The "lack of good servers"-rant

[The Monkey]

I'm very fed up with how shitty the majority of servers in TF2 are. My estimate is that 2/3 of all big servers (20> players) have instant respawn, which all civilized men know is evil incarnated as it upsets the balance of the game something awful. To make matters worse there is no way to tell whether a server have instant spawn turned on until the game is loaded. Another thing is the fake player count in the server menu. I'd say 3/4 of all servers lie about how many players are in their server. If I join a supposedly 31/32 servers only to find four Russian guys ****ing around one more time, I'm gonna burn up my carpet. Surely there must be a way for Valve to stop this abhorrent behaviour?

 

[ríomhaire]

Tip: Set max player count to 24, put "instantrespawn" and such things in the "do not include" tags and then favourite good servers.

 

[PriNcE oF SpAcE]

Tip: Set max player count to 24, put "instantrespawn" and such things in the "do not include" tags and then favourite good servers.

that only works if the idiot admins bother to put instant respawns etc. in their tags...which most don't.

I'm with you Monkey it's annoying.

anyone else also annoyed with all the single map servers out there?

 

[AtomicSpark]

You could play on the official HL2.net server, but I never remember to keep it updated.

 

[Lobster]

Every attempt made to deal with the problem was met with angry venom from the server hosting community.

They tried forcing custom servers into a secondary list, but everyone whined, so they removed it. The tag system implies far to much honesty on the part of server operators, which is hard to come by online, it is very easy to fake what tags your server has.

The only way to really enforce a standard ruleset, is to stop dedicated servers entirely, and we know how well that works out. Plus these dodgy settings all have their part of the playing audience. I myself like to play on 32 player servers, which is non-standard, but everything else I like to have vanilla.

The trick is to find a host or two with servers that run your personal preference of rules, and then stick to them religiously.

 

[Loke]

I usually main only two servers, SpecialAttack (SpA) and TriggerHappyGamers (THG) - both of them have plugins (AFK-manager, auto-balance, vote map etc.) and the SpA servers have a point system in which you can buy reserved slots and maps/custom maps but otherwise they're very much vanilla with only official Valve maps in rotation and no instant respawn.

 

[ríomhaire]

that only works if the idiot admins bother to put instant respawns etc. in their tags...which most don't.

I'm with you Monkey it's annoying.

anyone else also annoyed with all the single map servers out there?

I didn't say it would solve all problems. It just helps. On the other hand setting good servers as favourites does work (unless the favourites list breaks again).

 

[Druckles]

The trick is to find a host or two with servers that run your personal preference of rules, and then stick to them religiously.

This works. Uberium, BNS (not completely vanilla) and Saignz (or something) for me, although I don't like the latter's change-map system. Gives me a mostly vanilla with some interest server list.

 

[Adabiviak]

I only come across maybe 1 out of 6 servers (random statistic is random) where the player count is bogus. Instant respawn doesn't bother me that much, but I have a couple of public servers that are pretty reliably good.

 

[Darkside55]

You know what gets me more than finding a server with the specific set of rules I'm looking for is finding a server that plays a custom map rotation. There's so many good community maps out there, and what are the majority of servers? 24/7 Dustbowl and 2fort.

If I join a supposedly 31/32 servers only to find four Russian guys ****ing around one more time, I'm gonna burn up my carpet.

Right click, view server info.

 

[Russian Guyovich]

First post here (hello )

Sorry to bump an older thread, but one of the main things that really puts me off about a lot of servers nowadays is the excessive amount of server messages about recruiting, links to the community website, annoying 'rate this map' messages that people just press a number so it disappears, donation requests and lists of benefits such as being able to wear any hat with any colour etc.

In addition to this, plenty of servers seem to allow players to just stay in spawn spamming trade requests and crafting while taking up a useful class slot (Engi or Medic).

As I am UK-based I have noticed the above issues seem to be prominent with big communities like UKCS, LotusClan, Fragmasters, and even Hampshire Heavies now.

