So we have around 2 weeks to go to trial decision time and its been a journey of highs and lows.
We have done very well we have a server populated regularly but usually just need to get it going which is something we can work on.
Acid and I are going to be working extensively with a new admin tool found by magnus which we will migrate to however this will take around 2-3 weeks maybe longer to be ready with guardian being used in the meantime.
Overall we are all doing well we have succeeded in many areas we just need to make sure we keep working hard and keeping our server alive and keeping it in the public eye.
Guardian is about to be hosted on a dedicated box so this will be a great way to further advertise us.
I am going to allocate tasks to you guys to do this week none too long or scary and if you have any problems let me know and i'll try to jump in and help where i can.
Cheers and keep smiling!
:D
Ghosty
Guardian is already up and running on BA4. Went live this morning.
Council's Perspective:
We've been keeping up to speed with BC2 in Council and watching the discussions going on along with the ongoing community response to the game. As you pointed out the renewal on the server rental is due shortly and we have a couple of options: cancel the server or renew it for another 3 months.
In our view the game itself does encourage a lot of solo die:respawn frag hunting- type of play and that's a basic problem which is compounded by a total lack of workable in-game voice comms. These problems seriously restrict the ability of even dMw members to play in a fashion which we would like to support and it almost bars members of the public from finding out about the dMw way!
In addition and contrary to your above indications we do not currently believe that the BC2 server is populated regularly. The Clanforge stats seem to show that in the last 7 days we have had 4 days with zero or negligible population during our peak gaming hours. Indeed only 2 nights in the last 7 look like that had 32 players online for more than a short period, the best being this past Sunday.
Given this intermittent population, the die:respawn nature of the game itself and the ongoing non-existent in-game voice comms we are struggling to justify renewing the BC2 server for a further 3 months.
One alternative would be for us to renew the server for a shorter period, say a month, to see if anything changes from the Dice end. Should that happen then we might look more favourably upon a further renewal but whilst these basic problems remain reported within the community we struggle to balance the cost:benefit equation.
So that's where Council feels BC2 is at the moment and we'd like your own views (not just GM, the other admins too) on our summary. Have we got it wrong? In your opinion, how should we proceed? We really want to grow the community and we're sure that there will be many more opportunities and games that come up. Let's not flog the dead horse if that's what it is....over to you.
Realistically its been tough.
All of the team were in the deep end from the start we struggled on and we have made progress.
My gut feeling is with this type of game servers need help to populate and RIP and DEARWANDY.COM both have the same issues until the magic "8" join and then they're sent publics like us.
Your view is fair and i really appreciate the council's judgement on the matter. We need games like this to practice on but we need to think have we got a big enough community to support a game like this unfortunately i think we haven't
A devil's advocate approach is to say we really would prefer if theres budget for it for a further 3 months the games settled down immensely and the community is seeing the server populated on a regular basis and we still have some more ideas to try with little games coming out this summer its something to bide us over at least.
Lots have bought the game on recommendations such as Butta, Serial and Ranger all with late purchases so we can't just pull the game as it could cause bad rapport.
Ã,£30 is alot to invest in a game and I honestly think that the council should either consider we share a server in an alliance with another community (dearwandy.com could be an idea as i know the owner well who is the hardware editor at pczone) or maybe think about sponsorship or a cheaper server host.
All these are just ideas i have been thinking about running up to the end of the trial.
As i say the team have performed well and i look forward to hearing their feedback to your and my post.
I do agree with most of what has been said, but , I think a lot of the problems we have had have been exasperated by the bugginess and frequent server "fixes" employed by EA.
I have read on the EA forums that a patch is due any day now, whether that fixes the probs remains to be seen and until we have the in-game comms working we cannot really demonstrate to the publics the DMW way.
I dont think the fact that its a bit "run and gun" should make any difference to our decision, it didnt seem to matter with COD4 (yea I know we dont have to pay for that), and also this server is probably populated more frequently then other FPS's we suppoort.
I like the idea of co-hosting but wonder how we will be able to spam much DMW stuff as Im sure the co-hosts would want to recruit from there as well.
