ET:QW Balance

(escapedturkey) #1

Nothing like ranked servers, where admins have to pay extra. However, perhaps an option where admins can have stats reported to the master server - i.e. weapons stats, kills, etc. I believe Epic did this for UT2k4 and it allowed them to monitor if one weapon, power-up, etc was dominating too much of the playfield and they could adjust accordingly via patches.

This would be perfect for an open-beta and or open-beta/demo. That way people could play for awhile and you could gather stats on game balance, introduce streaming patches, etc.

When the open-beta is over, simply make it so the open-beta can’t report to the master server so people have to purchase retail, etc.

Secondly, I suggest if patches come out, please have the game auto-detect them and downoad them.

Just a thought. :smiley:

(Desoxy) #2

Afaik SD already announced a “Ranking”-system that keeps track of how well you’re doing, but unlike BF2 you cannot unlock anything that would affect the gameplay (e.g. new weapons or special skills) - it’s just for posing. :cool:

Well, I doubt SD/id will have the ressources for such a thing - and it simply wouldn’t be worth the trouble. Due to the deferment they’ll hopefully have enough time addressing bugs and gameplay issues - no need for patching the full game ever 2 or 3 days. :slight_smile:

(SCDS_reyalP) #3

ET had most of this functionality, despite being free/unfinished/mostly unsupported.

(Desoxy) #4

Well, I just thought of the server capacities you’d need for distributing a patch that might be several hundreds MBs in size (which seems to happen more and more lately, let’s hope it won’t be like that at ETQW :smiley: ). I already hear the first flames “I want my patch now, lame system!” etc. :rolleyes:

In my view this wouldn’t be worth it unless id plans a steam-competitor, the old “Patch gets released and everyone gets it from his own server of choice”-system still works fine. :slight_smile:

(]UBC[ McNite) #5

We ve seen it with ETPro and the patches, that you get the patch first and then the ETPro update. As a server admin i have to say I would HATE a system that automatically distributes patches and thus ruins my ETPro settings etc. (or whatever pro-mod we ll have in QW).

With important things like updates and patches a server-admin should have the choice if he wants them or not.

(MuffinMan) #6

I have several counter strike source servers and so I know the forced updating by steam - my conclusion:
the forced update is not bad for the client but as the automatic update for the servers doesn’t work properly you sometimes end up updating for half a day because you were some hours late, everybody is crying that the servers are outdated and you can’t update because steam is overloaded

it could be solved with ready to download update packages which could be mirrored but steam obviously doesn’t want that so you have to sit there and wait for a free download slot everytime, then watch the data trickle in with a surprising speed of some kb/s (on the server…)

so from a server admin view: plz make patches available as file downloads preferrably with some mirrors, other than that forced update is ok with me

of course it can crash your mods and maybe forces you to remove the mod for as long as it takes to update it but this is only a question of wether sd release infos on new updates in advance for etpro and other developers.
steam doesn’t and so they sometimes crash half of the servers, on the other hand they don’t even need to do that, releasing a server side patch that deletes the linux libraries and so kills all linux servers for a day was a very smart move as well.

as SD is more mod friendly I hope and guess they won’t make such errors

(jah) #7

ET shows a pop-up inside the game if a new patch is available with a link to a webpage where you can find the file, mirrors, info, etc. i think :slight_smile:

i think q4 has this functionality also (et:qw is based on q4 engine right?).

it’s the best solution imo (way better than steam’s way of updating things).

this might be usefull in ET:QW, but not in a unconfirmed qw beta demo (that i guess will never see the light of day)… rtcw had 2 betas. it makes more sense to release a new updated beta, than create some installer to update a BETA demo. waste of time and resources. imo.

J

(jimb0) #8

ET shows a pop-up inside the game if a new patch is available with a link to a webpage where you can find the file, mirrors, info, etc. i think

i think q4 has this functionality also (et:qw is based on q4 engine right?).

I hope you meant “q3”, because it’s where ET comes from.

Yes, Q3 had some auto-updater, but you had to fire it.

The ‘good’ thing with steam is that it’s automatic. So even clueless people will have their game updated without having to worry about it. When a new update comes around, you don’t have to wait until most people/servers have already had the time to update… since a simple restart is enough.

There are tweaks that could be done (maybe the ability to turn off the update, or add a confirmation before it’s done), but I really think the way steam does it (even though I hate steam itself) is pretty good for a game platform.