Jonamerica
Beta member
- Messages
- 1
Some of you that play on the TF server regularly know me as eggman. I tried registering under that name but someone already has it.
As you can see from the topic I'm posting about server suggestions. I'm doing this because I like your server and would like to see it become more popular. I mean, if I didn't like your server I'd just leave, there are thousands of servers, right?
Some of you may be wondering what gives me the right to offer suggestions. I could talk about the fact that I've been doing multiplayer gaming and setting up lan parties since... well since Doom. (Null modem cable baby!). I'm sure I'm not alone in this front.
I could also tell you about the three CS servers I used to run before I became turned off by the game because of rampant cheating.
None of that is going to get you to listen to me, so I'll just hope the suggestions speak for themselves.
------------------------------------------------------
Building a community
You guys already have a leg up on the competition because you've already got a community built, but you can foster a better relationship with the CS community (meaning people that aren't already familiar with TF.net) by offering some basic amenities.
Website: TA-DA! But have more than the forum; create techist.com/cs. There used to be a stats plug-in that generated html stats pages. This was a great resource for serious players. It allowed people to look up their own stats (or others) and check things like: favorite weapon, best weapon, best map, worst map, who has the most kills with <weapon>, kill/death ratio, number of headshots. These much more in-depth stats are a great way to learn about your playing habits, your friendÂ’s habits and the habits of the server.
IRC (you may already have this)
Forum Heh; but why not have a board under PC Gaming for the CS server itself?
----------------------------------------------------
Improving game play
Balance: Good servers have good game play. Game play is judged by balance. If you are on the most unbalanced map, but the rounds are neck and neck, it'll be fun. Nobody likes to play on a server where one side is dominating the other.
It's important to make sure game play is even by keeping the teams fair. If the game play is unbalanced a good player from the winning team should switch sides to help even things out.
Game play also means playing good maps, but we'll get to that in a second.
Players: Game play is also about the types of players and the quality of the admins. If your server is full of annoying script kiddies that run around yelling "***** you gotz 0wn3d!!#@%$" it will drag the server down. Good players, mature, fun, team players, make a good server. It's up to the admins to watch out for bad players, bad players will drive good players away.
-------------------------------------------
Server settings
This is essential! Your server settings are what make your server different from all the others!
Map rotation: Right now I feel like you have too few maps in the rotation, and not enough "popular" maps to keep the server full. It's important to have a balance between "good" maps and "popular" maps. Good maps are well balanced but popular maps bring in the players.
Before I ditched CS I had my server to switch to assault if nobody was on it (I did this through cron). Assault is a "bad" map (itÂ’s unbalanced, or was, it might still be) but it was by far the most popular map. It got the players on the server.
I then used the map rotation to go from a bad popular map to a good popular map. Bad players like unbalanced maps. After the map changed I'd lose a few bad players but because it was a good popular map good players would join. I was able to effect the level of game play by coming up with a good map rotation.
Round settings: The time limit for each round feels good right now. After the initial fire fight there's still enough time for CTs to rescue hostages or Ts to plant bombs, but not so much time that camping is a problem.
Tickrate: Right now your tickrate is way too high. In my opinion if the terrorists plant the bomb they should win. (Suicide bombing is the terrorist way!). The CTs job on a de maps is to protect the bomb spots, which is why you spawn so close to them. A low tickrate forces the CTs to play strategy rather than death match. On most de maps CTs already have the upper had, Ts have to make it past choke points to put the bomb down, so a lower tickrate evens the odds. I'd recommend somewhere around 20-30 seconds. Enough time to defuse it with a kit if the person is nearby. If CTs don't have a kit or for some reason they are across the map (and ignoring their CT duties) it should be impossible to defuse.
Money: Money seems fine.
Number of maps: There are tons of maps, only a handful are popular and worth playing. Right now you have too few in the rotation. It feels like we're playing the same maps: dust, dust2, Aztec, office. Pick a few more popular/good maps to put in the rotation. Try to pick smaller maps and mix good with popular, big with small, and hostage with de. Order is important. I've compiled a list of maps based on popularity.
