TF2 server restructure

[Clavus]

As most of our TF2 players will know, our Payload / CP and King of the Hill servers haven't been doing that great, barely getting any players. This morning the TF2 update killed Koth for some mysterious reason so I guess this is as good of a moment as any other to restructure.

What will happen:

1) Koth is going to be removed

2) Payload / CP will change, but might be removed altogether if we can't really figure something out for it

3) Arena will stay as-is because it runs fooking great

I prefer we change Payload / CP to something where the GC shop items still matter but that's a background issue.

There are a few options being thrown around for the Payload server change:

1) TF2 Allround. Make the server have vote options for Payload (Race) / CP / CTF / Koth maps.

2) VS Saxton Hale. My impression: I think the popularity of this mode has faded by now but people can prove me wrong on this.

3) 24/7 instant respawn 64 player 2fort

4) "MR. GREEN ARENA 2 TOURNAMENT NOCRITS NOSPREAD NO SANDMAN ONLY DICKWATS ALLOWED" (actually no)

Share your thoughts.

[Hundred2]

Everyone knows true skilled warriors fight with randomspread, crits and randomdamage to give those noobish rookies a chance, we can't slaughter them 24/7 can't we.

[Iulian]

As most of our TF2 players will know, our Payload / CP and King of the Hill servers haven't been doing that great, barely getting any players. This morning the TF2 update killed Koth for some mysterious reason so I guess this is as good of a moment as any other to restructure.

What will happen:

1) Koth is going to be removed

2) Payload / CP will change, but might be removed altogether if we can't really figure something out for it

3) Arena will stay as-is because it runs fooking great

I prefer we change Payload / CP to something where the GC shop items still matter but that's a background issue.

There are a few options being thrown around for the Payload server change:

1) TF2 Allround. Make the server have vote options for Payload (Race) / CP / CTF / Koth maps.

2) VS Saxton Hale. My impression: I think the popularity of this mode has faded by now but people can prove me wrong on this.

3) 24/7 instant respawn 64 player 2fort

4) "MR. GREEN ARENA 2 TOURNAMENT NOCRITS NOSPREAD NO SANDMAN ONLY DICKWATS ALLOWED" (actually no)

Share your thoughts.

No.

People don't actually vote for what they want, they just press some random buttons. Ends up with a retarded map where you have to run 5 miles to kill something -> player leaves -> endless cycle. Remove shitmaps from cycle, and people will stay. Payload only was the best option. Give players what they want, votecrits and votescramble. But I like the 64 player 2fort option too.

Edited April 18, 2012 by Iulian

[Dr. Pannenkoek]

The full servers seem to be 64 2fort, so why not I say!

[Balmung]

I'm going to rock the boat a little here, I think a change in the green-coins system and shop is one possible action, Theres alot of servers, which have different sorts of benefits which I assume come from different plug-ins, they include a premium command which gives donating players extra things such as all classes moving scout speed, no need for reload, starting off with partial ubercharge, regaining health on kills etc.

This links in to what I wanted to say about the GC shop, From what I noticed from playing on the servers is that there are a few long-term regular players with some GC upgrades, and the rest usualyl don't have any, My first shop improvement suggestion would be to lower the price of the shop, I know it is cheap all ready, but My opinion is by making it cheaper more people will spend their green-coins and therefroe more likely to stay on the server, after all, they wouldn't want to just waste their benefit they just bought.

An alternative solution to lower the prices is to possibly increase the amount of GC rewarded in TF2, If more GC was earned for Point capping and payload pushing, then those who do want to get green coins would play more on the servers in which the larger rewards can be reaped.

The second thing I'd like to do is address the 4 situatuions suggested:

1) TF2 Allround. Make the server have vote options for Payload (Race) / CP / CTF / Koth maps.

Personally, I feel like this idea would fall, partially for the reason mentioned by NPhect, When it comes to votes people tend to just hit the the first option or just vote as they don't really care, Its evident that the merged servers seemed to perform worse than when the servers were pure (E.g Payload was more popular before CP merged into it) The way I see it is that a person joins a specific game type because thats what they want to play, Its been on more than one occasion that I join a server looking to play Gold Rush only to find that before I even have a chance to select my class I find myself off to CTF_Doublecross, essentially Mixing them all into one would kill all of the gamemodes completely.

