Quick Explanation on Quickplay/Server State

[Mister36]

So, with the recent changes to the physical location/IPs of the servers, we have had issues getting/keeping them full. Many people attribute this to the fact that for whatever reason the favorites did not move over for most people as they should have, and while that certainly didn't help with regulars and such, it does not appear to be the main reason.

As the tech team and leadership have worked on and watched the status of the servers, and the FFTF has done their job of filling, they have noticed that we are barely receiving players through quickplay.

Normally, we could get 5-8 people to help fill a server, and 20 minutes later it would be 10-10, then we could filter out and the server would stay alive. This has not been the case since the change.

One way you check this (if you have admin powers) is to do sm_connectmethod in console. You will see a few ways that people join the server, such as
serverbrowser_favorites
serverbrowser_internet
steam (invite by friends, etc)
and also quickplay/quickpick_#.
Even when we had 20 people in the server, there would be 1 or 2 coming in through quickplay.

So essentially at this point we are still figuring out how to get quickplay back into gear, Leadership/FFTF is still asking for help with filling, since that is a critical part of getting quickplay up and running as it was. In all the information we have learned about the mechanic, a regular player base has always been a significant part of it's success.

Thanks for all of your help, and with continued effort, we can bring the servers back up and get everything rolling at full speed again.

If you have any more questions about more technical stuff with quickplay, I can give more detailed answers here or just reach out to me.

EDIT: More info here http://www.edge-gamers.com/forums/showpost.php?p=2715926&postcount=15

 

[Insomnia Princess]

This was posted by Mister36 with the approval and support of leadership. He's right on point with what he says and I could not have said it better myself.

Also, I'd like to publicly thank Mister for his hard work in helping us with the servers and trying to resolve this issue. Tech team has also reached out to me and Adam to say how much they appreciate his help.

I know the dropping rankings and decline in activity on the server is discouraging but please know we are aware and we are working on it. Be patient and keep up the good work. We'll get this turned around.

 

[Adam]

This was posted by Mister36 with the approval and support of leadership. He's right on point with what he says and I could not have said it better myself.

Also, I'd like to publicly thank Mister for his hard work in helping us with the servers and trying to resolve this issue. Tech team has also reached out to me and Adam to say how much they appreciate his help.

I know the dropping rankings and decline in activity on the server is discouraging but please know we are aware and we are working on it. Be patient and keep up the good work. We'll get this turned around.

Couldn't have said it better myself.

GardenGroveVW has been working his butt off and Mister36 has been there helping him most of the way. So I too would like to extend a big thank you to them.

We are on top of this as much as we can be. Don't let the decline in activity discourage you. This division has gone through MUCH worse in the past. We always bounce back and this will be no different.

 

[Fullmetal]

I had no idea you could check how someone connected to the server.

 

[Insomnia Princess]

I had no idea you could check how someone connected to the server.

Yep. Isn't that a nifty command?

 

[noblenote]

A generally overlooked contributor to this issue is TF2's decline in popularity, the game isn't growing.

Valve has also made some unfavorable changes to the quickplay system over the past few years, hurting community servers.

I'm not preaching the end of the world here, but I mean the game isn't too far off from being 10 years old, so I don't think people should blame themselves in any amount for our servers' decline in popularity. Just today we filled harvest, once it neared 24 and some of our filling crew started to leave, it emptied.

This community is also in pain from TF2's decline in player base. The FFTF was only created about 2 years ago by Goyan, before then eGO didn't need something like that because we had enough members to actually play on the servers for entertainment and keep them full at the same time. With our limited members now, "filling" a server is something we do more than ever before.

A prime example of this was egypt (shoutout to all my eGOptians), we had the strongest player base of any server I've ever seen, a filled egypt would be at least a third regulars. But as TF2 lost players and Valve made some quickplay changes, it was proven that a strong player base is not enough to make a successful server. More effort was put into keeping egypt successful than keeping 100 dustbowls successful, and we still lost the war.

Again, not preaching the end of the world, but foundry is going through similar things egypt did. I see us losing servers in the future much more than gaining them. Dustbowl and 2fort are the future (lol).

A solution to this issue is still non-existent to my knowledge.

Take everything I said in moderation, I know most of it isn't exactly positive.

P.S. I love the new box locations, 5 ping for me #Florida

 

[Insomnia Princess]

A generally overlooked contributor to this issue is TF2's decline in popularity, the game isn't growing.

Valve has also made some unfavorable changes to the quickplay system over the past few years, hurting community servers.

