Too many Server options for a community this size

Heisenberg

Heisenberg

New Member
First of all it think's great to see the effort the dev team has put into Legions:Overdrive and into running servers across the globe. I enjoy this game tremendously.

On to my criticism:

The community is tiny and having many options is detrimental to pub play; a common sight when logging in is this:
mrSu8.png

(US servers presenting a slighty rosier picture)

Whenever i join the Duel server (a truly pointless invention, unlike TDM) i only see people dicking around a bit, maybe chatting a little, but in general not being engaged in any type of serious gameplay. When i ask them to come to a CTF server, there's usually interest and the reason they were on the Duel server to begin with, is "because someone else was there"; No surprise.

Once a CTF game gets started and the server fills up, everybody's usually having a great time, experienced or not. (*cough* MJ1284)

The way i see it, we could have that everyday, but only through the removal of (unused) alternatives. In my opinion this would imply:
  • Removal of all public non-CTF servers. (TDM as Private server if desired)
  • Removal of the password for Public Test servers; or making these servers inaccessible to the public.
  • Removal of the [S/L] distinction, putting the most popular maps into rotation and leaving dinosaurs like Bladerun out.
Ideally this would mean: 1 Public EU server, running CTF, no password, popular map rotation (Frost, Moon, Nivo, Zenith, etc.)

I'm aware of the reasoning behind having a publicly accessible Test server, but i think its context it's not effective.

Now the developers and those who have given up on PUB play all together will probably disagree.
The way i see it, this current system is blocking any influx of new players at the gates, especially the password protected public servers. What use do all your current efforts have, if nobody is going to play your game in half a year's time? You won't be able to port it to another engine. Add to that the upcoming F2P release of Tribes:Ascend (~ early 2012) and you're just about done.
 
LumpySausage

LumpySausage

Member
I'm not Sure about Nivosus although this was just an example.
I wish the cycle would be Frostbyte-Stygian-Elegiac-Zenith Cauldron-Fallout.
And it is true there are too many servers. I only see like 5-8 servers being used and how many servers are there? 40?
Or is this because people are in school and studying?
 
Abandoned

Abandoned

Member
I remember a developer saying that they might as well have more servers for the same price they are paying.

e.g We pay the server providers $70 a month for them to run the servers for legions.
They give us the maximum server slots of 4 for that $70 dollars.
Might as well use all that 4 server slots anyway.

We currently don't have any admin or player-hosted servers yet, if your suggestion of having one server for CTF, and it's Stygian (or what have you), no-one would want to wait for 6 players, then have to cap it out, or play that round.

The duel servers do have a purpose, it's to stop people from ruining CTF games (you love so much) by dueling in it. A duel usually has 2 players involved. Which 2/8 out of 5 0/16 servers, it's quite obvious for a player who wants to play CTF to join the duel server, mainly because there are players in there, with the addition of flags still on the stand, unlimited time on Frostbyte.

The passwords are implemented for a reason, it's to stop unaware (new) players from stumbling onto joining that server and to have a tremendous confusion by the loadouts and weapons.

The release of *Tribes: Ass-End* won't kill legions, I'm sure ;)
(just because legions is so special in it's own way, the downtime of IA didn't stop legions)
 
LumpySausage

LumpySausage

Member
Abandoned said:
I remember a developer saying that they might as well have more servers for the same price they are paying.

e.g We pay the server providers $70 a month for them to run the servers for legions.
They give us the maximum server slots of 4 for that $70 dollars.
Might as well use all that 4 server slots anyway.

We currently don't have any admin or player-hosted servers yet, if your suggestion of having one server for CTF, and it's Stygian (or what have you), no-one would want to wait for 6 players, then have to cap it out, or play that round.

The duel servers do have a purpose, it's to stop people from ruining CTF games (you love so much) by dueling in it. A duel usually has 2 players involved. Which 2/8 out of 5 0/16 servers, it's quite obvious for a player who wants to play CTF to join the duel server, mainly because there are players in there, with the addition of flags still on the stand, unlimited time on Frostbyte.

The passwords are implemented for a reason, it's to stop unaware (new) players from stumbling onto joining that server and to have a tremendous confusion by the loadouts and weapons.

The release of *Tribes: Ass-End* won't kill legions, I'm sure ;)
(just because legions is so special in it's own way, the downtime of IA didn't stop legions)
Click to expand...

So you donate money to help a game to keep running but why use it on servers?
Why not something we need?
 
GReaper

GReaper

Grumpy
Most of this could be all solved with additional columns and filters. When player run servers come up on the server list, would you ask them to shut down servers because there's too many of them?

The game needs a vastly superior server browser, something which can filter by game type, server region (servers probably need updating to get this fixed) and player count. All the functionality exists in Torque, but sadly we aren't taking advantage of any of it. It just needs someone familiar with TorqueScript to go and add it.

With filtering, by default all passworded servers could be hidden, with a default view being all public servers with a minimum of 1 player in them.
 
Abandoned

Abandoned

Member
LumpySausage said:
So you donate money to help a game to keep running but why use it on servers?
Why not something we need?
Click to expand...

Donations go towards helping to keep the servers running, you idiot.. Without servers there will be no Pubs, and the whole fact that currently legions is staying alive because of players playing on Pubs.
 
Dacil

Dacil

Member
list is fine imo...but im US....and having filters would bother me for some reason, maybe cause I like seeing every option or something, dunno
 
P

prometheus11

New Member
Thats rather American of you, Dacil... ;)

I agree with the fact that there's too many servers but at the same time Abandoned has a very good point:

We currently don't have any admin or player-hosted servers yet, if your suggestion of having one server for CTF, and it's Stygian (or what have you), no-one would want to wait for 6 players, then have to cap it out, or play that round.
Click to expand...
 
Heisenberg

Heisenberg

New Member
Thanks for your responses.

Abandoned: I'm aware of all those arguments for having various servers to choose from. It's simply that we have different outlooks on the nature (and growth) of this community. My suggestion is to essentially force players to play together, even if it clashes with all points of yours. I believe it's the only chance to attract and hold new players and thus keep the community alive. Since neither of us can prove our assumptions, we'll have to agree to disagree.
 
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