There're "lots" of new players playing constantly on XS4All FFA! WTF?

So, let's behave there! Like it says on the QW.nu main page "New to Quakeworld? It's easy to get scared!"

Let's not rape newbies and let's use our own nicks, including all those div0 swedish fakers.

FFA can be fun in many ways other than boosting your fraghungry div0 ego!

Otherwise i'll tell your moms!

So ... you say "let's rape them with our real nicks"?

Johnny, You're NOOB IN READING, I'LL RAPE U SO EZ IN DA INTELLIGENTIC DISCUSSION

There has been many new players on Quake-Legion.net FFA, And some "Old" Quakers have returned also .

I am one of the new players there (xs4all) and have been enyoing it so far. FFA is underrated (to get new players), in QL its the most played game type along with CA.
What I would like to see is a FFA server with "weird" maps and a lot of them, like the netquake server bigfoot.quake1.net, everytime I connect to it another map is running that I have never seen before

btw, xs4all seems to be set up in a way that does not allow for automatic demo recording if I understand ez docs right. Could that be changed?

XS4ALL has so many 'weird' maps it frightens my nightmares.

Totally agree! And it doesnt have even that magical bugged shit antilag (and i hope it wont ever have). FFA is the first place where a newbie will go, not eql 4on4 as i said before a hundred times

div0 swedish players can be pretty motivating on x4ffa. Actually when i was a noob back in time, i was inspirated by thoose div0 players. I found the spammer fuckers more irritating than any others. When you born on dm6 near to gl, and you dont have a chance to move, cos a fucking retard is spamming his nades to that box, it is pretty irritating for example. And usually all spawn place has its own lifeless fuck when the server is full, imagine when you reborn and die 7-8 times in a row, WITHOUT a chance to escape. My advice to handle this problem is this: add the new possible eql maps to the pool(cmt1b,anni-beta, cmt3, Zaka's new map, clt 5-6) they are too big for spawnraping, and new to the spammers. Classic maps(dm4 dm6 aero ztn) are only enjoyable with only 4-6 palyers. My english sux badly, but i think this matter is VERY important, i hope you will get what i posted here. BTW welcome to the community Leopold

Totally agree with miku there. Those maps on X4all are just retarded and too cramped with ppl.

One could make the "Newbie Xs4all server" more custom orientated and the regular one more of a classic server?

I think there's a newbie xs4all server allready. Who's the admin of those servers btw? So we could force him to add those new maps to the pool and erase some of the maps, ie. dm3 which is NOT a ffa map.

Big maps are not interesting to a lot of people (the only reason e1m2 and dm3 are still on the server is for 'new people' to 'learn the basics of the most played 4on4 maps') so when big maps are on the server, people will drop and go on with their business. People want to play the small spamnation, retarded maps, because that's how they can go in a fragfrenzy and feel powerful and awesome.

Just look at which maps get the server to 16/16 capacity.

Perhaps I should just add big maps and look at an empty server the whole day? Perhaps I should lower amount of maximum people so others miss out?

Tell me, which of the larger maps gets the amount of people that are gained by aerowalk, pkeg1, dm4, skull, head-shot? The only ones that come close are the ones Tiddles are making, and they are medium-sized at best.

I've had a look at the possible EQL beta maps (ctl5, ctl6-beta and airbasebetatest2) or what the exact names are, they look like great TDM maps and might be suitable for FFA, but none of the CMT maps are really popular for FFA (Andromeda is perhaps an exception, though it's loathed as well). So yes, I'm thinking of adding them to the maplist and hallelujah for the whine I'll receive.

But then again, whine is Quake's blood, if there's no whine there's no game.

The 'Newbie' server exists mainly of custom maps, as best as I can recall (including dm3/dm2/dm4 and e1m2 for l2p reasons). The biggest reason there are people on that server is when the main server is cramped.

I think having one "Big maps" and one "small maps" server maybe a better aproach. The term "newbie" or "rookie" is not well defined and when xs4all is full veterans will enter the
"rookie xs4all" server because they want to play.


Besides that: What can be called a newbie? I come from q3 and have fps experience but am a newbie in qw terms. On the other side there seem to be some real newbies, saw at least 1 player on xs4all who was trying to play with 'always run' turned off (in a crowded dm6. People like this guy need a place too where they can play and have a good time.

Of course the situation is a difficult one since QW (same for other Quakes) can not afford to annoy the regulars. However, the obsession with the competitive part of Quake (all quakes) maybe contra productive. I started to play q3 because I loved how the game "feels" not because I understood how far it could be taken skill wise.
For the number enthusiasts: IIRC in QL 90% or more (!) of all players do not have bright skins enabled.

Example:
There is a edawn (new q3 mod) FFA server with 4 bots on it where 1-2, sometimes more people are playing having a great time with the bots and each other. Those players would be lost on any q3 server where veterans are playing and as a result would most likely not play at all.

So maybe some server with softer bots on it may help a little.

Just do as I have proposed many times - do a round-robin system with max 8 players and auto redirect.
So if you connect to quake.xs4all.nl and get "server full" you are automatically redirected to the next FFA port.

No huzz, no fuzz!

Also I think it's soon about time we make some FFA council where we work together on making FFA packages and setup some servers we can actively promote - which are also somehow highligted on stats page.

