Class caps after player increase?

[Hellfire 421]

I was just wondering if Lotus has ever had class caps before or even considered them?  I use to play nothing but 24 player servers until player increases were implemented.  With 24 players it was manageable to win on offense since you didn't have an extra 4 classes stopping you.  Plus I think most servers I play on are fast spawn servers.  

 

I have noticed mostly in 32 players Goldrush or Dustbowl stage 3 is hardly seen because defense always wins unless they are that disorganized or don't have that many engineers.  I personally have not seen stage 3 of Dustbowl in about 4-5 days because the farthest Blue team can push is just to 2nd stage.  I noticed what causes this halt is a couple of reasons:

 

1.  The game is not made for 16 people per team due to stability issues.  16 defenders on quick spawn is a challenge enough even if they don't have any engineers.

2.  Defense will stack engineers them self since they could not breach the engineer blockade on their attempt on offense.

     - because they know it works.

 

We have retaliated with 5 medics and 5 heavies on offense at times to only have one air blast push us back and the 10 sentries pushing us up into the air.  It natural that people want to play defense and people even switch to defense from offense so they don't have to deal with the boredom of getting stuck in spawn or not even be able to pierce the final defense.  You hear people complaining in voice chat about when they can see level 3 and I tell them to let the other team win to get to stage 3 and of course they don't want to do that because they are already playing defense!  

 

Any thoughts on this?  I feel there should only be a cap on engineers.  Probably 3 at the most or even 4 is doable.  When you have 6+ engineers playing it makes it close to impossible.  

[fever 9,884]

This gets brought up from time to time in various guises. We never implemented class caps as we wanted to keep the servers as vanilla as possible and in the past (pre january 2014) it probably broke Valve's QuickPlay rules.

I may be wrong but I think these are the reasons if memory serves correct.

[luop90 4,400]

It breaks Valve's Quickplay rules

(Hey, I can list three that Skial breaks, can anyone guess? )

[Hellfire 421]

That is a bummer.  Well what about no auto votes to increase player cap on servers?  Or what triggers that exactly?

[Domino 3,168]

The server filling kicks it in place I believe. Aka 24/24 = server vote

[+Dr. Obvious 14,606]

Also, who doesn't love to have 8 snipers in your 12 man team... 

[fever 9,884]

The 32 player servers run as (effectively) 24 player servers until they fill, then the vote is offered to extend to 32 players. I think that after running these servers for years and seeing the trends Mana believed this would be the most effective way to fill the servers and keep players playing games on them for longer. This is also why there is no cap limit and fast spawn on some servers...The logs showed that it kept players playing longer.

It's not to say he's not open to suggestions, but he's got the logs/experience which tell him something is likely to work or failed previously.

[Domino 3,168]

I've seen multiple times, particularly on dustbowl, the No to increase vote win, specially on dustbowl - lots of spam XD 

[Hellfire 421]

The 32 player servers run as (effectively) 24 player servers until they fill, then the vote is offered to extend to 32 players. I think that after running these servers for years and seeing the trends Mana believed this would be the most effective way to fill the servers and keep players playing games on them for longer. This is also why there is no cap limit and fast spawn on some servers...The logs showed that it kept players playing longer.

It's not to say he's not open to suggestions, but he's got the logs/experience which tell him something is likely to work or failed previously.

I guess that makes sense. That is why I now can see some players with 100 points and still be in the bottom 5 on the team.

I've seen multiple times, particularly on dustbowl, the No to increase vote win, specially on dustbowl - lots of spam XD

I have too but end up seeing the vote to increase pop up again shortly after that.

I just wanted to see to double check. Thanks for the responses.

[fever 9,884]

It's also worth noting that if want to play on a server and it's empty, if you spam out invites you can have 8-10 people join within a few minutes...the server quite often will then go to 20 players within 15-20 minutes.

[- Mike - 2,728]

Also, who doesn't love to have 8 snipers in your 12 man team... 

 

But it works! I swear!

[+Dr. Obvious 14,606]

But it works! I swear!

Reminds me of the "team heavy" steamroll we did on 2fort once. all in all 20 heavies shooting. Server went down a bit... ^^

[fever 9,884]

16 engies building in 2Fart Intel room was pretty funny when blue rolled up with ubers

[Emma 1,798]

Adding a cap to classes is a hassle and some people like me love the 9 Engineers on Dustbowl last. It's fun to play against! 

[Domino 3,168]

Only suggestion I can think of would be a very very high class cap, like.. 12. 

 

Means you can't have 16 engineers on 2fort then. 

[fever 9,884]

It'll never happen.  Fuck yo dreams XD

[Nano 7,892]

Not directly related but another issue,especially in maps with only 1 blu spawn, is not having lvl 2+ teleporters. No matter team composition, it's practically required in some stages of goldrush and dustbowl. Also very helpful for last piece of badewater/frontier/thunder mountain.

Written on my potato, please excuse spelling/grammar.

[Cola Kid 230]

Yeh Ive heard it from a few players saying they wish there was a cap on the classes but I didnt know that Valve had a rule about it. Next time someone brings it up I will tell them.