OCR TF2 Server - Anyone interested in trying out TF2 should join us!

[Lyrai]

I had told him that's how I figured it worked, trading a weapon for a weapon, he just went "LOL nobody trades like that on TF2".

Besides, I wouldn't want to trade more than a 1 for 1 anyways, I'm trying to save enough to craft a Quick-Fix.

I just don't understand why people have to be like that sometimes.

I have a spare quick fix. Give me your steam name profile thing and it's yours.

[Darkomega99]

I have a spare quick fix. Give me your steam name profile thing and it's yours.

http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561197998832172

Darkomega99

[Lyrai]

http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561197998832172

Darkomega99

Added (10char)

[Super-Duper Sombrero]

Server Admins:

Bahamut

Bark

Gamemaster

Regular Admins:

Brushfire

ParanoidDrone

phill

Plus some others.

'Spose I should step in and clear this up.

Current admin list is as follows (in alphabetical order):

Bahamut

Bark

Brushfire

Darkesword

FrostBite

Gamemaster

IJ

kamikaze

Jaswald

ParanoidDrone

phill

SuperDSombrero

There are two 'tiers' of admin (Bahamut, Bark, Bark, Bark, Gamemaster, and Sombrero have ftp and rcon access), but for most intents and purposes, any of 'em will do.

two people were 1v1ing a little while ago, they got mad at me for being in the server while they were fighting and threatened to ban me

When i questioned how they were going to do that, one of them said "he's an admin"

Now, I'm pretty sure there's no admin for the OCR server named "Snowball"

he then a few moments later apologized to me for being a dick and wanted to trade me, tried to say 6 of my weapons was worth a sollemn vow and a couple crates. I'm no expert at the TF2 economy, but that just sounds like a bad deal all the way around.

If there are any other specific weapons you're after, let us know. I've got quite a few spares myself, and if I don't, I'm sure someone does. Hats and cosmetics will usually run you more, but most people on this server would be willing to hand out a few duplicates at little or no cost.

Edited August 12, 2013 by Super-Duper Sombrero

[Top Gun]

Yeah, in normal trade servers, the most any normal weapon would run is two weapons or a scrap, but most people in normal games are willing to trade 1-to-1, or even give you a freebie.

[ParanoidDrone]

"/ban "User" 0 "Being a racist is fucking stupid and completely out of line. Buh-bye!"

So that's the syntax for doing it from chat. Splendid.

I'd also like to point out re: adminning that I'm probably a bit too lenient or willing to stretch a situation out for my/the server's own good. Mostly because I don't like the idea of becoming an abusive admin but w/e. Anyway, point is, if there's something going on and you think I'm waffling too much on bringing down the admin hammer, please tell me. (Admittedly this hasn't been an issue lately because there's usually 2-3 of us on at once and I'm normally beaten to the punch. Point stands.)

Edited August 13, 2013 by ParanoidDrone

[Lyrai]

Overall, though, just don't fucking react to the goddamn trolls, seriously. The less response they get, the better.

[DarkeSword]

Whoa I'm still admin?!

I SHOULD PLAY MORE

[Clefairy]

And now the minutes of tonight's games.

First, there's been a fair amount of resistance to the amount of arena being played in general; I suggested the time be moved down to 10 minutes, since they do drag on rather painfully at 15. Baha seemed to agree, so we'll probably see that implemented soon.

Also, Baha expressed some weariness tonight about the profileration of certain maps lately - Harvest and the various custom badwaters were named, but I would group saw and trainsawlaser in with them as a category. One or two of these here and there isn't bad, it even helps to break up the flow of things when we're on a long string of, say, payloads. But when we're playing them every night, the joke gets a little bit stale.

I realize this is a diverse community, with a wide range of skill levels and reasons for playing. Finding a perfect solution for everyone is probably impossible, but with some discussion we can work towards improving the user experience overall.

The suggestion he threw out was to get rid of nominations and revert to a regular mapcycle, updating it periodically to keep things fresh. Personally, if there's room for custom maps in there sometimes, in particular stuff we've never played before, I'd support that.

With that I'll open the floor. How do you feel about the balance of maps being played? Should there be more stock, more customs, more goof-off types? Is it fine like it is?

