Arena server digest and changes.

[Balmung]

Hi, This topics pretty much here to explain the changes that will be made to the arena server based on feedback I've received from talking to players, some of this you wont agree if, if that is the case just make a post saying where you disagree and we can all discuss it.

It's probably going to come as no surprise when I say the TF2 server is in need of some serious attention, For anyone who is new to the community, we used to run several TF2 servers for all game modes, but as time progressed TF2 became a lot less popular as a whole causing player count to drop and server merges and removal to occur. Upon the release of F2P the game gradually increased in popularity as a whole whilst our servers pretty much remained where they were before the update.

Since then there has been a gradual drop in player count ultimately resulting in the removal of one of the two remaining servers, the payload server. Today the only server which is still standing is Arena, The Arena server has always maintained a strong base of regular players but even now that has started to dwindle, I've spoken to both regulars and people in-game to try and find out the reasons why people are leaving and it brings up some of the age old topics.

Firstly, No crits, when you like in the chat logs for any day of the TF2 server you'll likely find someone complaining about these and whether you love the luck element or hate it, It has been one of the bigger factors in turning people off the server.

My intention here is to remove random crits from the server, what this entails is that RANDOM criticals will no longer occur You will still be able to use Crits which are caused by weapons (Jarate, Crit-A-Cola, Kritzkreig, etc.) however your weapon will no longer fire off crits at random.

People find crits a big deal as they feel that a shot that would usually deal around 45 damage instead deal over 120 damage which for most classes is an instant death, This can completely changes the flow of the game, For example, Imagine you've just started a nice 6v6 match, your team walks out of the base and is shortly confronted by a demoman, It's demoman's lucky day and he fires a nice critical grenade which hits your team for over 350 damage, This lucky crit has now caused the demoman to get first blood crits where he then precedes to coat your team in even more critical grenades leaving you in a 6v1 situation.

I understand how some people think of this as a part of the game which I too agree with and understand, however the majority of the feedback is that people don't like this situations, for many it makes them angry or annoyed causing them to leave for the day. After all it is more likely that those who don't mind crits will no doubt not mind if they are removed either.

The second thing I want to come onto is team choosing, Along with No Crits team choosing has come up just about every time as a complaint, It just doesn't belong in game modes like arena. When all of a team pile up into RED the people in BLU are never able to win and this then leads to two likely scenarios:

A ) Players from BLU leave the game, The direct effect this has is that it lowers the player count, lower player counts result in less people wanting to join the server as they are looking for near-full games to join.

B ) Players from BLU try and stack onto RED, While not causing people to directly leave it lowers the amount of players on one team making it even more one sided and when it is balanced It's more than likely that the players who were balanced will then try and stack back causing the people who originally changed team to go to BLU and the cycle repeats until A) happens or the map changes, at which point people just try and all get all back onto the RED team again.

A lot of arena servers do not have this feature and I've always thought of it as quite a unique idea here, but seeing other players reactions to this makes me think that perhaps practicality should come before individuality.

The third and final complaint I intend to correct links nicely into the second, this is autoscramble, for those who aren't too sure or just don't know about it Autoscramble is a server feature which will completely mix up teams if one team seems to be dominating another, people get bored of losing all the time and would rather play somewhere else where they may have a better chance.

I know I've gone on about past problems a lot here and I doubt I've hit all of them, those listed above are going to be changed as a little trial for next week to see if I can rack up regulars playing again, it would be appreciated that if anyone who has contact with any of the old regulars who still play TF2 could bring this topic to their attention it would be really appreciated.

Just a last word here If I've missed off anything crucial that you think needs to be changed drop a reply and we can discuss it, if others share the opinion It will be something else we can trial.

tl;dr - Go read it all

(18/10/12 23:33) Edit: Forgot double posting merged posts.

Edited October 18, 2012 by Balmung

[Dr.Minky]

I agree on everything, another thing to think about:

If any changes to GC perks are required

If anything else should be added to make it more unique so people actually want to STAY on the server after they enjoy it, that doesnt affect gameplay. E.g. being able to buy unusual hat effects from the gc shop, little things like that which make people want to stick around. Im sure other people could think of things

[VMR]

Seems like pretty good changes to me. I personally never liked either of the things you're describing here. The randomness, the team stacking... I hope this will help the server out.

[Mathijs1996]

Totally agree, I would love to play on the mrgreen server but most of the time there're only 2 players online which makes me go to another server which is always near full.

I hope the server gains popularity

[FishWithAHat]

First off maaaan I miss the cozy evenings on arena with ya'all :'(

But yes I agree on this, even thou' some of us old regulars try'ed to have fun with balancing and not stacked but

in the end one team will be strong than the other (99% of the time) as the new faces joining would just join the

team with the most wins :/

And last, my own reason to leave, there are other games that I want to play, I would love to have the server still

successful but I have to make time for other games.

[xeim]

Excellent ^^ i will definitely try it when the changes are applied !