I really like this game and will continue to play it whatever, I would just rather it was with my mates on a DMW server.
So what Im saying is Lets give a bit longer, see if this patch helps, see if the admin tool is usable and take it from there
Hmmm, I thought I'd posted this earlier but I guess my internet died mid-post.
My view on this is rather than a dead horse BC2 is a life raft. It might not be the passenger liner we were hoping for in terms of huge numbers of new members coming in and throwing their money into the supporting members pot, but people are playing on there. In terms of other FPS games we have at the moment, there's Arma II, which I don't own, but I don't think there are too many people playing that anyway, L4D 1&2 which are rarely played, and if you have everyone on your steam friends list it makes owning a dedicated server irrelevant, CoD 4 which has seen diminishing numbers in recent months (most noticeably since the steam overlay bug, it's harder to get a game together).
I don't play racing games and I don't play WoW.
This means without BC2 the lure of contributing to the supporting members fund for me lies solely on the shoulders of CoD 4 which is, as I said previously, dwindling and the larger number of PMs I can store. I'm not sure how many members would be lost if a new FPS isn't introduced soon. It may well be few enough that the money saved by not renting a server makes up for it, but it does seem like the FPS section of the community would all be die off.
Well T-Bag, CoD4 is limping along as you say, but Arma2 has a fair few devotees (and I am starting to get an interest)
BFBC2 on the otherhand is a dead duck most nights on our server. yet there are members online and in-game.
This, IMHO, is down to the fact that no-one seeds our server to start with.
Each and every time I've been on at the start of an evening, we've sent out some invites, got about 6-8 of us on there, and it fills up.
It's exactly the same in every other game that we play.
No-one joins an empty server.
You have to be prepared to start a game off by joining, inviting, etc.
If the BC2 admins and regulars are keen to see it supported by dMw, then they'll have to make more of an effort to fill the server IMHO
It may be worthwhile having a look at the server seeding thread (http://www.deadmen.co.uk/forum/showthread.php?31228-RFG-seeding-group)
I know that this is pretty successful for 141 who seem to have a full server most times I check.
It does however need to have someone to be active, and that is the problem at the moment.
First off..
QuoteIn our view the game itself does encourage a lot of solo die:respawn frag hunting- type of play and that's a basic problem which is compounded by a total lack of workable in-game voice comms. These problems seriously restrict the ability of even dMw members to play in a fashion which we would like to support and it almost bars members of the public from finding out about the dMw way!
I really do hate to do this, but both of your points here TL could easily be applied to COD4. In my opinion, COD4 is
even more of a frag-monkey style shooter than BC2 and its in-game voice comms are next to useless. I enjoy COD4 and I do not wish to see it disappear from DMW, but I detect a note of hypocrisy here.
I'm not trying to belittle another DMW game, but I don't think BC2 is being given a fair shout.
BC2 is a great team game, but you have to make an effort to support your squad mates. It's only deathmatch-y if you choose to play it that way - just like any other shooter we've ever played as DMW (with the exception of, perhaps, ARMA).
The same goes for seeding the server,
we have to pro-actively do this. Too many times I see 3 or 4 DMW members on Steam, all playing in different servers. When we seed our server it fills up, and people have a good time - surely this is what it's all about?
BC2 is going to be one of the biggest online FPS games for some time to come, there is nothing on the horizon that will challenge it for popularity imo. Before EA/DICE starting moving the bloody goalposts on us, we had regulars visiting our server and we had a real chance to recruit some new faces - it wont take much for this to start happening again now that the server config has been straightened out.
To pull our server now would be premature, and a mistake.
I think that's a fair accusation to make Tut, but the biggest difference I see between COD4 and BC2 is that we had the comms to discuss what we were doing. The lack of working in-game voice-comms is a woeful omission and by default pushes people to frag-hunting. If you added the voice comms then you might have a situation like CS or COD4 where people speak up and announce which site they are heading to or which objective and have the opportunity to play as a team. That's a big problem at the moment for us getting the whole server operating as a team. That's really why we're asking the question, is this right for us?
