Stock #3 Temporary Player Count Change

[Mana 3,867]

With the recent update Valve made more changes to the way quickplay works and now 32 player servers are rarely used in the "start playing" button on the main menu.

This is part of the reason why Stock #3 isn't nearly as popular as it was before.

So to make it more popular some changes have been made:

The mapcycles have been adjusted to that of Stock Maps #5 on all of our rotation servers. (Stock #5 is the most popular Stock Maps server we have right now)

And now there's another change that we could make. And I'd like players input on that.

I recently turned one of our less popular 32 player Stock Maps servers into a 24 player server which led to the server being full nonstop for 3+ days in a row:

http://www.gametrack...31.28.36:27015/

I'm thinking of trying to do the same with Stock #3. This would allow the server to gain new regulars who are using quickplay + favorites instead of the server browser.

Once the server is doing better again it would get switched back to 32 slots.

What do you, the players think?

[I can break these cuffs 2]

nooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

but seriously really hard to play badwater with 12 players on a team, offense will just be winning all the time.

[DrkEagle 15]

As a regular player of Stocks 3 pretty much only, I don't like the thought of it being 24 players at all. I don't play on 24 person servers at all. I know it's had some crappy luck lately with being full but the only other West Coast servers with 32 players are all 24/7's and the Payload server. The Payload server gets really old, really fast playing Badwater, Goldrush, and Upward, over and over and over (Hightower rarely wins). I think you should add all PL maps to it and even look at the Payload Dustbowl map, pl_db_heights.

I'm all for helping stocks 3 since west coast only has one stock map server, but the idea of making it 24 players only, even seeing the results from the other servers you've done this with. I don't like.

BUT, how long would you test this idea for?

[Destro 0]

Also as an avid Stock #3 player, I think this is a bad idea.

[Dartht33bagger 1]

The more players the better I say. 12 on 12 is about the lowest I'll go before I leave the game. TF2 is the most fun when the server is 16 on 16.

[tbhe 2]

I visit stocks #3 frequently. I said "visit" instead of "play" because Mana is correct in saying that the popularity of #3 has certainly declined and often times I'm left battling phantom the bot (who, ironically, is more challenging than the real phantom ).

I don't think changing the # of player slots is the solution.

Mana, we should incorporate the new map rotation for the next 3 weeks and see if that revives the popularity. If you make multiple changes at the same time (slots + map rotation) it will be difficult to tell which of the changes yielded good results.

If the map rotation change proves to be the only factor you may even revisit the player counts on the other servers. And vice-versa. I've frequently seen stocks #3 go from full to near empty on a single map change.

I'd additionally like to see if we can decrease round time from 45 to 32 minutes. I usually find the "rtv"'s starting when there is 10-15 minutes left in the round. This should also help with autojoin'ers since the server is changing game types more frequently there will be a greater intersection of game types & autojoin'ers (my bayesian side comes out).

+1 on map rotation & round time decrease, -1^1000000 on player slot changes (for now).

[Mana 3,867]

I visit stocks #3 frequently. I said "visit" instead of "play" because Mana is correct in saying that the popularity of #3 has certainly declined and often times I'm left battling phantom the bot (who, ironically, is more challenging than the real phantom ).

I don't think changing the # of player slots is the solution.

Mana, we should incorporate the new map rotation for the next 3 weeks and see if that revives the popularity. If you make multiple changes at the same time (slots + map rotation) it will be difficult to tell which of the changes yielded good results.

If the map rotation change proves to be the only factor you may even revisit the player counts on the other servers. And vice-versa. I've frequently seen stocks #3 go from full to near empty on a single map change.

I'd additionally like to see if we can decrease round time from 45 to 32 minutes. I usually find the "rtv"'s starting when there is 10-15 minutes left in the round. This should also help with autojoin'ers since the server is changing game types more frequently there will be a greater intersection of game types & autojoin'ers (my bayesian side comes out).

+1 on map rotation & round time decrease, -1^1000000 on player slot changes (for now).

Map changes cause players to leave. Decreasing the timelimit is not an option.

[tbhe 2]

Map changes cause players to leave. Decreasing the timelimit is not an option.

And causes new players to join. Not to mention that people will leave if the map changes to a less popular map. In my view this is offset by the new, presumably better, map rotation.

Forget the round time discussion for the time being, I'll amend my original +1 to just a map rotation change.

[Krash 1,040]

I played today with Tsar, Drk, and a few other GDD people. And the server stayed around 25 players. I'll keep an eye on it, but if its never full, on prime-time gaming time (Sunday, ~2PM for West Coasters) then why waste the slots.

Of course, i was on for about an hour, but ill post my report here after about a week.

[Overlord 0]

I just played at 7:17 PM MST and the place was empty. It was myself and 3 other humans vs a team full of bots. Something is not quite right here.

I've never played with Quick Play before, so I'm not entirely sure how it works. I found buddies on the LotusClan servers so I bookmarked them and pretty much play there full time, unless they're empty of course.

32 players is definitely better than 24, and while decreasing to 24 might increase users in the short term, there are no guarantees it will increase in the long term. You might as well try it out and see how it goes, but 32 should be the end goal.

[Corran 0]

As a stocks 3 man and donor I don't like the idea of 24 either, I don't have any wise words to say or pithy suggestions i just don't like it.

[Mana 3,867]

Problem is that there's about 1500 Valve servers that are 24 players and used first in quickplay.

That's about 36000 player slots.

http://www.game-monitor.com/search.php?search=valve%20tf&game=tf2

32 player servers are now much harder to fill when most people are sent to 24 player servers. Making this server a quickplay one would make it quite popular.

Mapcycle changes won't do much, especially since we could use any crappy map rotation and have a 24 player server popular.

I'm not making any changes yet, but it's just something for the regulars to think about.

[DrkEagle 15]

The server is pretty dead right now...but so is 24/7 Dustbowl, 2Fort, Badwater, and Payload.

All weekend and so far this week, I've been noticing it being mostly full a lot. Even on like Yukon and ctf_sawmill it stayed pretty full which was surprising.

[Mana 3,867]

I made some further changes today. So far it seems to have had positive effects but it's really too early to tell.

[IceSage 58]

Anything that makes it so that the server has players, and not just bots playing, sounds good to me. Is there a way to make it so once the server is full, the player count increases to 32? And when it drops below, say, 15, it sets back to 26, or whatever? I love that lotus has the 32 player servers, but I'd also like to see the unused servers gain players via the new "Start Playing" system valve added.

Or... is that how it's setup already?

[Mana 3,867]

Anything that makes it so that the server has players, and not just bots playing, sounds good to me. Is there a way to make it so once the server is full, the player count increases to 32? And when it drops below, say, 15, it sets back to 26, or whatever? I love that lotus has the 32 player servers, but I'd also like to see the unused servers gain players via the new "Start Playing" system valve added.

Or... is that how it's setup already?

That's how it was before and now is once again.

I see this is not something that the regulars would want. So it will not be done currently.