ET:QW and ranked servers

(Basic) #21

oh no.

Ranked servers stiffle the mod community. in terms of battlefield 2 + 2142. nobody plays unranked servers. ID + Activision are looking at ways to gain an income off the game after you have bought it. shame really, thought that was more EA’s cup of tea.

The only mods that I’ve played in battlefield2 (and most of my friends), are the total conversions. All those little changes and custom maps dont really get played on BF2, 2142 (unless punkbuster has banned you).

Many people dont care about stats and many do. which generally mean you end up playing on the ranked servers. And it also means that if you have a clan server you may as well get the ranked one cos somebody will bitch about not getting there points.

Generally I’m against ranked servers. it ruins mods, and if I have to pay for the game and extra for a ranked server. my clan have to pay to much money for the bf ranked servers. when our unranked server(cod2 mainly) costs half as much.

(M8DNanite) #22

Yeah rankings killed the custom maps + minimods in BF2.
But lets hope it will not happen in ETQW since there is no new weapon unlocks etc.
Rankings are not just EA’s thing. Valve is also going to do it with Team Fortress 2 and the coming HL2 engine game Left4Dead will most likely have also persistent stats.
Stats seems to be thing that was successfull with BF2 and gaming industry seems to want it now everywhere.
With stats there is also other side: they can track peoples behaviour and track how customers use their product. For example when they see gamers starts to play less and less the product its time to release addon pack or sequel.

I think with good mod sdk we can start to build alternative ranking system for mods to use like in BF
http://www.battlefieldranking.net/
This is one service for all mods to have their own ranking.

With custom maps we have bigger problem with those 500Mb filesizes.

([ls.leodavinci]) #23

hope id and activision will look for enough “ranked server partners” when they release the game

  1. it sucks when you have to choose from a small minority of gameserverproviders to get a decent server (the big ones get a bigger monopoly)
  2. if there are only a few providers @ the start… the price can be nasty !!!
  3. players are statwhores… so it is bullshit to say that unranked servers will be as popular as the nonranked (same bullshit EA came up with when they released BF2). " So you can have thousands and thousands of servers out there " ?! Sure… and they will be 80% more empty then the ranked ones
  4. so hope they will do a decent job for the community when they come up with things like ranked servers… we need freedom, not limitations !!!
(Ghiacciolo=ITA=) #24

then I only hope that ranked or un-ranked, the price would be the same…I mean: what’s the difference?? if an hoster have enough security to host ranked servers, why it would ask less for an un-ranked server?

The big problem whit dice-ea is that they had made another company (i mean:owned by them) that offer ranked servers. Obviously, others hosters cannot make better price for ranked server, coz dice-ea will not concede them the authorization. they are acting like monopolistics bitches!! :x
I think SD-Activision will not make the same, if they do…well, i only hope the EU Union antitrust commission will give all of them a good lesson whit a fine of some millions dollars per day…microsoft style!! :wink:

(SCDS_reyalP) #25

Perhaps. I’m not too fond of stats at all, but I know that when I was playing BF2, I favored ranked servers only because of the unlocks. Given the amount of playtime required to get the higher levels, and the fact that plenty of ranked servers were available, it didn’t make any sense to play on unranked. If it were just stats, I wouldn’t have cared.

I’d rather see it done like splatterladder or csports, where it’s simply categorized by mod. “SD certified” (or “ranked” or whatever you want to call it) could be one of the categories. That way, people who are just interested in tracking their own accuracy, K/D etc aren’t forced to play on certified servers just to see their own stats, but those who want a comparison with other players can still filter down to a more limited set.

Of course, in reality, there is absolutely no way to stop stat whoring. People are always going to find ways to do it, ranked servers or not.

(Dzhezkov) #26

Wow, and I was making fun of EA about the whole ranked/unranked servers thing. Kinda of disheartening that ID/Activision is playing follow the idiot on that idea. Even if the stats/ranks dont unlock anything in QW, people are still going to prefer playing on ranked servers to track their progress and success (or lack thereof) with the different classes they play.

Stupid idea, and I think ETQW is just trying to milk the cash cow with the ‘official ranked secure verified signature but did we mention more expensive’ server vs. the Joe dirt unranked server.

(darki) #27

i know for sure that people will play very defensive and camperlike on ranked server, just not to srew up their stats … i hate this, coz i know id do it myself

thats why im gonna play on “ranked servers” only as a sniping pussy or fops lamer spamming the enemy base … :roll:

(kamikazee) #28

I wouldn’t speculate too much about this.

Et.splatterladder.com is collecting loads of stats data from a LOT of servers and they’re not all running certified configs.
So imo, it’s just a matter of grouping the stats per-mod instead of creating one global rank as was the case in BF2.
That way, you can see who’s #1 for each group and still decrease the chance of someone making a mod to cheat with ranks.

Of course, you could group stats in other ways. I let the devs deal with that, but I think we won’t need a strict “certified server” system to deal with the stats system.

(ParanoiD) #29

Id say, just boycot the ranked servers. The way the servers are managed in ET is the way as it should be done. All equal and then the difference in mods/maps so all servers have their cons and pros which will attract various players.

Stats suck! In ET, id rather die 5x as much as i kill ppl, but when i plant the bomb in the last 1 min in fueldump with a team being slaughtered i feel so much better. Winning the game isthe only thing that matters!

