ET Jay #2 ADRENALINE Poll

[Dest!Ny]

On 5/21/2022 at 3:17 PM, the cake is a lie said:

First, I want to thank everyone for participating in the poll. I appreciate the concerns and preferences of those who don't want to harm the character of jay2 and/or actually enjoy using adrenaline. I think we can all agree that though that jay2 currently has unhealthy population numbers and there are rarely enough players for a sustained fun time.

 

For ease of reading I've split this up into three sections: analysis of the poll results, my personal views on adrenaline, a suggested plan to revitalize jay2 over the next month.

 

Now that the poll is closed and the votes are in it's time for the analysis to begin. Here is some (relatively) neutral analysis of the poll results:

 

It's hard to get much value from the answers to the old question #1 asking how do jay2 regulars feel about adren. I think it was a mistake to split off the question meant for jay2 regulars, to put it on the forum index sidebar without context, and to hide the names of the respondents. As someone said earlier, there probably aren't 60+ jay2 regulars. We would need the respondents names unmasked to figure out which votes should actually be counted on this question.

 

However, the percent of people with each choice didn't change much from the first few days to the current percentages. My recollection is that initially the neutral group was closer to 45 percent and the prefer adrenaline group was closer to 25 percent. So, something like 70-80 percent of players would be satisfied with either decision.

 

A few very vocal and seemingly angry or offended players posted in this thread in opposition to the change. Even among those, I think I only saw one player (spectator) threaten to leave the server (and go where?) if adrenaline is removed. About twice as many (10-5) of the commenters here opposed the change compared to those in favor.

 

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The results from the second question do indicate that adrenaline is second most significant reason (of the options given) why people don't play on jay2. Removing or modifying adrenaline would indirectly help with the main reason people don't play on jay2: too few humans and too many omni-bots.

 

The results from this question make clear that the maps and are not a big part of the population problems. The ability to run a much greater variety of maps compared to jay1 is probably one of the most attractive things about playing on jay2.

 

A fair number of people chose "ping" as a reason for not playing at jay2. I included this answer option for those who are just too far from the server but it suggest the server location is not a big issue.

 

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70% of voters would prefer a modified or less powerful adrenaline mechanic, with 75% of that group preferring sprint only and no damage reduction. If adrenaline is going to remain, this seems like the change that would have the broadest support among players. (Also, this change is very easy to do, only a few lines of code need to be commented out or removed.)

 

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Here what I personally don't like about adrenaline:

 

The adrenaline mechanic is extremely overpowered. It distorts the play-style, overall game-play, and becomes the entire 'meta' of the game. Like the AWP in CS:GO (a powerful 1 shot kill weapon), you have to constantly be thinking of how other players will use and 'abuse' it.

With the very short spawn times and double jump (like on jay2), it is easily 'abused' by respawning. You can't get your charge bar replenished by using \kill but you can by taking a fall death, setting off landmines, or just leaping at the enemy without any regard for survival (see how Delord and EL! play) to get into limbo and respawn almost as quickly.

Unlike NQ, there is no visible indicator in Jaymod that a player is using adrenaline. I haven't played NQ lately but I think the eyes glow when it is active.

Hit registration feels extra shitty in the longer fights that happen against people using adren. There are two reasons for this:

 

When the combined ping and built in engine lags of two players is more than 150ms (basically always on jay2) prediciton errors can accumulate and basically never settle. If a player hits you steadily you can't hit as well because you're not ever actually firing from where it looks like you are on your screen. An adren vs adren fights tend to last longer so this flaw sticks out more.

The other reason is just spread. The longer a fight lasts, typically the higher your weapon spread will be towards the end. Headshots are typically harder to land on aden users because of the unlimited stamina so you end up with a lot more body shots to get the kill. (Jaymod hitboxes are often up to 50ms behind the player models and other quirks like some A-D key movement patterns 'throwing' the hitboxes around.)

With adrenaline enabled it is much harder to actually win fights against multiple opponents at once (2v1, 3v1, 2v3, etc). The typical time to kill in ET with bullets is already fairly long (between 0.5 and 1.5 sec). The longer it takes to kill each opponent, the more time it gives target 2, 3, 4 to hit and kill you. Adrenaline does let you avoid fights and run away more easily as spectator's video shows. Not a lot of fun in my opinion.

I don't particularly like a lot of the jay1 settings either (poison knives, too much starting ammo + grenades, unlimited rifle grenades, short spawn time, too many landmine, too many players on small maps, etc) but at least there are typically humans to play against. I'm sure a lot of the players on jay1 feel similarly and F|A shouldn't assume that because they have a relatively captive player base that people are entirely satisfied with the server settings just because they are not constantly complaining.

 

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At the moment jay2 seems to almost be on life support even with the influx of new/returning players from steam.

