Hi,

I've opened a new FFA server at qw.quakeservers.net:27500. The server is supposed to be someting that small.qw.edome.net was years ago, running small maps with maxplayers 8 and powerups. The current map rotation is:


The reason I'm opening the server is that I would like see larger FFA scene in Europe. Currently FFA games seem to be running only in quake.xs4all.nl which seems to get crowded sometimes with maxplayers 16 in dm4/aerowalk/skull/xyz. I will be spamming the server address in .qw to get players on the server. Please tell me what you think or suggest changes if the FFA map you love is missing from the rotation.

sweet

Cool, thanks!

Good idea. I know a lot of people, myself included, like to play ffa on the big maps, and on xs4all there's a -lot- of custom maps before they come up - and then they're usually skippppped by voting. Playing on a crowded server can be tedious too - trying to survive a spawn and run like hell for five seconds etc.

As for additional maps, personally I like to see small map rotations, but would love to see either dm5, e2m7 or e3m2 on the server - all with hard-to-get RL's and nice architecture

We already got some games going! There was a problem with map rotation which is now fixed. So far people have suggested that doomed and pkeg1 should be added to rotation and dm3 + e1m2 should be removed. I'm not against adding but I like dm3 and e1m2 so I might need some convincing

I'd like dm3 and e1m2 to stay! ^^

qtv???

Add ctl maps (1,2,3,5) and ctl6 and q1anni (q3dm14) when finished!

Nice one!

The ping from Germany is surprisingly good. Would be nice to find regular action on there.
Some new/old (and different!) maps than on axes are highly appreciated

Server added to qtv.quakeservers.net and qtv.quakeworld.nu QTV's. Pkeg1 and ctl5 added to rotation. Let's see for a while how it goes with the current rotation.

Nice nice, I saw that droppowerups was on aswell.. sweet!!

The server is in Germany so it better be good for you?

It's only 12ms from London QWFWD! Which is 4ms faster than to Dybbuk!

And only 4ms slower than xs4all! I like the location!

Exclamation mark (!)

My kinda preferred setup (small maps with a modest maxclients and dropquad, great to see the return of ztndm6), let me know in due course if you need some map suggestions.
Does it support next_map (not sure how this works in ktx ffa... basically a way for players to vote mapchange if they aren't happy with current map)?

Oh, thought it was a Finnish server

Next_map exists as a command but it's disabled!

Woo, think there was a need for another FFA server as xs4all can get annoyingly overcrowded. Also like the map pool and dropquad... next_map should be enabled if it's not though!

Hope to see you on there soon

e1m2, dm2 and dm3 are completely useless for FFA - I think the argument for including those maps stating that they are part of official tournament maps are utterly bogus.

Just because there are good 4on4 maps, does NOT mean they are good FFA maps - and we shouldn't impose bad maps to a good mod 'just because'.

I said it over and over.. I'd like to see some kind of FFA collaboration with fellow admins. Different, nice map packages, some kind of round-robin with auto redirect, and some effort in the presentation/stats department to kind of.. set them apart and make the whole FFA experience more complete and unique than it has been for a loooong time.

It's really an open invitiation to Dar1n, flepser, mli and the ktx/ezq developers to show some initiative or interest in this possible project.
It seems that my previous suggestions about using bots on FFA servers as a catalyst for activity has been ignored/rejected or just that people behind the scene seem it less feasible it will be implemented cause it's too complicated.

So this is definitely the next_best option in my book.

But it requires efforts from multiple directions.
It's NOT enough simply to start a FFA server and pray that people will come. It's not enough to simply do .qw spams once a day to make people aware that this server is even available.

It's about looking at the way people use the current FFA "system" and how to improve.

I have a few suggestions for that:

Default nquake config when going to server browser should immidately show those FFA servers we have setup.
We should do some promotion via .qw AND www.quakeworld.nu
We should lower the maxplayers on xs4all BUT use a round robin system to automatic redirect overflow players - this will automatic spawn activity on other servers.
There should be an overview page IMO for this project. like http://ffa.quakeworld.nu showing overview of servers now much like you have on quakelive page with one-click play buttons (like we have watch-now for qtv, btw why are there not a join now button there, OR on quakeservers.net for that matter?), where you can see stats from servers - some rankings and so forth.