I do want to offer up a suggestion for this however, One solution is rather than to vote for one particular map each time, Choose the gamemode which most people play, Having one popular gamemode is better than having 4 sets cycling with players only hanging around for their preferred gamemodes. From past observations payload seems to be the most popular (following arena)

2) VS Saxton Hale. My impression: I think the popularity of this mode has faded by now but people can prove me wrong on this.

The few VSH servers that there are do seem to be fairly popular, however there is a very similar mod around now called Freak Fortress, Freak fortress is very similar to VSH but instead of one boss it features several, each boss is based upon popular fads among the TF2 community. E.g. Demopan, CBS and Vagineer, Its a server which appeals gratly to those who like that sort of thing and it ads more challenge than standard VSH (Saxton Hale is also included as a boss in Freak Fortress); If you are intending to check out Versus Saxton Hale, I would highly reccomend checking out this new mod aswell.

Heres the link to the TF2 Wiki page: http://wiki.teamfortress.com/wiki/Freak_Fortress_2

3) 24/7 instant respawn 64 player 2fort

I don't like this at all, 64 is a not a number that should ever be included in TF2 player counts, While 64 player servers may be popular, they built up from having a strong player base to kick it into gear and currentley I don't think have that luxury, I think a 24/7 server would be beneficial to the community however however I don't think a 64 player style would be a good idea, much better to keep it at the more traditional 32.

4) "MR. GREEN ARENA 2 TOURNAMENT NOCRITS NOSPREAD NO SANDMAN ONLY DICKWATS ALLOWED" (actually no)

This is what I've been saying for years I don't think theres anything to say here.

---

Haven't had to time to check for spelling areas so It's probably riddled with mistakes.

Edited April 18, 2012 by Vegeta7141

[FishWithAHat]

Well you want a biggy of the reason the KOTH/CP/PL isnt running so good?

1. We like to stack, no scramble, go figure.

2. NO QUICK-PLAY.

[Dr.Minky]

*smug face*

Anyway, as much as saxton hale and all that stuff is good, I dont see why we cant make our own game mode?

I'd rather not ramble on here, but if a small group of us got together and brain stormed for a bit I think we could come up with a good brand new type of game: A good example of this is the Slag Gaming Parkour server, (but we wouldnt do anything that fancy)

If anyone wants to brainstorm some ideas with me then message me on steam/IRC, I don't like to waste my time suggesting things anymore when nobody cares, like I always seem to do..

Other than that I don't see how the server can be revived how it is, as I said in the other topic, the issues with it aren't really fixable unless you scrapped green coins and plugins on the server, which would kind of make it pointless having it.

Edited April 18, 2012 by Dr.Minky

[Clavus]

Also note I don't have development time at all. I can't add new GC shop items (coding in SourcePawn is hell anyway), let alone new gamemodes.

[Duckbuster]

Don't make the PL/CP server into an all rounder.

Instead add more voting options like Iulian mentioned.

And maybe do something about the bots?

[Dr.Minky]

Also note I don't have development time at all. I can't add new GC shop items (coding in SourcePawn is hell anyway), let alone new gamemodes.

There are other coders on here, surely!

[Ywa]

3) 24/7 instant respawn 64 player 2fort

The more the better.

[Balmung]

Also note I don't have development time at all. I can't add new GC shop items (coding in SourcePawn is hell anyway), let alone new gamemodes.

Ah that sucks, If you do decide on eeediting and configuring shop upgrades, I'm down with Java and I'm fairly comfortable with some Basic VB (Which looking at SourcePawn seems quite Similar) I'll offer my help anywhere I can.

Don't make the PL/CP server into an all rounder.

Instead add more voting options like Iulian mentioned.

And maybe do something about the bots?

Just out of curiosity, what do you think about the bots, negative or positive view on them? (I like the Mei Misaki avatar by the way XD)

3) 24/7 instant respawn 64 player 2fort

The more the better.

I'd disagree with you there, for several reasons in my post, I think It's an idea which will work magnificently, or bomb out completely.

[Raxan]

remove crits, remove ridicilous timer on green coin things to balance out for everyone or remove the OP ones being active at all times for some

also get new admins on there's like 2 that come onto the server regulary.

[mogadonskoda]

remove crits, remove ridicilous timer on green coin things to balance out for everyone or remove the OP ones being active at all times for some

also get new admins on there's like 2 that come onto the server regulary.

