The Big Seeding FAQ

Here you will find the queries of our honored Ville residents and the helpful responses.
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Dirty Dan
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The Big Seeding FAQ

Post by Dirty Dan » Sat Oct 02, 2010 10:01 am

Seeding servers at TheVille

Almost as soon as I joined the ville forums, I recognized seeding as one of the best ways I can contribute to the community, while at the same time making new friends and having a blast. Lately I haven’t had a chance to seed quite as much due to some “RL” obligations, so I thought I’d share some basics about seeding that I’ve learned since there are always questions, and always more server slots to fill.

What is seeding?
Seeding is the act of filling an empty server. This is accomplished by joining the server and encouraging other players to do so in order to make the server more attractive for others to join.

Why do it?
1. It takes players to attract players. Whether a random pubber or a player that has the ville in their favorites, people want to join servers that already have players in them. Even a popular server can remain empty if it doesn’t have an initial contingent of players to get it started.

2. Servers that are frequently populated stay in peoples’ favorites list.

3. Selfish reason: It’s fun. You get to hang out with players you know well as well as get to know more players while you get servers going and it’s a blast! Seeding isn’t a chore!

4. Whether you’re a new player, a regular, or an admin, it’s a simple & easy way to give back and be sure the community stays strong. Anyone can do it.

How does one seed?
1. Make friends. The Ville is a network of hundreds of like minded gamers, become steam friends with them! Whether you see them in the forums, see them in your favorite ville server, or know them in real life, having friends to invite to games is essential to seeding. The list of the top server seeders is here: http://thevilluns.org/villetools/seedlist.php, that’ll give you a place to start if you’re looking for villuns to seed with.

2. Add all ville servers to your favorites list. Join an empty server, and simply invite all your friends. Seriously, all of them. Don’t worry about annoying them, the worst that can happen is they’ll have to close a window. They’ll live.

3. Wait. Get to know the people your seeding with, all-talk is on until there are 8 players in the game. If you have time, stay until the server reaches a healthy population of 16+ players. Depending on the time of the day and server, this can take anywhere from 5 minutes to an hour. The more you seed, the more you’ll get a feel for what time of day servers can populate.

4. Revel...in the joy that there’s a ville server full of players because you took a little time to get it started. It’s really satisfying to know that there are players enjoying our community partially due to what you’ve done.

We’re really lucky to be part of a community that makes an organized effort to keep the servers healthy, whether that’s Dog’s behind the scenes web/server/everything work, Stevo, MMX, and the server ops work on the server, to the players that seed the servers and simply make playing here fun, we have it good at the ville!

The oldest question of them all: What IS, A Seed Point?

Seed points are awarded to the first eight players that join a server that stay connected until the server has 18 total players. These “points” have no intrinsic value, they’re tracked in order to keep track of and recognize players that go out of their way to fill ville servers.

Personally, I try to stay in a server long enough that I feel it has reached a stable population (if you invite a few players and leave soon after the server tends to die out); just because a seed point is awarded doesn’t necessarily mean the server population is stable. Also, a server’s population might be declining, but may have already awarded seed points. Inviting players to keep a server steady is just as helpful as seeding one.

Other notes:
“Melee Only”: There’s an informal tradition of using only melee attacks until a significant number of players arrive. The idea of this is to keep the mood light hearted, as meaningful gameplay isn’t possible without a good representation of classes. Messing around with melee-only is fine, but forcing these rules on players isn’t helpful. If new players start joining and using normal weapons, it’s probably time to start playing normally. “Melee only” IS NOT an official ville rule, it’s an informal part of seeding, and no player should be criticized for using any weapon at any time, including seeding.

Cheers & happy seeding!
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Plinko
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Re: The Big Seeding FAQ

Post by Plinko » Sat Oct 02, 2010 11:22 am

Don't forget to join the Ville Seed Team:

http://steamcommunity.com/groups/thevilleseedteam.
"I made all my gold into pants" - Ignatius
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Stevo
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Re: The Big Seeding FAQ

Post by Stevo » Sat Oct 02, 2010 11:58 am

Stickified

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