A Competitive Pub Server
|DFA| Havoc
Join Date: 2009-08-07 Member: 68375Members, Reinforced - Shadow
Join Date: 2009-08-07 Member: 68375Members, Reinforced - Shadow
The DFA community came together and funded the purchase of brand new overclocked and watercooled i5 machine several months ago, and right now there is a significant amount of headroom left in the under-utilized hardware.
I frequently see comp level players defending their choice to stomp rookie servers, saying there is nowhere better for them to play, nowhere they can play against other competitive players and be challenged. To that end, we are now hosting another server with the explicit intention of creating a haven for the best of the (North American) NS2 playerbase to pub at an elevated level.
The caveat, and this is true of any server or community, is that it will require people who are willing to seed in order to succeed. The casual rookie friendly DFA server doesn't fill unless seeded either, so you will have to take some small measure of responsibility / ownership in order for this to work. Add other competitive players to your friend list, join the server and throw out invites, then be patient. It doesn't generally take very long, and the more people who get behind the idea, the more successful it will be.
The server is currently named 'Elite NS2 - No Noobs' and it's set up with the ENSL maps and mods, with a 12 player cap. The hardware can easily handle double that, but this is the number I assume is preferable based on tournament match and scrim sizes. Admin privileges will be handed out to trusted comp players as needed. DFA will not be moderating, we are simply providing the hardware / service, and we can make whatever tweaks or add whichever mods are required or requested by the competitive community. This is your server, and we will shape it to fit your needs.
This is your chance to play a better class of pub game, to challenge and improve yourself against others of the same skill, to get out of the kiddie pool. No more hackusations or getting banned for being too good, no having to worry about the server emptying out when the casuals get tired of being dominated, no more commander fail holding you back. By the same token, I should expect not to see any comp level players stomping around in rookie friendly servers as long as there are spots open on this one. Time to put your money where your mouth is. :P
The IP Address is: 71.201.65.186:27017
Enjoy!
I frequently see comp level players defending their choice to stomp rookie servers, saying there is nowhere better for them to play, nowhere they can play against other competitive players and be challenged. To that end, we are now hosting another server with the explicit intention of creating a haven for the best of the (North American) NS2 playerbase to pub at an elevated level.
The caveat, and this is true of any server or community, is that it will require people who are willing to seed in order to succeed. The casual rookie friendly DFA server doesn't fill unless seeded either, so you will have to take some small measure of responsibility / ownership in order for this to work. Add other competitive players to your friend list, join the server and throw out invites, then be patient. It doesn't generally take very long, and the more people who get behind the idea, the more successful it will be.
The server is currently named 'Elite NS2 - No Noobs' and it's set up with the ENSL maps and mods, with a 12 player cap. The hardware can easily handle double that, but this is the number I assume is preferable based on tournament match and scrim sizes. Admin privileges will be handed out to trusted comp players as needed. DFA will not be moderating, we are simply providing the hardware / service, and we can make whatever tweaks or add whichever mods are required or requested by the competitive community. This is your server, and we will shape it to fit your needs.
This is your chance to play a better class of pub game, to challenge and improve yourself against others of the same skill, to get out of the kiddie pool. No more hackusations or getting banned for being too good, no having to worry about the server emptying out when the casuals get tired of being dominated, no more commander fail holding you back. By the same token, I should expect not to see any comp level players stomping around in rookie friendly servers as long as there are spots open on this one. Time to put your money where your mouth is. :P
The IP Address is: 71.201.65.186:27017
Enjoy!
Comments
Edit: also i see it is on ns2_summit right now. Maybe change the map rotation to use the nsl versions instead.
Other than that, great idea. Good initiative. I wonder if there's actually still enough NA comp players to fill up pubs on a nightly basis.
+1
-Colt
The extra fps you gain from playing the nsl maps is huge. The nsl maps make the gameplay experience much better for that reason.
Just an idea.
Also, not enough people read the ENSL or UWE forums to justify applying a password the server. I believe All-In did this months ago and it lasted for about a few weeks. The problem is populating it.
I suggest making it 18 slots with 4 reserved slots and let anyone who is signed up for ENSL on a team or some other similar condition use those slots. DO NOT kick players who are already playing. Just make it so they can't join unless there's less than the 14, but that list of players can.
edit: Add Custom Hud plz
OK, let's let it fail instead
Honestly, I'm not very optimistic that it will succeed, for this very reason. Even if would yield a better class of game and a better experience overall, my experience is that most skilled/comp players would rather just immediately join a populated rookie server than put any effort into seeding.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_marshmallow_experiment
So, my bubble has not been burst. However, I feel that even if it has a small chance to succeed, it is worth it to try and to support it in any way I can, for the betterment of the community. Continuing as we have been just yields frustration all around.
We will not be adding a password or reserved slots to the server, we want there to be as few obstacles to joining the server as possible. I think the 'rookies joining' problem will be marginal at best, and in most cases should resolve itself - most rookies don't like playing on a server where they get reamed inside out. Reserved slots are counter-intuitive to the largest problem we are facing here, which is that we need to populate the server, not worry about overpopulation and preferential treatment. If we do somehow end up with a problem of there being too many people wanting to play, we will simply host another server.
I agree with this concept except that I feel it's a little unfair/myopic to say it only applies to the comp players. Nobody 'wants' to seed/populate. The only servers that regularly get that treatment as far as I can see is KKG, and that's because the community leadership/administrators do daily, concerted efforts to spam-invite community members and try to get a large audience of seeders on a hugely regular basis.
Everyone who wants to play the game would rather join a populated server.
The only people who 'want' to seed are server operators and people with a large number of friends wanting to join.
For the rest of everyone (comp players included) it's an inconvenient timesink to get a game going, and there's no difference between comp and casuals in regards to time constraints on gaming. If I only have 40 minutes to play, it's not going to be spent seeding a 0/18 game. It's going to be hopping into a 23/24 game and blasting some folks away.
*Shrug*
Just my two cents on your statement there.
-Colt
its the weirdest thing.
Well, that's fair to say, but the difference as I see it is that it doesn't really matter if the majority of the playerbase just piles into servers at random, but the highly skilled have a tendency to destroy balance wherever they go. Having elevated themselves above the teeming masses, it requires a little more effort to find an adequate challenge. The idea is the greater effort yields a greater reward, and everyone is happier as a result.
Everyone talks about how great it would be to have a matchmaking system, as many other successful games have, but the size of the community makes it untenable. We can attempt to produce the results on our own with a little work and discipline though. We're providing everything we can to make this happen, we just need people to get on board. The more comp players support the idea, the less individual effort will be required.
You mean like the reddit pugs that usually happen 4-5 times a day?
Only thing to really mention, remove Docking and Mineshaft from the rotation.