What happend to the players?

These are the main complainings I came across with:

-Rage spam
-No fun allowed (insta perma ban)
-It gets boring
-No new maps
-Admins are snobs
-Some people think our plugins are unique, the others think it's too much and useless



My ideas to improve?

1) GET NEW MAPS - I don't want to eat the same food every day

2) Do something against rage spamming. Nothing is more frustrating than getting killed EVERY round.
You may say "Hale needs rage if he can't kill anybody".
But you should only rage if you get ALOT of dmg and can't go out of a difficult situation. Thats the main reason why to use rage isn't it?

3) IMO vsh servers never got boring the last years. I joined in 2011 and I played vsh almost every single day, without losing the fun in this mode. But the last months were horrible. I don't know why, but playing vsh was never that boring.

4) Admins - Stop banning for no good reason. Do not punish people for not being a good player. Instead try to help them improve?

5) Remove all the "useless" plugins and wepon "nerfs" or "buffs"

6) Add something funny like a "Fun Round". Every player is invisible but has beacon enabled (no engineers)

7) Add an additional boss. I know blabla not freak fortress, but FF is also dead, no?

8) will add more if I find more

 

New maps don't just grow on trees. You can surely find lots of maps when you search for them, but who says they are balanced? Who says they don't have exploitable places which need to be fixed? That would require alot of testing.

I quite agree on this one. Since @rswallen was still working on the balance issues so that newer players have it easier, we'll just have to wait how that turns out. Also, why does it make a difference? Even if the hale ragespams, he doesn't necessarily win. And when that happens, they start to lose interest.

The plugins of the server didn't change dramatically in the last few months. All that has changed is the amount of players that play there, which might very well be the reason that it was getting boring.

I know I can't really relate to this, but as far as I saw it, not many people got banned, especially not for no good reason. When did admins players for being good? Name examples please.

So you want to remove every bit that made the server unique... eeeeeh, ok?

That is indeed a very nice idea, but looking at the point above, it seems very conflicting.

Would like to see that. Other VSH (not FF2) servers also have one or two more bosses than the LZ ones, at least those could get added (talking about Easter Bunny, maybe more than that)

 

The problem here, I think, is our map rotation system. While it's a good idea in its essence (play small maps with a small amount of players), it really limits the map pool of regularly played maps. I think if we loosen up the map rotation a bit more, we could get some more variation in the played maps again. Playing the same maps over and over becomes repetitive and boring after a while aswell. Maybe we should also go back to the 20 minute map duration instead of 30 minutes, increasing the amount of different maps played. Plus we should have the map rotation somewhere public, because it can't be found anywhere.

On Yolbe's point about plugins, I'm going to refer to the medics ability to jump with other classes and the ability to revive (Note that I didn't say they were useless). I've seen a lot of (new) people on the server commenting that it just isn't fair. I think we should limit the power medics have in some way. We made the game harder for hale, without giving hale more tools to counter this. In fact, we even want to limit hale's raging ability. I'd say that's a no go, but that's just me.

In general, I think we want to control what's happening on the server a bit too much. First the map rotation, now hale's rage ability and probably some other things I'm not thinking of right now. I don't think this is a healthy way too go.

Something else to consider, is the amount of custom stuff that's only found on our vsh servers (plugins and maps). A newcomer (to vsh or a vsh player new on our server) might be overwhelmed about all the stuff we have. Like I noted, most of this benefits the player team, so they would probably not even enjoy playing hale because they can't win. I don't say they should win their first game, but they should atleast have a good chance. This would just scare them of our server and would never come back. Ofcourse, balance has also to do with maps, and the most popular maps are those where the player team has a higher winpercentage. While we have changed some maps for the better, the most popular maps can't undergo a "balancing" pass because it would make them less popular.

Another thing is the !haletoggle command. While it's cool to have such a feature, and loads of people use it, I don't think we as a server really benefit from it (I admit I use it all the time, but it's there so why not). It's really weird to see the same people playing the hale 3 times on the same map. I know there was an option to reset queue points in the past, but this command just made it easier not to play the hale, resulting in more people not playing the hale.

 

This is exactly what I mean. I don't mind having a short circuit which stuns hale, because it's really useful. But what about the smokebomb- sapper, the rage-reduicing-fan, the energy you gain with a crossbow or backup-phlog. If I join a new server, I would like to know what is possible, I want to know why I am being stunned all the time by an engineer and I want to know why HHH is able to climb walls.

