• Please go to our Discord or SteamRep for trading. Bans and appeals go HERE

Make Skial/TF2 great again?


  • Total voters
    10

yurisuika

Somewhat Threatening Sniper
I love Skial servers. They have a great amount of regulars and well populated servers.

Unfortunately, Skial also has many servers that are consistently empty. Furthermore, these servers tend to be 24/7 maps that have multiple alternatives. It isn't hard to see why they are empty.

To compound on this, there are many maps that Skial does not offer. Both the bane and opportunity of this is that these maps can not be found anywhere else in TF2. They have simply been lost to time.

image.png


So, why not replace some of these dead 24/7 servers with rotational/vote gamemode servers to offer the many vanilla maps that cannot be found anywhere else? Doing so would both make better use of the hosting and bring in many people looking for these maps.

Unlike the stigma of locking a server to one map whose favourability will come and go, such rotational servers would allow the possibility of the vast catalogue that TF2 has to offer while never being stale. A few games of Badwater is always nice, but knowing there are so many more options not to be found makes the grind of repetitive tactics rather weary.

Just take a look at the long list of CP maps. When was the last time you played some of these? Feeling old yet?

image.png


I sure would love to play these again. I am sure many of you would as well. Take two dead servers and make an Attack/Defend CP and a Symmetric CP server. Do the same with CTF, PLR, KOTH, etc. There is a rotational Payload server, why can't these other gamemodes receive the same treatment?

Associate the Skial name with the great variety that TF2 has built-in.

So what do you think of this proposition?
 

Luke

Legendary Skial King
Contributor
You've taken a screenshot of a bunch of EU servers that are often used, but you're not in an EU timezone.
 

yurisuika

Somewhat Threatening Sniper
While at the time of this screenshot many of the empty servers happened to be EU servers, this momentary evidence is not what my point is based around. I play on the EU servers almost as much as I do the US ones, basically whichever has the higher population I go to. Higher population means better games, no?

When you have multiple servers of the same purpose that are not well populated if not full simultaneously it serves to promote lower numbers than possible.

Here is an example of what I mean.

image.png


You have three Turbine Fast servers based in the US. Two have players in them. One has 8, the other 2. Throw them all on one server and you have a party of 10. For some reason, these people are dividing themselves at the moment when they could have a slightly better game.

Are there consistently enough players in Turbine Fast to warrant three US servers? That would require that there be quite a few more than 48 players on a regular basis. Otherwise the extra servers tend to fragment the player base. Would you rather have three low-population/empty servers or one/two medium-high population servers? This is where my proposition comes into play.

You are an admin, so you can take a look at your server analytics. Aggregate the average player population for duplicate servers. If it tends to fall short of the threshold, you may have a better option. I don't have access to this, but I do see many empty servers around the clock. Many of them tend to be these duplicate servers.

Don't forget human psychology as well. People tend not to join low-population servers as much as they do high-population ones. It becomes self-defeating to have so many duplicate servers at a point.

Plus, why shunt so many great maps in the first place?
 

KinCryos

TF2 Admin
Contributor
Mapper
You have three Turbine Fast servers based in the US. Two have players in them. One has 8, the other 2. Throw them all on one server and you have a party of 10. For some reason, these people are dividing themselves at the moment when they could have a slightly better game.
again, different timezones. judging by the latencies, you yourself seem to have the best connection to the LA timezone, which has the most players in the example, so what's your complaint?
 

yurisuika

Somewhat Threatening Sniper
My complaint is that there are so many vanilla maps that Skial does not offer while at the same time having many 24/7 servers of the same maps, so I would like to see some rotational servers with these vanilla maps.

My suggestion of how to add these servers is just one possibility. It seems like the best way to go about it without adding more servers.

I think you guys are focusing too much on the latter part, instead my focal point is the missing vanilla maps themselves. How you would go about making these servers is up to you, but replacing dead duplicate servers is certainly the most efficient option.
 