I agree with all of that, but i want to add that there should be a team scamble option becasue team stacking just ruins the game

[Balmung]

remove crits, remove ridicilous timer on green coin things to balance out for everyone or remove the OP ones being active at all times for some

also get new admins on there's like 2 that come onto the server regulary.

I agree with all of that, but i want to add that there should be a team scamble option becasue team stacking just ruins the game

I'm in agreement with The team scramble option, Originally I just thought that it was a problem just concerning Arena, but It's not I wouldn't be suprised if any page of chat logs were loaded and somewhere on that page someone would be complaining about Stacked teams, When matches start getting one-sided it's obvious that they need to be balanced out, It's no wonder why servers end up empty.

As for the crits,It would pretty much now be redundant to remove them, therse so many ways to get crits with all the new weapons I can hardly tell whats random and whats not, I've always been one to campaign for No-Crits, but now even if we got no-crits there would still be endless ones flying around, I guess in a way it removes the no-crits nerf off of certain weapons.

[Mr. Darkness]

I was actually thinking about some fun game mode. Like ones with cars and shit like that.

Things with football, the one which was with that castle (for example at the time when we had tf2 even, where every1 slayed every1 in their team (expect admins )).

[Shoogoo]

Hi,

I've been one of the most (if not the most) active player on Mr.Green for the past 6 months, and those are a few suggestions I'm going to leave here;

The bots

Get rid of them, they're a curb to getting the server filled. I've seen #1 fill up on maps where bots don't have a .nav file (they just remain in the spawn) because people don't like facing bots.

Also, people stack as early as they can, and it often ends up being 4 real people versus 1 guy and 3 bots. The lone guy leaves, frustrated for obvious reasons, and you're back to square 1. Repeat until the 4 players are tired of fighting bots and the server is ded.

The maps

Some maps tend to bring traffic, while others make players leave for another server. I have a pretty good idea of which map does what and I'll be happy to list them, but overall it seems Payload classics are what gets the server filled in the most rapidly. A good variety of maps is a nice thing, but maybe you should leave some out of the rotation, only available through player voting (!= automated vote), and have a solid and limited map rotation.

The voting

As seen on Reddit servers (I wish I had a screenshot, but I dont) the voting menu goes like this

1. Please take time to read all the votes options ...

2. ... before pushing the buttons thoughtlessly

3. [nothing]

4. Map1

5. Map2

6. Map3

7. Map4

8. Map5

I find this system genuinely interesting because it avoids having people bashing the "1" button. One could think that they would resort to just bash the "4" button instead, but no, somehow the voted map seems to be any of the 5.

Team Scramble

I understand that scrambling the teams has always been a big debate on Mr.Green, I'm not sure why. It's been a month or so, and especially in arena (the last active server), that the stacking has gone to another level. Basically it's regulars versus newbs and non-regulars. People aren't even ashamed of joining the winning team when/if they can because after the 1st round you know what team will end the map with a score of 15-1. People stack because first of all the server allows them to (no autobalance, no scramble) and they don't want their ego to be hurt, but also and most importantly (to me) because of ...

...The rankings

Especially in arena, where the only way to score points is to get kills or assists, the ranking system is ruthless. If you're high in the leader boards, chances are that you will likely lose 25 points when the enemy sneezes at you, while you, on the other hand, struggle to even score a mere 10 points. TF2 ranking has this particularity that you really only care about your own ranking, since it keeps displaying in the text area at every action you make. Only a minority of people actually go check the leader boards page outside of TF2. For those reasons, this is what I suggest (probably will be laughed at/ignored)

• Adjust the ranking system only in arena so that it's not so punishing. I think that would stop, or at least help with the stacking problem (which has to be taken care of, I insist on that).
  
• No more stats, remove them altogether. Quite radical, but maybe that would lead to balanced matches here and there instead of people holding each others tail like what we have at the moment.
  
• Less radical, reset the stats every 6/3 months. I think that would help people give up with their obsession on the ranking. Permanent stats makes people give the illusion that their performances are being engraved in a memorial stone of gaming or something (while ultimately, nobody cares but yourself)
  

Stats are cool, don't get me wrong. But punishing stats + no scramble leads to the crapfest we're having in #3 lately.

