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Sunday 24 October 2004

Running a server - admins who fuck the karma [Brit]

EED plays Desert Combat (Final) a lot - probably more than any other game at the moment, and it's becoming increasingly hard to find a decent public server to play on.
Tonight was a classic example; we literally jumped on and off at least ten servers, as a combination of fucked server settings, utter lamer players, and shitty map rotation made for an utterly crap play and enjoyment experience.
Now, given that CS:Source has just come out, it's unsurprising that the DC public server listings may be a bit sparser than they were, but there are still a goodly few online, and it appears most of those are administered by other people.
Four EED finally scrambled onto the server run by Ice Central - we've never been there before, and it had all the requisites of a good server: good map rotation, nice ping, sensible ticketing, no stupid auto team balance (which ruins SO many games), and so we jumped on.
Now, not to beat about the bush, the "ICE" crew who were also on there, were three sheets to the wind. I mean completely. But we worked round that by owning their collective asses giving them a real run for their money, culminating in the satisfactory completion of our mission objectives against the oppostion during the level DC Twin Rivers. A stunning level, and jolly good fun.
Two levels later, we're being kicked. I got kicked, for no reason. Oh hang on, no, my mistake - I was kicked for inviting various members of the opposition to say hello to The Holy Grail. My bad. Lurks and Slim then found themselves targets of abuse by the seemingly nice man with the untypable nick and his buddies, who were insistent upon a perfect 1v1 player balance. Like that's going to happen with 11 people.
Personally, I enjoyed what games we had on that server immensely. I just get pissed off that the few servers that seem to be available are either inundated with numpties, or administered by fucknuts with no concept at all on how to play a game, and who kick as soon as the oppo start getting points.
Bad server administration is one of the reasons people don't play games online. Don't do it lamers!1!11!1!1111! (Edited by Brit in the cold light of next-morning sobriety)

21 comments:

  1. I didn’t kick you for no reason. Now, having mentioned for the best part of 10 times, over the best part of 3 rounds, that the teams were in fact unbalanced, yes, when there are only 10 players on a server, and its a 6/4 its just a little bit unfair. You got kicked because you were the last person I saw changing teams. As I said in IRC, I didn’t want to kick anyone, in fact, I would have used team kick if 1942 actually had one, but I did. I’m sorry for that, because apart from this, we have never had a single complaint about or server, or the way it was run. No one has ever got kicked because "Its our server and we can do whatever the hell we like" or "Oh, they are better than us".
    OK, yes after you got kicked it did turn into a bit of a verbal fracas, but you lot did try to pull the high and mighty “We’ve been around for 8 years and win tournaments” angle, or stating that “You live with an unbalance or we leave, and you have no game” is just bound to annoy people. And I wouldn’t worry about Tricky, he had been on the sauce anyway.
    As you say yourself, you enjoyed your games on ice, and we would welcome you back. As you can tell, we aren’t a clan, just a community of gamers, we run that server for the public. Please come back and play again, because that was just an isolated incident.

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  2. While I can't bring myself to type a nick filled with numbers, I do agree with the blokey here. 6 v 4 on any DC map isn't much fun, we didn't have tags on, so as far as the admin was concerned you're a random peon who's switched sides to the unbalanced winning team. You'd have got kicked if you'd done that on the old eed dc server for sure.
    It's a damn shame dev's still haven't supported anything for mates who want to play together. Be easy enough, only teambalance people who don't have anyone on the same side in their buddy list, bosh. Bah.

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  3. Got to say, we did have plenty of good games up to that point. The server didn't have loads of people on it and that makes team balance all the harder. We'd played all night with EEDers on both sides and the reason why we sought our a server that didn't have many players was so we might stand a chance of getting on one side.
    Really what we need is the return of Snatch. Rebot still has all the code in it to watch 1942 servers and inform when EED folks join and leave. That was ace, tends to get people to play too when they can see there's some clanners on the server.
    I've also got to say, I've done exactly the same thing as those admins before. Asked someone to switch sides for five minutes, get ignored and then kick. So I do see it from both sides of the fence.
    Slim's right though, game devs need to work out a way to sort this stuff out. Apparently Halo 2 does this and maybe that idea will, in the fullness of time, become the norm. Oh, I think it's kind of neat there's a small gaming community with a web site and game server like those Ice Central guys. Not so dissimilar to us? Well, when we're running a server that is.
    I'm also quite frankly amazed that this chap replied with that sort of response given this blog saying those sort of things, so even if his nick is a bit odd I think he's got the moral high ground here. Edit your blog to be nicer :)

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  4. If only trans atlantic was a bit faster, I've stacks of bandy in teh usa. On the Halo2 think, you know it doesn't even have a game browser? You select online, and it puts you in a game. The friend friendly stuff comes from the xbox live buddy list, which is exactly how it should be done.

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  5. from reading above the guy got kicked for joining a winning team to make it unbalanced, thats fair enough. the hostile reaction of the person being kicked is unfortunate....