Most popular:
Dust2
Very Popular:
Assault
Italy
Office
Dust
Popular:
Militia
Aztec
Cbble
Inferno
Nuke
Chateau
Somewhat popular:
Compound
Piranesi
Port
Prodigy
Tides
Train
You should add assault and Italy to your rotation; they are too popular to skip, even if you consider them to be bad. Then pick maybe two or three more. Again, consider size, how balanced the map is, and how good game play is. (I always liked the play of Train, Prodigy, and Nuke myself).
-------------------------------
Admins
Quantity: Make sure there are enough admins so that when the server has lots of players there is an admin present or easily contacted.
Know you server: Study the serverÂ’s stats. What times do people play, what maps bring in the players, what maps make them leave, what are people complaining about, what do people like.
Quality: Admins should know that their duties are first to the server, second to other players, third to themselves. They should be on the lookout for cheaters (including exploits and ghosting) and be willing to make a judgment call without jumping to conclusions. They should never abuse their powers.
Choose your admins wisely.
-----------------------------
Things that shouldnÂ’t be done
Gimp: I was made gimp the other day. This could be considered very offensive to other people, youÂ’re lucky I have a sense of humor. I canÂ’t really see the value of taking away someoneÂ’s ability to talk. Unless that person was abusing their chat by saying something like "***** you gotz 0wn3d!!#@%$" over and over again. I wouldnÂ’t recommend doing it to anyone you want sticking around unless you know them well enough to know theyÂ’re going to be okay with it.
<Clan> vs. everyone else: This is a great way to create unbalance game play and drive players away. I know itÂ’s your server, but if you want to have a clan match get another clan and put a password up. You should never put yourself in a position to lower the game play (the quality) of your server.
And you should never let your server be taken over by another clan for the same purpose. ItÂ’s YOUR server, remain in control. If a bunch of {-*F46S*-} jump on and all go to one team insist they split up or leave. Be courteous, suggest that they setup a clan match, but let them know that you pride yourself on running a fun and balanced server. If theyÂ’re good players they will spit up, if they arenÂ’t why do you want them around?
Admin abuse: DonÂ’t allow your admins to abuse their rights. I havenÂ’t seen this on your server, good job. A server with a bad admin is a nightmare.
--------------------------
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Well, I think thatÂ’s enough of my 2 cents. Take my suggestions as you like. Like I said before, I enjoy playing on your server, itÂ’s a good server. I think it could be the best.
As you can see from the topic I'm posting about server suggestions. I'm doing this because I like your server and would like to see it become more popular. I mean, if I didn't like your server I'd just leave, there are thousands of servers, right?
Some of you may be wondering what gives me the right to offer suggestions. I could talk about the fact that I've been doing multiplayer gaming and setting up lan parties since... well since Doom. (Null modem cable baby!). I'm sure I'm not alone in this front.
I could also tell you about the three CS servers I used to run before I became turned off by the game because of rampant cheating.
None of that is going to get you to listen to me, so I'll just hope the suggestions speak for themselves.
------------------------------------------------------
Building a community
You guys already have a leg up on the competition because you've already got a community built, but you can foster a better relationship with the CS community (meaning people that aren't already familiar with TF.net) by offering some basic amenities.
Website: TA-DA! But have more than the forum; create techist.com/cs. There used to be a stats plug-in that generated html stats pages. This was a great resource for serious players. It allowed people to look up their own stats (or others) and check things like: favorite weapon, best weapon, best map, worst map, who has the most kills with <weapon>, kill/death ratio, number of headshots. These much more in-depth stats are a great way to learn about your playing habits, your friendÂ’s habits and the habits of the server.
IRC (you may already have this)
Forum Heh; but why not have a board under PC Gaming for the CS server itself?
----------------------------------------------------
Improving game play
Balance: Good servers have good game play. Game play is judged by balance. If you are on the most unbalanced map, but the rounds are neck and neck, it'll be fun. Nobody likes to play on a server where one side is dominating the other.
It's important to make sure game play is even by keeping the teams fair. If the game play is unbalanced a good player from the winning team should switch sides to help even things out.
Game play also means playing good maps, but we'll get to that in a second.
Players: Game play is also about the types of players and the quality of the admins. If your server is full of annoying script kiddies that run around yelling "***** you gotz 0wn3d!!#@%$" it will drag the server down. Good players, mature, fun, team players, make a good server. It's up to the admins to watch out for bad players, bad players will drive good players away.
-------------------------------------------
Server settings
This is essential! Your server settings are what make your server different from all the others!