Quickplay plug-in

FishWithAHat has a point when he talks about Quickplay. As stated on this page, it seems once you register your server, you get more traffic (mainly F2Ps) driven to it. A good example for this is the EGT (Ever Green Terrace?) server, almost constantly full from early in the afternoon to late at night. The disadvantage with this is that the server has to be as vanilla as possible hence I assume no perks would be allowed. Since #3 doesn't suffer from traffic issues, a solution would be to keep perks there and remove them on the other Payload/CP server to allow the registration and access to the Quickplay thingie.

I was actually thinking about some fun game mode. Like ones with cars and shit like that.

Things with football, the one which was with that castle (for example at the time when we had tf2 even, where every1 slayed every1 in their team (expect admins )).

I'm sorry but those are really, really bad ideas. I'm not even going to comment on the cars thing, but the football/dodge ball only attracts a niche of players and most green regulars would bail the hell out.

And if by castle you're referring to DeGroote Keep map, I have to say that from experience it's such a faded/crappy map that #1 gets emptied when the server changes to it.

[Messy]

I don't believe removing stats will stop the stacking Shoogoo, people can still stack whenever they want. Most players don't care about stats but winning, so throwing in a scramble is the best idea.

[Shoogoo]

I don't believe removing stats will stop the stacking Shoogoo, people can still stack whenever they want. Most players don't care about stats but winning, so throwing in a scramble is the best idea.

If people don't care about stats, why not removing them? It could be of some use to players who don't even dare joining the server if/when their stack buddy isn't playing too.

[Messy]

I don't believe removing stats will stop the stacking Shoogoo, people can still stack whenever they want. Most players don't care about stats but winning, so throwing in a scramble is the best idea.

If people don't care about stats, why not removing them? It could be of some use to players who don't even dare joining the server if/when their stack buddy isn't playing too.

I didn't disagree about removing stats, I mentioned that scramble would solve the stacking problem, and not stats removal.

Edited April 20, 2012 by Messy

[FishWithAHat]

Hi,

I've been one of the most (if not the most) active player on Mr.Green for the past 6 months, and those are a few suggestions I'm going to leave here;

The bots

Get rid of them, they're a curb to getting the server filled. I've seen #1 fill up on maps where bots don't have a .nav file (they just remain in the spawn) because people don't like facing bots.

Also, people stack as early as they can, and it often ends up being 4 real people versus 1 guy and 3 bots. The lone guy leaves, frustrated for obvious reasons, and you're back to square 1. Repeat until the 4 players are tired of fighting bots and the server is ded.

The maps

Some maps tend to bring traffic, while others make players leave for another server. I have a pretty good idea of which map does what and I'll be happy to list them, but overall it seems Payload classics are what gets the server filled in the most rapidly. A good variety of maps is a nice thing, but maybe you should leave some out of the rotation, only available through player voting (!= automated vote), and have a solid and limited map rotation.

The voting

As seen on Reddit servers (I wish I had a screenshot, but I dont) the voting menu goes like this

1. Please take time to read all the votes options ...

2. ... before pushing the buttons thoughtlessly

3. [nothing]

4. Map1

5. Map2

6. Map3

7. Map4

8. Map5

I find this system genuinely interesting because it avoids having people bashing the "1" button. One could think that they would resort to just bash the "4" button instead, but no, somehow the voted map seems to be any of the 5.

Team Scramble

I understand that scrambling the teams has always been a big debate on Mr.Green, I'm not sure why. It's been a month or so, and especially in arena (the last active server), that the stacking has gone to another level. Basically it's regulars versus newbs and non-regulars. People aren't even ashamed of joining the winning team when/if they can because after the 1st round you know what team will end the map with a score of 15-1. People stack because first of all the server allows them to (no autobalance, no scramble) and they don't want their ego to be hurt, but also and most importantly (to me) because of ...

...The rankings

Especially in arena, where the only way to score points is to get kills or assists, the ranking system is ruthless. If you're high in the leader boards, chances are that you will likely lose 25 points when the enemy sneezes at you, while you, on the other hand, struggle to even score a mere 10 points. TF2 ranking has this particularity that you really only care about your own ranking, since it keeps displaying in the text area at every action you make. Only a minority of people actually go check the leader boards page outside of TF2. For those reasons, this is what I suggest (probably will be laughed at/ignored)

• Adjust the ranking system only in arena so that it's not so punishing. I think that would stop, or at least help with the stacking problem (which has to be taken care of, I insist on that).
  