Quote from: TeaLeaf;310978I think that's a fair accusation to make Tut, but the biggest difference I see between COD4 and BC2 is that we had the comms to discuss what we were doing. The lack of working in-game voice-comms is a woeful omission and by default pushes people to frag-hunting. If you added the voice comms then you might have a situation like CS or COD4 where people speak up and announce which site they are heading to or which objective and have the opportunity to play as a team. That's a big problem at the moment for us getting the whole server operating as a team. That's really why we're asking the question, is this right for us?
I don't think the BC2 in-game comms are quite as bad as you think they are. It's true that they do have problems with certain hardware configurations, but this is nothing new. CS, COD, ARMA - all these games suffer, or have suffered in the past, from exactly the same problems.
Hopefully the issues will be fixed in a future patch, and given DICE's commitment to continue to patch and develop the game I'm optimistic that this will happen.
You have to bare in mind that BC2 is designed slightly differently to the other shooters we've played. It is focused on squad level tactics, small groups of players working together to achieve goals for the whole team - that's why the voice comms are contained to squad members.
I do agree that getting an entire team to play the 'right' way can be tricky, but if you can get people working together properly at a squad level then the mechanics of the game make it work. So often, we've seen a single squad of 4 organised players win a mission almost single handedly.
Quote from: Tutonic;310989I don't think the BC2 in-game comms are quite as bad as you think they are.
Do you use in-game comms and not TS?
QuoteThe same goes for seeding the server, we have to pro-actively do this. Too many times I see 3 or 4 DMW members on Steam, all playing in different servers. When we seed our server it fills up, and people have a good time - surely this is what it's all about?
that's the crux of it. If the Game Admins are not prepared to try and get games going on our own server but wander off to play elsewhere what chance does it have.
We all say we need to seed our server but NO ONE - including the game admins does this.
When it was suggested that Game Admins could have a rota for helping to seed the server it was met with a massive negative with no one saying there were willing to do that.
we're all on the same side here but for this to work we need action not rhetoric. We can debate it forever but unless things actually happen then it's pointless.
I can pretty much guarantee that pretty much sod all has happened since the meeting at the LAN almost a month ago.
Whenever I've looked online at server activity people are playing BC2 - just not at dMw.
Last time I said I thought they were ok I was deluged with people telling me they were still unusable and choppy as heck? So I'm going on what people fed back to me last time I banged the 'in-game comms are better than TS' drum. If the comms are workable why are we using TS? The public do not hear about dMw and the way we can work as a team when we're isolated on a TS server.
The wierd thing is I'd actually like the game to be a success, I'm not trying to bring it down, just to add my own personal realism mod.
QuoteWe all say we need to seed our server but NO ONE - including the game admins does this.
Its difficult to force people to stick to dmw servers and i have said this publically said this before. If they enjoy a quick game somewhere else then thats what they're after. All the servers are in the same boat as us and are empty at some point in the day some even days in advance, take the bod clan's now "talking games.com" server for instance.
QuoteWhen it was suggested that Game Admins could have a rota for helping to seed the server it was met with a massive negative with no one saying there were willing to do that.
We are all volunteers. Its a great idea but we aren't a business. I can't ask my troops or anyone to devote x number hours a week they might not be able to. Volunteer work is adhoc and done when people are free and are willing to do the tasks.
Quotewe're all on the same side here but for this to work we need action not rhetoric. We can debate it forever but unless things actually happen then it's pointless.
There has been alot of change and yes we could of done more but we have had several problems and factors that have held us back. I could witch hunt but i won't certain deadlines haven't been met and we have all mucked in and got things going. Server tools have taken time to learn and to be honest i think we have all done a superb effort and i am proud of everyone.
QuoteI can pretty much guarantee that pretty much sod all has happened since the meeting at the LAN almost a month ago.
I can honestly say that at the LAN i was pretty shocked to have the admin section moved. It took time to come back online and i am unsure whether all my admins can still see the topic as not all of them have replied despite me emailing them all. Now things are live we can move forward. I would have preferred to have the previous section kept running and the new section set up as a test. Yes it was better for the longterm and now the new forum is live and everything is working which is superb :).
