You're not the only one Roker...
Server Change
- Thread starter Caelestis
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You're not the only one Roker...
- Joined
- Mar 24, 2011
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- 176
- Joined
- Mar 8, 2012
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I personally feel that Mesa isn't a very good map (Probably because I can't get any kills on it XD) But will be sad to see it go.
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- Mar 25, 2010
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d'oh. I'll miss BM, but I understand the change.
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- Apr 25, 2012
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This just needs to be repeated again
To tell you the truth, this is for the best, some of you are complaining, oh mesa was the best etc etc, but this was bound to happen, i would never see the server full unless we posted a fast fill, which shouldn't be necessary since, it wouldn't allow other servers to be filled and why sacrifice 3 servers for one? I agree with Goyan, when are other servers are doing extraordinary then we should put blackmesa back up! 
Once again we have come back full circle on the issue concerning Black Mesa, a particular sore subject for those of us who have actually been around longer than a couple of months to fully realize the whole picture and concerns that this is not the first time this has happened.
Yes, BM received Fast Fills, just like most of our other servers do when they were struggling to be filled, so does that mean we purposely sacrificed Mesa to fill our other servers according to one member's logic? Let's also remember that Mesa was a 32 slot server so of course it would struggle in the rankings as one of our other servers did until they lowered the cap to 24 and to our disbelief it started to climb the ranks. Why leadership didn't take that course of action to try and help Mesa is only known behind closed doors.
Also, as stated from previous members, that server was kindly donated to be a Mesa server and we were all told that it was gong to have a 6 month life span at the end of which would be decided, depending on rankings, if Mesa was going to be kept on or not. I'm fairly certain that my math is correct that it hasn't been 6 months yet and had I been the individual who had donated my money for a map I frequent on the premise it would be up for the term indicated for it to suddenly get pulled would leave me a little bit annoyed to say the very least. But, I was not that individual and I don't know the details of those terms.
I am not naive enough to believe that Mesa was going to make this monumental comeback and all would be right in the world. There simply weren't enough pubs keeping it full and it had sporadic times being somewhat full mostly with eGO members. Mesa was the one map I enjoyed most and could depend on to have a slot open for me because our others servers are almost always full.
Just getting tired of being told one thing only to be caught off guard by another.
Yes, BM received Fast Fills, just like most of our other servers do when they were struggling to be filled, so does that mean we purposely sacrificed Mesa to fill our other servers according to one member's logic? Let's also remember that Mesa was a 32 slot server so of course it would struggle in the rankings as one of our other servers did until they lowered the cap to 24 and to our disbelief it started to climb the ranks. Why leadership didn't take that course of action to try and help Mesa is only known behind closed doors.
Also, as stated from previous members, that server was kindly donated to be a Mesa server and we were all told that it was gong to have a 6 month life span at the end of which would be decided, depending on rankings, if Mesa was going to be kept on or not. I'm fairly certain that my math is correct that it hasn't been 6 months yet and had I been the individual who had donated my money for a map I frequent on the premise it would be up for the term indicated for it to suddenly get pulled would leave me a little bit annoyed to say the very least. But, I was not that individual and I don't know the details of those terms.
I am not naive enough to believe that Mesa was going to make this monumental comeback and all would be right in the world. There simply weren't enough pubs keeping it full and it had sporadic times being somewhat full mostly with eGO members. Mesa was the one map I enjoyed most and could depend on to have a slot open for me because our others servers are almost always full.
Just getting tired of being told one thing only to be caught off guard by another.
Alright, let me go ahead and give you a history lesson on Valve Maps.
Now, you're probably going, "What the hell does Valve Maps have to do with Mesa?". Last year, around early-mid 2011, I started getting active in the TF2 Division. My favorite server was our 24/7 Egypt server, which was doing really well in January through late May. Once that point hit, it seemed impossible to fill the server. We had people in Vent, Shoutbox, and the forums telling people to try and fill Egypt, because no one was ever on. After a week and a half, we had to remove the map from being a 24/7 server due to inactivity. Ring a bell so far?
After Egypt being removed, the server was put as a Valve Maps server, which was a rotation server, which, believe it or not, was something that has hardly worked out for any division in eGO (information credited by Ill Legend). The server was perfect for any person who liked competitive play: we went through different maps that we liked in 6v6 play, we had no random crits to worry about, and there was no spread! This was a dream server for members like Dalsia, Super88, Josie Altidore, and myself. Those three names sound really familiar as well, because those three (along with myself) tried to help fill Valve Maps every chance we could. When it got empty, we would stop what we were doing to try and fill it, even if we just sat in spectator.