As the noob mentioned before, FFA is the most played mod in qlive, and it was the most popular mod in QW also many years ago. It's the best for newbies - and everyone else for that matter.. it's nice to chillax or ragefrag on a FFA server once in a while.

I would happily host some FFA servers if it weren't for the fact that im on a f****n ADSL line atm

There's no point in hosting more FFA servers, as for example the XS4ALL rookies or the new one qw.quakeservers.net:27500 are empty even if the main XS4ALL FFA is full 16/16

Well then we have the thing about location... Kind of matters also

Modifications to the server software to allow for connecting people to autojoin another server when for example xs4all is full might be a h!o!t addition me thinks, even without bots.

A FFA server's player limit NEEDS to be adjusted according to the size of the maps. If you cram too many people on a small map like DM4 it gets pretty stupid quick.

On Quake-Legion.net the max player limit is 10 and all of the maps are around the same size, Nobody ever complains and everyone is happy with the maps. Admins need to listen to the players or else new players will leave and never come back, It's hard enough keeping noobies around...

I don't think it matters that much, I mean for new players most aren't going to care if the server is in Amsterdam or Lund, routing issues aside it should only affect their ping by 13ms. Fair enough having good servers in places a few timezones away, like North America, Russia, Australia etc etc is a good thing, but there is no need for you to host anything.

Foppa has an FFA port, which would basically ping the same as cuve.se I guess, and nobody ever plays there. And you can't tell me that current QW players have an issue with Foppa as a location, because it is probably the most active server host for 4on4. Yes in an ideal world we'd all have our own active FFA servers in our own countries, I remember those days but nowadays it just isn't feasible.

xs4all is where people go for FFA, it's always been that way because it was on the old master servers so newbies who didn't have serverlists, ASE etc would load up gamepsy or whatever and find that server.

The thing about FFA is the whole point is you can just connect and be fragging in seconds, no waiting around. So you could set up 20 new FFA servers and that wouldn't get more people playing, people go where the other players are. Even if a second ffa game starts up, it will die out once a 'bad' or oversized map comes on the cycle and people start dropping out. The bottomline is there aren't enough people interested in playing QW FFA to sustain multiple active servers for extended periods, unless the maxplayers limit was dropped.

I agree with this, People want the perfect map cycle and good luck with that...

All in all, If it's a new map and people don't know it, They complain. Too stubborn to try something new. FFA is about variety, Not the same old dm4 map...

Just do as I have proposed many times - do a round-robin system with max 8 players and auto redirect.
So if you connect to quake.xs4all.nl and get "server full" you are automatically redirected to the next FFA port.

No huzz, no fuzz!

I get your point, but I think some are dropping due to bad playing experience. It might just be me that has bad ping to xs4all, and it's also running FodFFA and doesn't have antilag (afaik). Atleast for me the playing experience is kind of shit at that server.

You're right about foppa too, even if I don't think it has gotten "promoted" as much as XS4ALL FFA though, since everytime you hear someone mention anything about FFA, XS4ALL is in there too (most likely due to the reason your mentioning).

So I agree that the servers is probably not the biggest issue, but I think it's still an issue _if_ you can't get a smooth playing experience.

On maxclients... is it possible for a server to have different map rotations based on the number of players on the server? For instance, if a server with maxclients 24 gets to 10 players, on next map change switch to the 'large' map pool? And if it fell below that, on next map change use the 'small' map pool.

I don't know if this would actually fix anything (I don't even know if there's a problem!) but I like it as an idea... which no doubt someone has already had!

Don't think that's possible currently, Driz. A relevant question overall is probably whether there are any server side coders left?

If you poke bigfoot, he might add that to the fodffa mod that xs4all uses

I talked to Flepster who's the admin on XS4ALL, he said that he's not following the map-scene, so I showed him CTL5-6 and Naughty, he'll probably add those to the map pool. But what we could do here is to tip him about good FFA maps, maybe we should start another thread to make a poll about FFA maps?

MUFFIN! Make a FFA map! It should be easier than making a 4on4 or 1on1 map. Btw, how about FFA map without RL and LG? SSG+SNG+GL Frenzy! I personally like to frag with gl+sng+ssg, especially on e1m2.


Another thing: There's no QTV on Xs4All or am I wrong? I think it would be good if it would be listed on qtv.quakeworld.nu.
Atm there's fragrank on stats-qw.nu, how about putting the FFA frag-rank on the mainpage of qw.nu? Atm there's no EQL games to show.
Allthough I dont like QW's weapon "balance" it causes ffa to be more rape-fest than in Qlive. I dont know if that's a good thing or not.

Both ctl5 and ctl6 should work great in FFA. Also Naughty and Anni's map.
Just wait for them to be finished! Ctl6 is on the verge of it, Anni's map will be done in mid August (according to him).

A good way to promote FFA may be a FFA tournament. If someone wants to run one, I'll happily put 100 E pricemoney in (I already payed for one q3 tourney
http://www.esreality.com/index.php?a=post&id=1983823 , you won't get ripped off If interested, pm me, I am iddling @ #qwrookie.

Small maps are perhaps popular as you can reach a weapon very quickly and therefore be part of the "main action" quite quickly. In large maps it takes a while. So perhaps large maps should contain more weapons than typical 2 RL + 1 LG. Then you get the good from both worlds - being in action quickly, but whole place not being overcrowded. Also maybe the mod should give some initial after-spawn armor (60-120 I'd say). The deaths per second rate is just ridiculous on some maps.