Here is a typical situation when I check in on jay1 vs jay2 populations:

jay1: 44 playing, 10 in spec
jay2: 2 playing, 2 in spec

 

Here is the populations of jay1 (solid) and jay2 (dotted) from last week, Thursday through Sunday using hourly data from TrackBase:

 

 

From what I can tell, TrackBase counts the total number of humans on the server whether on a team or in spectator.

I think jay2 would be healthier and the players on both jay1 and jay2 happier if players are more encouraged and nudged into playing on jay2.

 

For the first week run banners on jay1 alerting players that the number of slots on jay1 is being reduced and that adren is (at least temporarily) being removed from jay2.

 

Over the next week, gradually reduced the number of player and spectator slots on jay1 by 2 player slots and ~2 spectator slots each day.

 

M: 52, 58 (player slots, total slots)
T: 50, 56
W: 48, 54
R: 46, 52
F: 44, 50
S: 42, 48
U: 40, 46

 

Based on the graph, I think 40 player slots about the right critical number for jay1 to so that jay2 will have a viable population for more than 1-2 hours each day without significantly changing the character of jay1, 20v20 on et_beach for example is still extremely chaotic.

 

After a few weeks, the number of player and spectator slots on jay1 could be slowly increased back to near the current levels. My suggestion would be to make the eventual new limit 44 player slots and 48-50 total slots.

 

 

Decent summary. I imagine you looked from participant to participant rather than total votes cast, good job, I won't fact check you on it. It's unfortunate that there is a lot of subjective comments still, tho it is to be expected on a 2 question survey. At the end of the day the goal was not to create a statistical research so you did your work as well as you could have.

 

I like the suggestion in terms of players, modify jay1 a bit temporarily and when you adjust back see who stick around at Jay2. It doesn't affect Jay1 longterm but could be beneficial for Jay2 longterm. The second part of the suggestion is unfortunately too subjective for me. The poll does not indicate that removing adre completely will reel the players in (there was also no option to say to have adre fully removed as opposed to keeping adren completely the same). Tho if any conclusion can be made from question 2 is that slightly modifying adre is the most preferred option, rather than fully removing it

[ElEl]

On 5/21/2022 at 2:17 PM, the cake is a lie said:

The results from the second question do indicate that adrenaline is second most significant reason (of the options given) why people don't play on jay2. Removing or modifying adrenaline would indirectly help with the main reason people don't play on jay2: too few humans and too many omni-bots.

I disagree. Removing or changing adrenaline wouldn't necessarily 'save' Jay2. I imagine a small amount of people would start playing there for a week or so and then those people would eventually get bored and then just move back to Jay1. 

There's clearly a want for adrenaline - see Beginner's #2, Jay3 and ETc's most popular server.

 

On 5/21/2022 at 2:17 PM, the cake is a lie said:

The results from this question make clear that the maps and are not a big part of the population problems. The ability to run a much greater variety of maps compared to jay1 is probably one of the most attractive things about playing on jay2.

I don't think you've seen the server just absolutely die as soon as a bad map comes on, this happened just recently with Alcatraz. People just leave when a bad map comes on. I completely agree with your second point though. Less well known maps are great to play, when I handled rotations I made sure to include some unique maps because a reason I stayed on the server was for maps like raiders and Teuthonia. 

 

 

Here's my thoughts on the poll:

I think it should have been one response only for the first question, i.e. What's the MAIN reason you don't play on Jay2 regularly. It seems the main reason is obvious anyway - not enough players.

 

I'm not sure why the bot number was included? This just made the results more difficult to interpret. For example, Hesis and Bunny both said the number of bots was a reason they didn't play on Jay2 but they didn't say that the player count was the reason. Both these people play on servers with 25+ max bots, whereas Jay2 only has 15. I guess their votes should be added to the count for the number of players? I'm not sure on that either.

 

There are people voting on this poll that I've never even seen join Jay2, there are some people who I've never seen on a Jaymod server. Maybe that's the point but I'm not so sure that any changes made would even make those people start playing on Jay2.

There are people who haven't voted on the poll but have replied to this topic in favour of no changes being made to adrenaline on the server. I've counted 3 - Hotspur, Spectator and Mraw.

There are people who don't look at the forums and only play on the server so they can't vote.

Only 40 people voted. I wouldn't say that's enough to make any significant change to the server settings and given the percentages for adrenaline, I certainly wouldn't remove it.

 

9/40 said they don't play on Jay2 because of adrenaline. If we add the 3 who didn't vote but were vocal against its removal that would be 9/43.

19/40 said they don't play on Jay2 because of the player count.

21/40 said they don't play on Jay2 because of the player count OR the bot count.

 

It's pretty clear adrenaline isn't the problem. If people want to trial making changes to the mechanics then I'd be in favour of doing that but I'd be against it staying that way.

