sever list

[Mr_Molez]

As we can all see gu has done a great job in getting an active league, mainly by having a fun map which ducati can't contend with
(ducati maps are pretty boring, so really the only fun is in the competition in my opinion, it may not be others )
I think ducati is suffering at the moment because there is such a lack of competition, I was reluctant to rejoin because of this so was mistake and a few others. (This is not what i want to talk about, read my suggestion below and comment on it)

At the moment ducati match servers (dub) have an admsg advertising the league, its good to advertise the league, but i doubt ANY of the people that the msg is made for will ever see it, if they know about the match ports then they will know about the league.

If ducati had their servers publically advertised on the server list then the msg might be some use.

I think it would be a great idea to disallow spawning (but not talking) on the match servers unless they are registered ducati players (so the servers can be advertised in the server list)

This would also help greatly with finding matches

I tried to talk to menotume about it earlier but he didn't care, so I decided to post the idea here and get others opinions

[mistake]

Personally I find it a good idea, since I always perform better when I can show off to observers

But as experience shows on the GU league match servers, the only people that come and stay and watch a match are those that are part of the league anyway. For all those that got there by accident, they try to spawn, fail and disapear again (also cause they immediate spot the absence of superflags).

So I am not so sure if it will bring a lot, though I would totaly agree that it doesn't hurt either. Atleast the busy servers will be easier to found, though using strayers site helps a lot with this too.

mistake

[teatree]

How about:

one league...

... less servers

... more players


... less problems ...

[birdie]

http://my.bzflag.org/bb/viewtopic.php?t=8160

i wouldnt say exactly "less problems"

[mistake]

How about:
one league...
... more players

lol, this includes talking tanks pick a team

But the amount of servers is hardly the problem. Molez was not talking about number of servers, but visability of servers and controlling spawn rights as is done with the GU league.
Spawn rights I think is already taken care of since some time.

[strayer]

In my eyes, hidden match servers are a good idea. Maybe it would be better if the dub servers would be appear in the server list for registered ducati members (as the TLZ's ducati match server), but this is not a must, because they are well known.

...
I think it would be a great idea to disallow spawning (but not talking) on the match servers unless they are registered ducati players (so the servers can be advertised in the server list)
...

This would be cool...especially for the GU match servers (talking, but not playing). It's absolutely annoying when you connect to ask one of the observers to play a non-GU match, but all you are allowed to do is to leave the game.

[menotume]

.......
I tried to talk to menotume about it earlier but he didn't care, so I decided to post the idea here and get others opinions

Didn't care? I explained to you, Molez, that i agreed about the server admsg (although I hardly think that it's an 'emergency' issue). I also stated that in order to advertize the match servers to league members only, or to allow spawn only to them, that it would require a special bzbb group, with a lot of maintenance.

What else did you expect me to say while I was playing, and you talking to me from OBS? Besides, THIS is the place to state your concerns.

[US Marines]

In my eyes, hidden match servers are a good idea. Maybe it would be better if the dub servers would be appear in the server list for registered ducati members (as the TLZ's ducati match server), but this is not a must, because they are well known.


in my eyes it's why ducati doesn't grow sadly what noob is going to find dub public then see the advertise message and then join a league?

[kierra]

Re: ducati match servers on server list

Having the match servers listed on the server list would make them more visible to non league members. That is advertising in itself.
Also, enabling non league players to talk but NOT spawn is one way to control access to playing matches while at the same time offering opportunities for new players to dialogue with observers during matches, thus learning more about the league, watching the dynamics of a match, getting caught up in the excitement, etc. This is what will draw them into the league and keep them there....establishing a connection with the league players!
Of course, the connection can be made on the public servers as well, but it requires effort on the part of league players to be , first, present on the server (obvious, but its not happening), then friendly, helpful and informative to draw in new players. If the league has a dirth of new faces, but there are new players on the public servers, then some of the responsibility lies with us.

Note that I'm not saying the admsg in duc pub is wrong....but after a while, you ignore it and it becomes invisible at best or an annoying intrusion at worst.

meno said:

[quote( to allow spawn only to them, that it would require a special bzbb group, with a lot of maintenance.)]

Isn't gu doing this already....except that guleague players spawn AND talk. What we want is a'"talk only" group.... I understand this will be an additional group list, with lots of maintenance, but I am not recommending that menotume pick up this task....he has "TK" practice to attend!-priorties!. But seriously, meno/dmp do enough already.
Maybe a core group of trusted admins could oversee the maintenance. Counsel could be sought (and heeded... a novel idea) from GU admin board on how they maintain their list.

Its pretty obvious that duc league is wilting at best. 3-4 teams matching is not the sign of a healthy vibrant league. Nor are empty public servers.

On another note: Players need to exercise common sense on when & where to discuss these topics. There are plenty of venues; IM, IRC, bzforums that are appropriate and available. Trying to have a serious discussion from observers to a player in a game is not the best choice, imho.

[quantum dot]

GU has one list of league members who can talk/spawn/pause/start and run a countdown and cancel.

IMO having TWO lists would be very time consuming and unpractical. If a given player wants to be in the talk list he will have to ask to be added, so what is the difference from having one unique spawn/talk list? Two lists will give twice as much work.

In GU we really needed the list since many people were joining matches like crazy and matching was unpractical. We found out the problem in the test period when the official league was not launched yet. So menotume and I decided to try a list with regged players only, I think this was very inovative at that time as compared with ducati.

Another point in favor of the list is that servers can be safely announced, the number of obs is high and those who are non members can see and sense what that league is all about, preventing disturbance at the same time. A server msg with a link to the league site suffices for a noob obs to satisfy his/her curiosity.

GU list has been mantained manually, the first weeks (1.5 years ago) we had to add many names per day. Nowadays we have reached a plateau and receive 2-3 requests a week. Currently,

Number of players 325
Players without a team 120
Number of teams 35

all these have been added manually by 3 people who had access to the bzbb list. The hard work was actually done long ago. Now it is only mantainance and keeping an eye on double identities. GU forbids explicitly to have more than one name on the list and anyone wishing to be added have to globally register and join gu league site first.

In my experience only about 10-20 cases had troubles with global login and grasping how the system worked. Remind you that 2 years ago the global system had just started and many servers were still local registration only, so people were very confused. I doubt that would be the case nowadays when only global registration is used and well spread all over many types of popular servers.

[CannonBallGuy]

Isn't gu doing this already....except that guleague players spawn AND talk. What we want is a'"talk only" group.... I understand this will be an additional group list, with lots of maintenance, but I am not recommending that menotume pick up this task....he has "TK" practice to attend!-priorties!

GU have a group for accepted GU players - they get TALK and SPAWN.
Then, simply, EVERYONE else gets NO TALK and NO SPAWN.

It was proposed in this topic that non-league members get to TALK but not SPAWN.
For this, a group of all accepted Ducati players should be created and maintained with TALK and SPAWN permissions and EVERYONE else gets just TALK.

[US Marines]

GU has one list of league members who can talk/spawn/pause/start and run a countdown and cancel.

IMO having TWO lists would be very time consuming and unpractical. If a given player wants to be in the talk list he will have to ask to be added, so what is the difference from having one unique spawn/talk list? Two lists will give twice as much work.




this is great for noobs so they can join brad:5158 and not have to type in the email were to sighnup how to get on a team/make a team this is very usefull.

[sussi]

i would like to have matchserver onto the serverlist. But only registered player able to spawn other than obs. Recently i watched some GU matches while it was shown in the server-list. I dont see real reasons why to hide that servers. Or run some additional server hidden for people who like their privacy.