TheVille

I know we have discussed this previously, but I do hate seeing Ville servers empty during the day (or anytime really).

I saw this on reddit (There is language so hide your children). "24 standard slots with 4 hidden, reserved slots for donors and admins. This is in full compliance with Valve's Quickplay guidelines"

Is there a possibility of converting one of the Ville TF2 servers to have a similar setup? I always feel dirty after having played on skial servers

Unfortunately, reserved slots aren't the only thing keeping the major servers off of quickplay. TV6, TV7 and I think TV8 all have class limits in place which is not allowed on quickplay servers. It's probably possible to set up TV3 to work, but that server simply doesn't see enough regular traffic as it is (even when it was 24/7 payload). It would take a lot of dedicated seeding over a long period of time to build up the population of the server to have regular busy times like the other servers. At this point in TF2's life, I think that would take a lot of advertising or constant seeding to keep traffic steady.

It would be nice to get back on quickplay though. TV7 just isn't as busy as it once was

I've been looking into this problem too Scorch. The communities with quickplay enabled are still able to fill and keep filled their servers while those who don't, like us, struggle. Even the really big ones like No Heroes can't keep their servers full. The best advertising we could do is getting people to play on our servers and then come back, but that's hard when we have to hard seed the servers. One solution I've run across is to have one quickplay compliant server that offers to redirect to one of the other servers once the quickplay server nears capacity. It's not against the Valve rules (last I checked anyway), though I'm not sure how well it gels with Ville rules, nor am I sure that Stevo has the time/willingness to implement it, but that's my suggestion.

I thought they just impelemented some changes to keep server ops from redirecting players to other servers?

I would be fine if we went back to QP if we could, the empty servers aren't really any good as it is. . .

I've been playing on Valve qp servers for the past few weeks. Occasionally, we get the 5 engie team but for the most part class make-up hasn't been too bad. The Ville has 5 TF2 servers and only 2 of them get any significant action. Seems like a waste to have the others just doing nothing.

Plinko wrote:I thought they just impelemented some changes to keep server ops from redirecting players to other servers?

Automatic yes, but I didn't think that they took away optional for non-full servers (I could be wrong). Even then, simply having messages for the other servers could work the same way, something like "Like us, come play on our other servers <address> or press Fwhatever to go there now," on the announcement page.

Scorch wrote:I've been playing on Valve qp servers for the past few weeks. Occasionally, we get the 5 engie team but for the most part class make-up hasn't been too bad. The Ville has 5 TF2 servers and only 2 of them get any significant action. Seems like a waste to have the others just doing nothing.

I would say only one has really been active as of late. Seems as if tv7 is resting in pieces.

If we have the ability to do this, I would be in favour of it. Class limits are nice, but something I would be very willing to give up if it meant the servers might be full more often.

Fill them up!! lately servers aren't seeding until 8pm or later at night im used to them seeding mid afternoon if not earlier, I honestly think quickplay has alot to do with this...

If we are going to do this, I think we need to do it sooner rather than later. Apparently Quickplay takes into a account a server's reputation when deciding how many players to send to the server. So if TV6 and TV7 have a reputation for being empty all the time, we may have a much harder time reviving them if they've been dead for a while.

Also worth mentioning, Valve servers don't don't do fast respawns, although quickplay can support it now. So TV6 might actually do pretty well with our fast respawns since it wouldn't have to be competing with Valve servers.

the servers are dead practically all day but maybe 4-5 hours, i just feel like they are being wasted, quickplay would likely help quite a bit....

As someone who can't really play at the time when the severs are up at the moment, I would like to see quickplay reintroduced.

I would like to see this as well, seeing as how I have more time during "normal" work/school hours to play.

We've been struggling to even seed TV6 recently. We need to get more new blood on the servers, so either we need to start advertising or use quickplay.

I realize that TF2 is long in the tooth now but I'm infinitely more interested in donating for a reserved slot on an active server rather than access to the "supporter's forums". Quite a few regulars have moved on, new life will be needed around here.