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| NoSkill |
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Sir
Registered Member #457
Joined: Tue Oct 10 2006, 01:13PMPosts: 2628 |
I read everything and I concur. However in short of "market data" which would cost a few thousand dollars. (polling LAN centers could cost ample amounts of Jack Daniels & SanDisks) We're going to have to make an educated guess as to what the CS:S gaming community wants out of a 24/7 Office server. But I'm game... So... let's list what we all look for in a server. Go deep people, this is valuable market research. What NoSkill wants in a server. (already in order for ya) 1) Population - generally I wont join a server with less than 16 people. I'm a pubwhore, what can I say. 2) Low Ping/No Choke/High FPS - how does it run? (this is subjective and I think our server runs well enough ((THINK, I THINK THIS)) to accomodate our needs) 3) Non-Douchebags - seriously, if I'm in a server and am greeted by some fucking obnoxious asshole spamming nonsense on the mic... I'm out of there so fucking fast... 4) Lower Skill - it's about here I start sizing up the competition in the server... I'm likely to stay if the competition is below average. What can I say... I'm a statwhore too. 5.) Stats 6.) Rules/Admin Presence - I enjoy a strong admin presence, one of my fav servers is no swearing/no porn/no talking back... personally... I love it. 7.) Fun stuff - mods, noises, things that make me giggle. 8.) Originality - this should be up there somewhere... because somewhere in this list... originality is key... I've played on many servers who had the aforementioned items... but only a relative few... had something original that kept me coming back. #SourceInvite & oPG had CAL players and CAL maps. ECG has 32 players, no lag and custom maps. 24/7 Iceworld Deathmatch... Aim Maps only... Surf... I mean these are what got these servers on my favorites... I forget what made FTC original... it's been so long. So what do you guys look for in a server? |
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| b4ndito |
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b4ndito
Registered Member #958
Joined: Fri Jan 04 2008, 06:59AMPosts: 3385 |
Goose and NoSkill: I definitely understand where you are coming from. The server isn't going to get people interested unless there are people playing and some flashy new mod to keep them playing. CS:S is "evolving" and we need to meet the needs of our players. But there are some things we cannot change. One of the fundamental differences between FTC and other Office servers is that it is a traditional server. The importance of that cannot be emphasized enough. FTC has not, will not, and hopefully will never be a Mod based server. Obviously, population is the most important issue we need to address right now. Idling isn't the best way to get people to play, but honestly, I hate bots more than I do 2v2. I think at least 50% would agree with me on that. FTC/Recruitment Night is going to be my first choice on increasing population. So far, we've done well. The server has been ~9-10 people since 4 o'clock this afternoon, all the way until 11:30 (at least from what I've seen). However, I will concede we need to come up with some ways to keep people in the server. Several of the items that have been addressed in this thread are great for the server in my opinion. zBlock and the mod to stop radar/wall hacking are great ideas. Nade trails are a small change that would be fun. Knife rounds (assuming that people have a choice on a round to round basis) are great. Gore Mod would be pretty sweet, too. However, this "Nade-Catching" and "Grenade round" stuff just doesn't fit in FTC. Like I said above, FTC is a traditional server. Some of the mods Goose suggested are great, but some are just out of place and inadvisable. I think most of the fun of Office comes from dodging bullets and nades around corners, and if you can catch nades, that just deteriorates the quick-reflex action aspect of the server. I will not deny that FTC needs to update to meet the needs of the average CS:S player in 2008, but there are some things that would change the inherent aspects of the server. Catching nades or paintball mod are just tacky tricks that would change the way the server has always run; they wouldn't necessarily increase player activity. We need to be smart with our choices and choose ways to revamp the server in a positive fashion without changing the well-accepted layout of the server. |
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| NoSkill |
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Sir
Registered Member #457
Joined: Tue Oct 10 2006, 01:13PM Posts: 2628 |
b4ndito wrote ... Obviously, population is the most important issue we need to address right now. Idling isn't the best way to get people to play, but honestly, I hate bots more than I do 2v2. I think at least 50% would agree with me on that. I sincerely doubt it. Also... Goose is using some Cialdini on you. Make a very large request first, to make a lesser request more plausible... it's called the Law of Contrast. Not that he's manipulating you, I tend to like his... more grounded ideas. I think you're totally off base on bots though, you see... I don't just make up the ideas I have. I take them. Wherever I go, whoever I meet, whatever I do... I take what works... and discard what doesn't. So you can fight bots for personal reasons, you can fight bots to spite me, but in terms of The Goal (and I think that's what we're all after). Bots would be the easiest, simplest, quickest and most effective solution to your problem. But some people like doing things the hard way... anyway, I'll be back Monday. Don't burn the forums down before then. |