[Bahamut]

As I mentioned, I've always been a proponent of a well-updated mapcycle over the server voting for the next map from a server administrator perspective - a healthy balance of maps can encourage people to stay around more, and prevent the consensus forcing the next map, even if some people dislike it, which can be a huge problem & even kill the server for the night.

I would be willing to keep the server maintained as such with input from the community, should we agree to do so.

Also, I won't be on TF2 for the next 2 1/2 weeks or so due to drill this upcoming weekend and my vacation.

[Lyrai]

Reduce Arena to five minutes, and lock Badwater and all of it's variants to "Twice a week."

Delete harvest from the server. Or at least retire it.

Also, Gamemaster, the hell did you do?

[Aeronaut]

I'd totally be on board for the return of a map cycle as long as the "rtv" and "nominate" functionality remained intact.

As an alternative suggestion using our current system, I'd enjoy seeing some kind of plugin that would just instantly auto-nominate the next map in the "cycle" and make it the first choice for voting. That way there's always that one choice (and it's the first choice, to boot) that isn't able to be a silly map or something that was "just played".

[Clefairy]

I'd totally be on board for the return of a map cycle as long as the "rtv" and "nominate" functionality remained intact.

As an alternative suggestion using our current system, I'd enjoy seeing some kind of plugin that would just instantly auto-nominate the next map in the "cycle" and make it the first choice for voting. That way there's always that one choice (and it's the first choice, to boot) that isn't able to be a silly map or something that was "just played".

The point of the mapcycle would be to eliminate rtv and nominate, as I understand it. Baha feels they're being abused.

A good example is Egypt. The only time it gets played is when !! nominates it to troll the server, and it happens to show up in the F1 slot. He has admitted that's the only reason he does it in the past.

A more controversial example is Degroot. Some people who play here really, really like it. Others really, really don't. Most people fall somewhere in the middle, but will tolerate it when it comes up. The issue is that it gets played every. Single. Night. When you bring in that kind of polarizing experience on a regular basis, you drive people away.

And maps that were just played are ineligible for nomination, but the refresh time is just too low in practice. It's only 5 or 6 maps later I think.

Edited August 14, 2013 by Clefairy

[Native Jovian]

So the question is, how is the nominate-and-vote system failing? If people don't like a map, then why aren't they voting against it? If one or two people really detest a map that other people like enough to vote for, then why is that a problem (and how would going to a pure mapcycle fix it)?

Personally, I'd be mostly okay with getting rid of nominate, but not RTV. Sometimes you just get sick of a map and RTV it to go to the next one. The problem with that is that you can get people who RTV as soon as the map starts and that can lead to several map changes in a row that depopulates the server -- but I've only ever actually seen that happen on a troll map (like Pacman or something).

[Clefairy]

So the question is, how is the nominate-and-vote system failing? If people don't like a map, then why aren't they voting against it? If one or two people really detest a map that other people like enough to vote for, then why is that a problem (and how would going to a pure mapcycle fix it)?

Similar to the democratic election process, voting is opt-in. Most of the time I see about half of the people on the server bothered to vote; sometimes more, sometimes less, but it seems that a lot of people don't care.

There's also the issue that it pops up during combat, which is unavoidable obviously. But a lot of times people will just hit whatever to get rid of the window; that's the reason the map in the F1 slot usually wins, on average. The votes are split enough that the accidentals push it over the top.

A mapcycle standardises the user experience from day-to-day; you could argue that's not actually desireable, but when the same(mostly stock) maps get voted in night after night, it seems evident that the community at large prefers to stick with what they know.

It also removes the feeling of having to vote under pressure, negates accidental votes, and relocates the discussion of maps to the forum, maybe the Steam group if we want to do it that way. That last bit has two additional effects; it increases traffic to OCR, if only marginally, and it weeds out the people who don't care enough to join the discussion.

Edited August 14, 2013 by Clefairy

[Aeronaut]

The point of the mapcycle would be to eliminate rtv and nominate, as I understand it. Baha feels they're being abused.

A good example is Egypt. The only time it gets played is when !! nominates it to troll the server, and it happens to show up in the F1 slot. He has admitted that's the only reason he does it in the past.