As I said, I started in 2011 and none of these plugins were on the server and we still could beat Hale. This massive buffs and nerfs just made it sooo hard for beginners to get into the game.


"The plugins of the server didn't change dramatically in the last few months. All that has changed is the amount of players that play there, which might very well be the reason that it was getting boring."
Agree, the plugins didn't change much in the last months but it has changed alot in the last years.


"So you want to remove every bit that made the server unique... eeeeeh, ok?"
I never said that. I just said to remove all the unnecessary plugins.


"The problem here, I think, is our map rotation system. While it's a good idea in its essence (play small maps with a small amount of players), it really limits the map pool of regularly played maps. I think if we loosen up the map rotation a bit more, we could get some more variation in the played maps again. Playing the same maps over and over becomes repetitive and boring after a while aswell. Maybe we should also go back to the 20 minute map duration instead of 30 minutes, increasing the amount of different maps played. Plus we should have the map rotation somewhere public, because it can't be found anywhere."

I knew that something was strange about the map rotation, I just couldn't figure out what. I totally agree with the 20 minute map duration.


New Idea
How about adding a Forum - Section only for votes (without a registration) so people can come to our Forum and vote for some stuff like map rotation, new buffs, ...
This will give every player a feeling of being part of this community and server. Furthermore it will attract new people to play on LZ servers.

 

While it's good to have community input, I'm not convinced that people will just come here and vote. The forums as they are now are pretty deserted (for the most part, only admins and donators are active). Just look at the (vsh) maps section and what happened before that. We had a pretty active topic going for all vsh map related stuff. The activity went down the longer the thread was out there. Then Panromir "announced" that he'd make a maps section on the forums, and that we required map testers. A load of regulars declared they were up for testing maps and giving feedback to them. The maps forum is here now, and almost nobody of those who said they'd help are in there now.

Like you said, we should really have documentation of all the stuff that's on the server. The wiki snelvuur wanted to set up is great for this, and someone already began documenting all the weapons, but we have yet to see it actually being implemented.

Community attractiveness should really come from both sides (staff and admins on the one hand, players on the other). We have to give players a reason to come to our servers and our forums (like checking out what weapons does what and how a map was changed). Players on their part have to get involved in all this, like giving feedback, so we can enhance their experience playing on our servers.
I'm not entirely sure on how we could achieve this. The "post once and get the LZ" tag doesn't really seem all that interesting for players anymore.

 

I haven't played that much Vsh in the last time due to overplaying/fatigue, but I think part of the change is that non-regular players are going back to "normal" Tf2 due to the Updates at least to a degree.
Also I noticed a lot more servers being up now than a few months ago so the supply of VSH servers has gotten bigger.

Anyway a few things from my side that could improve stuff:

1. Changes to the Voting System
Currently the Voting System is an all or nothing case where the map with the most votes wins, even if it's just 3 out 11 votes. A deathrun server I sometimes play on has a runoff voting system , so when no map reaches 50% votes the first time, the 2/3 maps with the highest votes go into a second round.


2. Less restrictive Map rotation

There are some pretty good maps in the rotation, but barely anyone sees them since they are restricted to low player numbers. Also the restrictions make little sense with maps still being too big or too small for their group. Especially the 20+ (Not sure where the cutoff points are) maps are only like 10 maps.
Either remove the Map restrictions completely or downsize them.

3. Nerf Medics

Currently the success chances of Hale seem to be directly inverted to the number of skilled Medics on the field. The revive mechanic makes some playstyles as Hale difficult or even impossible (Ninja Hale, Hit-and-Run and attritioning down the other team for Example). I do realise that this feature is somewhat unique to the LZ server, still at least nerfs are necessary.
Maybe Medics can't revive Medics? Or the Medics actually heal Hale when leeching.


4. More Maps

I think simply having more maps on it's own isn't so much the problem (There aren't that many good Vsh maps left that aren't on the server), but having maps that actually change up the playstyle could be a solution. Converting somewhat unusual maps (From other modes than arena and koth, Event Maps, Or even completely LZ made maps) for VSH could spice things up.


5. Features for Fun

Stuff like roll the dice, Event Maps, Special Rounds ( I remember a 1st April where all the models were switched around so Scouts looked like Snipers etc.), maybe 2-3 more Bosses (There should be a few well balanced ones among the FF rotation)

 

I'd like to see that too, I think it's better than just having 5 maps to choose from, considering how many maps are there to play. Also, on the mark of most maps not getting played, the nominate feature should be disabled, since it's enabled the players to constantly play the same maps, while others get left out, essentially lowering the amount of maps which are in the pool.

