How to help/fix JB

[Revöker 656]

After reading @Mimic's digest I decided it was time to post my thoughts on how to improve JB and restore pop. TL/DR suggestions at the bottom.

 

Unmute/Mic problems

In my opinion, this has been an oversight of many.  The bug with unmuting T's and having CT's or even other T's not able to hear them is a big detriment to the server, this restricts many LR's that we are capable of doing which generally makes the game less fun.  Many times I've had people not understand why other servers don't have this problem but what I'd like to point out is that none of the other servers have an entire team muted by default like JB does.  Ever since the sourceBans plugin for muting was placed on JB it has caused this issue with unmuting terrorist.

 

Low pop, Startup troubles (Mic, and games)

What I and most others have noticed with JB is that it just isn't fun with less than 10 people on the server especially when only 1/3 (3 CT's 6 T's) of the server can actually talk.  This is even more compounded when 2 CT's won't talk and the other CT is just plain fucking retarded.  Now straight away I hear "Well just CT them then if they won't talk/warden" but this usually just ends up pissing the person off enough to leave the server, and with only having 9 people on that is effectively 11% of the server leaving.  When the server is 20/40 then that 1 person is just 5% of the server and usually never results in a noticeable server decrease.  

The other issue is not having much to do with less than 5 or 6 people.  No one wants to give orders because rounds would be 1 minute long and LR would suck because all you have is basic or some LR next round that only last 1 minute. all that again with only 1/3 the server being able to talk really sucks.  Other servers like War3/MG/KZ don't have this problem.  Reason being is that they always have something to do (games or dm) and everyone can communicate with each other freely.  War3 can easily be fun with just 3 or 4 people on.  I do understand though that with 20+ players on the server we can't have everyone unmute because ever with just the CT's unmuted it can get out of hand trying to give orders.  But when the server pop is less than 10 I find it to be very managable.

 

Map Voting

I believe most casual members on the server either spam 1 or vote for the map they know or one that someone in chat spams everyone to select.  Not being able to see what map other JB players are voting for really does hamper the voting process as it just makes people spam 1 or vote for Clouds.  Allowing the vote counts to show for each map being voted on (Like War3 and ZE) would allow players to vote towards the server's #2 instead of its #1 pick and allow players to try new and interesting maps that might not have gotten voted for.  And when players don't know what the #2 map would be they scatter their votes to other maps which results in them not having a voice for the map's choice, so why vote anything else than the #1 pick?  

For instances, if 35% of the server wanted to play clouds and they vote for it but the other 65% of the server doesn't want to play clouds.  So the 65% vote on the other 4 choices which results in [Clouds=35% / #2=16% / #3=16% / #4=16% / #5=16%].  So even though most of the server DIDN'T want to play clouds, they are now forced to play because their vote wasn't concentrated enough.  

Also don't have any map on 1, just like ZE does it so to cancel out the 1 spam.  I mean we already do 1=x 2=accept 3=deny for server wide LR's but not map voting?

The Auto map-pool is also really shitty if no one nominates a map.  I'd say change it to the top 20 or so maps or like a mid 20 or something else.

 

Map Pool

I think it would be interesting if we had some sort of incentive to play less played maps like War3 does.  This is a hard thing to do since we don't have Exp like War3 does.  But I do think it's something we can look at to improve.  Which also leads me to the map pool.  I don't think its much of an issue but there are maps that see little play/drop server pop.  I did graph my view on the current map pool as well as graph what I think the server would think of the map pool.  http://i.imgur.com/LNhfQd9.jpg  A rating of 9-10 is popular with 7-8 being a great map and 5-6 being good and 3-4 "ok/playable" and 1-2 bad/awful.  I would find it interesting to get a poll of what people think of the server's maps pool.

 

Server IP (Pop decrease reason not a suggestion)

As many have seen in the past the changing of server IP has caused a great drop in player count, even though active players (the ones who visit the forums) always tend to come back, the players who just had the server on their favorites list most likely did not.  I was one of the people who had to readd the servers to my favorites because of the move.

Now that was mostly just a reason for some of the population drop and past actions can't really be reversed but what can be is the current state of URL's.  Right now most of the old "jb.joinsg.net" links do not work.  I'm not sure if this was intentional or just forgotten about but this is what the links go to.

 

jb.joinsg.net      → 216.105.171.119:27015 http://i.imgur.com/DmU96l2.jpg (doesn't work) should be 216.105.171.119:27017

mg.joinsg.net    → 216.105.171.120:27015 (works)

ze.joinsg.net     → 216.105.171.120:27015 (connects to mg?) should be 216.105.171.120:27016

surf.joinsg.net   → 216.105.171.7:27015 (bad password? dev server or something?) should be 216.105.171.7:27018

war3.joinsg.net → 216.105.171.120:27015 (again connects to mg) should be 216.105.171.120:27020

tttgo.joinsg.net  → 216.105.171.7:27015 (again bad password) should be 216.105.171.7:27016

kz.joinsg.net     → 162.251.165.27:27015 (don't think this was ever set up, or i have the wrong address) should be 162.251.165.27:27017

 

So 3/7 of the url shortcuts connect to MG, and we wonder why they are doing so well.   @KiD Fearless

easy fix though. Nvm Cow's pointed out what I wanted to know.  Still really sad because it's harder for people to remember port numbers

 

Suggestions

→Have a game to play to occupy people's time while dead/low pop.  (I think I've heard of "/games" but haven't checked it out just yet.  I really liked @bulletford 's plugin that allowed people that were dead to play a sort of Deathmatch,  which made it really sad that it had to be taken down due to its bug of interfering with active players.)