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| Knightrider |
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Meteor 2016
Registered Member #316
Joined: Mon Jun 26 2006, 09:14PMPosts: 3503 |
When I go into a server I look for: 1. A lot of people. 2. Admins that don't bitch constantly or abuse their powers. 3. Great registration. 4. People that don't block or get in my Goddamn way. A good plugin to try would be noblock, but I guess that makes the server too noob. It also makes knifing a little bit harder in the timing. I'm going to agree with Bandito on the plugins to a certain aspect. It's great that he wants to stick with the fundamentals of the old classic, however, the point of this thread was to find things that would make it tick. Obviously, it's going to be a lot more than just sticking in plugins and hoping that people start showing up. We're going to have to do a bit of advertising. Not in other servers, because that would be a bit hypocritical of us. But I cannot stress this anymore: If you're playing in a server, and you make friends with anyone there, ask them if they would like to try out our office server since we're trying to get it populated. You never know who you might get. Be quick to add people on your friends list. Chances are if they like the chilled out person you are on that server they're currently playing at they're going to like ours a lot more because most of us are like that. It's what Noskill said, and Bubble, I think. We have to recruit an entirely new player base. That new player base will show up if they see the dedicated player base sitting in the server. We had the 5-5 most of the night last night till about 11:30. Those people are the dedicated ones. They will help the server get started. It starts with the old school players and then builds up with the new player base. I suggest we get the new player base before we add any new plugins. If the new people like how the server is ran then there's no point in putting stuff like that in (Except for detox, etc. that are useful). For now on when I play I plan to make some people on my friends list and invite them in. I'm going to look for the people who are not necessarily skilled, but do not ragequit if they're doing bad. People with the competitive edge do not help the server at all. They get frustrated, and in most cases all of them leave in a single file ragequit line. So when you're looking for new people, kind of be selective. The best type of people to find believe it or not is noobs. They're just starting out playing the game, so they're going to want to try to get a good feel in places. The next important thing to do is welcoming/warming in new players in our server. They aren't going to like coming into a server where there is someone that is like 180-40 in the server, so at least when you're raping their soul try to make it fun. If you're a regular in the server, don't complain about problems you are having like about registry, etc. That's a big problem with myself, so aside from all the tips I'm giving you guys, there are many things I need to work on myself. For the most part, I've been just running around with a deagle keeping a 1:1 kdr because trying in office is silly anyways. Let people have their fun. Introduce them to the fun aspects that made FTC, FTC like Alex had mentioned. Back hall nades, etc. Or in me, 3stripe, and Zero's case, the T Pyramid of random camping spots. It's time for what Goose said, to put on the Hamburgler costumes, and try to do things new around here. If FTC's empty, play around at some other office servers. You're going to have to put up with their shitty/lackluster and boring environments for a while, but at least there are some hopes you can meet new players and recruit a new fan base. In my case, I have three other office servers to choose from that have major flaws with each of them. NG's registration is terrible, BoSS's admins abuse their powers like crazy, and GSz's server is a 16k awpwhore fest. But all of those servers have high population at all times, especially NG. I intend to meet some people at NG since there is around 28-56 people there average. Get out there and recruit guys! It'd be nice to get at least 5-10 new people before FTC night. That would be a great way to get them to come to the server. If they see the server with about 12-14 people that are our regulars, they're going to be impressed, and chances are we're definitely going to gain some new regulars. Wear your tags. They won't feel out of place. Just make sure you include them in your fun and don't zone them out. I don't want to make you guys feel like I'm holding your hand so I'm going to let you do your thing. Just make sure it's going to make them want to be a part of our gay lingo talk/friendly sarcasm. Gogogo! |
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| Zero |
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I want to fuck your hand.
