<!--quoteo(post=2042966:date=Dec 10 2012, 08:28 AM:name=_Necro_)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (_Necro_ @ Dec 10 2012, 08:28 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2042966"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->1.) Fix Commander-Eject-Votes! You need to show clearly <b>who has voted and that a vote is pending!</b> To inform the team about the vote! The percentage may be ok. (3 people on a 12 player server would be 50% of the team. That is to high for 18 or 20 player servers.)<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Additionally, <i>give players the options to veto the vote.</i> If 8 players think a game is going fine, don't give power to three other players to eject the commander. The commander shouldn't get to vote, because he probably thinks he's doing a pretty swell job.
<!--quoteo(post=2043000:date=Dec 10 2012, 07:47 PM:name=sedek)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (sedek @ Dec 10 2012, 07:47 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2043000"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Additionally, <i>give players the options to veto the vote.</i> If 8 players think a game is going fine, don't give power to three other players to eject the commander. The commander shouldn't get to vote, because he probably thinks he's doing a pretty swell job.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> Agreed. <!--quoteo(post=2042970:date=Dec 10 2012, 06:35 PM:name=Champlo0)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Champlo0 @ Dec 10 2012, 06:35 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2042970"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->A few admins for each geographical region (East coast, midwest, west coast, East europe, west europe, australia, etc.) are all the servers need to function properly.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> Sorry, but you don't know much about economy, do you? You really prefer to pay X people for 16 hours a day to watch out for occasional trolls instead of investing 2 hours developer-time to get a solution that will work 90% of the time? How should they pay them? UWE can't afford your solution, nor is it proportional to the problem in the slightest. Come up with a real and practical solution. Or are you implying that they carefully chose some volunteers that get admin power? And do this every month because some people may quit and you need new admins? Hour many hours should UWE spend on choosing new admins? And even than you will end up with 10% of the admins being douchs himself.
A vote-kick may not be the perfect solution, but 90% is enough for such a problem. Never let "perfect" come in the way from "good", when you search for solutions!
Sorry, but you don't know much about economy, do you? You really prefer to pay X people for 16 hours a day to watch out for occasional trolls instead of investing 2 hours developer-time to get a solution that will work 90% of the time? How should they pay them? UWE can't afford your solution, nor is it proportional to the problem in the slightest. Come up with a real and practical solution. Or are you implying that they carefully chose some volunteers that get admin power? And do this every month because some people may quit and you need new admins? Hour many hours should UWE spend on choosing new admins? And even than you will end up with 10% of the admins being douchs himself.
A vote-kick may not be the perfect solution, but 90% is enough for such a problem. Never let "perfect" come in the way from "good", when you search for solutions!<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> You don't pay admins of servers, lol. People volunteer to do it. Vote-kick will just end up in bad players being kicked and trolls using it against people who haven't done anything
<!--quoteo(post=2043035:date=Dec 10 2012, 08:39 PM:name=Champlo0)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Champlo0 @ Dec 10 2012, 08:39 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2043035"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->You don't pay admins of servers, lol. People volunteer to do it. Vote-kick will just end up in bad players being kicked and trolls using it against people who haven't done anything<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> No. The percentage of vote-kick-abusing isn't higher than the percentage of admin-power-abusing. But the time invested in pick admins is higher than the time invested in building a good vote-kick system.
If there are really enough idiots on the server to abuse the vote-kick-system, the only thing an admin could do (if he is online on this server) would be to half empty the server. That is no gain. NS2 isn't LoL! The community sure has some trolls, but the majority wouldn't abuse a vote-kick-system.
<!--quoteo(post=2043039:date=Dec 10 2012, 11:44 AM:name=Kouji_San)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Kouji_San @ Dec 10 2012, 11:44 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2043039"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->The thing is there are way more servers then available admins, it is quite unmanageable with the sheer amount of them...<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> There are a couple solutions to that, some of which have been proposed.
Reduce the amount of official servers. This will rid excess empty servers, prevent filling of random official servers, focus traffic from those servers to a particular few (one per region?) and possibly allow alternative community driven servers to fill up. This will allow you to effectively administrate with fewer admins.
Or recruit more admins. It's basic server administration, not UWE's new programmer. By now you know who most of the level headed, mature, active community members are so put out a "Looking for more volunteer admins" and find some. Give them the ability to "kick" "reset" and force random teams. Nothing more is needed.
