Suggestions for helping low-pop servers

[Clarks]

Ok, let's try again.

Shutting down the two servers that have been running without a hitch for like 6 years is dumb.
Shutting down the new servers that maybe lag less is only slightly less dumb.
People started all playing on one server way before #4 became a stable alternative (and #3 was never populated unless all other servers went down).

The issue is that one server used to be for guys who liked working their jobs and doing some light rp. The other was for the people who played a looser game. Eventually everybody loosened up a bit and with no difference in style people stopped segregating on a favorite server. If you bothered looking at tg you'd see they hate the same issue, two servers but only one is full.

Moreover, the ultralow pop servers are used by nerds (yeah ok, I did it too) to test their secrets without interruption. It's not that they want to play a quiet round, they don't want to play a round at all.

[Sundance]

I agree with bubs. I called for shutting down the servers before it became fashionable. It's really a case of less is more at the moment.
I'd think it'd be much more logical to just have two servers, one european and one american. There'll always be a fuller one, but it'll be around 40:15 rather than 40:3. This way if you die or get bored at least you have another server to go to.

Put another server that's not viewable public for an experimental server for admins to experiment code. Make it public as a back-up when another server shits itself to death.
This server is accessible, it just isn't advertised so dorks can go on this empty server and test their own shit if the want. Or not. They could do all this experimental shit on a full server if they wanted to. There are places out in space made for this EXACT reason.

[Shoddy]

I don't know if I ever voiced this opinion hard enough but uh...

Shut down two of the servers, there was at least a reason to have #3 up after the repeated crashing of #1 and #2 to make sure people had a place to play, however having a #4 is just weird since it started out as a testbed and was then open to the public, people then started hailing it as the saving hero of lag, and that the deep dark lag monsters would never again betray us with their vicious swords that menace with spikes of hoary-marmot bone.

PS: I wonder what the hierarchy of goonstation is, and who gets the ultimate decision?.

[FootChar]

I dont really care bout longevity or whatever, go with whatever servers run better, but it's far superior to have one server with 15 and one with 50 than three with 5 and one with 50

I agree with bubs. I called for shutting down the servers before it became fashionable. It's really a case of less is more at the moment.
I'd think it'd be much more logical to just have two servers, one european and one american. There'll always be a fuller one, but it'll be around 40:15 rather than 40:3. This way if you die or get bored at least you have another server to go to.

Yeah I disagree with this argument. Look at this shit.


The popular server doesn't just have 40 or 50 people, it has 60 goddamn people as of this post. Yesterday it had 70 people. I wish I screencapped that. The idea that once a server gets to 40 to 50 that people will just jump to the other server seems pretty bullshit. They just keep piling into the one.

Again, server cap. If it's possible, it should really be considered.

[bubs]

I never said people would jump to another server if the server goes over 50, and I don't see how it having more people than what I said proves what I said wrong??? Or even is a basis for you to disagree? Perhaps you have a tumor.

That picture shows exactly what I was talking about.


A player limit on the servers is arbitrary and annoying. If I go to join the game and one server has 50 people and one has 5, if the 50 one is full I sure as fuck ain't gonna join the one with 5, I'ma do something else. We don't have any sort of investment in stopping the playercount from going too high, the issue is that all the extra servers are just empty. Why have 3 empty servers when we could have just one slightly less empty server? Having 75 percent of our real estate empty makes us look dead.



I EDITED THIS POST A LOT OK

[Paineframe]

The point of having only two servers is that instead of having 7 people on #1, 5 people on #2, and 5 people on #3, there would be only one alternate server with 17 people on it. #4 would have 61 people either way, but instead of spreading all the people who don't want to play on #4 across several different servers so each one only has a few players, there would be only one alternate server with enough players to really play.

