ET:QW and ranked servers

(MuffinMan) #41

same for me - I’m planning to setup at least one public (and 1 or 2 privates but they don’t really count) for QW - I never tried the bf ranking stuff so I still hope that the players on my servers won’t be rank addicted. I plan the servers to be rather pro-oriented anyway so I might be lucky.

in any case I won’t pay a single buck for the ranking system, the servers are expensive enough. hopefully there will be some certification possibility for free but as I’m going to host customs as well I might have no chance anyway…

let’s see… although an official statement would be very welcome

(EnderWiggin.DA.) #42

I’d like to say that people coming from the BF series will be all about the ranked servers until they realize that that it doesn’t really really get them anything. But like ReyalP said, he played on ranked servers to get the unlocks. Even though QW “level ups” won’t work like the BF series, I think people will stick to the ranked servers simply because they are there to get stats (and perhaps they are used to ranked servers actually meaning something).

I’m assuming the leagues won’t require ranked servers. I hope that once clans realize paying extra for ranked slots doesn’t make sense except for recruiting, the ranked servers will go away in part. Especially since I am a big fan of fresh custom maps. I really don’t want to see those squashed.

As far as distributing custom maps: would xfire be a good way? custom map pack of the month or something. Yes, there are faster ways to get files, but I’ve found xfire great for pulling down large files when I’m NOT using my machine. OR Torrents.

(SKaREO) #43

I don’t want to see “stat padding” in this game.

I hope they catch the cheaters and deal with them real proper like. :evil:

(Nail) #44

I’ll happily get a ranked server as well as at least one unranked, to play on

(Sauron|EFG) #45

Sounds like a lot of effort is spent to please XP/stat whores, but maybe that’s what it takes to make a commercially successful BF competitor. :lol:

I’d prefer a game completely without stats to this. :frowning:

(carnage) #46

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

comparing ranked and unranked bf2 servers to ETQW ranked and unranked server might not be a good comparison. although ETQW does have persistent stats they don’t effect the gameplay by giving extra weapons etc so the only advantage is bragging rights

also ranked servers cant run mods or any custom content (even custom maps) and looking at the popularity of certain W:ET mods ETpro, ETpub Jaymod etc and the custom maps available if there are QW equivalents i doubt many people would pass all these up just to get some meaningless stats

the only advantage i can see from ranked servers is that there wont be any custom content that i don’t have saving me an annoying download that is getting to be quite a pain in W:ET

(ZeusBBA) #47

an agreement with id and Activision to make sure it is kept secure."

If they are referring to the same sort of security that the BF games have, requiring us to give up root/RDT access, all my servers will be UNranked thats for sure. :roll:

(jaybird) #48

Ranked servers are going to alienate a lot of competent server admins with the head room to run a server or two on their machines. I really hope that players will see past the nonsense that is stats.

This is a very community dividing feature.

(SKaREO) #49

I agree wholeheartedly. I can’t see a single benefit; not one.

(darki) #50

yep yep , there is rly nothing good about public stats. even if you just wanna compare your stats / “gameplay” to eachother, some clans ( this was said to be a cool feature in an interview) you could just play a war and this way you can compare clans much better than on some stats ? :S

(sddo) #51

it really does, doesn’t it? sd talks so much about how the fun factor of teamplay will sell their product for them, but they seem to be placing a lot of emphasis on statistics for a marketing bullet.

i had a lot of faith in the devs’ decisions [even some i didn’t agree with] until now. i’m glad i haven’t preordered because i don’t have time to join a clan and i don’t want to be stuck with meandering statwhores while strangling the livelihood of modmakers. i don’t care about stats so if there is a good showing on the unranked servers then i’ll buy, but my plans to get it asap are now out the window.

you are right that there is a difference between the stats/ranks of this game and bf2/142, but people will still have that pang in the back of their mind when joining that they “might as well” join a ranked server. on the flip side there is the possibility that it just splits the player base into idiots vs. teamplayers.

x2. very poor planning, sd. you should learn from others’ mistakes.

(Flesh) #52

Exactly what I was trying to say.
What angers me the most is that its not just EA and, now, SD that are using some sort of permanent online stats system, this is becoming a trend in the entire video game industry.
What SD did only shows that pretty much every developer will somehow, sooner or later, implant this into his software.
Maybe the worst thing about this whole issue are that the majority of players is responding so well to these changes.

(.-COM-.PAIN) #53

A better alternate to global stats would be to isolate the stats to the particular server. Players could come and go to their favourite server and build up whatever ranks are available. The specific server could publish stats to website or whatever. That would help the specific server community and move away from all the nonsense associated with global stats and server issues.

(Lanz) #54

Somehow I think it would be better to just let anyone install ranked servers, with a note that the stats may not be 100% reliable. If you looked at the statistics for any given stats system I think the player spends 95% of the time looking at his own stats anyway, and that player knows if it’s correct or not. He can’t be sure of anyone elses stats but do you really care? It doesn’t alter anything but some form of lame bragging rights anyway.

I would rather see the stats removed completly though, because they’re not worth the hassle, but that’s me.

(murphIV) #55

for real, nothing like connecting to a Wolf ET server with a good number of players and having to download god knows what at a blazing 11 kbps. At least the ranked server will get rid of that junk.

(Lanz) #56

for real, nothing like connecting to a Wolf ET server with a good number of players and having to download god knows what at a blazing 11 kbps. At least the ranked server will get rid of that junk.[/quote]
That could just as easy be handled with a server cvar, like g_customcontent or something like that, and if it’s not set to 1, it will refuse to start the server with any “custom crap”. This could then be used by server browsers to filter the servers according to what you want.

(SCDS_reyalP) #57

Any ET server run by halfway competent admins will download much faster than that.

(BiggaJigga) #58

The reason they don’t want custom maps to have ranks is because someone can make a map where they can stat pad. What they should do is this:

The mod team would send the custom map to Splash damage and id software, They would test it and then decide if it appropriate for release. This would make it alot easier and easy to do.

(Strogg) #59

for real, nothing like connecting to a Wolf ET server with a good number of players and having to download god knows what at a blazing 11 kbps. At least the ranked server will get rid of that junk.[/quote]

Well when I had my UT2004 server ( DeathRow ) I had a sepreate FREE server that would auto redirect the map to the user so they would not have any slow downloads to them. Also there was a couple generic servers so you could upload the maps to it and re-direct the maps to the users from “ANY” server. Was Great!! :smiley: You could also set a flag to delete all the moded maps from your maps folder ever 30 days. I wonder if you will be able to do something like that for Quake Wars?

(Floris) #60

for real, nothing like connecting to a Wolf ET server with a good number of players and having to download god knows what at a blazing 11 kbps. At least the ranked server will get rid of that junk.[/quote]
Quake 4 has a lovely feature warning you in case you have to download game code or files (and mentioned the filesize as well), too bad it didnt show overage download speed…