→Fix the unmuting issues and allow T's to be unmuted when the server pop is under 10.  Since there is no LCT when the server is under 10 population I think it would make sense for the T's to be unmuted.

→Have the map voting numbers show (like War3/ZE) and/or have runoff voting.

→Adjust the auto map pool suggestions and the map pool itself.

 

Tagging people I think are relevant to this post: @Pike @Iherdcows @Moose @AntiTeal @thorgot

[Bluestreakid15 540]

I'm not sure if it was due to the IP changes, or my hiatus from CSGO, but all of my saved favorites of sG servers were wiped for some reason, I only just recently got the IP back. 

[Iherdcows 3419]

JB doesn't use the default port of 27015. jb uses 27017. When you type in "connect <IPhere>", whats really going on is that the console reads the IP, and adds the default port like so: connect <IPhere>:27015. As said earlier, JB is not using the default port. I've asked before about this, and was told this was something we could not change, because our server provider just wouldn't let us. In order to have the short hand version work, you need to include a port.  Typing
"connect jb.joinsg.net:27017" should work just fine. When our IPs changed, I tried to go and get them all fixed wherever they were listed. If some were missed, please tell us so we can get it fixed.

 

Heres a picture from our sG steam group with all IPs

[Jodas 1542]

13 minutes ago, Revöker said:

jb.joinsg.net →   216.105.171.119:27015 http://i.imgur.com/DmU96l2.jpg (doesn't work)

mg.joinsg.net → 216.105.171.120:27015

it still works you just need to add the port.

 

connect jb.joinsg.net:27017

[Revöker 656]

1 hour ago, Bluestreakid15 said:

I'm not sure if it was due to the IP changes, or my hiatus from CSGO, but all of my saved favorites of sG servers were wiped for some reason, I only just recently got the IP back. 

 

1 hour ago, Iherdcows said:

JB doesn't use the default port of 27015. jb uses 27017. When you type in "connect <IPhere>", whats really going on is that the console reads the IP, and adds the default port like so: connect <IPhere>:27015. As said earlier, JB is not using the default port. I've asked before about this, and was told this was something we could not change, because our server provider just wouldn't let us. In order to have the short hand version work, you need to include a port.  Typing
"connect jb.joinsg.net:27017" should work just fine. When our IPs changed, I tried to go and get them all fixed wherever they were listed. If some were missed, please tell us so we can get it fixed.

 

Heres a picture from our sG steam group with all IPs

 

 

 

Aw, that makes a lot of sense, I was wondering what happened with that.  Thanks for the info.

But I accidently submitted my post early so that wasn't supposed to be the main part of my post but just a side comment about the server pop decrease.  I've edited it now so it is pretty much up to date.

[Swed 2651]

JB may not have xp, but it certainly has credits. A % multiplier for underplayed maps would be a good way to solve the issue. Credits are also earned on a time basis, rather than merit, and this might cause them to spend more time overall on underplayed maps. I doubt wardens will negatively draw rounds out for credit farming though.

[Iherdcows 3419]

Since you added more, i'll go on your points. The unmuting bug has been going on for awhile. From what I know, no one knows how to fix it. It could also be it was just forgotten about. But if asked people when we first had issues with unmuting and no one knew how to solve it.

 

I told pike that he could add a plugin that allowed you to play games while dead. You typed about it in your main points. To be 100% honest im unsure if its on the server as I've never used it.

 

I do enjoy sweds idea with a credit multiplier. That should add an incentive to play the underplayed maps. I'll see if I can try and get something like that implemented 

[Dakota 4722]

I remember we played the idea of a death match while you're dead. Idk how much it was worked on but honestly as far as we keep rock paper scissors, and the players know about it, that can easily keep some people from leaving during 10 minute rounds. 

[AntiTeal 231]

The /games plugin was added to the server yesterday @Revöker, you can play a couple of games while dead or in spec. In regards to the map vote points, I'm pretty sure ZE and JB use different map vote plugins.

 

I do like some of the ideas though

[Revöker 656]

23 hours ago, Iherdcows said:

Since you added more, i'll go on your points. The unmuting bug has been going on for awhile. From what I know, no one knows how to fix it. It could also be it was just forgotten about. But if asked people when we first had issues with unmuting and no one knew how to solve it.

 

I told pike that he could add a plugin that allowed you to play games while dead. You typed about it in your main points. To be 100% honest im unsure if its on the server as I've never used it.

 

I do enjoy sweds idea with a credit multiplier. That should add an incentive to play the underplayed maps. I'll see if I can try and get something like that implemented 

 

 

From what I noticed it looks to be the sourceBans plugin is interfering with the normal mute/unmute plugin that mutes T's at the start of the round.  I was thinking that the problem is that /mute is sending a command it to 2 different plugins.  Or the /unmute command might not be sending a command to the plugin that mutes T's at the start of the round if the plugin was changed instead to include the sourceBans.  

 

If the sourceBan plugin is a separate plugin though we can remove the mute/unmute sourceBan plugin which could fix our issue. Or have separate commands for each plugin like / banvoice and /mute.

 

Most importantly I think it has something to do with whatever mutes the T's to start off with because other servers don't have mute/unmute problems because they don't have one whole team that gets muted in the start.

 

I do remember either @thorgot or @Moose trying to look into the issue but I don't think they found anything.  

 

I really do think this is the most important issue though.  As I said playing with low pop and no one talking is just boring and not being able to do LR's that include voice really does limit the choices that T's have for LR as well as it limits warden's choice of games to play.