 

 

My thoughts on adrenaline anyway, feel free to skip:

I think adrenaline is a lot more necessary to low skilled players than it is to high skilled players. A number of people replied in this topic backing this claim. Myself and another person posed an example earlier: if a full team of defenders are just sitting and camping the objective, there's not much the attackers can do without adrenaline. The full attacking team never pushes, a lot of them prefer to sit back and do stuff like arty spawn for whatever reason. In regards to playing the objective I would say the current adrenaline settings favour the attacking team.

Worries about it being the 'meta' are a bit silly in my opinion. It's an adrenaline server - it's there to be used. Thinking about how others will use it adds another level to the game doesn't it?

 

Regarding respawn abuse: I don't see a massive issue with it personally. You used my name as an example but I don't use adrenaline much these days mainly due to ragequitters but if there are 4 medics on the other team and it's basically just me attacking then you're damn right I'm using it 🤣.

I have the same playstyle regardless of if I'm using adrenaline or not - this game seems to favour aggressive playstyles and it gives me a nice dopamine rush when I take on a 1v3 and win with or without adrenaline. At the end of the day isn't that why we play games?

 

You can usually tell if someone is using adrenaline - are they sprinting the entire time? Do they have a lot more health than they should've after you killed them or got killed by them? Did you hear someone just switch weapons?

 

Hit registration feels fine to me in long fire fights and I can usually adjust if something feels off. It's not nearly as bad Jay1 full.

Spread? There are ways to control spread. I'm sure you know how to better than I do.

 

I would argue it's easier to win fights against multiple opponents with adrenaline enabled. You stay alive longer, more chance to get more headshots. You just have to aim better and move better than them 😛 

 

All in all, I don't think adrenaline's the primary factor for Jay2's player count and I don't have any serious belief that modifying or removing it will change that.

 

My thoughts on improving the player count:

I really like your suggestion regarding lowering Jay1's max players. I doubt anything will come of it unfortunately. The server owners likely don't want to mess with Jay1 as it's so successful and is ET's most popular server. Making changes to Jay1 risks changing this. I also think the increase to 60 slots was partly due to ETc's server being 60 slots too so there's the competition aspect. Apparently people want to play 20+ vs 20+, I just can't understand why. If it was up to me I'd just lower Jay1 back down to 51 but it's not . If changing Jay1, even temporarily, to help Jay2 isn't realistic then something else needs to happen.

 

If half the people who voted are saying it's due to the lack of players then we should start scheduling times to get the server active and start there. Hopefully that will start driving more players to the server as people go where people are. Before I start playing ET I look at Jay2 on Splatterladder and see if it's worth going there. If I see more than a 3v3 I usually join. 

Scheduled Discord voice calls for Jay2 could help massively in my opinion.

 

Jay2 needs a Co-Leader and a Leader who actively play on the server and can help with recruiting members and thus increasing regulars and dealing with trolls and cheatcallers. I'd say CapTn and Gameplan would do a great job in either position. People in these positions could also help with scheduling times to get the server active.

 

The mini-gameday I put on a while ago was pretty successful, I think we got to 13v13? That's a number I'm pretty happy with if we can get the server to be like that regularly. Maybe that's something the current rotation team can look at doing again? I had plans to make it every Sunday or every other Sunday but real life and other shit happened that made me want to step away from that. I'd be happy to help put that together just not as the primary person. I've finished my current year at university and I'm in a lot better of a place than previously so I've got a bit more free time to help now.

There was another idea to make weekly rotations and swap them out via scripts with the help from Daredevil so that rotations weren't so stale for the regulars who stuck around. I don't know if something like that is in the works.

 

I think server activity increased a bit when admins were in spec and left their computer to run. I remember reading a post about it somewhere.

 

Worst case scenario: merge Jay2 and Jay3. Just don't include the fast fire 🤣

[-=HipKat=-]

On 5/21/2022 at 8:17 AM, the cake is a lie said:

70% of voters would prefer a modified or less powerful adrenaline mechanic, with 75% of that group preferring sprint only and no damage reduction. If adrenaline is going to remain, this seems like the change that would have the broadest support among players. (Also, this change is very easy to do, only a few lines of code need to be commented out or removed.)[/quote]

 

 

I think that's agreeable by most people, that had good points about Objective play and Adren working in favor of Engi's achieving goals to complete objectives. 

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With the very short spawn times and double jump (like on jay2), it is easily 'abused' by respawning. You can't get your charge bar replenished by using \kill but you can by taking a fall death, setting off landmines, or just leaping at the enemy without any regard for survival (see how Delord and EL! play) to get into limbo and respawn almost as quickly.