<!--quoteo(post=2043042:date=Dec 10 2012, 11:47 AM:name=_Necro_)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (_Necro_ @ Dec 10 2012, 11:47 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2043042"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->No. The percentage of vote-kick-abusing isn't higher than the percentage of admin-power-abusing. But the time invested in pick admins is higher than the time invested in building a good vote-kick system.
If there are really enough idiots on the server to abuse the vote-kick-system, the only thing an admin could do (if he is online on this server) would be to half empty the server. That is no gain. NS2 isn't LoL! The community sure has some trolls, but the majority wouldn't abuse a vote-kick-system.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> That is an extremely big assumption.
I'd sooner trust admins than just any random person who joins the servers. A better system would be one that sends out an alert to an admin if 2 or 3 people perform a command in console that could be individualized to each server's config (think admin list) so that it sends an alert to the admin system and requests an admin.
Also, I'm not talking about trolls, I'm talking about people who would kick bad players, which is something I would never wish to happen even in remote circumstances.
And I'd really like to see an example of a good, popular vote-kick system, because I don't know of any that work well.
No volunteer admin will play long enough to assure that every server (even if you reduce them) has an admin on when the occasional troll hits. You are really exaggerating that problem. Also someone has to pick those admins this IS time from the developers or who should do this? Who can be sure to not pick an admin that bans bad players?
An vote-kick-system is easy to implement and always there when you need it. And it can be made 90% troll-save. But even with admins you can't rescue a game when most of the connected players are trolls. You can only kick them all and empty the server. That achieves nothing.
<!--quoteo(post=2043052:date=Dec 10 2012, 11:55 AM:name=_Necro_)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (_Necro_ @ Dec 10 2012, 11:55 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2043052"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->No volunteer admin will play long enough to assure that every server (even if you reduce them) has an admin on when the occasional troll hits. You are really exaggerating that problem. Also someone has to pick those admins this IS time from the developers or who should do this? Who can be sure to not pick an admin that bans bad players?
An vote-kick-system is easy to implement and always there when you need it. And it can be made 90% troll-save. But even with admins you can't rescue a game when most of the connected players are trolls. You can only kick them all and empty the server. That achieves nothing.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> No, but the idea is to have an admin alert system that is shared among all the servers in the network. It wouldn't be particularly difficult in my opinion. And I still don't know why you think vote-kick would even help when half the time no one even knows how to eject troll comms, or does, or even notices them. A vote-kick option would come up and all the players would just be a flat out "what" and probably wouldn't even know why you were vote-kicking someone.
Official servers need to have an a function that sends admin help requests to IRC. This should be be noted in a MOTD when players join or use a console command.
Shutting down the UWE servers would be pretty frustrating for my region (Australia). Of the small handful of servers available they're the few that are unmodded and have 16 slots.
I can't say I've ever seen an admin on their servers though, the only trolls I seem to encouter are people who just eject comms for no reason.
<!--quoteo(post=2043176:date=Dec 10 2012, 07:09 PM:name=Mister Black)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Mister Black @ Dec 10 2012, 07:09 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2043176"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Official servers need to have an a function that sends admin help requests to IRC. This should be be noted in a MOTD when players join or use a console command.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I remember we had a mod like this on Lunixmonster back in NS1. Players could call for an admin in-game and we'd get a notification in the channel. I'd love to see the return of this, but we'd also need reserved slots implemented.
I love official servers. When I can find one populated and not full I play there. Generally stable, unmodded and not set to 24 player max is the appeal for me. I still don't understand how the extra large servers stay are so popular. More players =/= more fun.
I remember that IRC mod. Those are great since you always feel like you can reach an admin when trouble starts.
AU region doesn't need so many official servers. But they do need to fix the whitelist/blacklist options. Perhaps look at the TF2 method that when a mod is installed there's a 'tag' system so you can see just what is on there.
<!--quoteo(post=2043194:date=Dec 10 2012, 06:43 PM:name=iUsurper)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (iUsurper @ Dec 10 2012, 06:43 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2043194"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Shutting down the UWE servers would be pretty frustrating for my region (Australia). Of the small handful of servers available they're the few that are unmodded and have 16 slots.
