COMMUNITY, Too many servers

[Tankbuster 1747]

Yeah, thats like masturbating in the red light district.

You crazy Dutchies! :D

[whisper 0]

and i especially love those guys who like playing by themselves, but online...? lol.

I've personally a very good reason for doing so : I'm editing in MP :)

[galzohar 31]

You can make the server LAN ;)

In any case, I highly doubt the problem is the number of servers. When I want to just hop on a server and play, the reason I end up not doing it is not because all the servers are empty, but because they are all running the same 3-4 missions. The problem is that there are a lot of missions out there and only a few good ones, and even less when you only count missions that can be played with any number of players, and most server admins are probably not willing to go out and look for something new when they can just load up domination and let the server do its thing without requiring a 100% active admin like most good missions would require.

In the end - more servers or less servers, public MP will stay weak if there are no servers that are actually worth joining.

[11aTony 0]

Sure but another thing is that a lot of good missions out there are CO-06 or smt like that + they are not really playable if you join the mission half way done. You see 3, 4 guys playing some kind of "destroy the convoy" and you join and they are 2km away from you and there is no transport to there or anything. So Im sorry to say it but mostly Evolution, Domination and Warfare is best for public jip gaming. Now sometimes you see some really nice CO20+ missions on some servers but they are usually locked or ace or passworded.

And sorry this was a bit off topic.

[landdon 0]

The problem is not the amount of servers; it is the quantity and quality of multi-player missions available. Domination was at the time of its inception ground breaking in its design, a mission able to run for a great length of time and “Spawn†different scenarios in different areas. This was extended to other terrain which made it a big plus for some units. What we need are more missions that have a set scenarios or objectives. Well written and well thought out intros and parameters that allow the user to change some things to fit their style or taste. They need to have a good storyline and include good mission briefs and notes. Additionally, I think there is a slightly different crowd now that plays this game versus those that use to play OFP. Plus one has to remember that OFP had a certain level of development from the mission makers, terrain makers, and model makers. Some great mission makers are Terox, Shark-attack, Lightninguk are still around and hopefully some of us dogs can learn a few tricks from them.

[Rommel 2]

I kept looking for the smiley on this posting. But you are serious, aren't you?

I have no problem with the server count, wish the user count would be higher. But any snapshot of a world-wide list of servers is going to show a lot of idle machines.

BTW Rommel, the world does not revolve around 3-6 missions. There are plenty of fine missions out there and servers that host them. I'd be encouraging diversity to enrich the community instead of demanding others to think like you do.

I am serious to the point that is addressing a bigger problem, which most people who are posting are realising, I admit the first post was foul in its structure, but I felt most understood the intent.

The attempted outcome here is for the community to become tighter, without any major compromises, which appear to be the most forthcoming solutions (ie server side restrictions everywhere) at this time; which personally aren't acceptable.

I would prefer a more a uniformed approach to the way the server addons are handled; but I propose no solutions as I have none which are not riddled with flaws.

[cri74 10]

Community Server Group ? To discuss public community servers, how to promote, how to organize, how to make an effort

Servers sorted by ranking / Most played Allso able to sort by country etc

Edited March 29, 2010 by cri74

[Freeborne 10]

2nd link has no ArmA servers for Australia for whatever reason - FAIL :-p

[rundll.exe 12]

game-monitor seems to mix A2 and Arma, so its a double FAIL.

Anyway, I still cant see how less servers can lead to a better community. Every server has their own player base, and if they werent used they would be taken offline anyway.

On the other hand: filtering in game should be improved indeed to filter the servers where you dont want to or can play anyway.

[cross 1]

Use the browser in Yoma's AddonSync... it has everthing

[Freeborne 10]

Anyway, I still cant see how less servers can lead to a better community. Every server has their own player base, and if they werent used they would be taken offline anyway.

The real debate here is what is the 'sweet' spot for the player/server ratio.

Think about your statement. Would 1,000,000 ArmA2 servers be a bad thing? Would 5 ArmA2 servers be a bad thing? I say yes, and anyone who answers no to both those questions I think suffers extremely low IQ :p

So therefore, it's about having the right number of servers. Rommel (OP) thinks we have too many. I agree. Some people disagree. I think both sides are correct in some circumstances. Some countries don't have enough servers, some countries have way too many.

Secondly, there are plenty of ArmA2 servers that are not being used. I'm pretty confident in saving over half of the ArmA2 servers are NOT being used, and have not been used for several months.

Although not definitive, GameTracker counts over 700 ArmA servers. I'm in a different timezone then the majority of the world's popular, so feel free to test this yourself. Sort by Armed Assault servers, show 50 results per page, and tell me if you ever get more then 2 pages of filled servers. Whenever I've done this (various time of the day), my 2nd page of results (50+) never have more than one player in them. Yes I'm aware of timezones and that you would need to add up totals several times over a 24 hour period...

After you've done that for a few weeks come back here and tell me how you went ;)

[Tankbuster 1747]

So therefore, it's about having the right number of servers.

You have to get this out of your head. What does it matter if there are too many servers? What's important is the number of players. Players find servers, not the other way round.

Your reasoning is fundamentally flawed. I'm too wet because it rains too much.

[Pulverizer 1]

If there was no server I liked, I'd simply quit playing Arma2 altogether. Not go to a server that doesn't match my preferences.

:cool: Pro tip: You can hide all the empty servers by setting filter to minimum 1 players.

Edited March 30, 2010 by Pulverizer
what tankbuster said

[hund 0]

I don't really see the point. Wouldn't you just filter by numbers and disregard all the empty ones? It's not like having empty servers around is going to hurt anyone but the owners wallet.

There is the slight conundrum of the server with one or two fellas on, but if those two fellas really want to sit there by their lonesome, that's their choice I guess.

So no, I don't think having too many servers has any bearing to the quality of the game at all.

[eggbeast 3684]

It seems that people on public servers like to play warfare, domination, evolution and berzerk missions

As Evolution was possibly the MOST PLAYED mission in Arma 1 I made it a mission in life to repair the busted versions available in Arma 2 as soon as I got the game.

I have now made

Evo blue cherno

Evo red cherno

Evo blue duala

Evo blue sahrani

Evo blue mod (F4, F16 etc) duala

Evo blue mod (F4, F16 etc) panthera

I have prodiced a briefing in pdf and zipped all ofthese into a zip file for easy download.

and the work continues. Brit mod, sahrani red, etc...

Even so, there are still loads of people playing on the old broken versions of the mission, which is very strange...

The problems are numerous... but the server joining interface, the absence of a steam/ rockstar/windows live/ xfire firiends list, the absence of a cluster of well designed JIP-possible STOCK MAPS, etc all compund the problem in multiplayer.

I can call on about 10 out of my 60 strong clan to play arma 2 at any time, so if someone wanted to host evolution for a night, we'll come over...

we play cod mostly, and the console profit-seeking codmw and codwaw just killed the community spirit completely...

[galzohar 31]

People play the old versions because they have no idea what is broken and what is not, and neither do the server admins :( I suppose that's the biggest problem the OP was meaning when he said "too many servers". It's not "too many servers", but it is "too many bad servers that the good ones are hard to find".

[Tankbuster 1747]

Indeed. In English we say that we "Can't see the wood for the trees". Appropriate in many ways methinks. :)

[galzohar 31]

I think it's more like "so many bad servers I can't find the good ones". It's not the total number of servers but the number of bad servers.

[Tankbuster 1747]

That's exactly what that saying means. :)