(BondyBoy007) #30

well said that man, we need more of your type :wink:

(SCi-Fi) #31

Ranked servers for BF2 cost allot and tbh i rather not see a ranking
system be nice but would cost allot, we got rid of our ranked server as it
was a waste of money, we now have our own server which we pay for
servicing and stuff. I rather pay for nonranked than ranked far cheaper.

Shame there is no way of saving the stats on a non ranked server and
then gettin us admins to post or the server uploads the stat files over to
where ever? Ok it should be encrypted and so on so cheaters cant alter
them.

(kamikazee) #32

Even seen ETPro? It featured certified configs so that the server was known to run only specified maps/map scripts, have the required settings and used non-modded files.

Should this be built in into the ET:QW engine, you could prove a certain map/mod mix as “certified” and thus allow any server to be ranked once he runs one of these configs.

The only problematic thing that needs to be done is the maintenance of the config files. When new mods come out or new settings are in order, a new config file should be made. If this is free, a ranked/unranker server shouldn’t cost more.
The only true problem is that this could result in some form bureaucracy.

(bartreligion) #33

stats or no stats, nothing sucks more than 1000s of servers with custom crap content.
Sure, there’s some good custom stuff, but not all.

(Dzhezkov) #34

Yes yes well all I can do is speculate at this point. But the very idea of having to pay extra for verified or authorized servers rubs me the wrong way.

(kamikazee) #35

If the only thing to do for you is speculate, then don’t do anything until the game is released. :wink:
I believe there are many ways you can handle a ranked server network but still keep the same price as an unranked one.

Seems EA/Dice didn’t pick any of those, although they had less choice.

(Dzhezkov) #36

You’re awfully quick to hand out suggestions and then follow up that suggestion with pure speculation, creating a complete air of hypocrisy. :wink:

Any my opinion on Ranked servers costing more money isn’t speculation at all, since if you visit any server hosting company, the servers with ranks, honor, or what have you, are always more expensive.

(kamikazee) #37

Maybe you are still thinking in terms of corporate schemes, or I might just not be acquainted with the procedure for hosting a ranked server.

Considering prices, taking a site like GameServers (Found using google): [ul][li]A W:ET server costs 32 dollars for 16 players over there.
[/li][li]A BF 2 unranked one costs the same, 32 dollars.
[/li][li]A BF 2 Ranked one costs 47 dollars.[/ul]
[/li]So you are right they charge a different price.

Now I included the W:ET server because you can also run other mods on it. In this case, ETPro.
The ETPro mod on a W:ET server can make sure that there are no files present altering the gameplay, just like competitions want it. No gameplay tweaks means everyone will gain the same amount of XP, and thus ranking is possible. So to run a ranking server, all we need is a certified server, and this could be free if you have a mechanism of certificates which would be free as well.
If the certificates wouldn’t be free, competitions would lack a direct tool to set up match servers. Not to mention that mods will be totally left in the dark and must re-implement this feature.

So either way, it could as well be the same price if you choose a better way of trusting servers to send ranking data.

(SCDS_reyalP) #38

Note that this only stops trivial attempts to bypass the rules. It will stop people from just editing the config, and will certainly catch a lot of configuration mistakes, but it isn’t magic.

If a server admin really wants to cheat there isn’t much you can do.

(kamikazee) #39

[quote=“SCDS_reyalP”]

Note that this only stops trivial attempts to bypass the rules. It will stop people from just editing the config, and will certainly catch a lot of configuration mistakes, but it isn’t magic.

If a server admin really wants to cheat there isn’t much you can do.[/quote]I’ll admit that I shouldn’t push it as a miracle solution.
However, I still believe that you can make something along the lines of this to make it harder for server admins to cheat, even to the point that they might not be interested to do so because there are easier exploits in-game. Of course that’s more food of thought for the developers, but I can’t resist to rumble on about things like this.

My point remains: ranked servers shouldn’t cost extra. Don’t let companies fool you.

(melb) #40

A: Kevin: “Yes, servers will basically have to be under a validation process for ranked servers because the issue is that you do not want people going in and hacking your stats, and then having roll back issues for the stat tracking data base guys. It would just be a mess. So yes, there is a comparative system to Battlefield.”
Paul: “Anyone who wants to can run a server, it just would not be an officially ranked stat collecting server, but anyone can run a server on your LAN or ISP for anyone you like. It does not have to be ranked. So you can have thousands and thousands of servers out there just like Wolfenstein and Enemy Territory now, but if you want to play on a ranked server then it needs to be on one [that has] an agreement with id and Activision to make sure it is kept secure.”

How unfortunate to hear this news. I have been waiting to find out if this was going to be the case.

Our clan has a really nice dedicated box in the Equinix Data Center in Virginia. We have been hosting RtCW, and W:ET servers on the box for quite some time. Now, hearing this, it appears that it will not be able to be used for Quake Wars.

I understand that we could run an un-ranked server, but we tried that with BF2. Nobody wanted to play on a non-ranked server. I suspect that this will be the case with QW. So in this situation we will be forced to pay 3-5 dollars a slot for a server instance on a shared box with a game hosting site. This is exactly what we were trying to get away from, and the reason we went with a dedicated box. More control, and more bang for your buck.

Seems that there should be a way for clans with dedicated boxes to get ‘certified’ to host ‘ranked’ servers. There should be a way to somehow secure the QW server instance, and lock it down so that it can’t be tampered with. It could work kind of like Punksbusted interface, only in a secure manner. The QW server could work with SD’s servers, and allow them to harvest the stats.

At this point, I guess we will just have to wait to see, and not jump to any conclusion until we actually get to see the product.