Community retirement of RANKED

(sereNADE) #1

Was wondering how the community would feel if all the operators of the remaining popular etqw servers switched their ranked servers to unranked. While many new players probably like their shiny medals I think if all of the popular destinations were no longer ranked we could see some better games and maybe more promod for popular consumption. Of course, this would take an agreement between some of the clans/communities to stop supporting ranked servers.

I would like to see some of the popular servers switch to unranked and be supported by a good portion of the remaining players. It also makes on-the-fly admin much easier.

(.Chris.) #2

I would very much like this but can’t see it happening.

Would love for a couple of custom maps to be played along side stock maps and custom stock campaigns were the crap stock maps aren’t used at all.

(Dthy) #3

I’d like to see this aswell, but the chance of it happening is pretty much 0. There have been many discussions about this everywhere (These forums and old ones(RIP)).

(Aristotle) #4

I agree completely. You also need to keep in mind the people here on the forums for the most part have always been in favor of not having ranked servers anymore. The thing is that even though we are many, we still represent a small portion of the players who still play regularly. I would be willing to say that for every one of us there are two or three people who don’t know about these forums, or just don’t care about them. We wouldn’t get an accurate representation of the community as a whole. Also, there are some server owners who don’t know or care about these forums as well, and you’d have to talk to them in game or on their website, and I am sure that some may not want the make the switch. Despite what you think, there are still people who stat whore, because it’s kept track of on their ends still I believe (even if it wasn’t that wouldn’t stop some of the people). If some people held out and didn’t switch their servers over to unranked, I am willing to bet the majority of players would flock to those servers and with the exception of a small few, the servers who did make the switch would fall dead.

(Boktor) #5

Voted yes, because it obviously keeps the custom scene down.

I think unranked would have done a lot better if it weren’t for the bots…

(Breo) #6

Will Activision shutdown the “account servers” if nobody pays the ranked ones :confused:

(sereNADE) #7

keep your eyes and ears open because i heard some rumors about something someone was doing but i am sworn to hush

(Testeo) #8

The ranked servers are a way of ensuring that a particular server configuration is running under a certain standard (vanilla) to which many of us are usually playing.

Personally I prefer that this be maintained and use non-Ranked servers to run new maps, mods and custom configurations created by the community.

(.Chris.) #9

[QUOTE=Testeo;381210]The ranked servers are a way of ensuring that a particular server configuration is running under a certain standard (vanilla) to which many of us are usually playing.

Personally I prefer that this be maintained and use non-Ranked servers to run new maps, mods and custom configurations created by the community.[/QUOTE]

Putting “Vanilla Settings” in the server name achieves the same thing.

(Apocalypse_Pony) #10

I think the only concern would be new players (which I’m stunned there still are) and those who don’t pay attention to such things would think the player base went bye-bye. Although, if I remember correctly, no filters are set by default.

Myself, frankly I just go where the players are. Which at the moment are all on ranked servers.

(sereNADE) #11

Say three or four popular etqw servers all agreed to switch to unranked. It might have a more significant impact than if just one server went it alone. That is more of what I should have been clear with. How people who play now would feel about that and if they would still play regularly on their favorite server (if it happens to be ranked) if it switched to unranked. New players would be a worry in a later phase.

(Apocalypse_Pony) #12

Again for myself, I would be just as happy (or more so) playing on an unranked bh server, as a ranked one.

Hard to say about the (remaining) community at large. Best guess, they too would go where the players are.

(sereNADE) #13

Don’t forget, there is no longer punkbuster support for rtcw, wolfet, and etqw. Not sure what is going to happen, if anything, to the point of “ranked” since it requires PB. Maybe SD can post some info?

(Susefreak) #14

I’m all for it and willing to throw our ranked servers overboard.

(Hackman84) #15

What’s the benefit of going unranked for the (uninformed) player? Because as mentioned most players have no idea about this forum. Server cost might be lower but that doesn’t affect the average player.
And don’t forget there are (popular) servers where the admins love stats and won’t change to unranked.
Unless you mean switching to promod, which (unfortunately) never reached the critical mass of players. And now the number of actual players is just to low so that you could divide it.
What I’m trying to say is the actual playing community is a lot more lazy and uninformed than this forum[over exaggerated]. They have shown they don’t like to play custom maps or mods. And I’m NOT saying it’s the fault of mapers or moders, they have done a great job!
So it’s just won’t happen…

(.Chris.) #16

Relaxed server options:

Ability to make campaigns with any mixture of maps.

Ability to make campaigns last more than 3 maps.

Ability to use custom maps.

Ability to use mods, ET:QW Pro with it’s multitude of options not found in the base game for both the server and client or QW:TA with it’s custom weapons and vehicles which are optional.

They have shown they don’t like playing without ranks.

(tokamak) #17

With reason. Ranked play is a quality seal. The old ‘they play for statistics’ conundrum has been demolished long ago when the stat servers ceased to work. The ranked servers right now mean that ETQW didn’t suffer the same fate WET did. I dare say that should WET have ranked servers from the start then it would still be played by masses of players. Every single time I mention WET on other gamer forums people complain about all the random custom **** that has been thrown on the game.

That said, I really think the option of random three map campaigns would add a lot of variety to the game. It would give a completely different dynamic with the upgrades people own at the start of a map.

(Susefreak) #18

Quality assurance isn’t decided on if a server is ranked or not, it’s about how the community on a server interacts and how admins deal with issues. There have been a couple of popular servers but also various servers with a bad rep, all of them being Ranked.

I do catch your drift but quality assurance is the wrong term here, it’s more about delivering a “stock gameplay”, tuned to offer a casual experience.
It’s in human nature to explore new things and I think if you’d ask anyone, they’d say they want to see the ETQW enhanced, even after four years. The big hurdle here is that a user doesn’t want to go to extra length for it. There is a certain threshold that a user doesn’t want to cross. This is for each user different. The more tech-savvy users are willing to go to extra length.

In ETQW it’s the extra engine load that is the hurdle. From my experience it seems that there needs to be an automated process in which the user shouldn’t have to interact. Judging from that it seems logical to lower the threshold for the user, with taking a lot of user interaction out of the process. e.g.: Delivering an installer, create a new shortcut that directly launches the “tweaked” gameplay and automaticcaly imports game settings from the user.

(.Chris.) #19

Not really as stats are still updated for the client.

You make it sound like the moment ranked servers are removed there would be a flood of servers with silly settings and custom skin and sound paks, incase you didn’t notice this isn’t ET, it’s ET:QW, the effort needed to make such packs would put off a server admin from attempting it, the sounds and textures are compressed and use some hashed naming convention, you wouldn’t know which files to edit and be hard pressed to actually edit them if you did find them.

What happened to ET wont happen to ET:QW now, there is no modding scene left to butcher the game and even simple mods are beyond the average server admin.

I’ve wanted this since day one.

Ranked servers are one solution to keeping game integrity but certainly not the only solution.

Anyway.

What are the main servers these days? Maybe worth while trying to contact server admins and get some heads together to talk about it, inform them all with all the facts and see how it goes.

(Susefreak) #20

Unranked != mods/direct tweaks/additional paks/extra engine load