The community night is being tweaked and the server admin file is now on the box which is great aswell as our readiness to get stuck in with the new admin tool once we have a bit more time as Acid is currently doing exams, t-bag is deep in studies and i am beginning to learn how the tool works.
QuoteWhenever I've looked online at server activity people are playing BC2 - just not at dMw
Alot of players including the BIG guys are now playing elsewhere this is due to hostility from ninja, kreg and others in early posts and critical posts early on and i have got them back a couple of times but they don't really want to commit time to the community anymore because of the above. Its a shame to loose them but it would seem. After a long talk with a couple of other section admins, community leaders and my game admins i decided to reduce collateral damage and prevented Ninja from causing other upsets by removing his admin status. This cost me my friendship but at the end of the day it was the best move for the community and for the greater good as Paddy, Magnus, Dewey and Snokio have since all come back to the server.
Channel Talk is improving and community night are both enjoyable and highly sought after.
There was a very short break in service on accessing the BC2 admin section GM. It's not a good thing to wheel out as an excuse. Perhaps, as I have mentioned already, the fact that you have not badged some of your admins might explain why they cannot see this section? That's not a forum problem, that's down to you as Penfold explained in a PM to you. Anyway, getting back to the question I asked - are comms usable now then? Is there anything else we can do to make it better? If we know there are hardwareissues, have we done a Sound FAQ to explain the quick fixes others have already found? Etc.
Here's my sixpenth. The game is enjoyable enough but every time I've played it's been a bit farcical, I've had some fun and tactics, suprisingly enough more often than not with one or two dMw'rs that aren't party to this section of the forum. I've had to encourage people into the separate channels, which TL renamed there and then. A two second job which could have been done on any night previously.
There are a number of references, and rightly so to other games, but what had happened is that people have made a concerted effort to drive those games, Arma is a bug ridden hell ride of a game to get right but in no small measure thanks to those initially involved we've stuck at it and are now slowly reaping rewards. My advice would be this. There is extremely limited time until renewal. Nothing is concrete..yet.
Stop discussing the minutiae and start getting bodies on the server, encouraging the teams, getting rotations working and getting the forum section alive. Guides, tips, tweaks, active posting. Discussing the finer points ad infinitum doesn't solve the issue. We do not have a server that is any different to every other public server. Why not go en masse to any other server and play together there? We want to support this game but see no real differentiator here that justifies spending community funds on something that is just a.n.other internet server.
I'm not going to reply in depth as others have. Just let me clear something up
Quote from: GhostMjr;311032We are all volunteers. Its a great idea but we aren't a business. I can't ask my troops or anyone to devote x number hours a week they might not be able to. Volunteer work is adhoc and done when people are free and are willing to do the tasks.
I'm not suggesting that you do or can. It wasn't my idea.
I'm suggesting that the resistance is systemic of the game as a whole. There seems an overriding resistance to this game on our servers. Please don't try and pin this back on us, we're calling it how we see it. I like BC2 and I'd love to play it. However I'm only interesting in playing with dMw which is why I'm sad when I go online to play and see the server empty.
Quote from: GhostMjr;311032"I am unsure whether all my admins can still see the topic"
Have you PM'ed them all to check why they're not replying in the admin forum? What is the reply? ............It's kinda critical. If they're not responding to your PM's then that's something else.
Either way, I've checked each of their permissions and as far as we're concerned Smilodon has given them all permissions and they've had them for a few weeks (since the change). We even had a discussion about it as we weren't sure what Kakehund's forum name was.
You had an admin meeting yesterday. Were they were all there? Did you check about the forum access?
Who didn't attend?
can you please let me know about the above so we can establish once and for all about the forum access?
Thanks
QuoteHave you PM'ed them all to check why they're not replying in the admin forum? What is the reply? ............It's kinda critical. If they're not responding to your PM's then that's something else.