Hit registration feels extra shitty in the longer fights that happen against people using adren. There are two reasons for this: 

When the combined ping and built in engine lags of two players is more than 150ms (basically always on jay2) prediciton errors can accumulate and basically never settle. If a player hits you steadily you can't hit as well because you're not ever actually firing from where it looks like you are on your screen. An adren vs adren fights tend to last longer so this flaw sticks out more.


The other reason is just spread. The longer a fight lasts, typically the higher your weapon spread will be towards the end. Headshots are typically harder to land on aden users because of the unlimited stamina so you end up with a lot more body shots to get the kill. (Jaymod hitboxes are often up to 50ms behind the player models and other quirks like some A-D key movement patterns 'throwing' the hitboxes around.)


With adrenaline enabled it is much harder to actually win fights against multiple opponents at once (2v1, 3v1, 2v3, etc). The typical time to kill in ET with bullets is already fairly long (between 0.5 and 1.5 sec). The longer it takes to kill each opponent, the more time it gives target 2, 3, 4 to hit and kill you. Adrenaline does let you avoid fights and run away more easily as spectator's video shows. Not a lot of fun in my opinion.

 

THIS is the exact reason and perfectly describes my own frustration with playing against skilled players who use dren in a way I've struggled to. 

 

 

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I don't particularly like a lot of the jay1 settings either (poison knives, too much starting ammo + grenades, unlimited rifle grenades, short spawn time, too many landmine, too many players on small maps, etc) but at least there are typically humans to play against. I'm sure a lot of the players on jay1 feel similarly and F|A shouldn't assume that because they have a relatively captive player base that people are entirely satisfied with the server settings just because they are not constantly complaining.

 

Absolutely. So many people have said in the past about the chaos on Jay 1, but it's people, not BOTS and people want to play against other people.

 

 

Quote

Based on the graph, I think 40 player slots about the right critical number for jay1 to so that jay2 will have a viable population for more than 1-2 hours each day without significantly changing the character of jay1, 20v20 on et_beach for example is still extremely chaotic.

 

After a few weeks, the number of player and spectator slots on jay1 could be slowly increased back to near the current levels. My suggestion would be to make the eventual new limit 44 player slots and 48-50 total slots.

I just think that with a waning number of players - even in lieu of Steam, Jay 1 slots should just be reduced and players redirected to Jay 2. That's just my own opinion

Edited May 25, 2022 by -=HipKat=-

[captnconcrete]

49 minutes ago, ElEl said:

I disagree. Removing or changing adrenaline wouldn't necessarily 'save' Jay2. I imagine a small amount of people would start playing there for a week or so and then those people would eventually get bored and then just move back to Jay1. 

There's clearly a want for adrenaline - see Beginner's #2, Jay3 and ETc's most popular server.

 

I don't think you've seen the server just absolutely die as soon as a bad map comes on, this happened just recently with Alcatraz. People just leave when a bad map comes on. I completely agree with your second point though. Less well known maps are great to play, when I handled rotations I made sure to include some unique maps because a reason I stayed on the server was for maps like raiders and Teuthonia. 

 

 

Here's my thoughts on the poll:

I think it should have been one response only for the first question, i.e. What's the MAIN reason you don't play on Jay2 regularly. It seems the main reason is obvious anyway - not enough players.

 

I'm not sure why the bot number was included? This just made the results more difficult to interpret. For example, Hesis and Bunny both said the number of bots was a reason they didn't play on Jay2 but they didn't say that the player count was the reason. Both these people play on servers with 25+ max bots, whereas Jay2 only has 15. I guess their votes should be added to the count for the number of players? I'm not sure on that either.

 

There are people voting on this poll that I've never even seen join Jay2, there are some people who I've never seen on a Jaymod server. Maybe that's the point but I'm not so sure that any changes made would even make those people start playing on Jay2.

There are people who haven't voted on the poll but have replied to this topic in favour of no changes being made to adrenaline on the server. I've counted 3 - Hotspur, Spectator and Mraw.

There are people who don't look at the forums and only play on the server so they can't vote.

Only 40 people voted. I wouldn't say that's enough to make any significant change to the server settings and given the percentages for adrenaline, I certainly wouldn't remove it.

 

9/40 said they don't play on Jay2 because of adrenaline. If we add the 3 who didn't vote but were vocal against its removal that would be 9/43.

19/40 said they don't play on Jay2 because of the player count.

21/40 said they don't play on Jay2 because of the player count OR the bot count.

 

It's pretty clear adrenaline isn't the problem. If people want to trial making changes to the mechanics then I'd be in favour of doing that but I'd be against it staying that way.

 

 

My thoughts on adrenaline anyway, feel free to skip:

I think adrenaline is a lot more necessary to low skilled players than it is to high skilled players. A number of people replied in this topic backing this claim. Myself and another person posed an example earlier: if a full team of defenders are just sitting and camping the objective, there's not much the attackers can do without adrenaline. The full attacking team never pushes, a lot of them prefer to sit back and do stuff like arty spawn for whatever reason. In regards to playing the objective I would say the current adrenaline settings favour the attacking team.

