et server suggestion Bots (jay1)

[sepulchre]

Hello,

 

I quit playing ET 5-6 years ago and I started to play again (just for fun).

Mainly I play on your jay1 sever and I enjoy it, although I am located in EU and your sever is in the US.

But there are 2 things which bother me a lot. About the first one I will talk in this thread, about the other one in a seperate thread.

 

The first thing is that you run bots on your servers. If I wanted to play against bots, I would play single player (offline). But the charm of ET is, that you play against real human beings. You team up and try to make the obj. It is very annoying to have bots.

 

I can understand that you try to make the server look full, but FA's handling is way over the top.

Correct me if I am wrong, but the bots start to appear when there are less than 13vs13 people on the server. Really? C'mon!

I really can understand when it is 3vs3 and the maps are so huge, so 3-4 bots can't be that bad to have and it would make the server look full. But as I said it is way over the top and you have never a "free space".

I mean, for me, I prefer games when it is 6vs6 up to 15vs15. Then it is enjoyable, and it doesn't lagg so much, there is enough "free space". More than 15 vs 15 (which is mostly the case on the jay1 server), the spamming and blood bath start. Then it is just a killing festival. Obj oriented gameplay is almost impossible because "too much" is going on.

But because of your bots, there is never a "free space". As said lower than 13vs13, bots come out, so it is always full, you can't have a minute where you don't have that spamming and fullness.

 

Another problem with bots are, is, that they quickly uneven the teams.

Let's say both teams have 4 bots. Now when 2-3 people leave team Axis, then they have the stupid bots + fewer people, so they get dominated. But because they get dominated, more people leave, so it gets more uneven, even when more bots join that team. And when there is no admin online who can shuffle and restart the map, then you have a problem. That happened 2-3 times when I was online.

 

 

So my suggestion is to change the limit when bots appear.

I would say let's completely turn bots off but I assume you won't do that so I'd suggest to lower the limit.

I think the limit at this moment is 13vs13, less people than that and they appear. I suggest to change that to 8vs8 or 6vs6.

Or maybe if you are that unsure, then start lowering 1 by 1. So first 12vs12, after some time 11vs11, and so on...

So you can check how people react to it.

 

 

PS: I mainly talk about the jay1 server because I play there the most. I'd rather play on an etpro server, but it seems you don't have one or it is not populated and I don't like the NoQuarter or Silent Mods, so jay1 for me. But all the things I said about bots and jay1 can be said also for your other servers. The issue stays the same.

Edited August 3, 2015 by sepulchre

[Aniky]

Hello and thanks for the suggestion.

 

For your question about etpro servers, we have two, but normally we use this one when ppl gather around:

 

scrimeuro.clan-fa.com:27980

 

http://fearless-assassins.com/topic/72889-july-etpro-gamenights/

 

We tend to run ETPro gamenights every Friday from around 19:00-21:00 (London time GMT+1), ofc if we can, we extend that period of time, during other days it depends on how many of us decides to camp the server and then hopefully increase the popularity and attract some players to play couple of maps.

 

For the bots, jay1 does have indeed a bigger amount of bots present at certain number of human players comparing to rest of Fa servers, where it's normally set to reasonable amount of human players so it doesn't overflow with bots only. FA1 tends to be the most populated server considering majority of time its up to 35+ human players and then up to full 51 slots. While the numbers of human players are down, such as in morning's for CET timezone, the bots jump in to help with statistics for the tracker, to keep the server at top ranks of populated servers and therfore attracting more human players that way, that's the simple job of bots, attract more players and make it easier for game to get populated with human players.

 

For the question about reducing the amount of bots per team or per lowest amount of human players, on that i assume only DareDevil will be able to answer u, as he's the one in charge of settings for server and normally as well with the amount of the bots considering every FA server.

We are fully aware of the issue when it comes to uneven teams when bots are present and teams are stacked either one way or another, sadly if there's no admin present we can't really do much about it, apart of someone from regular playing members asking someone else to switch the teams up to make it even, as sadly none of us is able to camp servers entire day just to make sure teams will never be stacked. The best way u can do is, ask politely players to change the team and even it up and hopefully some of them will reconsider that, or u can download Evolve client and PM one of the admins there to aid u on that server. I assume Dare has mentioned at past that he's working on some fix considering the bots unevening the teams, but can't do much when it comes to stack from human players.

[sepulchre]

Thanks for your answer and information.

 

As mentioned, I understand why you enable bots (because of attracting people), and I am fine with it but on jay1 it is way over the top in my eyes.

I don't expect that you turn off bots but by lowering the limit, people like me could also enjoy games when it is not that full AND with no bots around. And the issue with unevening teams won't happen that often, too.

 

I know you fear that it can cost the server its popularity because it doesn't look full that much but I think my critique is legit and think fewer bots would do more good than harm. But you decide, I just suggest.

Edited August 4, 2015 by sepulchre

[Aniky]

Thanks for your answer and information.

 

As mentioned, I understand why you enable bots (because of attracting people), and I am fine with it but on jay1 it is way over the top in my eyes.

I don't expect that you turn off bots but by lowering the limit, people like me can also enjoy games when it is not that full AND there are no bots around. And the issue with unevening teams won't happen that often.

 

I know you fear that it can cost the server its popularity because it doesn't look full that much but I think my critique is legit and think fewer bots would do more good than harm. But you decide, I just suggest.

 

And there's nothing wrong that u suggest it here, rather here than bitching at servers as some do, i applaud u for that, so everyone can read positive constructive feedback that would be required from every player not just u. It will be only decided if and when Daredevil sees this post and if reconsider anything to change considering the number of bots, as like i said, is in charge of setting the server stuffs.

Obviously u writing it here in this polite way, explaining why it would be good to change it to lower amount of bots, has a lot more chance in order to be done so, than some random player whining on server why there are so many bots present.

[sepulchre]

Thank you.

And I appreciate the polite way you responded.

 

Personally, I really hate to play in any kind of online game against bots. If I wanted that, I wouldn't be online and play single player.

And that is why I made this suggestion. And of course with explaining why I think how I think. The rest is up to you.