Extremely disappointing

This is the second week in a row we've had shitty games on a friday. Barely able to get 3v3s. Salute to the dedicated folks that showed up to try and salvage a night out of things, but I'm really starting to wonder if this is truly the end. I know "it's summer" and "we've had slow times before". I've personally financed the game server for the last year, and as it stands I don't think I want to make the next payment in October. I'm not soliciting donations - I'd be happy to pay for a server, so long as more than 5 people are willing to play a few hours a week to keep things going. I know that QT also has done a hellova job over the past months trying to motivate people to play, trying to get some fresh things going here -- and yeah, he's on vacation for a few weeks and that is all good.

I'm mostly posting this out of frustration, but where the hell is everyone?

Beck, I sent u a PM.

You have posted in this forum: Sat Jul 24, 2021 11:07 am Post subject:

Even the 3v3 was scarce. It was mostly 2v2

You have posted in this forum: Sat Jul 24, 2021 11:22 am Post subject:

I would love to play with you guys on Friday but with my arm still not working. Its not an option yet but ill play as soon as I can. I am hoping to get a shot on a few weeks to see if that fixes it.

You have posted in this forum: Sat Jul 24, 2021 11:52 am Post subject:

ET isn't that taxing of a game... could have one of us host the server on a home pc & point the domain there to avoid paying server costs.

You have posted in this forum: Sat Jul 24, 2021 1:55 pm Post subject:

I literally can't play on it anymore since we switched the hosts. I just get dropped after a few minutes.

You have posted in this forum: Sat Jul 24, 2021 2:39 pm Post subject:

It's not purely a financial thing -- even if someone hosted it at their house people still have to show up to play. It gets taxing doing this week after week and having only a few people show up. Again, I know it might just be the season or whatever, and I know I should be happy to even get 3s to show up for a near 20 year old game. W/e, I'll be here next Friday to try again.

@sin - not sure what to tell you why you'd get dropped. Do you want me to ask the host to look for anything in the logs?

You have posted in this forum: Sat Jul 24, 2021 2:56 pm Post subject:

Not sure what we would even ask. Its like clockwork, about 4 mins after I connect I go full zombie and never re-establish a connection until I reconnect. This has persisted through multiple routers and modems, 2 windows reinstalls, et legacy and vanilla clients and I even booted up my old pc with the same exact thing.

Is there old subnet bans that are being enforced at all? I can't think of anything else

You have posted in this forum: Sat Jul 24, 2021 3:34 pm Post subject: T

I try not to chime in these because, well fuck, I'd be a hypocrite. It's nice to see someone other than QT showing some interest?

I haven't played much for obvious reasons. I'll show up and try when I can. Nobody has bitched at me for being worse than - I won't name any names. Very Happy

You have posted in this forum: Sat Jul 24, 2021 3:35 pm Post subject:

You playing FF this year, Sin?

When I saw this, I presumed it was in the public general forum, so I pm'd Beck my thoughts: the content of that message is below...

Hi Beck,

I saw your post on the forum, but I didn't want to post publicly some of my commentary as most of it is debatable. Perhaps you can paste this to the internal member forum.

My only interest here is to keep ET players playing and attracting new ones. And in that interest, I suggest the following:

Adjust XP save to forever, or something close to it. Currently, Friday-only players start at zero each week. This doesn't bother me personally but regular pub players will go where they have XP-saved. When FA or OF is full, they can spill over to IoW and at least have some XP from the last time they played.

Increase client rate: popular servers allow up to 50000 and some use some kind of auto up-tick on this

Increase max client FPS: not a dealbreaker, i think iow is set to 144, but some servs allow 200 or more

Consider enabling BOTs. 6max. As humans join, a bot drops off, but at least balance is maintained. Force a shuffle every 3rd map or so. Change bot names from time to time.

Adjust server name: Something that speaks to the features: <Iow> silEnT XPsave Forever, or something

Forget about SW: while this is my favorite game mode, it never really works well for pubs. Most players that enjoy SW will play it thru pugs on ETpro. Not saying you can't do it from time to time for special game nights, but to have it enabled by default every Sat/Sun is not a good idea, unless commitment exists to populate the server at those times.

gatorhead

100% for the xp save.

gatorhead wrote (View Post): › When I saw this, I presumed it was in the public general forum, so I pm'd Beck my thoughts: the content of that message is below...

Hi Beck,

I saw your post on the forum, but I didn't want to post publicly some of my commentary as most of it is debatable. Perhaps you can paste this to the internal member forum.

My only interest here is to keep ET players playing and attracting new ones. And in that interest, I suggest the following:

Adjust XP save to forever, or something close to it. Currently, Friday-only players start at zero each week. This doesn't bother me personally but regular pub players will go where they have XP-saved. When FA or OF is full, they can spill over to IoW and at least have some XP from the last time they played.

Increase client rate: popular servers allow up to 50000 and some use some kind of auto up-tick on this

Increase max client FPS: not a dealbreaker, i think iow is set to 144, but some servs allow 200 or more

Consider enabling BOTs. 6max. As humans join, a bot drops off, but at least balance is maintained. Force a shuffle every 3rd map or so. Change bot names from time to time.

Adjust server name: Something that speaks to the features: <Iow> silEnT XPsave Forever, or something

Forget about SW: while this is my favorite game mode, it never really works well for pubs. Most players that enjoy SW will play it thru pugs on ETpro. Not saying you can't do it from time to time for special game nights, but to have it enabled by default every Sat/Sun is not a good idea, unless commitment exists to populate the server at those times.

gatorhead

I agree with most of this except for bots but that might just be my old school thinking or something. I just always hated going into servers thinking there was people and it was just all bots. I'd rather just know the server is empty. But again, just my two cents. I know it doesn't count for much since I don't play either but figured I'd throw it out there.

You have posted in this forum: Sun Jul 25, 2021 8:52 am Post subject:

I'm not a fan of bots but I wouldn't mind if there was a voting system or some way for the average person to get rid of them?

Last edited by ontheqt on Sun Jul 25, 2021 6:20 pm; edited 1 time in total

I’m probably going to say a few things that will upset some folks.

All of the items discussed above are icing on a cake that has collapsed.

XP save could be a great idea. I’m all for it.

Changing a few server settings might be helpful.

Bots turn me off - big time.

StopWatch on off days is something I like but if being pub 24x7 works then great. 24x7 pub hasn’t been helpful on IoW for years though.

The most important thing (the cake) is to have dedicated IoW members that are willing to put in the time and effort to make the server successful. This means showing up regularly, messaging players to encourage them to join the server and game, not running off regulars or new players, and working to increase our membership. No one person can do this. It takes a collective effort from all of us.

I’m a very flawed person so I fail at consistently doing many of these things constantly. It takes all of us to pull this off.

Stepping down from my soapbox now for folks to curse at me, or scoff at me or ignore me.