After a while, the original Valve Maps had to be shut down for our 3rd 2Fort server due to inactivity. I didn't know why Leadership wanted another 2Fort server at the time, but I know that they probably didn't want to keep it forever. After the Australian Christmas shenanigans went by, on New Years day, Leadership and multiple Valve Maps supporters had a meeting in order to bring the server back. What was really cool about this server is that we had the opportunity to tell them what we wanted on the server, and we even came up with our own maplist that we thought would work on the server in order to help it fill. We even had Quick Play here to help us out. We knew that this would be able to work.
Once Valve Maps was put up, we had idlers on in the mornings (a new semester in school started for most TF2 Division members) and we had people playing in the afternoon and into the evening. Sadly, an update came out for Team Fortress 2 that changed how the Quick Play system worked. Now, servers had to be entirely vanilla in order for QP to be available on your server. This took a drastic hit on Valve Maps, since, as said before, we had no crits and no spread on this server. Now, we had to try everything that we could in order to keep this server up. Idling through day and night, we couldn't help it in time. About a month and a half, we had four members, who supported Valve Maps to their fullest, either get banned or they decided to leave. This hurt the server rankings for VM a lot since the people who actually decided to help the server couldn't be there to help.
What happened at this point? A member by the name of Kazoo helped bring Valve Maps back to life. She joined eGO around the first time we had Valve Maps before it was removed. She had a large thread wanting the opinions of users if we should remove the more competitive aspects that Valve Maps had in order to have Quick Play working on the server. The majority did say yes to this change, which hurt me a lot. I was getting into competitive TF2 at that time, and it was just insane to hear that we had to turn to this, but I dealt with it. While I wasn't in eGO at the time, I tried to do what I could to fill it, as that server was a nice memory of mine.
Once I came back into eGO, I still did what I could to help Valve Maps out. Leadership started to do Fast Fills for all servers that were empty, which did work out for the first couple of weeks. Using this and the current supporters of Valve Maps, we had the server rise up in the rank over time. We started out around 1100, which we then rose up to around 650 over three months, and now we are at, at the time of this post of course, 383. That is a huge jump from when we first had the server. How did we get to this point? We did what we could to being members into this server. Our wonderful Division Leader spidEY even asks me about changes that we can put into this server, makes a thread on it, and it usually does get put into here. We want this server to improve and we've been showing it.
Now, after all this talk, you're still probably wondering, "Nik, what in the hell does Valve Maps have to do with Black Mesa?". Take what I have said around the end of the paragraph before this one and try to think about Black Mesa for a second. Around the start of Mesa, if I am mistaken please correct me, the servers rank was around 1.9k. That is around a rank of a server that Game Tracker, if they even decide to still track the server, will consider Dead. Over a three month period, Mesa rose about 205 ranks and is currently sitting at, also at the time of this post, 1692. That isn't too much of a jump at all, and the server is still struggling to get full and to STAY full throughout the whole day. Our other servers can do that over night at times, but I know that if you get them full during the day, 95% of the time they will stay full until a map comes on that no one likes and usually empties the server. At that point, we REMOVE the map. Sound familiar again?
You guys brought no backup to the server. You guys complained to Leadership to bring back Black Mesa when you guys did barely anything to bring it back to its old Rank 50 days. Its saddening that in the first post on April 1st, there was a bunch of posts like yours, Roker. What was surprising was that Leadership accepted a donated server, which is another thing that eGO hardly ever does, and to see how it would work out over a six month period. Through half of this trial period, the server barely rose in rank, compared to other servers we have. Foundry, a map that came out during Australian Christmas 2011, is at 341. LAST MONTH, this server was at a low 786~. Look at that difference over a month. Members have dedication towards this server.
Lets also look at Dustbowl while I am at it, you know, the map that everyone hated because you see it on a 24/7 server all the time? We had to start the server back at around 1.8k. Now, last month, Dustbowl sat at around the High 1k-low 900's. As of today, Dustbowl is sitting at 288. This is just amazing. I mean, Dustbowl is really bad, right? Its surprising to see it at 288 after all the hate its gotten and the lack of support on the server when we first got it. I'll admit it, I hate Dustbowl. You can't deny the fact that the server rank rose up so much at around the same period as Black Mesa.