I'm not preaching the end of the world here, but I mean the game isn't too far off from being 10 years old, so I don't think people should blame themselves in any amount for our servers' decline in popularity. Just today we filled harvest, once it neared 24 and some of our filling crew started to leave, it emptied.

This community is also in pain from TF2's decline in player base. The FFTF was only created about 2 years ago by Goyan, before then eGO didn't need something like that because we had enough members to actually play on the servers for entertainment and keep them full at the same time. With our limited members now, "filling" a server is something we do more than ever before.

A prime example of this was egypt (shoutout to all my eGOptians), we had the strongest player base of any server I've ever seen, a filled egypt would be at least a third regulars. But as TF2 lost players and Valve made some quickplay changes, it was proven that a strong player base is not enough to make a successful server. More effort was put into keeping egypt successful than keeping 100 dustbowls successful, and we still lost the war.

Again, not preaching the end of the world, but foundry is going through similar things egypt did. I see us losing servers in the future much more than gaining them. Dustbowl and 2fort are the future (lol).

A solution to this issue is still non-existent to my knowledge.

Take everything I said in moderation, I know most of it isn't exactly positive.

P.S. I love the new box locations, 5 ping for me #Florida

Actually, you make some really good points. Everything you say is pretty spot-on. That said, it's definitely not an "end of the world' scenario (as you said). DoD:S is another old game and they have seen many of the same struggles we face. QuickPlay is definitely a killer and we're constantly battling the changes Valve makes to it to remain up to date and in prime positions.

I cannot thank Goyan enough for creating the FFTF and all the fillers and captains that have come since then and worked hard for our servers. That said, I remember a time before QP when that would not have been needed because good community servers stayed filled on their own. It's unfortunate but something we don't have a lot of control over so we have to roll with the changes as we can.

On the topic of the game being old and declining:

In Steam's Top Played Games, TF2 is still sitting in 3rd place, just under Dota 2 and CS:GO so the game is not a bust, even as old as it is. Raptr had it in the Top 20 Games list in October but it took a decline in Nov-Dec. Kotaku wrote a piece, also in October about how TF2 is still around, even after all these years.

That said, independent communities have to work even harder to fight in rank against Valve maps. As you said, the QuickPlay changes have hurt communities like ours and sometimes it's like fighting an uphill battle to get found by new players and casual players who just hop in Valve servers.

I agree wholeheartedly that people should not blame themselves for any decline in the server rankings or playerbase. We're fighting against a lot of different issues here and leadership is working diligently to give us the best opportunities to be known as a TF2 community and to keep our servers alive. It is our goal to not have to cut any more this year and possibly to even grow enough to introduce a new server in 2015. Time will tell but I know that all of our members are devoted to seeing this community grow and that means a lot to me (and I know my fellow leaders agree).

Also, #GoFlorida (my home state lol)

 

[Sephiroth]

I had no idea you could check how someone connected to the server.

Yep. Isn't that a nifty command?

*cough* and _who_ put this on the servers? me? couldnt be!

 

[Rawburt]

*cough* and _who_ put this on the servers? me? couldnt be!

ur beautiful

 

[Fullmetal]

*cough* and _who_ put this on the servers? me? couldnt be!

Let me sm_who that and get back to you.

 

[Nix]

Noble said it all.

I'm of the opinion that we're in kind of the ELO hell of quickplay, so we're in an endless cycle of people not coming in. But IP's and Noble's points burst that bubble.

I enjoyed a nice <10 ping when our servers were in dallas

 

[Mister36]

Everyone is making good points and I am glad that this has brought about discussion, but I didn't want to get too deep on the first post, so once I get home tonight I will explain a bit more some of the reasoning behind the issues, especially in relation to ping times, game popularity, etc.

 

[Ezekiel]

*cough* and _who_ put this on the servers? me? couldnt be!

You should know by now that tech guys are usually the unsung heroes.

 

[Ledzo]

Thanks Mister36, keep up the good work!

 

[Mister36]

So I want to explain a little more with the ideas that have been brought up so far. Noble and IP talked about the popularity of the game. That discussion could be debated and argued in it's own merit, but it is important to note that in the past couple of months, TF2 had it's highest number of concurrent players (I believe around 70K) in almost four years. IP mentioned that TF2 is still in top 5 in played games on Steam. I don't think that raw numbers is the issue here.

