Me and at least two others in my clan haven't had a server browser for almost a month now. By that i mean no servers showing up no matter what the filters checked. It just stopped working after patch 222 (i think), not sure when, but not right after patch, just randomly some time after a patch.It apparently does find the servers since it counts up to almost a thousand, but that number just tells me there's a thousand servers i could be playing on and not a single server i can actually join. If not for joining in on friends through steam or nanogrid (not optimal (cant type password for example), I/we would be unable to play at all.
On the positive note you can use F3 or whatever in your browser and search servers by keywords or name :) no favourites though.
I wish copy paste would work in console for connecting, getting ip and password from your opponent and just pasting it in would be so easy. I dislike having to add a chinese military worth of people on my steam friends list so i can join in on opponents or even contact people since irc seems to be out of fashion. but thats a story for some other time.
The server browser in ns2 is however not the worst i've seen. but the whole thing being unresponsive while refreshing ALL the servers can be a bit annoying since you can't join one you just see having slots or whatever, and joining in with 2-4 friends can be hard when you think there's slots but once you finally even got to klick on it it's basically full already. you should be able to mark some and refresh for example.
Also a cool feature would be to see how long the current round has been going on. lets say the round has been going on for 5min and the server is full, you understand that probably there will be no free slots soon, since the round just started and people still have fun battling off early game. if however it's been 20min the round probably ends soon, unless it become a turtling game, but people tend to leave in that case soon enough too and you can join a well populated server and help end the game and get to a fresh new round.
in steam when looking at the details of the server your buddy might be playing on you can also see useful information like how many points people have or frags, that already gives you a good idea of how long a round has been going on. and people who've spent already over an hour on the same server are likely to leave soon so it's worth the wait to get to play with your friend. Or against him, which is even more satisfying at times ;)
I'm all for steam server browser until ns2 server browser gets awesome. i like the look of the ns2 more than steam but functionality right now is not optimal, and for me of course non-existant. and i prefer loading in to a server from ingame, not having to start the game up through some external app. Luckily ns2 starts almost instantly since there is no useless crap to load before even getting to the main menu, like some ######ty video people skip anyways except maybe the first time you run the game. A small detail but so awesome. crash from server? no prob you'll be in again in 10 sec sine game starts in 1sec and precaching seems to stay until you boot your whole computer :) i don't even have ns2 installed on my ssd. (first load takes a while but you just start ns2 once and you're done for the whole evening)
Also one more thing, would be nice with an option to choose how many servers you wanna show "per page", think font size on the server names, to show more servers at once or if you got hard times reading quickly then have it at this standard size. I hate scrolling, so i like to see as much information as possible at once :D but this is by no means anything really important.
This post got longer than i planned. Deal with it.
About the server full message: I believe the client does refresh the number of free slots when a server is selected in the browser because sometimes almost full ones disappear if filter full is enabled. However after clicking join it seems the client takes a few seconds of loading before it gets to tell the server to reserve a slot and sometimes other people get in during that window.
I said this before release and I'm saying it again: A <u>good</u> (not merely acceptable) server browser is crucially important for casual play. If it's a hassle to find and join a decent game, people aren't going to play. For the hardcore fans and the competitive players, a substandard server browser is a nuisance, but for those that doesn't play very often and happen to have an hour to kill it's a deal breaker and they'll launch some other, more effortless game.
I know UWE have a lot on their plate and they're doing a tremendous job, but in comparison with rewriting engine code to fix strange bugs and optimize the game and what not, making the browser shine shouldn't be a monumental task.
This is how my server browser expirience goes: (assuming i have no idea about nanogrid, the standalone server browser etc)
Starting game, server list refreshes once, 90% of the time joining the the first time will give me a server not responding message. Then i go back to the server browser, and its ofc empty again and has to load the full list again... tho this time it doesnt load anything for minutes. So now i either alt-tab out of the game and wait until refreshing works again(up to 10min), or i just quit and restart the game a few times.
So after 15min or so i can either luckily join a server, give up and join someone trough my steamfriends list.
Changing maxpings on steam doesnt change anything in that regard, all it does is making it super slow to update the list in those rare times it decides to load, making the expirience even worse.
What i discovered the other day is that the not responding stuff comes less if i wait a few extra minutes after it tells me that the list is finished updating.