KinCryos

TF2 Admin
Contributor
Mapper
to quote a response from a thread that was posted in the proper subforum:
You may think that people would get bored of playing on the same map over and over again, but the fact is that 24/7 maps have always beat out rotation maps by a wide margin.

Why is this the case? No one knows for sure. But from my vast experience in having the most popular tf2 community for almost 10 years now, I always see people leaving in droves when the map changes/is about to change. This behavior seems to damage the server way more than the lack of variety.

Pointing out 1 random rotation server from the furry pound doesn't really prove there's a huge demand for more rotation servers. Our payload servers are barely holding up as they are now. Just because you personally like rotation servers doesn't mean most people like them. And trying to compete with casual mode will most likely end up in failure.

basically, rotation servers seem to have gone the way of Arena mode, dropped by Valve in every way but officially
 

Bottiger

Administrator
Why do you think we aren't using our analytics? Each of the 3 turbine servers you pointed out reaches maximum players every single day.

You are pointing out some servers are near empty at a time when both US and EU players are at their lowest point in the day. It is 2-4 am in the US and around 10 am in Europe.

What you don't understand is that some people refuse to play on other regions, some even filter servers out by ping and will never even see the other servers. Maybe it will help if we start deleting servers until we only have ones that are full even at 2 am, but we could also lose some players forever.

Both the bane and opportunity of this is that these maps can not be found anywhere else in TF2.

I want you to think, why do you think that is? What is stopping someone else from hosting all those many year old maps and getting players? Our experience has told us those other maps are extremely unpopular and not likely to fill. There was only 1 point in time when complete rotation servers had any players in it, and that was when quickplay still included community servers 3-4 years ago, and even then it started to die.

Think about it, if we were wrong, why aren't there 20 other rotation servers out there filled with players right now that you could be playing on? If people wanted this, one would think our payload servers and koth server wouldn't be doing as poorly compared to the 24/7 servers as they are now.

basically, rotation servers seem to have gone the way of Arena mode, dropped by Valve in every way but officially

Casual mode is basically rotation mode, and trying to compete with the same format as official servers after being blocked from quickplay has always resulted in failure.
 
Last edited:

Bottiger

Administrator
I wish it wasn't true, it would be nice to fulfill people's desire for more variety and it would be way easier to have 10 rotation servers instead of 30 single map servers.

But full rotation servers have been the hardest to fill for us in the past 8-9 years we've been hosting. And no one else I've seen has had any success.

As I've said before, we used to have nearly every single map down to gravelpit, and 5 full rotation servers. Full rotation servers were the first to die out when Valve started implementing anti-community changes. Our last one died when a regular was banned for posting child porn, and his friends decided to boycott the server.
 
Last edited:

Dovahhkiin64

Scarcely Lethal Noob
I would personally love to see a 24/7 CTF server with the removed maps that the idiots at Valve decided to remove like sawmill and well so we can have a good balance of the classics while giving the opportunity for players to play newer maps like landfall without being given worthless teams who have no idea how the fuck to defend or make use of teles to get to the enemies base quicker like in Valve's shitty attempt at competitive and casual modes.
 

yurisuika

Somewhat Threatening Sniper
At least Saxton Hale mode is a good example of successful rotational servers. There are maps there voted for less than others, but as long as there are ones that people enjoy, it doesn't hurt to have the less popular ones in there.

And I was never pointing out any servers in particular, as I said before, rather using hypothetical examples to describe my proposition. Basically if there is a server that is dying, it would be a good opportunity to try out a rotational server again.

Also, I am using "rotational" interchangeably with "vote", I don't know if there is a better term for that. At least with votes people can choose the maps themselves and RTV if enough people dislike the map.

But like everything in the universe, life works like a pendulum. In time, rotation servers will become popular again. Hopefully it won't take too long.
 

Jermaphobe

Moderator
Contributor
Legendary Mapper
Also, I am using "rotational" interchangeably with "vote", I don't know if there is a better term for that. At least with votes people can choose the maps themselves and RTV if enough people dislike the map.

That already exists. Skial's current rotation servers