Take a look at the numbers for our ranks; here is the week before the change:

January 7th 2015

Hightower: Rank 961 (+28)
Harvest: Rank 1362 (+48)
Dustbowl: Rank 1446 (+47)
2Fort: Rank 1518 (+59)
Foundry: Rank 2078 (+241)

We were having no issues keeping numbers up right up to the point of the switch. As soon as we moved them, nearly all red. While the numbers of players might be a factor, the bigger issue is that most players go default to Valve servers from quickplay; unless we go and picket Valve to remove it's servers, we are unlikely to get help in that manner. (you are of course welcome to do so if you so desire).

As for latency/ping issues, that is also something I don't think is a major concern. After all, lot's people play from the east coast, and even up here from the wasteland of Minnesota my pings are still quite decent. Does quickplay prioritize people to servers with good latency for them? Reportedly yes. Does that seem to matter in our case? Apparently not.

I had done some testing over the weekend in trying to find our servers through the quickplay browser (the Quickpick mentioned in OP). This shows a certain number of servers that the mechanic would normally send you to, but it shows a list and you can choose from them. You can test this out by hitting "Play Multiplayer", then going to the settings gear at the bottom after selecting the appropriate game mode (Harvest is koth, Hightower is PL race, etc). If you hit "community servers" then all the defaults, which our servers are, you can then look at a group which the mechanic thinks would be a good fit. I never saw ours even ONCE on there, and I tried all of our servers. What I did see were servers which were empty and had pings of 150 ms, while I was in one of our servers which had players and good ping.

All of these factors play into the success of the mechanic, but at this point still all we can do is fill the servers to the best of our ability and hope to pull them up by the bootstraps. It may just take time.

 

[jhnsn]

So, you got new servers, right? Did you remember to copy over the quickplay keys? If you didn't, you are starting off at step 0. I carefully read the quickplay rules several times when quickplay was first introduced. One of the things Valve stressed is that part of the quickplay algorithm records not only ping, but average player population and average player connect time. Obviously, higher numbers are better. The idea is, if your server is full, and the people who join your server spend lots and lots of time there, then they are having a good time, and thus anybody else that joins your server will also have a good time. However, if your server is new, your average population number is 0, and your average connect time is 0. This puts you at the bottom of the list. If you copied the keys, good for you! I have no idea what your problem is. If you didn't, unless you just happen to have backups of boxes you are no longer running, your hard earned quickplay standing has been lost forever. Womp Womp. Find another way to fill it. If you can up your averages, then you'll have quickplay spitting in new players in no time.

 

[GardenGroveVW]

So, you got new servers, right? Did you remember to copy over the quickplay keys? If you didn't, you are starting off at step 0. I carefully read the quickplay rules several times when quickplay was first introduced. One of the things Valve stressed is that part of the quickplay algorithm records not only ping, but average player population and average player connect time. Obviously, higher numbers are better. The idea is, if your server is full, and the people who join your server spend lots and lots of time there, then they are having a good time, and thus anybody else that joins your server will also have a good time. However, if your server is new, your average population number is 0, and your average connect time is 0. This puts you at the bottom of the list. If you copied the keys, good for you! I have no idea what your problem is. If you didn't, unless you just happen to have backups of boxes you are no longer running, your hard earned quickplay standing has been lost forever. Womp Womp. Find another way to fill it. If you can up your averages, then you'll have quickplay spitting in new players in no time.

Quickplay 'tokens' / login were transferred over and sv_setsteamaccount was trasffered over.

I have also been hearing that 'some' peoples favorites updated days later.

 

[shaPOW!]

The good news is that Foundry last night had a batch of regulars playing, and after some of them left for the night a few brand new people who I have never seen before showed up (1000 points in gameME scores).

Hopefully that means the quick play thing is now happening and we can start getting new players joining a half full server.

 

[Mister36]

So, in the past couple of days, something happened to Dustbowl, and it has finally gotten quickplay back to normal, as show here:

players...
- =(eGO)= Mister36 serverbrowser_favorites
- Fiyah powa serverbrowser_internet
- theFuzzyChinnedCrusader quickplay_1
- The_little_HIPPO_that_could quickplay_2
- Sir Bedeviere serverbrowser_favorites
- Насильно России quickplay_1
- (Qc)hamel194 quickplay_1
- ngrier583 quickplay_2
- =(eGO)= Dark Moon
- Popolac serverbrowser_favorites
- Campe?o mundial de bets quickplay_4
- =(eG)=Chronic sonic tonic steam
- Asc BR quickplay_2
- =(eGO)= Overbeck serverbrowser_favorites
- A Neverending Supply Of Memes quickplay_1

Because Wednesday and Thursday it was full for almost the entire evening, it has gone up more than 1000 ranks, and that isnt counting Friday or today yet. We are coming back!