I dont understand <b>why it has to totally reload the server list everytime you leave the server browser menu(because you try to connect or whatever) instead of just refreshing the servers (eg. having 2 buttons, 1 quick refresh, and one that reloads the full list)</b>
<!--quoteo(post=2044876:date=Dec 13 2012, 10:47 AM:name=TheKarva)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (TheKarva @ Dec 13 2012, 10:47 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2044876"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Me and at least two others in my clan haven't had a server browser for almost a month now. By that i mean no servers showing up no matter what the filters checked. It just stopped working after patch 222 (i think), not sure when, but not right after patch, just randomly some time after a patch.It apparently does find the servers since it counts up to almost a thousand, but that number just tells me there's a thousand servers i could be playing on and not a single server i can actually join. If not for joining in on friends through steam or nanogrid (not optimal (cant type password for example), I/we would be unable to play at all.
On the positive note you can use F3 or whatever in your browser and search servers by keywords or name :) no favourites though.
I wish copy paste would work in console for connecting, getting ip and password from your opponent and just pasting it in would be so easy. I dislike having to add a chinese military worth of people on my steam friends list so i can join in on opponents or even contact people since irc seems to be out of fashion. but thats a story for some other time.
The server browser in ns2 is however not the worst i've seen. but the whole thing being unresponsive while refreshing ALL the servers can be a bit annoying since you can't join one you just see having slots or whatever, and joining in with 2-4 friends can be hard when you think there's slots but once you finally even got to klick on it it's basically full already. you should be able to mark some and refresh for example.
Also a cool feature would be to see how long the current round has been going on. lets say the round has been going on for 5min and the server is full, you understand that probably there will be no free slots soon, since the round just started and people still have fun battling off early game. if however it's been 20min the round probably ends soon, unless it become a turtling game, but people tend to leave in that case soon enough too and you can join a well populated server and help end the game and get to a fresh new round.
in steam when looking at the details of the server your buddy might be playing on you can also see useful information like how many points people have or frags, that already gives you a good idea of how long a round has been going on. and people who've spent already over an hour on the same server are likely to leave soon so it's worth the wait to get to play with your friend. Or against him, which is even more satisfying at times ;)
I'm all for steam server browser until ns2 server browser gets awesome. i like the look of the ns2 more than steam but functionality right now is not optimal, and for me of course non-existant. and i prefer loading in to a server from ingame, not having to start the game up through some external app. Luckily ns2 starts almost instantly since there is no useless crap to load before even getting to the main menu, like some ######ty video people skip anyways except maybe the first time you run the game. A small detail but so awesome. crash from server? no prob you'll be in again in 10 sec sine game starts in 1sec and precaching seems to stay until you boot your whole computer :) i don't even have ns2 installed on my ssd. (first load takes a while but you just start ns2 once and you're done for the whole evening)
Also one more thing, would be nice with an option to choose how many servers you wanna show "per page", think font size on the server names, to show more servers at once or if you got hard times reading quickly then have it at this standard size. I hate scrolling, so i like to see as much information as possible at once :D but this is by no means anything really important.
This post got longer than i planned. Deal with it.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
go to your \steam directory go to steam\config delete MasterServer2.vdf [...] profit
Comments
On the positive note you can use F3 or whatever in your browser and search servers by keywords or name :)
no favourites though.
I wish copy paste would work in console for connecting, getting ip and password from your opponent and just pasting it in would be so easy.
I dislike having to add a chinese military worth of people on my steam friends list so i can join in on opponents or even contact people since irc seems to be out of fashion. but thats a story for some other time.
The server browser in ns2 is however not the worst i've seen. but the whole thing being unresponsive while refreshing ALL the servers can be a bit annoying since you can't join one you just see having slots or whatever, and joining in with 2-4 friends can be hard when you think there's slots but once you finally even got to klick on it it's basically full already. you should be able to mark some and refresh for example.
Also a cool feature would be to see how long the current round has been going on. lets say the round has been going on for 5min and the server is full, you understand that probably there will be no free slots soon, since the round just started and people still have fun battling off early game. if however it's been 20min the round probably ends soon, unless it become a turtling game, but people tend to leave in that case soon enough too and you can join a well populated server and help end the game and get to a fresh new round.