The maps have restrictions for a reason, because small maps with lots of players make it impossible for the bosses to win. Since more players = less class restrictions = more of the same classes, you can easily have three Engineers sitting in a corner without the boss being able to do anything, even with rage (example: sawmill).

Medics heal the boss now while leeching, even if its just a bit, they do. But Medics not being able to revive Medics would make it much more pleasant for the boss, since he doesn't need to worry about that specific Medic, once he actually got him. You got my full support for that one.

Someone has to do THAT, too. And I don't think @Darkness899 wants to do that on his own the entire time. I do believe he has a life, too.

Like I said above, yes, that would be nice, since it would spice things up a bit, while making it less serious.

 

Too much too read, but i read in between the lines (dont have much time atm) but the idea of not begin able to revive a medic is a good one. Or at least make it that it needs 2 ubers to revive the medic. (or something like that)

Thing with map rotation is always a issue, we had tiny maps, with 30 players = insta hale kill and insta rage spam = also bad.

I am open for genuine suggestions, granted that it doesn't take a rework for Jelly. There have also always been ups and downs in periods with players, never thought it would happen to saxton. Since i didn't play saxton for some time (was playing ark) it has dropped a lot.

And all admins know that i always prefer the policy "if its a mic spammer or whatever, just perm mute them instead" a muted player is still a player.

Also, i thought about say mayhem friday, get rounds with only medic, only solider, only heavy etc etc.. for fun. But then regulars could complain because they don't like that style. So in the end its always too damn hard to please everyone. i actually think our server is one of the best and proper maintened saxton server. Perhaps we should find more "regular" people for it, that need a home.

And.. people move on too, i still see loads of people on teamspeak, just in different channels. Nothing wrong with that.

 

While I don't play VSH at all I guess it really was Gun Mettle "forcing" participating players to play on certain maps for map contracts. From a Valve server perspective there's been a lot more skilled players there than say the year before. I don't want to keep you guys from making changes you deem necessary but I'd agree with Snelvuur that it's just a "natural" downward spike. Will be interesting to see how all this event and contract system will affect community servers. Quickplay pretty much killed "normal TF2 maps" community servers, this one might actually endanger the rest of them. Unless of course we'd set up event map servers like for example Skial do.

 

Some other possible tweaks to Medics:

• All classes require a full bar of energy to revive.
• Hit an ubered medic to remove 5-10% uber
• Fix the bug that let's you revive someone if you have no energy after an uber
• Increase uber drain of needlejump

!haletoggle was added to reduce the number of boss suicides. Given that halepunish also helps reduce suicides, it could be removed (or just limited to donators)

 

I think this would be better:

• All classes require a full bar of energy to revive.
• Hit an ubered medic to remove 5-10% ENERGY
• Fix the bug that let's you revive someone if you have no energy after an uber
• Increase uber drain of needlejump BUT give him the possibility to gain uber while shooting hale (2-3% per shot) and not 5% like the normal syring gun.

_______________________________________________


Two days ago I came across with a guy on a public server who asked me: "Why do you still support LZ? Isn't it dead already?"

Could it be possible that people think we are dead? How about making special events once a month, with advertisment and announcements (like on Facebook)?

I could make a give-away event, like everybody who kills hale gets a goodie-bag?
Or how about a halloween event where you are able to play the big-fat eye as hale (don't know how it's called xD)

 

No. Either remove it completely or keep it like it is. No stupid "Look, you'll have to give us money to use this feature"-crap. This is making it look like pay-to-win, I'm already thinking the option to choose bosses when being a donator is stupid. When you want to play VSH, you just have be whatever guy you get to be, not just "Ah, I'll just take Vagineer all the time, because he's the best boss when I constantly rage".
Looking at you Zeyon...

No, if you donate, you do it to support the community, not to gain features that other, non-paying players, can't get because they're not paying for it. They way most community handle donations is just to get more people to donate by giving them donator perks, but how I see it, it's just making this a pay-to-have-better-chances-as-the-boss. Donating means giving someone their money (or similar stuff) while expecting nothing in return. So please, just remove the !haletoggle command completly.

The ideas you said about Medic seem good, but I'll still stick to my opinion that Medics shouldn't be able to revive each other.