[FootChar]

Well, I guess we're assuming the people on the lowpop servers are actually there to play. I think Clarks is right that people use those to do whatever experiments undisturbed. If they wanted to actually play they would join the most populated or second most populated servers, not spread themselves out as they do already. We could just as easily end up with the same lowpop server with only two of them.

Besides that, I guess its a separate issue but I thought a server with more than 40 people in it is a laggy crowded chaotic clusterfuck. I assumed a lot of people put up with it because fuck trying to populate a server when 70 people are going to pile into the one server anyways. At least with a server cap those servers would fill out eventually, unlike now. And if we have no investment from stopping the playercount from getting too high, why should we care if the low population servers are being used effectively?

[Clarks]

Hey bubs, take the sass and shove it up your ass.

Use your brains for a second and think hard when did people start crowding one server only. Because it started happening way before server 3 and 4 popped up.
How is removing two servers going to fix something that happened even before those two servers existed?

People could join a low pop server when they die on the main one, and get a decent round going. If they don't do this anymore there's some other reason that "oh man, so many empty servers, I don't know which one to pick."

[Paineframe]

There's nothing wrong with a low-pop server! Sometimes the absolute fucking chaos (and lag) of 60+ person rounds gets old and you'd prefer to play on a server with 15-20 people. The problem is, since there's three low-pop servers instead of one, you get three completely unplayable servers with <10 people instead of one server with ~20 people. Right now, #1 has 9 people on it, #2 has 3 people on it, #3 has 5 people on it, and #4 has 54 people on it. So even though there's four servers, three of them have too few players to have a functional game, because the "people who don't want to play on the high-pop server" population is split across three different servers. If there were just TWO servers, called SERVER1 and SERVER2, then SERVER2 would have 54 people on it and SERVER1 would have 17 people on it - so that instead of having one playable server and three boring sandboxes, there would be two playable servers.

[Sundance]

It never really was THIS bad before the 4 servers. When the 3rd server was introduced, the playerbase got spread out. People say it was the introduction of cogmap, but from personal observation it looked like this boosted our population, just in the wrong damn way.

It's all got to do with the mentality. I'd write a post but embolism summed it up nicely last thread

Having four servers actually gives us no choice of server assuming you want to play a proper round.

There's three broad types of SS13 players: those who don't mind chaotic rounds, those who prefer less chaos but actually want to play a round, and those who just want to do their own thing. With four servers, the players who prefer less chaos find themselves too spread out amongst the three lower-pop servers to actually play a proper round, and since they still want to play a round they go to the packed server; leaving the lower-pop servers even emptier. The result is instead of having two choices like we used to have, we now only have one.

tl;dr: Herd mentality.
Have two servers, one american and one european. Leave it up for 2 weeks and if shit doesn't start to patter out, then I will record myself eating half a dozen of eggs.

[Zamujasa]

At the same time, some of the people on the very-low-pop servers don't actually want to play and are just there to experiment or test shit you can't usually do on a full-pop round.

Especially since on v-low-pop people are usually pretty chill and won't just come toolbox you.


One server set to extended/respawn on/sandbox or whatever would take care of the non-players, removing one server so there's two "real" servers would at least make a sufficient population to have some activity.

[lifehole]

I dont really care bout longevity or whatever, go with whatever servers run better, but it's far superior to have one server with 15 and one with 50 than three with 5 and one with 50

Gotta say, bubs is right. I prefer playing when there's over 25 people, and generally there is only one option for that. I dislike playing with 50+ people but if the choice is between 60 and 5 then ofcourse I'd choose 60.

The sudden server pop bomb in EU is also most likely because EU runs like 50% better, so that's and obvious choice too. We saw a LOT of new players a day or two ago because of less lag, I think. That will always be a MAJOR factor in server preference, and we currently only have one server with less lag.


My recommendation: Get two servers with the speed that EU4 has and then have those be the only servers.

[lifehole]

It never really was THIS bad before the 4 servers. When the 3rd server was introduced, the playerbase got spread out. People say it was the introduction of cogmap, but from personal observation it looked like this boosted our population, just in the wrong damn way.