Map rotation: Right now I feel like you have too few maps in the rotation, and not enough "popular" maps to keep the server full. It's important to have a balance between "good" maps and "popular" maps. Good maps are well balanced but popular maps bring in the players.
Before I ditched CS I had my server to switch to assault if nobody was on it (I did this through cron). Assault is a "bad" map (itÂ’s unbalanced, or was, it might still be) but it was by far the most popular map. It got the players on the server.
I then used the map rotation to go from a bad popular map to a good popular map. Bad players like unbalanced maps. After the map changed I'd lose a few bad players but because it was a good popular map good players would join. I was able to effect the level of game play by coming up with a good map rotation.
Round settings: The time limit for each round feels good right now. After the initial fire fight there's still enough time for CTs to rescue hostages or Ts to plant bombs, but not so much time that camping is a problem.
Tickrate: Right now your tickrate is way too high. In my opinion if the terrorists plant the bomb they should win. (Suicide bombing is the terrorist way!). The CTs job on a de maps is to protect the bomb spots, which is why you spawn so close to them. A low tickrate forces the CTs to play strategy rather than death match. On most de maps CTs already have the upper had, Ts have to make it past choke points to put the bomb down, so a lower tickrate evens the odds. I'd recommend somewhere around 20-30 seconds. Enough time to defuse it with a kit if the person is nearby. If CTs don't have a kit or for some reason they are across the map (and ignoring their CT duties) it should be impossible to defuse.
Money: Money seems fine.
Number of maps: There are tons of maps, only a handful are popular and worth playing. Right now you have too few in the rotation. It feels like we're playing the same maps: dust, dust2, Aztec, office. Pick a few more popular/good maps to put in the rotation. Try to pick smaller maps and mix good with popular, big with small, and hostage with de. Order is important. I've compiled a list of maps based on popularity.
Most popular:
Dust2
Very Popular:
Assault
Italy
Office
Dust
Popular:
Militia
Aztec
Cbble
Inferno
Nuke
Chateau
Somewhat popular:
Compound
Piranesi
Port
Prodigy
Tides
Train
You should add assault and Italy to your rotation; they are too popular to skip, even if you consider them to be bad. Then pick maybe two or three more. Again, consider size, how balanced the map is, and how good game play is. (I always liked the play of Train, Prodigy, and Nuke myself).
-------------------------------
Admins
Quantity: Make sure there are enough admins so that when the server has lots of players there is an admin present or easily contacted.
Know you server: Study the serverÂ’s stats. What times do people play, what maps bring in the players, what maps make them leave, what are people complaining about, what do people like.
Quality: Admins should know that their duties are first to the server, second to other players, third to themselves. They should be on the lookout for cheaters (including exploits and ghosting) and be willing to make a judgment call without jumping to conclusions. They should never abuse their powers.
Choose your admins wisely.
-----------------------------
Things that shouldnÂ’t be done
Gimp: I was made gimp the other day. This could be considered very offensive to other people, youÂ’re lucky I have a sense of humor. I canÂ’t really see the value of taking away someoneÂ’s ability to talk. Unless that person was abusing their chat by saying something like "***** you gotz 0wn3d!!#@%$" over and over again. I wouldnÂ’t recommend doing it to anyone you want sticking around unless you know them well enough to know theyÂ’re going to be okay with it.
<Clan> vs. everyone else: This is a great way to create unbalance game play and drive players away. I know itÂ’s your server, but if you want to have a clan match get another clan and put a password up. You should never put yourself in a position to lower the game play (the quality) of your server.
And you should never let your server be taken over by another clan for the same purpose. ItÂ’s YOUR server, remain in control. If a bunch of {-*F46S*-} jump on and all go to one team insist they split up or leave. Be courteous, suggest that they setup a clan match, but let them know that you pride yourself on running a fun and balanced server. If theyÂ’re good players they will spit up, if they arenÂ’t why do you want them around?
Admin abuse: DonÂ’t allow your admins to abuse their rights. I havenÂ’t seen this on your server, good job. A server with a bad admin is a nightmare.
--------------------------
--------------------------
Well, I think thatÂ’s enough of my 2 cents. Take my suggestions as you like. Like I said before, I enjoy playing on your server, itÂ’s a good server. I think it could be the best.
