That's just it,say if you play soldier as a newbie. then run into a good soldier without random crits. If you are new you don't get that good player dead 1o1. He just gets his rockets better aimed and he avoids your better. Now with random crits, if like your first rocket is a crit, you have an advantage by getting that experienced player down below 1/4 health. Handicapped him. Random crits are in the game for newbies to random win from experienced players.
Yeah, I'll bump this. The F2P beginners that joined the existing servers, made it harder for the good ol regulars to get in. Then with the addition of another 2 - 3 servers spread them out. You can also consider schoolterms, vacations and whatnot starting/ending. Another point is that most regulars also started a new season in ETF2L. So to get people back, first of all sitting on a server spectating does not help. Surely people join but they'll be the only one actually moving at times. Secondly, reduce the ammounts of servers. Advertise that there is an all payload server, remove some of the less played maps out of the rotation and your good to go. Allow the "no crits" vote on some of the other servers again, whilst advertising that there is a fully non-crit server. You can also stop "stomping" beginners - Im like the biggest troll.... so... - which make them ragequit. I randomclass a lot, give feedback to the players - not always in a good way, sorry =( - so they can graps what to do to win. Enable a visable class limit counter in the class selection menu / scoreboar / wherever you can see it. Give "hints" as valve do in the loadingscreens in the chat. For example "To defend a capture, you have to touch the point or kill the opponent" Enable the "working" scramble you had at the end of the "prime time" #3 no crit, that way the intensity of matches held there will spread to the other servers. Do not show that a top player joined, it discourage some of the new players - does opposite to others. When running eventservers = disable stats, I know quite a few players including myself not playing on lethalzones server during that time. Frankly cause you could screw scores up ( yeah, Im a troll.. ). I hardly returned after that. If you're on the winning team and a good regular when no autobalance has been done, consider joining the losing team to give them a chance to enjoy. Say whatever you want about this, but its my 2 cents and hopefully some of it actually makes sense. Heck, I've been hanging around lethalzone's servers for two years, but I've said it so many times. Since the F2P and addition of more servers, its gone downhill. Edit: Its also good to see the LZ'rs play there. But as I've not been there for some time I can't say I've seen if they are.
Thank you for that feedback man, much appreciated. Getting the critvote back up again might be a good idea, since, say whatever you want guys but hardly anyone is connecting via the autojoin thingy now anyway. The playercount reached the level from BEFORE the F2P update, lower actually, and with am 2,4,5,6 we have been relying on exactly those players. Now they're gone, so what to do? As I mentioned in the admin section, might as well ask the regs here anyway, I think it is an IDEA (not that its good, thats for everyone here to judge) to go for 32 Player servers 24/32 Player Fast Respawn servers Maybe more mod servers like Surf maps and stuff Before you shoot the fast respawn idea down remember that lots of new players don't like to wait 10 seconds after death. It's true and you know it. I do agree that it can take a lot of fun out of the game but to them it seems like more fun. To fill the servers we HAVE to take this into consideration.
A lot of those new players also fill up the regular servers, so if we send them to fast-respawn then the nomal servers will fill even worse...
We send nobody to fill anything, that is the point. We want our servers to fill by themselves, which includes the assumption that those who are playing on am #1 will stay there because they prefer the config. So I'd say if we put up the servers mentioned above we get NEW players that become regs there. It's all about getting new regs and you wont achieve that with only one filled 24 men server and basically no variation in your servers. We currently have 6 (!) servers that are basically the same.
And they used to be full too.. Doesn't matter what server it is.. Put enough people on it and it will fill
Getting no new regs or losing the current regulars while getting new ones aren't very different things. The servers now also have people who don't care about respawntimes, they'll just join the server with most people on, which will be the quickspawn. This is nice and all for everyone but the current regulars, who mostly prefer vanilla spawntimes. Though 6 servers is to much, 2 would be alright.
I never said we should touch AM1 which is the only server that is being filled. AM1: AM2: AM3: AM4: AM5: AM6: For comparison: UKCS 32 Player instant respawn servers (remember they have 32 slots, so 8 possible regs more PER SERVER)
It really sucks that LZ servers apart from 1 seem so dead lately. I have been playing here since 2008 and I remember 1 and 2 always being full during prime time and payload used to be pretty full too. Now sometimes not even LZ 1 is fully crowded. Have so many of the old LZ community deserted TF 2? :cry:
I think the most regulars from the old times are just playing saxton hale or quited TF2. But it's weird finding out the servers are not always full anymore...
AM #1 has NO respawn time at the moment, well atleast not on badlands. Dunno if it's the same on other server