Worries about it being the 'meta' are a bit silly in my opinion. It's an adrenaline server - it's there to be used. Thinking about how others will use it adds another level to the game doesn't it?

 

Regarding respawn abuse: I don't see a massive issue with it personally. You used my name as an example but I don't use adrenaline much these days mainly due to ragequitters but if there are 4 medics on the other team and it's basically just me attacking then you're damn right I'm using it 🤣.

I have the same playstyle regardless of if I'm using adrenaline or not - this game seems to favour aggressive playstyles and it gives me a nice dopamine rush when I take on a 1v3 and win with or without adrenaline. At the end of the day isn't that why we play games?

 

You can usually tell if someone is using adrenaline - are they sprinting the entire time? Do they have a lot more health than they should've after you killed them or got killed by them? Did you hear someone just switch weapons?

 

Hit registration feels fine to me in long fire fights and I can usually adjust if something feels off. It's not nearly as bad Jay1 full.

Spread? There are ways to control spread. I'm sure you know how to better than I do.

 

I would argue it's easier to win fights against multiple opponents with adrenaline enabled. You stay alive longer, more chance to get more headshots. You just have to aim better and move better than them 😛 

 

All in all, I don't think adrenaline's the primary factor for Jay2's player count and I don't have any serious belief that modifying or removing it will change that.

 

My thoughts on improving the player count:

I really like your suggestion regarding lowering Jay1's max players. I doubt anything will come of it unfortunately. The server owners likely don't want to mess with Jay1 as it's so successful and is ET's most popular server. Making changes to Jay1 risks changing this. I also think the increase to 60 slots was partly due to ETc's server being 60 slots too so there's the competition aspect. Apparently people want to play 20+ vs 20+, I just can't understand why. If it was up to me I'd just lower Jay1 back down to 51 but it's not . If changing Jay1, even temporarily, to help Jay2 isn't realistic then something else needs to happen.

 

If half the people who voted are saying it's due to the lack of players then we should start scheduling times to get the server active and start there. Hopefully that will start driving more players to the server as people go where people are. Before I start playing ET I look at Jay2 on Splatterladder and see if it's worth going there. If I see more than a 3v3 I usually join. 

Scheduled Discord voice calls for Jay2 could help massively in my opinion.

 

Jay2 needs a Co-Leader and a Leader who actively play on the server and can help with recruiting members and thus increasing regulars and dealing with trolls and cheatcallers. I'd say CapTn and Gameplan would do a great job in either position. People in these positions could also help with scheduling times to get the server active.

 

The mini-gameday I put on a while ago was pretty successful, I think we got to 13v13? That's a number I'm pretty happy with if we can get the server to be like that regularly. Maybe that's something the current rotation team can look at doing again? I had plans to make it every Sunday or every other Sunday but real life and other shit happened that made me want to step away from that. I'd be happy to help put that together just not as the primary person. I've finished my current year at university and I'm in a lot better of a place than previously so I've got a bit more free time to help now.

There was another idea to make weekly rotations and swap them out via scripts with the help from Daredevil so that rotations weren't so stale for the regulars who stuck around. I don't know if something like that is in the works.

 

I think server activity increased a bit when admins were in spec and left their computer to run. I remember reading a post about it somewhere.

 

Worst case scenario: merge Jay2 and Jay3. Just don't include the fast fire 🤣

yes we incorporated 4 weeks worth of rotations.  each week  rotations should be swapped out . for the next. its supposed to be done every sunday.

 

i disagree that one setting makes or breaks a server.

 

we used to have  more of a player base on jay2 . when jay1 redirected  .more players.

 

adren has only been a issue for mister top shot who only joins to be the top shot.

 

alot of the players just leave if they cant spank other team we need a broader friendlier, approach. i see alot of people start crying when they lose.  its a game some one loses  and some one wins. 

 

duel objective maps. hard to rush maps.   fun laid back easy going.  teamwork.......  thanks cake for putting in the time and effort.

[the cake is a lie]

@ElEl

 

I don't think changing or removing adrenaline temporarily will by itself save jay2 but it's one of the factors keeping at least 9 people (29%) who responded away. This is anecdotal of course, but when jay1 becomes an overcrowded laggy mess jay2 is often mentioned in chat with comments like, 'I'd play there except for adren'.

 

I don't think there's any reason to think people would get bored of jay2 and go back to jay1 if the population could be sustained at a 6v6 or 8v8 level during peak jay1 hours instead of for one or two maps on a good day.

 

For however representative the sample in the forum poll is of all potential jay2 players (not very but it's what we have to work with), 29% (9 of 31 non-jay2 regs/admins) cited adrenaline as a reason they don't play as much on jay2. Running a survey directly on jay1 for example would be a better sample but isn't likely to happen.