I have pm'ed them all some have responded some haven't. I am still waiting to see Kakehund, Dewey, Paddy and Magnus post in the section as of yet i haven't seen them post so i do not know what is going on. They know where the section is as i've told them.
QuoteYou had an admin meeting yesterday. Were they were all there? Did you check about the forum access?
Only four attended- Tbag, Skass, Lion and myself. They already have access to the forum.
Have you looked at the badges awarded to BC2 admins to cross-check who you have asked to have a badge & have access?
Things I like:
The Rackage host idea and joining that group of self-seeding admins.
Would people support that idea if we renewed for another period?
Guys,
GhostMjr has resigned as TGL for BC2.
He cites the fact that some of the admins do not have badges as a reason.
Both TL and I told him weeks ago about the need to make sure he badges people up or to ask if he needs help so it's not particularly a valid reason but hey ho.
I guess this makes TL's post all the more poignant now so we'd appreciate your comments. TL is also going to try and catch you chaps online.
In the meanwhile if you have any questions please shout.
Thanks
edit:
I've spoken to GhostMjr and there are other reasons why he has resigned - so the above is not the sole reason.
I also understand that he, and several others of you, were upset at my comments above. For that I apologise. I shouldn't have vented my frustrations in such as broad generalisation. Not that it's a defence but please bear in mind that it's down to us to vocalise what what others are telling us - be they members of the Community other game admins or other Community Admins.
Also, I shoudn't have posted yesterday, my emotions were all over the place (on Tuesday, not only was my 7 year old daughter in hospital for an hour long Meckel scan but my mum was diagnosed with Cancer). Not an excuse but I over-vented.
Anyway, I do apologise if I've upset you. It wasn't my intention. I've known most of you for many years and I hope you guys also know in return that it's not normally my style.
Like I said above, Please do feel free to reply, post, PM or generally cuss me if you want to vent.
Thanks
I'm wasn't offended Pen, no worries there. Given your personal circumstances, I think we can all excuse your grumpiness.
More on-topic, we managed to seed the server tonight and fill it up without any outside assistance. Moving people into separate TS channels made things a bit more organised - cheers for that TL.
As has been said before it only takes 6-8 people in game and the publics flood in.
Good games tonight.
Late entrant to the conversation. I havent been following things as I thought BC2 was effectively dead in dMw.
Just a few comments.
Comms are not the problem. Benny mentioned we can change TS channels. Pubs don't always talk or even listen to ingame comms anyway. BC2 is by design a tactical TEAM game as Tut states. If anyone would like a demonstration of BC2 being played tactically then PM me or any of the BIG guys and we will show you how it feels, we have now reached the point where if we don't get best squad we sulk. This is not CSS or COD it is another game and needs a different team approach. Sure go frag if you like, but you wont beat team BIG that way and competitively we would encourage you to do that as much as you like.
There have been a number of mistruths stated.
None of us were insulted by Ninja (I cant imagine any of us ever being offended by Ninja) and that has not led to us playing elsewhere. We played elsewhere 1. because the DMW server is usually empty and 2. because we like to play together and don't think that is the way to recruit. I guess we would always instigate away days in any case. We didn't come back (gosh that reads bad!)
Admin channel access. Ghosty pm'ed password. I pm'ed success as requested. Magnus can't see it because he isn't an admin.
I take no offense.
On the assumption that we renew, what is the preference of the BC2 admins - remain with Multiplay or is switch the hosting to Rackage and trying to be part of the self-seeding group? Remember we lose bookmarks when we switch IPs if we move so there are pros and cons. Opinions please.
Not sure how exactly this seeding with Rackage works but if it means more players on our server it can only be a good thing can't it ?
If this admin tool (wolfcon) works I think this will help us as well, the mixed mode is a winner as far as I concerned, I was playing last night on our server and by 10:30 it was empty, I looked in my faves and all the servers playing conquest were full, all those playing rush were empty.
Is there a cost difference between the choices we have ?
Not sure the bookmark loss is too much of an issue really, dont think we have that many regular publics at all.
Cant really say anything about Rackage since havent tried it, but i quess there's only one way to find out.
And conserning regular publics: we lost all of them ages ago.
