server size discussion and offical UWE server suggestion

freak0ut

hey guys,

dunno if this was already discussed here, but I just watched the latest Clogcast about 267. There will be a warning message for rookies who are attempting to join 24+ slot servers.
I started wondering why this "warning limit" was set so high. Playing on a 24 slot server is - in my opinion - not a big step down from wooza 40+ server. I can't understand why big servers are so appealing to folks, as an 18 slot server seems to be the optimum for pub play in terms of "not too crowded maps" and "not too much impact by one player". Also most big servers have performance issues who are just killing the fun out of it, like warping, lags, low fps and so on. I can't be the only one who avoids servers with more than 20 slots.

And a quick suggestion: before we get a new sale with another rookie invasion, why not make the official UWE servers rookies only (lets say, autokick all people with more than 40h playtime) to give them an easier start. We only got one real rookie only server by HBZ (I don't know if it is still online). Most of the time, the servers are empty anyway. They run vanilla, so rookies don't have to deal with server mods which could distract them and it should be possible by filtering to gather rookies on these servers for their first 10h+ of NS2 experience. That would put the offical servers to some use.

Please comment on my thoughts, would be nice to hear from guys who like to play on 24+ slot servers and why they do it.

Pelargir

I know that said sentence when you'll try to join a server as a rookie gonna be: "The server you are joining has more than 24 players. Natural Selection 2 was designed to have an optimal experience within a maximum of 24 players. On servers with player counts higher than 24, we can not guarantee acceptable performance, or balanced gameplay."

I even didn't know HBZ was running a rookie friendly server... But I have to disagree with your idea, or a little bit, this is not rare to have one of my friends trying to play with my Steam account to NS2, and in that case, i'm not so sure he wants to play on another server than the dedicated rookies ones. And when a "rookie invasion" occurs, it's pretty hard to join any server so sometimes, you have to connect on whatever server you can find.

ZEROibis

The reason is that as soon as there is <12 players all players tend to quit and likewise if there is not >=12 players then players tend to not join. A larger server mitigates this issue by reducing the odds that the server will approach the cataclysmic 12 player count by having a losing team rage quit for example.

Lastly tossing all the rookies onto a server together is a fast way for them to never learn or spend 10hours learning very little. Experienced players on servers with mixed populations educate rookies much faster. New players generally learn faster by observing and showing more skilled players. Think of it like an apprenticeship. For example I recently couched a few new players explaining them how skulks moved and how to think about where to aim in advance when entering a room. They said after that having a detailed explanation about how players actually think in different situations helped improve their aim a lot. New players would not be able to easily obtain such advice in a rookie only environment.

WasabiOne

FYI all the official UWE NS2 will be going offline, pretty much as we speak. They are are not being used except for a very small number of players and since there is not admins on them as much as a lot of the public servers UWE has decided for now to shut them down.

ZEROibis

Sort of saw that coming eventually, there is no point sinking money into them when the community is providing enough servers to meet demand for free.