I can't say I've ever seen an admin on their servers though, the only trolls I seem to encouter are people who just eject comms for no reason.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> Ok, well, be fair about keeping the servers up in regions where they are working well. But at least, in NA, they've really not caught on, and there are lots other options that are much better.
Huh now that I think about it, does NS2 have a remote admin system so admins can administrate the server without having to be in the server itself? I distinctly recall a remote admin system being used in BF2 (BF2 Remote Admin Tool?) and chewing the fat with some admins I knew were from the community without them being in the server itself.
A system like that along with an irc channel is a great way of making sure there are admins available 24/7 without having to maintain a constant presence on the servers itself and taking a slot in the process. Just get a bunch of players who want the job to idle on irc and give them only kick powers until they prove themselves worthy of more privileges, or revoke said privileges if they abuse it by means of "super admins."
One server I used to play on back in BF2 had admins readily available in their TS2/IRC channel. Great playing in a server knowing full well an admin can be reached most of the time if need be.
for admins to be able to do anything about that, it needs a notification system, an rcon system, and a reserved slot system (so admins can join full servers), possibly with the reserved slot only allowing spectating.
And picking admins isn't super hard, just disqualify every single person that offers to do it, then find the responsible people in the rest. If someone is asking for admin, they probably suck at it.
putting in votekicks has advantages, but the main disadvantage is that for example clans or large groups of players could start kicking people that are bad at the game, but simply want to learn, or people from different nationalities, ping differences, or any number of reasons that a mature and objective admin would never do.
I'd agree with vastly decreasing the number of UWE servers in regions that don't need them, like europe and the US.
While I don't like gameplay changing mods (I think they divide the community), currently calling admin mods or statistic mods like ns2stats gameplay mods is the main reason servers appear "modded", even though their core gameplay hasn't changed.
modding displays, huds, models, crosshairs is all fine, but properly administrating a server is somehow not allowed on vanilla ns2? that just doesn't make sense.
Just makes you wonder what makes them hate NS2 so much that they do this. At least I have much better things to do than waste time on emptying servers (like actually playing the game).
<!--quoteo(post=2043528:date=Dec 11 2012, 05:00 AM:name=Tunska)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Tunska @ Dec 11 2012, 05:00 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2043528"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Just makes you wonder what makes them hate NS2 so much that they do this. At least I have much better things to do than waste time on emptying servers (like actually playing the game).<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Don't think it has much to do with hating NS2; has more to do with getting off on being a ######. These are the people that also probably bully other kids in school in whatnot. Their sadists. They find pleasure in causing misery to others.
NS is a relatively involved game, so it does sour the experience more than in simpler games like CS if you get players trying to turn it into a pissing match or just generally trying to get others to rage. I've played for about 90 hours in EU servers and I haven't seen the kind of griefing described in this thread, but I've seen decent players (using voice, learning, listening to others) leave after being put down by infantile jerk-offs. It would be very nice if there was a way to get admins to listen in and issue warnings and ultimately kicks. People shouldn't be forced to hop servers like it is now.
<!--quoteo(post=2043381:date=Dec 10 2012, 10:06 PM:name=Biglines)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Biglines @ Dec 10 2012, 10:06 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2043381"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->And picking admins isn't super hard, just disqualify every single person that offers to do it, then find the responsible people in the rest. If someone is asking for admin, they probably suck at it.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> and that was the day that no one found any admins because everyone who actually would have done it offered to and no one else gave 2 f****
Happened again late last night on a Central US server. Was full, I was getting a great ping and having fun. All of a sudden all the aliens start F4ing.
3 guys with cute matching names had taken over the alien side. They would get in the com and do nothing, and vote out anyone who wasn't them.
They did this over and over until I just left.
I directed people to this thread from the server before I left. Hopefully people keep pushing this because I hate to see otherwise great servers I have fun on totally ruined and newer players getting disenfranchised like this.
Edit: I will admit one of the big reasons I'm pushing this so much is because I live out in the boonies of PA and the best internet available around here isn't that great. I consistently get the best ping on US UWE servers. So full disclosure, that’s my personal motivation to keep these servers running amicably. I’m sure I’m not the only one that this is true for though and it’s a damn shame our games keep getting ruined.