It's all got to do with the mentality. I'd write a post but embolism summed it up nicely last thread

Having four servers actually gives us no choice of server assuming you want to play a proper round.

There's three broad types of SS13 players: those who don't mind chaotic rounds, those who prefer less chaos but actually want to play a round, and those who just want to do their own thing. With four servers, the players who prefer less chaos find themselves too spread out amongst the three lower-pop servers to actually play a proper round, and since they still want to play a round they go to the packed server; leaving the lower-pop servers even emptier. The result is instead of having two choices like we used to have, we now only have one.

tl;dr: Herd mentality.
Have two servers, one american and one european. Leave it up for 2 weeks and if shit doesn't start to patter out, then I will record myself eating half a dozen of eggs.

pretty much this, except have the american server not be a laggy shitfest compared to the eu server. I'm a player that goes in-between not minding and preferring less so previously I would travel in-between 1-2 (or... what was it before? 3-4? 1-4? back when we were named gibbed) and since they both had like 15-40 people it was satisfactory to go to 1 if I wanted to have a chaotic action packed funtime, and go to 2 if I wanted a more slow-paced do your own thing type thing. But now it's either chaotic action packed funtime (at peak hours, anyways. I don't mind the 4 am in the morning 20 people stage) or just completely empty.

I've never even CLICKED or bothered to GO on one of the servers with less than 10 people, because I know I won't have fun or a real round there.

But then the problem arises: if it comes down to how it was previously with low-but playable pop and high-and-chaotic pop BUT one of them is less laggy, I will probably still choose the less laggy one.

[Fox McCloud]

At the same time, some of the people on the very-low-pop servers don't actually want to play and are just there to experiment or test shit you can't usually do on a full-pop round.

Especially since on v-low-pop people are usually pretty chill and won't just come toolbox you.


One server set to extended/respawn on/sandbox or whatever would take care of the non-players, removing one server so there's two "real" servers would at least make a sufficient population to have some activity.

Agreed on this, it would also give people who wanted a more roleplayish environment to do so (still fully optional, of course).


In any event, I'm going to have to respectfully disagree with you a bit here, Bubs. Even back in November-December, when there were only two servers, one would end up with nearly all the population, and the other one would have, at best, about 15 players (still 1-6 during the late night hours), and people still treated the low population servers as they do now; a place to do research and try new things. Even if 2 servers are eliminated, I'd be willing to bet that #4 will still be super crowded and the other server will still be fairly quiet. I can understand where you're coming from though, I just don't think that eliminating two servers will be enough to make the remaining secondary server reasonably active.

[lifehole]

At the same time, some of the people on the very-low-pop servers don't actually want to play and are just there to experiment or test shit you can't usually do on a full-pop round.

Especially since on v-low-pop people are usually pretty chill and won't just come toolbox you.


One server set to extended/respawn on/sandbox or whatever would take care of the non-players, removing one server so there's two "real" servers would at least make a sufficient population to have some activity.

Agreed on this, it would also give people who wanted a more roleplayish environment to do so (still fully optional, of course).


In any event, I'm going to have to respectfully disagree with you a bit here, Bubs. Even back in November-December, when there were only two servers, one would end up with nearly all the population, and the other one would have, at best, about 15 players (still 1-6 during the late night hours), and people still treated the low population servers as they do now; a place to do research and try new things. Even if 2 servers are eliminated, I'd be willing to bet that #4 will still be super crowded and the other server will still be fairly quiet. I can understand where you're coming from though, I just don't think that eliminating two servers will be enough to make the remaining secondary server reasonably active.

But it did before! I remember when we just had 1-2 (or 1 and 4??) and I usually played on 2, because I preferred a less chaotic round. (typical pop during high hours was maybe 25-30 and low pop during was 6-15) Maybe our population has declined to the point where that isn't viable enough anymore.