Registered Member #571
Joined: Thu Feb 15 2007, 09:59PMPosts: 2809 |
To recruit we would need easier requirements. NO ONE likes our policy of staying around forever, and it's too time involving. Yeah we all made it through, but that's because we all loved it. Newbies probably wouldn't For god sakes... BOTS CAN BE FUCKING AUTOBOOTED AFTER TWO PEOPLE ARE IN THE SERVER. there settings can be tweaked and changed and any personal hate is fucking stupid. Bots will automatically leave once two people are in the server. That means, IF YOU ARE THE ONLY ONE THE SERVER IDLING OR PLAYING, YOU WON'T BE ALONE!! not that fucking hard to understand. We have very limited things to offer. our community is difficult to get into our registration in server has almost always been shaky We aren't ridiculously strict, but we are strict to the point where people don't want to deal with us 18+ steers people away, making them think that we are too specific We need a broader target market... EVERYONE. In order to get everyone, we need to find stuff that everyone would enjoy, any age. The plugins and bots are the ONLY things I see helping us right now |
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| b4ndito |
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b4ndito
Registered Member #958
Joined: Fri Jan 04 2008, 06:59AM Posts: 3385 |
Okay, I just read about the plugins for nade catching and frag contest. Neither are even good. Nade catching doesn't give you like 2 or 3 seconds to throw the nade back. You just keep it if it hits you before the nade touches a wall or the ground. So if you throw a flashbang at a guy rushing you with a knife and hit him, he just gets the flashbang in his weapon arsenal. It won't go off, he just steals it. Frag Contest seems almost fun, but the winner gets to change the map. If we could change what the winner got to do, it might be better. But even then, it's an admin activated command to run it. That's not the sort of thing that would work out well. Someone would do it almost every round. I don't want to see ten bots in the server either. So far, it hasn't even been people asking for bots that are populating the server. It's been me and Foxbox and a few others populating. So when you guys start hopping in the server as the first person, I'll take your suggestion a little more seriously. |
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| alcosatz |
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FT Classic Op
Registered Member #39
Joined: Fri Dec 02 2005, 10:30PMPosts: 1545 |
There are consequences and considerations of using bots that have not been brought up in this discussion. 1. They don't play nice with stats from what I can recall. It's been so long since I've messed with bots on a server that uses HLSX and/or Psychostats, but I believe both require all bot activity to be factored into real player stats, or none at all. The only problem is that "none" translates to no kills on bots are recorded, but bot on player kills still count against the player. Example: you go 10/9 playing exclusively against bots, which is recorded as you going 0/9. I'm pretty certain this is how both of them work, maybe even Mani's stats modules as well. If stats are enabled for all players and bots, then nifty things like bots being on the leaderboard for pstats/HLSX points, getting awards for "Most Online Time" etc. start to pop up. Generally this makes stats less relevent, and may not sit well with "stat whores," who see other players padding their ranks by whipping the crap out of bots during off hours. 2. Simply looking at connection counts or slots filled for the day may not be appropriate metrics to use. For starters, not everything (much at all?) may be distinguished between bot counts or human counts for Psychostats or HLSX. Also, I'm not aware of what happens when a player leaves and a bot takes his or her place--does the bot taking the vacant human player spot count as a new connection? The numbers would get severely skewed if bots are auto-vacating/leaving. Either way you're going get more humans actually connect with bots, but you're probably going to have shorter human player sessions. This is because many people do precisely what Glitch mentioned earlier in this thread: "When i saw bots i was very disappointed, mad, and instantly left that server." I believe a more accurate metric would be either average session time for human players, or total hours played by human players per day. Better yet: a distinction of human player time spent on CT/T or as a spectator. The only problem is that there isn't any plugin or stats analyzer "off the shelf" that does this... 3. There may be unknown results with plugins and bots. This isn't a huge concern, and I'm not trying to do a FUD job here, but I think this is another point that most people haven't taken into account. From a SourceMod plugin writing perspective, I can definitely say that SRCDS handles players and bots very differently at times. While I suspect most of our plugins will work, some may not. cTB will certainly work since bots are primarily how I have tested it but I can't guarantee all the other stuff we have (or may have in the future). Goose has suggested a great many promising ideas but anything that is going to go into production needs to be tested. If we start fiddling with too many things at one time it can make troubleshooting things like lag at the beginning of the round a giant pain in the ass. While typing this up I remembered some recent experiences with bots. This happened earlier this year when I was busy programming cTB. At certain times I would leave sv_password unset on my dev server so that random players had the opportunity to connect (sometimes FTC'ers would help me out too), and I could get real player data (as opposed to bots) and see how well cTB was working. I was surprised with how many players actually connected. The number of noobs who would join and think they were actually playing with real people was hilarious. Seriously, some guy would join, with a name like "@n@L 1N+RooD3r," and actually think some players named Gary, Paul, and Julian were real players--complete with trying to strike up conversations with them, accusing them of hacks, etc. So with that in mind maybe bots may not be such a bad idea. Sure, these people were total noobs but everyone has to start somewhere, right? Before FTC started in 2005 I had plenty of experience running empty servers--I kinda consider myself an expert.  