Well, from what I've seen, 141's server is pretty full most of the day, every day.
They work hard to seed the server, using a shoutbox on their forum to let each other know when they are needed.
AFAIK they sometimes join and just stay for a map, just to kick things off.
My experience tonight gave me reason to be hopeful;
I have been having PB problems lately and have been trying different things to sort it.
This evening I joined our empty server to see how long I lasted before PB kicked me, and I jumped in a tank.
I was messing about just killing time and blowing up trees.
5 mins later Gmj joined and within another couple of minutes we had 12 or so playing.
after that it just filled up and stayed full (it was fullish when I left 5 mins ago)
Great games tonight :D
And I didn't get PB kicked either!
Same thing happened to me this afternoon. I was on the server messing about with the admin tools, changing maps etc and the next thing I know there was 6 people on there,
I had been changing maps and stuff for about 15mins so christ knows what they must of thought, any way I apologised and thought Id have a quick round; next thing theres 24 of us on there.
1:05am still 30 people on the server, have we started giving club card points or something?
Quote from: lionheart;3112521:05am still 30 people on the server, have we started giving club card points or something?
Damn, I wanted another 5 minutes before bed and the server's full:D
As you can see from the news section, we've decided to renew the server for 3 months.
QuoteA lot has been discussed around the challenges and limitations of the game but we still feel that underneath all the issues there may be a dMw staple hiding away. We have decided to renew the server for a period of 3 months. With that said we are looking for a TGL for the game to really drive it forward and make sure we give it every chance of succeeding. GhostMjr has done a great job in getting it onto the map and invested a lot of time in getting the game up and running for us and with his ongoing focus on new games (not to mention exams - pah, who needs 'em) we need someone to step in.
If you think you are the right person for the job, send a PM to TL stating why you want the role and what your ideas are and more importantly how you are going to do it over the next few months. Now really is the time for action so we need people to push the game forward. Rome wasn't built in a day, but I'm pretty sure Billericay was built in 3 months, can you build Battlefield 2 in the same time period?
Now we need applicants for the BC2 TGL role please to drive this forward.
Quote from: Blunt;311253Damn, I wanted another 5 minutes before bed and the server's full:D
We've had a few comments that we *should* be kicking publics to make way for members and I'd like to give this some thought. I know it's not in our ethos but I'd like to have a discussion on it. So long as people are warned that it may happen via in-game messages then I have less of a problem with it. It's been rightly pointed out that there's little benefit in being a member otherwise. It may also encourage regulars (when we get them again) to sign up.
Any thoughts?
Actualy Pen, there is a message that says "You might be removed to make room for members"
Quote from: Penfold;311272We've had a few comments that we *should* be kicking publics to make way for members and I'd like to give this some thought. I know it's not in our ethos but I'd like to have a discussion on it. So long as people are warned that it may happen via in-game messages then I have less of a problem with it. It's been rightly pointed out that there's little benefit in being a member otherwise. It may also encourage regulars (when we get them again) to sign up.
Any thoughts?
I was merely pointing out that the server was full at 1.15 AM!:D
As Acid says, there is a server message that explains.
Maybe we should make it a bit more obvious/frequent?
We're about to roll over to a new rcon tool (Wolfcon) and we can sort more regular messages for sure. Personally as long as people are warned then I see no issue in using a VIP invite to bump the last non-member to join off the server to make way for a member. The messages we can sort and Valdeko provided a base config file to me just now which is now up on the server, when Wolfcon is installed and running we can then try to make use of things like this.
Quote from: valdeko;311273Actualy Pen, there is a message that says "You might be removed to make room for members"
You see, that why you guys are paid the big bucks :)
I think it's a good move and we all know that it's frustrating not be able to get on the server while L33tHax0rroxor gets to play. It was (is) more of an issue when, like CS, the servers were totally populated by dMw'ers.
Coolio.
Server renewed with Multiplay for a further 3 month period from 3/6/10 as there were no strong contraindications and we know the Multiplay ping and even the room where their servers are hosted in Telehouse.
Let's make this work folks.