Definitely the worst is the amount of instant respawn servers going about. It's completely game breaking. I think 32 player servers can work with vanilla respawn, and this is one of my own preferences, but 24 player is what the game is intended to be and it works out quite well.

 

[ríomhaire]

I don't have any problem with rate this map pop-ups or links to the community website. I mean they're hosting that server for that community, they want to two to be linked and they want people who are part of that community to play on the server and people who play on that server to be part of that community.

 

[Russian Guyovich]

I don't have any problem with rate this map pop-ups or links to the community website. I mean they're hosting that server for that community, they want to two to be linked and they want people who are part of that community to play on the server and people who play on that server to be part of that community.

I don't mind them either for the exact reasons you have mentioned, but an excessive amount of them annoy me, especially with @@@ Sourcemod messages that appear in the middle of the screen are more of an annoyance than anything.

 

[ríomhaire]

I really don't understand why they make IP addresses (teamspeak servers and such) appear in the middle of the screen, it's not like you can copy them that way. If they appeared in the chat area you could actually copy and paste them.

Also, I'm pretty sure I've seen you or at least someone with the same name as you in TF2 more than once before.

 

[Russian Guyovich]

I really don't understand why they make IP addresses (teamspeak servers and such) appear in the middle of the screen, it's not like you can copy them that way. If they appeared in the chat area you could actually copy and paste them.

Also, I'm pretty sure I've seen you or at least someone with the same name as you in TF2 more than once before.

If you've ever played on the GTFOgaming servers, you probably have.

EDIT: Ahh, you are the one who was playing with a TrackPad!

 

[ríomhaire]

EDIT: Ahh, you are the one who was playing with a TrackPad!

Oh I remember that conversation! Don't forget I also had about 15 or fewer FPS. That was a fun game. I think I actually managed to dominate someone, he must have been terrible at the game.

 

[Russian Guyovich]

Oh I remember that conversation! Don't forget I also had about 15 or fewer FPS. That was a fun game. I think I actually managed to dominate someone, he must have been terrible at the game.

16th Dec 2010 11:47:49 pm Action received a points bonus of 5 for triggering 'Domination' against Chicken Boy

For shame Chicken Boy! FOR SHAME!

Hope to see you around more often.

 

[Hectic Glenn]

I think I've adjusted to the chaos that is 32 man...when I drop back into 24 I feel a degree of emptiness at some parts of maps. Like you say the instant respawn thing has always been a real pet hate for me but I've never noticed the idling traders in spawn...I guess I just run out of spawn desperate for blood. Do you have any stats for idle players in spawn on the GTFO servers? I'd be interested to see how much it has increased and in turn effected the game.

 

[Russian Guyovich]

I think I've adjusted to the chaos that is 32 man...when I drop back into 24 I feel a degree of emptiness at some parts of maps. Like you say the instant respawn thing has always been a real pet hate for me but I've never noticed the idling traders in spawn...I guess I just run out of spawn desperate for blood. Do you have any stats for idle players in spawn on the GTFO servers? I'd be interested to see how much it has increased and in turn effected the game.

It's not really a prominent issue because we don't tend to allow traders who just join to request items from others. I'm not sure if it's a natural thing regarding the type of people we attract or we just got lucky, but it's rare we ever have to deal with idlers or these folks at all and our servers never seem to be used for idling/trading mainly because we don't see the point in having an idling or trade server when we can just have one for people to play the game on instead. If the server is full and there's people spectating/idling and they fail to respond to a request for them to join then they usually get kicked. 9 times out of 10 someone else who was waiting to get in will immediately join.

Other servers I've went on have had constant spam and crafting going on mid round and it's basically accepted in other communities. It's unfortunate because it can really ruin a good game if some of your team aren't interested in playing at all.

Don't get me wrong, I tend to trade and craft quite a bit but I either trade with friends on Steam or post a thread on a trading forum.

 

[ríomhaire]

I've seen some servers that are for normal play but specifically say that they're trader friendly. I've only played on I'd say two but even those two didn't have a massive problem with people idling in spawn (maybe two or at the very most three at a time).