A more controversial example is Degroot. Some people who play here really, really like it. Others really, really don't. Most people fall somewhere in the middle, but will tolerate it when it comes up. The issue is that it gets played every. Single. Night. When you bring in that kind of polarizing experience on a regular basis, you drive people away.

And maps that were just played are ineligible for nomination, but the refresh time is just too low in practice. It's only 5 or 6 maps later I think.

Of the 50(?) or so stock maps that exist, I can name only two, Badwater and Frontier, that were played "just about every night" as of a week or two ago. We play on Harvest, Upward, Thunder Mountain, and several other maps pretty frequently, but unless the crazy resurgence in Degroot Keep you're describing has only happened recently, we hardly play it "every single night". Hell, I'd estimate that the server rolls through about 5-6 maps on a typical night depending on what's played. The only monotony I directly recall with regard to map votes is Frontier magically winning more than I'd care to play it.

If map voting doesn't automatically happen at the end of every single map, nominating will only even matter if half the server chooses to RTV off the current map. I don't think we'd see nearly as much abuse of the system if that was the case.

As for the "recently played" list of maps that can't be nominated, I'd completely agree with lengthening it enough to prevent the same group of maps from being played over and over, but sometimes everyone just wants to play cplrtf_dustrushbadbowlgoldwater.

[Top Gun]

I don't see any problem with the system as-is, but then again I'm the type who's willing to play pretty much any of the stock maps at any given time. (DeGroot 4 lyfe!) The thing is, the reason why certain maps come up almost every night the server is active is because those are the maps that the majority of the regulars enjoy playing. And I don't see anything wrong with that...if almost everyone has fun with those, why shouldn't they be seeing the most playtime? I've played in servers with regular map rotations before, and it honestly gets pretty boring knowing exactly which map is coming up next all the time. The nomination method allows for much more immediate flexibility, and even if random stuff like Egypt or 2Fort gets thrown up there as a troll choice, I don't see anything wrong with playing them every once in a long while. The only choices I'd honestly like to see removed from the server are the backwards/rainy/night variants of maps, since those are just clones that take up vote choices from legitimately different maps.

I guess my thing is that I don't really understand having a deep pathological hatred for certain maps, to the point where you'd leave the server for the night if one of them got chosen. If it's a map you don't like, why not just go Demoknight or Battle Medic or Punching Hoovy or Lucksman or Fungineer and just derp around for 20 minutes? I promise you, engaging in random shenanigans is guaranteed to not cause physical harm.

[Bahamut]

To give an example of the map votes that popped up recently, here was one such situation:

pl_retawdab

cp_egypt_final

arena_offblast_final

cp_sdnaldab

Here was another (I believe this happened more than once as well):

pl_retawdab

pl_badwater_rainy

pl_badwater

[insert map I forgot]

These are becoming less isolated occurrences, and are the type of map votes that lead to unsavory results, especially on those who continue to play for the evening. Most people don't seem to care about that aspect, but as the primary server admin, I do care because I don't want a server environment where a particular clique forms and excludes those who dislike the opinion of the server norm by map vote, unwarranted marginalization, etc.

I refrain from nominating maps too much myself due to not wanting to be overbearing in deciding what maps get played next, even if I don't like the choices I have to make some times. However, it's clear that a pure vote for the next map with nominations is broken when this is becoming an increasing regularity and the negative reactions to those types of votes are quite noticeable.

This is far worse from a server management standpoint than a fixed/frequently updated mapcycle IMO, but I want to hear more opinions before forcing that change.

[Lyrai]

Extend the "played recently" flag to last for several hours - days, even - and see if that works.

And, again, delete all Arena maps off the server. Have Powerlord code a plugin that deletes your TF2 inventory, uninstalls TF2, uninstalls Steam, and formats your computer if you try to vote for it.

[Pika22]

To give an example of the map votes that popped up recently, here was one such situation:

pl_retawdab

cp_egypt_final

arena_offblast_final

cp_sdnaldab

Here was another (I believe this happened more than once as well):

pl_retawdab

pl_badwater_rainy

pl_badwater

[insert map I forgot]

*snip*

arena_offblast (or another arena map) usually gets nominated by me or Frost whenever possible.

The Backwards maps and Badwater Variations seem to be everyone trolling everyone else. Give it a while, and it should stop.