 

The map question was targeted at non-jay2 regs/admins to confirm that the map pool on jay2 isn't keeping players away. It may be driving regulars away, but that wasn't what I was attempting to measure. Again this may be a case where the people who are on the forum are not the right sample to ask about maps. I often hear on jay1 from low XP players (presumably either new or returning after some time away) that they want to play the original maps (sometimes they say 'classic').

 

The last 20 or so times I've briefly switched over to jay2 when jay1 becomes an unplayable 40+ mess there were still only ever 4 or fewer humans on jay2.

 

The benefit of allowing multiple selections is to get a broader understanding of the various reasons a player doesn't play on jay2. It would be better if the poll allowed people to score the relative importance of each factor as well but that wasn't available without making the survey difficult to navigate with what the forum provides. We could run it again on a 3rd party survey platform that allows for such weighting.

 

The "too many omnibots" option was included because it can be a reason separate from player count why people don't play on jay2. A typical small sided game on jay1 is around 19 humans and 4 bots, the same on jay2 is around 4 humans and 11 bots. There are people (like me) who would rather play 2v2 or 1v3 without the omni-bots because of how they shape and change the gameplay and allow the few humans on the other team to hide amongst the omnis and such.

 

Presumably the jay2 players you listed who didn't vote in these 2 questions voted on the question Daredevil broke off from this server since that got more total responses. I can't tell with the participants hidden. But, if they can't be bothered to actually vote well...

 

While only 9 jay2 regs/admins voted in this poll, I don't know how many there are in total. It's hard to tell just from the TrackBase usage numbers but I'd be surprised if it is much more than 30.

 

You're generally using the wrong denominator in your ratios. 40 is the total number of responses but only 31 are non-jay2 regs/admins. 29% felt strongly enough about adrenaline to choose the option, 63% chose player count as a reason, etc.

 

I'm not sure which specific ETC server you were referring to, the only ETC player with any humans on right now (4) does have adren but averages about 20 humans with a peak in the past 24 hours of 35 players. I would be surprised if the jay1 slots is being set in relation to this or any other individual server. Adrenaline is probably the reason some prefer to play on that server but I'd wager it has more to do with demand for euro servers and 'brand loyalty' to the flagship ETC server. Just like on jay1, there are probably many who play there who don't like every setting (eg. poison knives).

@Dest!Ny

 

Yeah the jay1 player count could be cycled down temporarily a few time a year as needed to give periodic boosts to jay2 and balance out the population between server. The more people there are on jay2 the less of a annoyance I feel about adren since it's power can be negated by team play (amongst reasonably competent players) which is rarely possible now with the abysmal player counts.

 

@captnconcrete

 

I would guess a lot of new or returning players are also put off of jay2 when they connect and get obliterated by the adren using jay2 regulars. Jay2 would probably benefit from fewer skilled shooters or they need to focus on killing each other instead of slaying the beginners over and over until they disconnect.

 

As you say though, attitude is a big part of the problem. I have seen toxic and unwelcoming behavior from admins as well as skilled and unskilled regulars. There are as many problematic players (way more actually) on jay1 but the larger population makes those players easier to ignore.

[Valk]

Not sure about the others who voted or commented on this topic, but for me, I'd like to see more players on jay2. I don't play there due to the fact it's never got many players on. The whole adrenaline thing can be easily avoided and I avoid using it on B2.

[-=HipKat=-]

Jay 2 is more deserted than ever. I connected several times yesterday and never saw more than 4 humans playing. The last time there was 1 and at the same time, Jay 1 was full with 23 vs 24 playing and the rest in spec. The only way Jay 2 is going to get more active is reducing slots on Jay 1 and redirecting to Jay 2, in my opinion. Adren has really, nothing to do with it and maps have little to do with it, unless they're just too big for the server.

 

Actually, I think a better poll would be asking people about doing just that, reducing slots on Jay 1 and redirecting to Jay 2

Edited May 29, 2022 by -=HipKat=-

[captnconcrete]

44 minutes ago, -=HipKat=- said:

Jay 2 is more deserted than ever. I connected several times yesterday and never saw more than 4 humans playing. The last time there was 1 and at the same time, Jay 1 was full with 23 vs 24 playing and the rest in spec. The only way Jay 2 is going to get more active is reducing slots on Jay 1 and redirecting to Jay 2, in my opinion. Adren has really, nothing to do with it and maps have little to do with it, unless they're just too big for the server.

 

Actually, I think a better poll would be asking people about doing just that, reducing slots on Jay 1 and redirecting to Jay 2

it is memorial weekend people do go camping.

[Valk]

Doesn't seem like a bad idea to do, maybe opening a poll in order to see the feedback to the idea is needed for further judgement.