Also so it's easy to redirect newbies to this type of game - remember I said this before - A LOT of oldschool QW players learned the trade on FFA servers and still find it fun to play. It's one of the greatest and purest mods in QW and we should embrace and encourage it more to get people hooked on the game.

As soon as you create an enviroment where it's optional to have fun but at the same time compete on some level, it will be interesting for players. When you can get higher on the rankings, get some nice competetive stats have some fun with that, it will make ppl play more and longer - I just know it

Here in North America, Players are more interested in Team games rather than FFA. It's been this way for years and it's really hard to gather new players for FFA, I don't think it will ever change.

I think you need a critical mass of players to cater to several different game mods.
If you are 1 player on the scene it's hard to do anything except trick maps.

If you are 2 players you can play 1on1, if you are 4 you can play 2on2 and some FFA, if you are 8 you can play 4on4 and all subsequent mods.

To have a decent activity on a FFA server you need quite a lot of active players. Lets say 1 in 50 will play FFA at any given time, that means you need at least 500~ active players in the scene to have ~10 players on the FFA server at any given time. I don't even think you have 50 players in the USA, but we do probably have 500 in europe.

That's my take on it at least. Numbers will ofcourse be overly rough guesstimates.

You are correct on this, QW is much more popular in Europe. And with all these new games coming out I think we will loose more and more...

I personally like FFA on these maps but I can see that they might not be the right ones to lure more players in. On e1m2 and dm3 it's difficult for beginners to get weapons and armor because they are a long way from spawn spots and on places that are difficult to reach. Dm2 on the other hand seems to continuous spawn frag fest which people for some reason seem to like (at least on xs4all).


I've requested a redirection to FodFFA on #fodquake but do not know if anything is happening. I think that it would really help to get more servers going. The redirection should start from quake.xs4all.nl which is the only active server at the moment. It also needs lower player limit or more suitable maps to maxplayers 16. All this is depending on FodFFA developers and Flepser. No point redirecting from server that's never full.

I'm willing to change the map rotation of my server or help in some other way if needed.



.qw spam seemed to work somehow and we got some games going. However people don't seem to find back to the new servers on their own if it is empty


Agreed.


I have a stats page made with Qlog 90% ready for my server. I don't have much time or interest for developing QuakeServers.net. At the moment it's only costing me money (has been like that for years).

During a discussion with some people in #fodquake we came to a nice idea which I'll explain here.

Basically it it's a combination of "split server" and "auto redirect".
The redirect is when a server is full (8/8 players), a player would be auto-redirected to the next server available with free slots.
The issue some people have is that when you try to join a full server, being redirected to an empty server, you would quit anyway - and the whole idea is kinda nullified.
My argument with this is that there is a very positive expectation of more players joining soon - so there is no reason to actually leave right away. As opposed to joining unknown FFA servers where noone ever plays anyway.
Even if you don't agree with me on that, it's possible to add an additional feature to combat this.

The split server would be a little more complicated. If a server is full (8/8) and the map changes - the server would split up the players taking some of the players and send them to the next port, to auto populate more servers.
This way you would never really be alone on the server.

So how do you decide which players to be taken from the primary server? The worst players. The whole point of creating the "rookie QW FFA server" was to give new players an option to play FFA without the top players raping them too hard. This would be a tool to help that along. After 12 mins of rape, the worst half part of the players on that server would be auto redirected to next port. Which in turn would free up slots on primary server, and around we go

The argument THEN is that people would target the rookie port to play worse players - and I think that's just weak and unfounded and ... who cares? I don't even think that would happen. In any case it's a really good idea that I'd like to get some feedback on and it's much better than what we are left with now. One server with high maxplayer limit and small maps.

Good idea. The worst players should be selected based on frags per second/minute they made during the round.

Code the tools and Bigfoot might implement them on XS4ALL