The Future Is Not Bright

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old.Zeiram

Guest
I just waited an hour for a Q3 duel and then everyone left the server. Ten minutes later a modemer turned up who wanted to play tourney1. Mentally destroyed I had no choice but to disconnect near the start of the game because he wasn’t really shooting back. As Q3 is designed of multiplayer gaming long waits and games against less experienced players is definitely going to become the norm.

Before I go any further I’d like to say that I realise that some very generous individuals donate a lot of their free time to create by far the best on line gaming service in the UK and that I’m very grateful to these people and appreciate what they do.

There are a number of reasons I’m considering giving up playing game on line.

I’m not a great player, but I am a regular player and I really don’t want to play casual players. The sort of people who don’t know the maps, don’t shoot back and can’t even control their movement. I’d rather not play than play someone like this. The number of these casual players seems to have rocketed and Q3’s server browser makes it very easy for them to find a server and connect. Before they had to find the ip address but now it’s all too easy.

With only four tourney servers I don’t think a 15 minute time limit is the most sensible choice. Sure, I’d like play a 15 minute game as much as the next guy but I’d much rather pay a 10 minute game and reduce my waiting time by 33%. Even with 10 minutes four servers will mean a lot of waiting. The memory requirements of running a Q3 server means Barrysworld won’t have the resources to run many more than four so things aren’t likely to improve. While the number of players is increasing at a shocking rate the number of servers is falling. That can’t be good.

The ping seems to have gone up from around 40 on the old test servers to around 50 on the full game servers. Not a huge increase but it makes a big difference in the game.

What’s the solution to all this? I don’t know about anyone else but I’d rather pay for something good than get something bad for free. I’d really like to see a £10 a month direct debit service (run by Barrysworld) that offered subscriber only access to servers. The benefit of this would be no casual players and therefore much less waiting for games. No casual players would also mean a higher standard of opposition so games would be much more fun. No more players wanting to play stupid maps or talking through an entire game. The extra money would mean a vastly smaller server to player ratio and probably slightly improved performance and reliability.

I can’t be the only one who would pay £120 or more a year to be able to connect to a server and after a short wait be in a game against a player similarly matched to my own ability. I know this seems like a step backwards in online gaming, but it’s the only way to segment players in way which Quakeworld did so well for Quake 1.

I’d be interested in others opinions on this matter. Who else would rather pay a minimal fee for a service such as this?

-Zeiram

P.S.
Have I gone on a bit? I don’t sound mad do I?
 
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old.buckleb

Guest
Leaving aside your preferences about who you would, and would not, like to play online, you have a valid point about a subscription based service.

I seem to remember that this topic came up during one of Barrysworlds' crisis situations last year (could have been the year before). A surprising number of people were in favour of it.

I guess the problem must be the fact that there are now a number of online-gaming services that are 'free' (Wireplay etc), and BW would effectively cease to become viable if a majority left to use these services.

Of course when unmetered internet access becomes available the situation will change again, and I can see gaming sites having to charge, unless they are heavily sponsored or subsidised.

BW has always been pretty much the best gaming service for a number of years. Unfortunatley, the efforts of a small group of talented individuals are being trampled by the onslaught of more commercially driven services.

It wouldn't surprise me to learn that the BW staff have at least thought about this, perhaps not to implement a purely subscription driven service, but maybe a two-tier one.

This topic will run and run, and it's about time it was brought up again
smile.gif
 
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old.Maverick

Guest
timelimit on tournament servers should be set to 10 tonight and will take effect next time they automatically reboot (early tommorrow morning).

maxplayers has already been reduced to 4 (and should have taken effect when they rebooted this morning) which with the above should ensure that 20 minutes is the longest anyone on a server has to wait.

It should also help stop the servers filling up with specs who are very new to Q3 and don't realise that it's a tournament server. Something which seems to happen a lot with higher playerlimits.

You should also see a ping reduction as well due to the reduction in the number of spectator slots.

// maverick
 
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old.Necro

Guest
Q3 is still reletivly young and game scenes are always a mess at this stage. Many servers, quite honestly, are badly setup to start with. Any half-decent LPB will do well on Q3 servers because even a HPB of the same skill level has got a noticable lag difference between firing weapons and anything coming out..

I think that if BW went subscriber only its popularity would go down by around 70% (when push comes to shove, most people will go for the cheaper options). I might pay BW if they gave a connection superior to most ISPs but i would not pay them just to get onto a player list.
 
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old.Zeiram

Guest
Heh, I think I overreacted a bit last night when I wrote that. I was just sulking because I waited an hour and didn’t get a game. Playing today at 7:00 things seem better. Could just be that around 12:00 is not the best time to play.

I’m still in favour of paying for the service, because extra money can only be a good thing. When I suggested Barrysworld offered a subscription I meant keep the current service running along with the subscriber supported service.

-Zeiram
 

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