[-=HipKat=-]

8 hours ago, captnconcrete said:

it is memorial weekend people do go camping.

It's only Memorial Day in the US and it's been like this for over a week

Edited May 29, 2022 by -=HipKat=-

[nAbish]

9 hours ago, -=HipKat=- said:

Jay 2 is more deserted than ever. I connected several times yesterday and never saw more than 4 humans playing. The last time there was 1 and at the same time, Jay 1 was full with 23 vs 24 playing and the rest in spec. The only way Jay 2 is going to get more active is reducing slots on Jay 1 and redirecting to Jay 2, in my opinion. Adren has really, nothing to do with it and maps have little to do with it, unless they're just too big for the server.

 

Actually, I think a better poll would be asking people about doing just that, reducing slots on Jay 1 and redirecting to Jay 2

Could not agree more! 

[Eazy]

On 5/21/2022 at 9:17 AM, the cake is a lie said:

First, I want to thank everyone for participating in the poll. I appreciate the concerns and preferences of those who don't want to harm the character of jay2 and/or actually enjoy using adrenaline. I think we can all agree that though that jay2 currently has unhealthy population numbers and there are rarely enough players for a sustained fun time.

 

For ease of reading I've split this up into three sections: analysis of the poll results, my personal views on adrenaline, a suggested plan to revitalize jay2 over the next month.

 

Now that the poll is closed and the votes are in it's time for the analysis to begin. Here is some (relatively) neutral analysis of the poll results:

 

It's hard to get much value from the answers to the old question #1 asking how do jay2 regulars feel about adren. I think it was a mistake to split off the question meant for jay2 regulars, to put it on the forum index sidebar without context, and to hide the names of the respondents. As someone said earlier, there probably aren't 60+ jay2 regulars. We would need the respondents names unmasked to figure out which votes should actually be counted on this question.

 

However, the percent of people with each choice didn't change much from the first few days to the current percentages. My recollection is that initially the neutral group was closer to 45 percent and the prefer adrenaline group was closer to 25 percent. So, something like 70-80 percent of players would be satisfied with either decision.

 

A few very vocal and seemingly angry or offended players posted in this thread in opposition to the change. Even among those, I think I only saw one player (spectator) threaten to leave the server (and go where?) if adrenaline is removed. About twice as many (10-5) of the commenters here opposed the change compared to those in favor.

 

------

 

The results from the second question do indicate that adrenaline is second most significant reason (of the options given) why people don't play on jay2. Removing or modifying adrenaline would indirectly help with the main reason people don't play on jay2: too few humans and too many omni-bots.

 

The results from this question make clear that the maps and are not a big part of the population problems. The ability to run a much greater variety of maps compared to jay1 is probably one of the most attractive things about playing on jay2.

 

A fair number of people chose "ping" as a reason for not playing at jay2. I included this answer option for those who are just too far from the server but it suggest the server location is not a big issue.

 

------

 

70% of voters would prefer a modified or less powerful adrenaline mechanic, with 75% of that group preferring sprint only and no damage reduction. If adrenaline is going to remain, this seems like the change that would have the broadest support among players. (Also, this change is very easy to do, only a few lines of code need to be commented out or removed.)

 

////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

 

Here what I personally don't like about adrenaline:

 

The adrenaline mechanic is extremely overpowered. It distorts the play-style, overall game-play, and becomes the entire 'meta' of the game. Like the AWP in CS:GO (a powerful 1 shot kill weapon), you have to constantly be thinking of how other players will use and 'abuse' it.

With the very short spawn times and double jump (like on jay2), it is easily 'abused' by respawning. You can't get your charge bar replenished by using \kill but you can by taking a fall death, setting off landmines, or just leaping at the enemy without any regard for survival (see how Delord and EL! play) to get into limbo and respawn almost as quickly.

Unlike NQ, there is no visible indicator in Jaymod that a player is using adrenaline. I haven't played NQ lately but I think the eyes glow when it is active.

Hit registration feels extra shitty in the longer fights that happen against people using adren. There are two reasons for this:

 

When the combined ping and built in engine lags of two players is more than 150ms (basically always on jay2) prediciton errors can accumulate and basically never settle. If a player hits you steadily you can't hit as well because you're not ever actually firing from where it looks like you are on your screen. An adren vs adren fights tend to last longer so this flaw sticks out more.

The other reason is just spread. The longer a fight lasts, typically the higher your weapon spread will be towards the end. Headshots are typically harder to land on aden users because of the unlimited stamina so you end up with a lot more body shots to get the kill. (Jaymod hitboxes are often up to 50ms behind the player models and other quirks like some A-D key movement patterns 'throwing' the hitboxes around.)