At the end of this, I'm not saying Black Mesa is a bad map, but there is no reason to get angry when you guys can't even fill one server, but we have three others that will fill no problem. I have no idea how Doomsday will work out, but with all the hype that Pyromania has received, it will do better than what Black Mesa has done.
- Joined
- Aug 24, 2008
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Blackmesa was one of my favorite maps. It was the map that got me to join eGO years ago, and I am sad to see this change, but I understand what needs to be done. If quickplay is enabled on this new doomsday map, it will almost always been full thanks to there being only one doomsday map. That will be good and help rise the ranks of the server. The sad thing is that even when I would try to fill blackmesa, and we could never get it about a 4v4 or something, I was still having a great time with those who were on. This whole ordeal of "keep blackmesa" but blackmesa always being near empty reminds me of long ago when we had a warpath server, for those who remember that. RIP blackmesa, you were a favorite of mine and I hope to see you again in the future on events and maybe a server one day.
Let's also remember that mesa was not a quick play map, a feature all our other servers have giving them a huge advantage over mesa as far as bringing in pubs goes. I believe, if a mesa server ever comes back, that we should have quick play on it and see what happens. Obviously the way things are now have not been working.
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- Jun 22, 2008
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Let's not forget that foundry was supposed to be a "temporary" new map too until it became a popular map. I can appreciate how people feel about Mesa going away (even though I never liked the map), I remember the old Convoy server, the old Warpath server, the old Turbine server....I hung out in each of those maps and over time they went away. It happens, but my friends are still here, even if the maps aren't.
Maybe Doomsday will turn out to be another keeper if it's good, I don't know, I haven't had a chance to play it yet.
Maybe Doomsday will turn out to be another keeper if it's good, I don't know, I haven't had a chance to play it yet.
Quite honestly, I don't get all the anger. As I eluded to before, it isn't as though Black Mesa no longer EXISTS. We will still be using it for events and such. Which is still likely beyond the amount of activity most people currently put into mesa.
Quick Play won't work for Mesa because it is a custom map.
Thanks for the reply, all I can say back to that is this.
We are eGO, a gaming community, THE gaming community. Probably the largest one in TF2, and we can't even fill a server. We as a community are unable to fill a single server that doesn't have quick play on it. This has left us with few options to use as servers and in turn has made us a VERY boring community. Apart from events and clean servers I have no reason to want to play on eGO servers. There is absolutely nothing special about any of our servers, and therefore we have no reason to attract new and interesting recruits. By only allowing normal servers to succeed and climb ranks, quick play has single handely destroyed everything interesting about this community. It has caused leadership to make the most predictable and boring decisions about every server change that have been made since it's addition to TF2.
This isn't an RIP mesa thread, this is an RIP interesting server thread. I sincerely hope that one day this community returns to something that people have a real reason to join.
-Roker
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- On sentence 2-3: Why do you think Black Mesa is being removed then?
On sentence 4: After looking in the PSC forum for the applications, 15 out of the 40 apps are for TF2. While that is about 38%, you still can't deny that people are joining our "VERY boring community".
On sentence 6: Any community needs recruits. This sentence is probably the dumbest one out of your paragraph. Even with someone who's GameME stats shows that he spent the most time in Mesa probably got about one recruit the whole time from it and we have had pubs on the servers.
On sentence 7: If I am not mistaken, I believe the CS:S Division has or is close to having the most members in one division. So, since CS:GO is going to have a Quick Play system like TF2, does that mean the CS Division will just become uninteresting, given your logic?
Might be just me, but I find it odd that you have those kinds of feelings towards our community when, as an EC, you spend time to try to make everyone have a great time here.
- Joined
- Mar 24, 2011
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- 176
You make fair points Nik.. honestly I don't know why is the server being removed, after all it's a donation server but that's beyond my rank. All I know is many valuable players (notice I didn't say members) still played Mesa.
To be fair I agree, we haven't been able to fill Mesa as we used to. There is a reason for that, it's called real life, I used to be in Mesa 2-3 hours a day. Now I just can't and I guess it's the case with many players.
I don't wan't to start another argument.. I'm donating a server for the next month and up to 50% of the server for the following 6 months. It won't be an eGO server as I don't think leadership will take a donated server again, and it might not fill because... well it's not an eGO server, members won't be there trying to fill it and it won't be on the same stats as eGO servers.. like it or not stats contribute to the community, people stick to the servers in part because of the ranks.
Can I post info of this server on this forum? I know I shouldn't be advertising other servers but it's a particular case.
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