When no one knows about this community, no one will know that there are any events... The halloween event with playing MONOCULUS is a nice idea, but that needs to be coded as well... The goodie-bags need to be donated as well, I wouldn't mind helping there, but someone would need to organize those events. Next week, I'll have some more time since I'll be alone in my house for 2 weeks, I could look into stuff like that then, but not now.

 

I could also help if the big boss agrees on that @Snelvuur

 

Just gonna throw my penny out there..

#1 School just started, many parents pressure their kids.. plain simple.. people just dedicate themselves in this period to school, wait for holidays, weekends are also good for it, but not by much.
#2 People move on, done..
#3 Too many buffs/nerfs lately. Adding more will confuse whatever is left. Need to stabilize what we have first.
#4 Maps are fine, rotations are fine in my opinion aswell, splits are alright. Some maps could be bumped in other sets but that's just my opinion. However the "Nominate" feature makes it so that people pick same maps over and over, and many don't know about this, so they never see new maps, gets boring, disabling this could open up to more players as people would see all our maps in the current pool as there's many, just people never see them. As for adding new maps... Make them.. it's fun right?
#5 Fun rounds.. grapple anyone? People hated me for doing these.. now reading about it.. good old times..

Have fun :3

 

This is far from related to vsh, but still concerns the community. Maybe we should review what servers we offer. For example, we have a surf server I've never seen people playing on, same with tower defence, the asteroid server and the server still running last year's Halloween map.

Like Biber noted, servers playing stock maps are dead, but we might have a chance when we put up a server(s) with quality community made maps. I'm all up for selecting and playing custom maps. I believe there's a playerbase for it too. Might be worth a shot.

In the end, putting up a server and waiting for new players to join is kind of a shot in the dark. If players don't know a server like this is out there, they won't come. Like Snelvuur said, we should find more "regulars", but then there's the question of where to find them.

 

My personal advice to nearly every problem on earth from politics to computer issues is: "Start from the scratch" simplicity is usually the best way to succeed. Trying to fix the current issues by adding more into it will certainly make it more complex.

I'm one of those people who used to be quite regular back in the day but then stopped playing on LZ servers. There're many reasons why I don't play there anymore. The servers that I used to play were: VSH, Freak Fortress 2, Orange and Trade server.

1. Team Fortress 2 isn't attractive anymore.
There's nothing we can do about this one. Valve can't keep TF2 new and funny for an eternity, all games will eventually die away.

2. SO MANY PLUGINS!!11
I won't lie about this. I hate many of the plugins. They fill your HUD and you barely know what's going on. I'm not even sure what all kinds of plugins there are but I kinda gave up when Spy got smoke bombs, things got even more confusing. Also the chat had was filled with ads and everything, orange, green and all kind of text everywhere. Also the medics are annoying.

3. VSH is very competetive.
I don't like being competetive, challenges are okay but it's very frustrating when you have to fight to keep your scores up, I gave up. I really enjoyed the old scoring system, where you could only gain more points. Back in the day I felt like something when I had maybe 4000 points, Comedian had maybe 15 000-20 000, not sure but I felt like I was part of the pro players because I was gaining more points as I played more. Losing didn't feel like a punishment.

Also, the only way to see someone's points, was if they typed something like !score, which showed their score to the entire server. This was the only way to see anyone's points. It's very annoying when your scores get compared to someone else's.

Story:
I joined LZ because the servers were funny and I wanted a place to stay. I first played at the Freak Fortress 2 server but then I found VSH servers and stayed there because it had more players, sometimes the servers were so full that I had to wait. I played as Hale, although I didn't know that I could jump with Mouse 2.

New updates, plugins and fixes were added but they were fine, untill they became a menace and began affecting the gameplay. The medic update was a rather annoyance and I practically stopped playing as hale, because I couldn't enjoy it anymore. I only played as a Hale if there were no other regular players on the server. Also the point system scared me away, because I could never get such points that the pro players had.

I kept a break from TF2. Once I returned, I didn't really want to play on the LZ servers anymore.
VSH servers had so many plugins that I didn't even want to learn them, I just quit and went back to FF2 servers, which hadn't been updated for a long long time. I could've enjoyed my stay there because things felt like they used to be but the server didn't really have any players and it was eventually removed.

Orange is still quite playable but it also has the competetive scoring system, so I don't playe there either. Trade server doesn't exist anymore.

 

Thank you, you explained everything what I couldn't explain