• No more stats, remove them altogether. Quite radical, but maybe that would lead to balanced matches here and there instead of people holding each others tail like what we have at the moment.
  
• Less radical, reset the stats every 6/3 months. I think that would help people give up with their obsession on the ranking. Permanent stats makes people give the illusion that their performances are being engraved in a memorial stone of gaming or something (while ultimately, nobody cares but yourself)
  

Stats are cool, don't get me wrong. But punishing stats + no scramble leads to the crapfest we're having in #3 lately.

Quickplay plug-in

FishWithAHat has a point when he talks about Quickplay. As stated on this page, it seems once you register your server, you get more traffic (mainly F2Ps) driven to it. A good example for this is the EGT (Ever Green Terrace?) server, almost constantly full from early in the afternoon to late at night. The disadvantage with this is that the server has to be as vanilla as possible hence I assume no perks would be allowed. Since #3 doesn't suffer from traffic issues, a solution would be to keep perks there and remove them on the other Payload/CP server to allow the registration and access to the Quickplay thingie.

I was actually thinking about some fun game mode. Like ones with cars and shit like that.

Things with football, the one which was with that castle (for example at the time when we had tf2 even, where every1 slayed every1 in their team (expect admins )).

I'm sorry but those are really, really bad ideas. I'm not even going to comment on the cars thing, but the football/dodge ball only attracts a niche of players and most green regulars would bail the hell out.

And if by castle you're referring to DeGroote Keep map, I have to say that from experience it's such a faded/crappy map that #1 gets emptied when the server changes to it.

my 5 cent

The bots: I wouldnt reamove them but make it 2-4 bots

Voting: Please yes!

Scramble: yes, but maybe make it like every 5th round on arena

ranking: Yes it sucks that one have to stack teams to get proper points, but with top 100-25ish its not a problem beacuse if you kill someone on the stacked team you get more points ( )But what i dont get is on #1 and #2 you got 5 points for killing as the lowest and 3 on arena? (personaly i would love to "anti-stack" but im trying to get into top 50 )

Quickplay: Yes its Ever Green Terrace, and yes as soon 3-5 players have played for about 10-15 min its full, beacuse of quickplay.

[Raxan]

THG has auto scramble whenever a team is stomping the other, add that.

[mogadonskoda]

Quickplay plug-in

FishWithAHat has a point when he talks about Quickplay. As stated on this page, it seems once you register your server, you get more traffic (mainly F2Ps) driven to it. A good example for this is the EGT (Ever Green Terrace?) server, almost constantly full from early in the afternoon to late at night. The disadvantage with this is that the server has to be as vanilla as possible hence I assume no perks would be allowed. Since #3 doesn't suffer from traffic issues, a solution would be to keep perks there and remove them on the other Payload/CP server to allow the registration and access to the Quickplay thingie.

Are there any server side mods that will disqualify me from Quickplay since some do not change sv_tags?

No, we are not automatically disqualifying servers for server side mods. If the mods results in a better or worse player experience, that will be reflected in the back-end server score.

So the greencoins and perks might be allowed.

Edited April 20, 2012 by mogadonskoda

[Dr.Minky]

Here's a suggestion: Dont make it payload/cp, make it either one or the other. Most of the time when I play tf2 I want to play on a specific game mode so I got to a specific server that I like for that.

Thats another reason why I dont think 'oh I'll go and pay payload on mr.green' because its 50/50 wether ill even get to play what I want to or not (ignoring bots and crap)

You could argue that this would push away people that like the other game mode, but you will still get more regular users wanting to play.. What do you guys think to that?

As for admins, people would definitely be more interested in being an admin if people start playing again (I know I would) so if you can revamp the server then it wouldn't be an issue

And Darky, I agree that would be fun too. An idea I had the other day was a Takeshi's Castle server (if you've ever seen that program), where each map was a different game mode based off of the show. That would be insanely fun and unique, but I dont really think anyone here who can code is willing to put in the effort into something like that at the minute..

Edited April 20, 2012 by Dr.Minky

[Raxan]

As for admins, people would definitely be more interested in being an admin if people start playing again (I know I would) so if you can revamp the server then it wouldn't be an issue

People don't want to apply for admin because they know they have to be active on IRC or w/e that weird chat is and it's mostly dead anyways. The rule itself is odd and makes no sense, and people just gave up asking.

When was the last time someone got admin on TF2 that hasn't been admin before?