Yeah this is pretty silly. I don't even pub that much and have run into this a few times. The least they can do is increase the number required to vote out a comm and list the numbers who are voting.
I don't understand the admin argument. Why not just fix the broken system of only requiring 2 to vote out a comm? Then you won't need admins on 24/7.
It seems that a reallocation of servers is needed, since they are being used some by players. North America definitely has many times more servers than are needed. On average, the vast majority of UWE servers are empty. Surely these things are costing UWE a ton of scratch, so having many times more servers than are necessary in a given region seems wasteful.
If server admins would crack down on smurfing it would help because then players could at least know when a team is stacked unfairly rather than complaining about game balance etc. That's where NS1 was headed at the end of it's prime because so many competitive players would team stack under smurf names and clear all the good servers out one by one, including great community servers that were supported by donations and hard work (Voogru/G4B2S/NSArmsLab come to mind). There was a "let's go clear out some servers" mentality shared amongst several players of the competitive community. The trolling/griefing pissed off a lot of casual players and forced a portion of the player base to seek other games. Treat the newbies with respect and this game will flourish.
Comments
Additionally, <i>give players the options to veto the vote.</i> If 8 players think a game is going fine, don't give power to three other players to eject the commander. The commander shouldn't get to vote, because he probably thinks he's doing a pretty swell job.
Agreed.
<!--quoteo(post=2042970:date=Dec 10 2012, 06:35 PM:name=Champlo0)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Champlo0 @ Dec 10 2012, 06:35 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2042970"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->A few admins for each geographical region (East coast, midwest, west coast, East europe, west europe, australia, etc.) are all the servers need to function properly.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Sorry, but you don't know much about economy, do you? You really prefer to pay X people for 16 hours a day to watch out for occasional trolls instead of investing 2 hours developer-time to get a solution that will work 90% of the time? How should they pay them? UWE can't afford your solution, nor is it proportional to the problem in the slightest. Come up with a real and practical solution. Or are you implying that they carefully chose some volunteers that get admin power? And do this every month because some people may quit and you need new admins? Hour many hours should UWE spend on choosing new admins? And even than you will end up with 10% of the admins being douchs himself.
A vote-kick may not be the perfect solution, but 90% is enough for such a problem. Never let "perfect" come in the way from "good", when you search for solutions!
Sorry, but you don't know much about economy, do you? You really prefer to pay X people for 16 hours a day to watch out for occasional trolls instead of investing 2 hours developer-time to get a solution that will work 90% of the time? How should they pay them? UWE can't afford your solution, nor is it proportional to the problem in the slightest. Come up with a real and practical solution. Or are you implying that they carefully chose some volunteers that get admin power? And do this every month because some people may quit and you need new admins? Hour many hours should UWE spend on choosing new admins? And even than you will end up with 10% of the admins being douchs himself.
A vote-kick may not be the perfect solution, but 90% is enough for such a problem. Never let "perfect" come in the way from "good", when you search for solutions!<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
You don't pay admins of servers, lol. People volunteer to do it. Vote-kick will just end up in bad players being kicked and trolls using it against people who haven't done anything
No. The percentage of vote-kick-abusing isn't higher than the percentage of admin-power-abusing. But the time invested in pick admins is higher than the time invested in building a good vote-kick system.
If there are really enough idiots on the server to abuse the vote-kick-system, the only thing an admin could do (if he is online on this server) would be to half empty the server. That is no gain. NS2 isn't LoL! The community sure has some trolls, but the majority wouldn't abuse a vote-kick-system.
There are a couple solutions to that, some of which have been proposed.
Reduce the amount of official servers. This will rid excess empty servers, prevent filling of random official servers, focus traffic from those servers to a particular few (one per region?) and possibly allow alternative community driven servers to fill up. This will allow you to effectively administrate with fewer admins.
Or recruit more admins. It's basic server administration, not UWE's new programmer. By now you know who most of the level headed, mature, active community members are so put out a "Looking for more volunteer admins" and find some. Give them the ability to "kick" "reset" and force random teams. Nothing more is needed.
If there are really enough idiots on the server to abuse the vote-kick-system, the only thing an admin could do (if he is online on this server) would be to half empty the server. That is no gain. NS2 isn't LoL! The community sure has some trolls, but the majority wouldn't abuse a vote-kick-system.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
That is an extremely big assumption.