With adrenaline enabled it is much harder to actually win fights against multiple opponents at once (2v1, 3v1, 2v3, etc). The typical time to kill in ET with bullets is already fairly long (between 0.5 and 1.5 sec). The longer it takes to kill each opponent, the more time it gives target 2, 3, 4 to hit and kill you. Adrenaline does let you avoid fights and run away more easily as spectator's video shows. Not a lot of fun in my opinion.

I don't particularly like a lot of the jay1 settings either (poison knives, too much starting ammo + grenades, unlimited rifle grenades, short spawn time, too many landmine, too many players on small maps, etc) but at least there are typically humans to play against. I'm sure a lot of the players on jay1 feel similarly and F|A shouldn't assume that because they have a relatively captive player base that people are entirely satisfied with the server settings just because they are not constantly complaining.

 

////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

 

At the moment jay2 seems to almost be on life support even with the influx of new/returning players from steam.

Here is a typical situation when I check in on jay1 vs jay2 populations:

jay1: 44 playing, 10 in spec
jay2: 2 playing, 2 in spec

 

Here is the populations of jay1 (solid) and jay2 (dotted) from last week, Thursday through Sunday using hourly data from TrackBase:

 

 

From what I can tell, TrackBase counts the total number of humans on the server whether on a team or in spectator.

I think jay2 would be healthier and the players on both jay1 and jay2 happier if players are more encouraged and nudged into playing on jay2.

 

For the first week run banners on jay1 alerting players that the number of slots on jay1 is being reduced and that adren is (at least temporarily) being removed from jay2.

 

Over the next week, gradually reduced the number of player and spectator slots on jay1 by 2 player slots and ~2 spectator slots each day.

 

M: 52, 58 (player slots, total slots)
T: 50, 56
W: 48, 54
R: 46, 52
F: 44, 50
S: 42, 48
U: 40, 46

 

Based on the graph, I think 40 player slots about the right critical number for jay1 to so that jay2 will have a viable population for more than 1-2 hours each day without significantly changing the character of jay1, 20v20 on et_beach for example is still extremely chaotic.

 

After a few weeks, the number of player and spectator slots on jay1 could be slowly increased back to near the current levels. My suggestion would be to make the eventual new limit 44 player slots and 48-50 total slots.

 

I checked the respondant of the question #1 and it s fair to say "most" are jay 2 occasionnal ++ players . 

 

There is not 60 respondant but around 25ish  who choosed multiples options.

 

I m suprised no one suggest adding poison knifes to jay 2 . I used to be admin on jay 2 and left when poison knifes has been disabled , never played there afterwards. I wouldn t want to talk for him but i m quit sure my old friend @Audie Leon Murphy stop playing on jay 2 when knife has been disabled too. That s just to say , taking options off doesn t always mean making it better or more appealing to the general public. 

 

As for reducing jay 1 slots , once again that is none sense... i ll be pissed off if i got to wait to get on server and i can assume the 20 other players won t appreciate either.  

[nAbish]

6 minutes ago, Eazy said:

I checked the respondant of the question #1 and it s fair to say "most" are jay 2 occasionnal ++ players . 

 

There is not 60 respondant but around 25ish  who choosed multiples options.

 

I m suprised no one suggest adding poison knifes to jay 2 . I used to be admin on jay 2 and left when poison knifes has been disabled , never played there afterwards. I wouldn t want to talk for him but i m quit sure my old friend @Audie Leon Murphy stop playing on jay 2 when knife has been disabled too. That s just to say , taking options off doesn t always mean making it better or more appealing to the general public. 

 

As for reducing jay 1 slots , once again that is none sense... i ll be pissed off if i got to wait to get on server and i can assume the 20 other players won t appreciate either.  

Toucheeee. 

[-=HipKat=-]

1 hour ago, Eazy said:

I checked the respondant of the question #1 and it s fair to say "most" are jay 2 occasionnal ++ players . 

 

There is not 60 respondant but around 25ish  who choosed multiples options.

 

I m suprised no one suggest adding poison knifes to jay 2 . I used to be admin on jay 2 and left when poison knifes has been disabled , never played there afterwards. I wouldn t want to talk for him but i m quit sure my old friend @Audie Leon Murphy stop playing on jay 2 when knife has been disabled too. That s just to say , taking options off doesn t always mean making it better or more appealing to the general public. 

 

As for reducing jay 1 slots , once again that is none sense... i ll be pissed off if i got to wait to get on server and i can assume the 20 other players won t appreciate either.  

More people hate poison knives than  hate Adren and the redirect from Jay 1 to Jay 2 is how I first got on there, like many people did, years ago. I get that you would not be happy but your opinion is not the same as everyone's opinion, agreed?

The best way to get someone to do something new is by getting them to sample it. Like test driving a car before you buy it

Edited May 30, 2022 by -=HipKat=-

[PHNTM]

6 hours ago, Eazy said:

I m suprised no one suggest adding poison knifes to jay 2 .