East Coast 2Fort Only 24 Players Now?

[Alex Ward 0]

The LotusClan 24/7 2Fort East Coast server has been mine and my girlfriend's go-to server for a couple of months now and just today we're noticing it's been reduced to only 24 players like the New Jersey server. One of the reasons we love the server, aside from the community feeling when you're on it, was the mayhem and fun 32-players allows.

We're really hoping you reconsider or at least tell us why.

Thank you

[Nano 7,892]

I can't speak on behalf of Mana. But I'm 90% sure that this has nothing to do with what he wants and everything to do with Valve's matchmaking quickplay (Play Now!) button.

Valve really doesn't like 32 player servers because in their view it is unbalanced and an entirely different type of play (they even pop up a message to new players stating this if they try to join a 32 person server!). Because of that they were planning to (and must have finally gone through with) sending less players to servers configured for the extra people. While there are plenty of regulars on EC 2fort, I doubt there are enough to keep it full during normal playing hours, something the matchmaking service can do.

Without full servers nobody has a fun time.

I think you'll find most if not all other 32 person servers (Lotus or not) will disappear shortly(if they haven't already).

Don't worry though, if there is enough demand I'm sure Mana will add more servers to meet it! If you were worried about being able to join a game, both you and your g/f can become donors (10 bucks for 2 of you) and then you'll be able to join the server even when it's full.

[Nano 7,892]

I could be wrong about this, but I believe a plugin changes sv_visiblemaxplayers to reduce the maxplayers reported to 24 when the playercount is below a certain number, so that quickplay will send players to that server. Once the playercount reaches a set amount, sv_visiblemaxplayers will be changed back to 33

That's pretty clever.

That explains why the mailing list had no mention of the change.

[Mana 3,867]

It's still 32 (33) players.