I'd sooner trust admins than just any random person who joins the servers. A better system would be one that sends out an alert to an admin if 2 or 3 people perform a command in console that could be individualized to each server's config (think admin list) so that it sends an alert to the admin system and requests an admin.
Also, I'm not talking about trolls, I'm talking about people who would kick bad players, which is something I would never wish to happen even in remote circumstances.
And I'd really like to see an example of a good, popular vote-kick system, because I don't know of any that work well.
An vote-kick-system is easy to implement and always there when you need it. And it can be made 90% troll-save. But even with admins you can't rescue a game when most of the connected players are trolls. You can only kick them all and empty the server. That achieves nothing.
An vote-kick-system is easy to implement and always there when you need it. And it can be made 90% troll-save. But even with admins you can't rescue a game when most of the connected players are trolls. You can only kick them all and empty the server. That achieves nothing.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
No, but the idea is to have an admin alert system that is shared among all the servers in the network. It wouldn't be particularly difficult in my opinion. And I still don't know why you think vote-kick would even help when half the time no one even knows how to eject troll comms, or does, or even notices them. A vote-kick option would come up and all the players would just be a flat out "what" and probably wouldn't even know why you were vote-kicking someone.
I can't say I've ever seen an admin on their servers though, the only trolls I seem to encouter are people who just eject comms for no reason.
I remember we had a mod like this on Lunixmonster back in NS1. Players could call for an admin in-game and we'd get a notification in the channel. I'd love to see the return of this, but we'd also need reserved slots implemented.
I remember that IRC mod. Those are great since you always feel like you can reach an admin when trouble starts.
I can't say I've ever seen an admin on their servers though, the only trolls I seem to encouter are people who just eject comms for no reason.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Ok, well, be fair about keeping the servers up in regions where they are working well. But at least, in NA, they've really not caught on, and there are lots other options that are much better.
A system like that along with an irc channel is a great way of making sure there are admins available 24/7 without having to maintain a constant presence on the servers itself and taking a slot in the process. Just get a bunch of players who want the job to idle on irc and give them only kick powers until they prove themselves worthy of more privileges, or revoke said privileges if they abuse it by means of "super admins."
One server I used to play on back in BF2 had admins readily available in their TS2/IRC channel. Great playing in a server knowing full well an admin can be reached most of the time if need be.
And picking admins isn't super hard, just disqualify every single person that offers to do it, then find the responsible people in the rest. If someone is asking for admin, they probably suck at it.
putting in votekicks has advantages, but the main disadvantage is that for example clans or large groups of players could start kicking people that are bad at the game, but simply want to learn, or people from different nationalities, ping differences, or any number of reasons that a mature and objective admin would never do.
I'd agree with vastly decreasing the number of UWE servers in regions that don't need them, like europe and the US.
While I don't like gameplay changing mods (I think they divide the community), currently calling admin mods or statistic mods like ns2stats gameplay mods is the main reason servers appear "modded", even though their core gameplay hasn't changed.
modding displays, huds, models, crosshairs is all fine, but properly administrating a server is somehow not allowed on vanilla ns2? that just doesn't make sense.
Don't think it has much to do with hating NS2; has more to do with getting off on being a ######. These are the people that also probably bully other kids in school in whatnot. Their sadists. They find pleasure in causing misery to others.
and that was the day that no one found any admins because everyone who actually would have done it offered to and no one else gave 2 f****
3 guys with cute matching names had taken over the alien side. They would get in the com and do nothing, and vote out anyone who wasn't them.
They did this over and over until I just left.
I directed people to this thread from the server before I left. Hopefully people keep pushing this because I hate to see otherwise great servers I have fun on totally ruined and newer players getting disenfranchised like this.
Edit: I will admit one of the big reasons I'm pushing this so much is because I live out in the boonies of PA and the best internet available around here isn't that great. I consistently get the best ping on US UWE servers. So full disclosure, that’s my personal motivation to keep these servers running amicably. I’m sure I’m not the only one that this is true for though and it’s a damn shame our games keep getting ruined.
I don't understand the admin argument. Why not just fix the broken system of only requiring 2 to vote out a comm? Then you won't need admins on 24/7.