks in advance.

*edit* I picked this part of a rotation up in another thread. I believe it was from last night.

Originally Posted by sordavie

End of Songhua: 27
Beginning of Great Wall: 13
End of Kubra: 32
Beginning of Road Rage: 22
Sharqi: at least 38
Quarry: never much more than 23, if even that.
Karkand: I'm not sure did anyone check? At least 25
Songhua: 40
End of Oman: 36
Beginning of Harvest: 14 which turned into 10 after a minute.

Frankly, that is the worst possible maprotation I could imagine. And bound to alienate people.

**PanzerHans** · 08-02-2006, 09:33 AM

I belive the decline of population is inevitable. The game is getting old and the western hemisphere has the joys of summer. When 2142 comes out the server is going to be very sparsly populated and I believe there is nothing short of becoming ranked that will get it filled up. And frankly I'm not sure going ranked will help for long either....

We Europeans, have seen this thing coming a lot earlier than you US guys as our playing time are at odd hours(in your perspective), but it did seem to predict the main gaming trends for TG-Battlefield2 games(Server1).

The only real option for us(TG euros) is going pubraid unless there is a scrim if we wish to play with our TG likes at workfriendly hours.

**UnDeaD** · 08-02-2006, 09:34 AM

Originally Posted by asch

And if I'm not mistaken, if EA heard that your ranked server was kicking people for not being in squads, then they would take action against the server. EA does not support kicking people for not being in squads.

Oh well, I don't understand EA, do they not want to promote teamwork? Their ROE is silly, and a joke at the same time. "Let's make a teamwork game, but you dare enforce teamwork, you shall be in trouble for it."

**JMJ** · 08-02-2006, 10:05 AM

Originally Posted by BigGaayAl

I'll just add my experiences from last night, while you keep in mind it takes me about 10 minutes to load the game. I connect to TG as a m8 of mine is connecting as well. Shongua stalemate, I start a sniper squad. Calvin joined me immediatly with whom I had good rounds on the last tacmod. My friend is disconnected because he went for a smoke (his fault off course). Near the end of the rounds he comes back. But this time he's gone to the toilet. As he comes back he is disconnected again as I am because a booster map came up.

What I have an issue with here is: the maprotation.

Is it just me or is it vanilla map / booster map / vanilla/booster and so on???? The last 3 times I connected, I always played half a map and then got kicked. Basic curtousy would say that you put a few vanilla in succession and then a few boosters.

Face it no-one is going to force anything to buy anything. Is the maprotation conceived with forcing booster packs in mid?

I know I'm whining a bit, but these experiences are really very frustrating and totally keep me from playing some vanilla maps on TG 1.

Question to the admins: Please add the maprotation in a sticky somewhere so that I know wether and when I can play more than one map on your server. Thanks in advance.

*edit* I picked this part of a rotation up in another thread. I believe it was from last night.

That rotation doesn't look like the rotation I setup. I believe another admin was changing maps around. I can't show you the exact rotation right now as I am at work and do not have access to it.

Basically, we attempted to set it up to have 2 vanilla, 1 booster.....wash, rinse, repeat. This ensures that those who bought the boosters get to play the maps here, yet there is still usually 2 vanilla in a row between them. I think the exception is around "Great Wall" where there is only 1 vanilla between 2 boosters. If you want to play more vanilla maps, show up this Friday for vanilla night.

Frankly, that is the worst possible maprotation I could imagine. And bound to alienate people.

Even if that were the rotation and we changed it to 4 vanilla and 1 booster, don't you think that would alienate the SM's who bought the expansions but didn't get to play them?

This should be the end of the booster vs. vanilla discussion right here. This thread was for a mature discussion on ranked servers. If you want to start whining (as you put it) about boosters, please go start your own thread doing so. Any more booster bashing in this thread will get deleted.

**JMJ** · 08-02-2006, 10:13 AM

Originally Posted by undead77

I've told pleanty of people, but they just don't want to leave their unlocks behind.

As a bf2 admin myself, having to kick people off the server that are not in a squad is seriously a pain in the ass. It really is. 2 warnings then a kick. Now mutiply that by about 4 or 5 people, havng to do that to. It's really hard to concentrate on the game.

And this would be one of the things we'd want to avoid..it's just more work.

Oh well, no one said being an admin was glamorous

**BHack** · 08-02-2006, 10:24 AM

I'll come back for 2142. My gaming trends seem to be cyclical in nature. I haven't played a videogame in almost 3 months. That last part is immaterial to this conversation but what isn't, is that BF2 is not the newborn darling it used to be. BF2, at some point, stopped being as fun for me because I had explored every nook and cranny of the game. That combined with the decline of full server games, and the total fun of the experience began to wane.

2142 will see full servers. If the game is any good, we will all get at least 6 more months of full server gaming.

**Joebar** · 08-02-2006, 11:26 AM

Originally Posted by sordavie

We need a better recruitment effort.

How about some kind of promotion or something?

/trying to think of a way for TG to give out a prize w/o encouraging crazy point whore play

**Mateo** · 08-02-2006, 11:44 AM

Looking at the responses, I see two real divisions: those who get what we are doing, and those that want it both ways: they want the protection of the TG server from boneheads, while getting the traffic that ranked servers get.

Tempus has already established that the two things are mutually exclusive, so I wonder why "ranking is the only thing that will save BF2 at Tactical Gamer" keeps coming up as the common refrain?

I'm going to quote the big man: Tactical Gamer is not for everyone. It's not meant to be. Frankly, I was surprised that the server population was so large for so long. That's a credit to the admin team, which is doing it's best to accomodate everyone, which is impossible.

What we need to do is find players and communities that are "just like us" (few and far between), and not so much poach, but market ourselves.

I have time to do it, and as Marketing Officer, I have a duty to fulfill there, but one thing I will not do is run around the web evangelizing about BF2 at Tactical Gamer as the shizzle, then have players come to empty servers. We need to get our house in order before we do any large recruitment drive.

The solution to the problem starts and ends with us.

**Reader1234** · 08-02-2006, 12:20 PM

Originally Posted by Tempus

Great points Drizzid.

Everyone keeps saying they won't join the server until they see 30 or more players. This is part of the problem. If everyone who said that actually would join the server when there were fewer players, the population would grow!

We all want to play on a full server, but we all need to do our part. The players need to seed the server, and the admins are trying to come up with new ways to attract players. Vanilla night has been a success so far, but we can expand on that. We can also do more recruiting (we do almost none now).

I wanted to add my remarks/experience to what Tempus pointed out above. Over the last few weeks I have logged on around 8-9 EST, on a Friday to try to get the server going and to support any of our EURO members that might still be on. On most of those days I will find under 10 people on the server. A few will join and a few will leave, I stick it out and we may get 20 by 9pm MST (my time zone). The booster packs will drop 3 to 7 people when they start, but again a few new bodies show up.

I would like to appeal to the rest of the TG members to stay on the server for more than 20 min. IMO we all log in hoping the server will fill, but that is not going to happen if you don't give it some time.

Yes, I know we all have a RL that effects are available game time. The upcoming high school football season will reduce my game time for the next 3 months. And,I think we all understand the drop off because of the different time zones. All I am asking of the TG community is to stay on a little longer (when you can), to support TG members in the different time zones.

I hope I have made my thoughts clear, I have reread them, but I am on vacation {RL cutting in on my gametime

} and sleeping on a pullout bed which is not comfortable

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