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  6. Well also let's not underestimate the power of blogging while under the influence of hippo-felling quantities of alcohol and the red-mist rage of getting kicked :)
    Anyway, we're all lovely now. Not a clan but host a server - now that's an interesting idea - how's that work then? Might have to check these fellas out

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  7. Heh. I have got a right hangover. Why is it we always end up playing uber sessions with at least 2 bottles of wine per person? :)
    I'll have you know that I didn't join the winning team either; well, I did, on DC Weapons Bunkers, but that's because that is a shit level which I wanted over and done with soonest. I got kicked on El Alamein, where the server itself assigned me to the Coalition side *shrug*.
    Apologies for sounding like a cunt!

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  8. Yep, Slim, I read about it. Subject of a blog I feel. You know you want to.

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  9. I don't see how the HALO2 concept would help. You select buddies from your XBox Live setup, and jump on a server, and that's it? I don't see how that differs massively from buddies in ASE? Then again, I don't have an XBox, so I shall await Slim's explanation for my own edification :)
    There is a solution to situations like last night (aside from not getting trashed of course) and that is to make the games absolutely massive. Massively multiplayer, one might say. Oh, they already have - still, nobody ever complained when half of EED joined up on Planetside for example, because there were that many people playing, it made no odds.

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  10. That's not how it works dear chap. What happens is you get on Xbox Live and you select your buddies that you want to play with and then it goes off and gets someone to host a server (the lame thing is it still hosts peer-to-peer) which has good network performance and which roughly the same amount of roughly the same ranked/matched players are also looking for a game. Think of it as if we were on #eed and we found that this night we had five players looking for a game. You'd press a few buttons and bingo, you're in a five v five game with all your mates on one team.
    That differs completely from ye olde game browser approach where you'd have to hook up with your chums and then find a server where you can go and play (how long exactly did we piss about last night?) and then try, for the next hour, to get on the same side without having the admin kick you (chuckle).
    Actually Planetside wasn't the panecea that you make it out to be either. There was piss all action anywhere and then when you got somewhere, you either outnumbered your opponents 10:1 or vice versa. Smaller tightly controlled games with a moderate amount of players just plain leads to better games.
    You yourself have noted how rubbish DC is when there's too many players. It's the same with the current fixation of CS: Source servers having over 20 players. There's fire all over the place and you're likely to be killed randomly by someone you didn't even see. In essence you get the most enjoyment from going mano-a-mano against someone in a mini battle, defeating them and therefore being successful at your part of the team game.
    I don't think game developers think hard enough about how to engineer enjoyable games. When you think about what they're doing with Halo 2, it's clearly just right. Hopefully then someone will do something like that with, say, UT2004 Onslaught and we'll have a bloody superb and fun game on your hands that you can play with your mates.

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  11. Gentlemen, can I start off by thanking you for playing on our server.

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  12. Oops, i just hit return :D Looks like I missed a brilliant time last night. Let me apologise for the abuse the player recieved from our drunkem member of icecentral. He's a good guy who got rilled up when drinking the grain waters of Russia. Reading the comments it looks like you guys enjoyed our servers until the incident. That makes me glad cause I'm a tad of an older gamer myself (btw I frequent the yak yak minter forums myself). We just run the servers cause we like games without the rigidity of clansmanship, we like to have the say in roatation etc. We run entirely through donations aswell. If you guys would ever like to play us (kick our arses) come on over to www.icecentral.com and talk to us on our forums, where we can set up a match and also set up a long term friendship with a good bunch of like minded gamers. Cheers guys hope we get to all know each other :D

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  13. Just been to www.icecentral.com and these boys appear to run a server for almost every game we play. I for one am annoyed I missed last night sounds like a blast, of course there is always tonight!

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  14. Spiro you last played a game in 1988.

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  15. Yeah I remember it clearly. We were celebrating the last time you got laid

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  16. I go by corroded, monkee, any 1337ification of them, or simply Chris so any of those will do!
    Nice to see we've resolved this now, feel free to make icecentral your DC Final home ;)
    Unfortunatly due to funding, we only have the one server, but we do swap it about as we have full access so we can put up whatever we want, whenever we want, though it usually reverts to DC when its not being used for a gather.
    Hope to see you on the server sometime.

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  17. Dear Impartial Readers,
    Please witness the above blog which is what happens When Gamers Grow Up. Now I realise this will disappoint many of you who would have been much happier with an exchange between 't' Death and Ice along the lines of "J00 sux0r g3y n00b f00lz" "STFU n00b butt m0nk33" but I'm afraid, having been drunk a thousand times (and many more), we have come to this place where we can acknowledge our mistakes. Very disappointing but there you are. For those of you looking for a bit more spice and the occasional blast of "wankstain shitknobbed fartfaced sewageteethed gazellefucker" let me assist.
    Wankstain shitknobbed fartfaced sewageteethed gazellefucker.
    There y'go.

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  18. Hehe, i'm only 21 damnit!

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  19. 21 eh? Makes him legal everywhere I can think of. Mmmmmmmm........

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  20. Amnesia you're sick. Quite sick. But also, quite correct. Well done that man.

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