[Super-Duper Sombrero]

Extend the "played recently" flag to last for several hours - days, even - and see if that works.

This is not a bad idea, if maybe slightly exaggerated. The "recent maps played" list is populated by the last x maps, not by time, but I see what you're saying. Setting it to 15-20 as opposed to 6(?) could really change things up.

Also, I totally agree with the idea of removing the backwards, rainy, snowy, upside down, inside out variations of existing maps. It's just redundant, unnecessary, and redundant.

On a side note, I'd like to see somewhat regular (weekly?) event nights at some point. I've tossed around the idea of just using admin override to make a set maplist of a bunch of customs, and just ignoring the rtv and mapvotes.

[Lyrai]

This is not a bad idea, if maybe slightly exaggerated. The "recent maps played" list is populated by the last x maps, not by time, but I see what you're saying. Setting it to 15-20 as opposed to 6(?) could really change things up.

Also, I totally agree with the idea of removing the backwards, rainy, snowy, upside down, inside out variations of existing maps. It's just redundant, unnecessary, and redundant.

On a side note, I'd like to see somewhat regular (weekly?) event nights at some point. I've tossed around the idea of just using admin override to make a set maplist of a bunch of customs, and just ignoring the rtv and mapvotes.

If we have the community for it, set up another server that's all that wacky shit. It's nothing but the stupid customs, and sometimes stupid plugins with no warning.

Like Gamemaster's weapon changing thing.

[ParanoidDrone]

I enjoy Badwater a great deal (it's very nice for Spy play) but I agree we play it and various other maps perhaps more than is strictly necessary. The primary negative effect that I feel as a result is stagnation. As in, there's rarely a fresh or exciting experience when the maps are usually the same every time I play.

I do enjoy playing the occasional custom, although they do tend to result in lower player counts since they're not everyone's cup of tea. Multiple customs in a row is probably even worse in that regard. Although I think Baha had a thing semi-recently where we would just romp around on a bunch of customs and vote yea/nay on them? That was enjoyable.

[Native Jovian]

We've tried doing two different servers before, and what usually ended up happening is that one would be full and the other would be dead, so there was sorta no point in having two servers anyway -- only one was ever being used at any given time.

Generally speaking I'm fine with not playing customs. There are enough official maps, and enough variety between them, that you don't really need custom maps to keep things fresh. That said, customs can be fun as well, so I don't think that we should delete all the custom maps off the server entirely.

I'd be okay with only allowing official maps by default, but if we did that I'd probably want to have a custom map night every once in a while, too.

edit -- oh, and I do like the idea of extending the "recently played" count if we're just going to do official maps. Part of the problem with just officials is when we end up doing the same maps repeated over the course of the night. The recently played list should be long enough that you shouldn't see the same map twice in one session.

Edited August 15, 2013 by Native Jovian

[XeroZohar]

My two metals on the matter:

Don't get rid of unique customs. They add some much needed punch to the standard maps. Weather and layout variants of standard maps can go, though, for previously stated reasons.

To be blunt, if voting is to remain as is, even with the "recently played" extensions mentioned, then people need to just suck it up and stop what they are doing to vote for the map they desire. Yes, it interrupts combat, but that's the price you pay if you want the voting. If there was a way to make it more seamless at this point, don't you think someone would have thought of it? Hell, Powerlord adapting the votes to the F-keys was a godsend for a while. For the love of Gabe, stop hitting F1 to remove the prompt and pay attention. Or stop complaining.

And if returning to a mapcycle-only setup, then someone needs to be a dictator and lay down the cycle themselves, balancing it out as much as possible with most played, least played, and custom maps. Voting for the cycle order will only result in the same imbalances as with regular voting. If keeping RTV, then if possible, create a limit of one or two RTVs (and never consecutive) per every five maps to prevent the revolving mapset scenario that people are worried about. If you want variety and voting isn't in effect, you're going to have to deal with the fact that you won't get the map you want all the time. Variety doesn't mean "delete arena/badwater/harvest forever". It shouldn't need saying but well whatever.

Anyway, I probably shouldn't have written this at my current level of fatigue but ehhhhhhhhhh. :zzz:

Edited August 15, 2013 by XeroZohar