in steam when looking at the details of the server your buddy might be playing on you can also see useful information like how many points people have or frags, that already gives you a good idea of how long a round has been going on. and people who've spent already over an hour on the same server are likely to leave soon so it's worth the wait to get to play with your friend. Or against him, which is even more satisfying at times ;)
I'm all for steam server browser until ns2 server browser gets awesome. i like the look of the ns2 more than steam but functionality right now is not optimal, and for me of course non-existant. and i prefer loading in to a server from ingame, not having to start the game up through some external app. Luckily ns2 starts almost instantly since there is no useless crap to load before even getting to the main menu, like some ######ty video people skip anyways except maybe the first time you run the game. A small detail but so awesome. crash from server? no prob you'll be in again in 10 sec sine game starts in 1sec and precaching seems to stay until you boot your whole computer :) i don't even have ns2 installed on my ssd. (first load takes a while but you just start ns2 once and you're done for the whole evening)
Also one more thing, would be nice with an option to choose how many servers you wanna show "per page", think font size on the server names, to show more servers at once or if you got hard times reading quickly then have it at this standard size. I hate scrolling, so i like to see as much information as possible at once :D but this is by no means anything really important.
This post got longer than i planned. Deal with it.
and why the flip can't I <u><b>browse servers when I am ingame?!</b></u>
I know UWE have a lot on their plate and they're doing a tremendous job, but in comparison with rewriting engine code to fix strange bugs and optimize the game and what not, making the browser shine shouldn't be a monumental task.
Starting game, server list refreshes once, 90% of the time joining the the first time will give me a server not responding message.
Then i go back to the server browser, and its ofc empty again and has to load the full list again... tho this time it doesnt load anything for minutes.
So now i either alt-tab out of the game and wait until refreshing works again(up to 10min), or i just quit and restart the game a few times.
So after 15min or so i can either luckily join a server, give up and join someone trough my steamfriends list.
Changing maxpings on steam doesnt change anything in that regard, all it does is making it super slow to update the list in those rare times it decides to load, making the expirience even worse.
What i discovered the other day is that the not responding stuff comes less if i wait a few extra minutes after it tells me that the list is finished updating.
I dont understand <b>why it has to totally reload the server list everytime you leave the server browser menu(because you try to connect or whatever) instead of just refreshing the servers (eg. having 2 buttons, 1 quick refresh, and one that reloads the full list)</b>
On the positive note you can use F3 or whatever in your browser and search servers by keywords or name :)
no favourites though.
I wish copy paste would work in console for connecting, getting ip and password from your opponent and just pasting it in would be so easy.
I dislike having to add a chinese military worth of people on my steam friends list so i can join in on opponents or even contact people since irc seems to be out of fashion. but thats a story for some other time.
The server browser in ns2 is however not the worst i've seen. but the whole thing being unresponsive while refreshing ALL the servers can be a bit annoying since you can't join one you just see having slots or whatever, and joining in with 2-4 friends can be hard when you think there's slots but once you finally even got to klick on it it's basically full already. you should be able to mark some and refresh for example.
Also a cool feature would be to see how long the current round has been going on. lets say the round has been going on for 5min and the server is full, you understand that probably there will be no free slots soon, since the round just started and people still have fun battling off early game. if however it's been 20min the round probably ends soon, unless it become a turtling game, but people tend to leave in that case soon enough too and you can join a well populated server and help end the game and get to a fresh new round.
in steam when looking at the details of the server your buddy might be playing on you can also see useful information like how many points people have or frags, that already gives you a good idea of how long a round has been going on. and people who've spent already over an hour on the same server are likely to leave soon so it's worth the wait to get to play with your friend. Or against him, which is even more satisfying at times ;)
I'm all for steam server browser until ns2 server browser gets awesome. i like the look of the ns2 more than steam but functionality right now is not optimal, and for me of course non-existant. and i prefer loading in to a server from ingame, not having to start the game up through some external app. Luckily ns2 starts almost instantly since there is no useless crap to load before even getting to the main menu, like some ######ty video people skip anyways except maybe the first time you run the game. A small detail but so awesome. crash from server? no prob you'll be in again in 10 sec sine game starts in 1sec and precaching seems to stay until you boot your whole computer :) i don't even have ns2 installed on my ssd. (first load takes a while but you just start ns2 once and you're done for the whole evening)
Also one more thing, would be nice with an option to choose how many servers you wanna show "per page", think font size on the server names, to show more servers at once or if you got hard times reading quickly then have it at this standard size. I hate scrolling, so i like to see as much information as possible at once :D but this is by no means anything really important.
This post got longer than i planned. Deal with it.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
go to your \steam directory
go to steam\config
delete MasterServer2.vdf
[...]
profit