I've formulated (and long-held) this opinion based on talking with people who tried to help me get a few server formats off the ground in 2005, and my many unsuccessful ventures to run cs_office_extended, CSS:DM, and VIP mod servers. My opinion is this: bots are very similar to a "bait and switch" scheme. By running bots on a server you are essentially saying: "We don't have 10 human players for you right now, but since you're through the door... well, why don't you stick around and wait for some other people to join?"It's best to keep in mind that bots are one of many means to an end. I am not adamantly opposed to using bots but I urge caution. Also, NoSkill's rhetoric could stand to be toned down a little by referring to bots as the "easiest, simplest, quickest and most effective solution to [our] problem." Even if bots are implemented, exactly HOW they are implemented is critical. I'm positive there will be mixed opinions about using bots when my first point above is considered. Introducing bots will have adverse effects on Psychostats and HLSX. What about the number of bots? NoSkill mentions 5v5 at one point in this thread. Does that sound a little high to anyone else? Hell, I don't know... maybe you think 10 bots is too low. It appears to me that the "easiest, simplest, and quickest" plan needs some refinement. Anyways... I will comment on some of the plugins that have been suggested if I have time later. Detox doesn't work too well from what I recall--a fellow FTC'er and I tested (VAC disabled on my dev server of course, "just in case" ) and the person testing wall hacks was still able to see enemies through walls more often than not.
Edited Wed Oct 15 2008, 05:27PM
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| b4ndito |
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b4ndito
Registered Member #958
Joined: Fri Jan 04 2008, 06:59AM Posts: 3385 |
Alcosatz wrote ... ...and the person testing wall hacks was still able to see enemies through walls more often than not. Was it Kever?  I don't want bots to screw with our Stats; that is one of the most important marketing factors in FTC. However, if there is a way to get them to work with it, I think having 2v2 bots wouldn't be horrible. Definitely not 5v5 though. We'd almost always be playing with bots in NoSkill's suggestion. I'll put more time into this later, I gotta get going for now. Edited Wed Oct 15 2008, 05:32PM |
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| Zero |
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I want to fuck your hand.
Registered Member #571
Joined: Thu Feb 15 2007, 09:59PM Posts: 2809 |
Also off topic but not Chatbox worthy, I feel the site needs updating. On the home page I think we should advertise what is currently going on with Surf and Office, it's been saying surf has been cancelled since october 5th for like, a whole month. Updates plox? |
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| alcosatz |
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FT Classic Op
Registered Member #39
Joined: Fri Dec 02 2005, 10:30PM Posts: 1545 |
b4ndito wrote ... Alcosatz wrote ... ...and the person testing wall hacks was still able to see enemies through walls more often than not. Was it Kever? I don't want bots to screw with our Stats; that is one of the most important marketing factors in FTC. However, if there is a way to get them to work with it, I think having 2v2 bots wouldn't be horrible. Definitely not 5v5 though. We'd almost always be playing with bots in NoSkill's suggestion. I'll put more time into this later, I gotta get going for now. No, it wasn't Kever, and I see no need to say exactly who it was. Let's see if we can piece together a plan based on NoSkill's general suggestion of bots and Goose's plugin ideas. As far as I can tell there are two distinct problems. The first is that we have trouble actually getting the player count above 0, and the second problem is that we rely too heavily on community members to keep the server populated once a handful of old regulars/admins/FT's join. The consensus seems to be that we have to build consistent, regular player counts before we can expect an influx of new players. This makes sense to me, but how do we get there? Bots seem to deal with the problem of getting players to initially join but they (bots) do not deal with retaining players AFTER they have joined. Plugins may help with retention but I'm not so sure that's a good idea. We may have to take the "Classic" out of FTC if we change too much! I believe the stuff Knightrider is talking about, the social aspects of FTC, have more influence in retaining new players and regulars more than anything else. Case and point: I seduced you, Bandito, in a single night by saying (in what you call a "mexican growl") "Ban-deeee-toe" several times during the night. You're a sophisticated guy and all, but apparently my inebriated mumbling was enough to reign you in as a diehard tanker.  Jokes aside, we need to come up with a comprehensive plan for success. Bots and new plugins may have a place in FTC moving forward but they are not going to solve all of our problems. |
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