Time to Drop the Truth Nuke
Bigger does not mean better
The TL; DR for you people is don’t try turning something into something it's not or you're just going to get a bad result from it and just because you think it's ok does not mean the same to others.
A few weeks ago, I noticed that Skial’s max player count on the 24/7 payload server increased a large amount. At first, I thought it was a bug, so I hopped on to see if it was true and lo and behold, I was correct. I was told that there was no discussion about considering a server size increase nor Skial forums and that it was probably a bug with Skial premium. I was worried about creating a forum because I thought I would be called crazy, and I should “enjoy this more modernized version of Payload” or stop whining about a “Minor” change. And a week later I checked on Skial to see people complaining about the recent change. Since I've played Skial’s Payload for more than 2 years and I can finally call myself a server regular among the crowd I thought about speaking out about my thoughts on this recent change.
The server is a stretch form the core vanilla 24-32 player experience and Identity
It may come to a shock to some of you but TF2 was a game designed to be a 24 to 32 player experience in mind, not anything higher than that and lower, and an increase like this can stray away/disrupt its playability.
You may ask, well Skial made it 32. Why does 40 look like a big jump and I say that the 24 to 32 is the sweet spot on how many players should be in a given server.
The Identity of Skial’s Payload 32 is that there are no crits, no bullet spread, a somewhat positive atmosphere and it comes down to having fun first than winning.
Due to Skial’s VIP subscription servers can go up to 37 temporarily to accommodate for the people who have paid for it. When I mean temporarily the players who have not paid for VIP can’t join a full server but the ones that did can join up to 37 and if reached beyond that threshold it will force a player out that did not pay for it. This means that it will never stay at 37 for long and will naturally decay back down to 32.
As I recall from a post from an admin, the Skial servers try to preserve the original gameplay of TF2 and not stray away from it.
Performance on Servers
Yes, this is an issue for lower end devices and as someone who first played TF2 on a lower end device I do see an issue that a jump of 8 players can have an effect of the server connecting to your given instance of the game which also has to do the same to the other players in a server.
The excuse of “Go and Use Mastercomfig and get your PC optimized to play TF2” just shifts the burden to players, rather than addressing the root issue. A person might experience that their computer is not good enough to play this game that runs on over 21-year-old code even though that just ran fine yesterday.
Players new and old should not go out of their way to do something that the developers should have done a long time ago.
Go to Another Server if You Don’t Like This One
Skial is the biggest community server by far and has the effective gold standard when it comes to hosting servers.
You may ask “Why Don't You Go to UGC or Uncletopia” and I say that these are not solutions. Uncletopia has the hardest TryHards in all of tf2 right next to MGE servers and UGC mostly has Gimmick non vanilla servers.
I'm not going to leave my community to pursue some cheesy game modes like prop hunt and VSH.
Telling people to go to another is not going to help Skial’s problem of player retention and revenue.
The other question in the room is “Why Not and Go play Casual” and I say that Casual is a crime to TF2, I’ve tried so hard to like Casual ever since it was bot free a while ago but I keep on coming back to the same conclusion that it's a broken piece of trash due to the the Long queue times, Not being able to really form of a community and It was designed to be a competitive version of TF2 in mind when Meet Your Match Dropped.
The FriendShips we made along the way
The Friends that I’ve made on Skial accounts for more than 80% of my friends list thanks to Skial’s existence alone.
I can’t just leave the friends/community that I was apart for years to go to one that I know none from, I will not join a soulless Casual and TryHardTopia.
Game Balance
Due to an increase of players each team now has 4 more players which might sound like nothing but has a big impact on gameplay.
Classes that utilize explosive/splash damage classes like Soldier and Demoman get soft buffs while classes like the spy get severely nerfed making them even more useless.
This also makes classes like Engineer more annoying to fight on defense due to staking.
The classes that would be affected negatively for example: Scout due to sentries, Pyro due to range and Spy because he is Spy.
This also makes it harder to push due to relying on pub pushes more often and flanks being covered almost at all times.
It would be more situational for every class but at the end of the day it makes it harder to push, makes it more of a chaotic/spam filled mess and feels more crowded.
Skial Revenue
I know that Skial makes money from selling VIP to players and they Decided to increase players to increase their revenue and to people who have not paid they see ads which generates Skial money. Due to this I could imagine Skial doing this as a no brainer but will have negative effects.
People not liking joining servers where it feels unbearable to fight could cause them to stop buying VIP subscriptions and for the people who have not paid, they will leave losing Skial ad revenue.
Possible Compromise/Ideas
A possible compromise/Idea is to make a new server for 24 or 32 so there are more options for people to choose or just revert it back to normal.
The Reason I Came to Speak Today
The reason I came to speak today was because of an unfair change done to a very beloved server where you could make friends, talk about the political state of the world or just have a good time and I wouldn't trade it for anything else but that.
The People that came to this forum came here because they cared about this server which is the same reason I did as well.
Conclusion
In conclusion the 32 payload servers offered the best experience of a payload server in TF2.
And for the people that are angry about this post I'm not sorry the only people who would want it to stay at 40 would be those who have no job, showing people dead memes for attention, Rage bating for whatever reason and got their frontal lobe removed but at the end or the day get Rexatronzed.
Sorry If it's long or wasn't professional or something, if there is demand I will probably make a shorter one or use AI yourself or something I don’t really care.
