Seeding the server

[Ki!ler-Mk1]

TL;DR Seeding needs at least 8 ppl. + access to the clanforge console.


Well, it has been revealed that in order to get quickjoiners and seed a server, you need to alter the max server size to keep the server 4 slots from full.

This means that in future when we have 6-8 ppl online, we should be able to seed up 64 in 30 min. I tested it this afternoon and managed to get from 1/4 to 28/32 in 20 minutes.

 

[Ki!ler-Mk1]

Tried again this afternoon, while watching TV, from 1:30 till about 3:30 to get to 32 players, mainly thought the problem of so many ppl leaving, from 32 to 64 took less than 30 min. Effect, filling the server in afternoons is fairly easy, but without ppl in the server to block baserape etc, no much i can do. So, it looks like on week days filling the server in the evenings is going to be hard unless several ppl want to seed all at once.

If our server is at at least 8 people please, help seed.

 

[Ki!ler-Mk1]

Server graphics:

Customise Graphics.






Note: due to a bug they only display 32 players.

 

[Ki!ler-Mk1]

Heres what happens at night

 

[Ki!ler-Mk1]

Some success this week:

 

[Ki!ler-Mk1]

Going to bed, server has been full today since before i got up, it was up and full by 9 am, and still full at 2am the next morning, though i think it will soon be empty now. Additionally ive been running procon for 13 hours and the server itself hasnt crashed atm for 36 hours. And yes, there is a memory leak, if its not full when i get up in 9 hours it will need a restart anyway.

EDIT:

Server hasn't been empty for 28 hours. It did fall to less than 10 players for over an hour and a half, yet some how it never dried up last night.

The memory leak is still there too.


EDIT2:
Here is why our server has no trouble being full on hardcore:

Empty Hardcore CQ 64 Servers.

List doesnt go on forever like the normal servers list which I have confirmed* shows the full 300.

Even without the europe filter, worldwide there are less than 300 empty HC CQ 64 servers.

*For those of you who somehow think i may have counted, i simply compared the length of the page with a search which would show all servers(or rather 300).

Just hope i can get it restarted so it can show 64/64
EDIT3:
Interestingly the list of empty 32 player hardcore servers does go on forever. Needless to say, for normal mode this is the same. Endless
EDIT4:
Even more bizarrely is the search for all hardcore CQ64 servers with no freespace filter, shows in europe there are currently less than 300 servers meeting this search. Will be interested to see what this search shows at 7 pm.

Conclusion; there barely enough hardcore servers.

 

[Ki!ler-Mk1]

The DICE/EA BF3 patch today has effectively killed BF3 seeding, you now need 5 players in a server before anyone can move around.


Patch notes on battle log.

Major changes are, idles times are now locked at 300(seconds), which is good because i once went afk for many hours on a server with it set to zero, but bad for seeding because you cant set to 30minutes, which is what i used only when seeding, and 10 minutes at all other times.

You now need to have 5 people before anyone can play, so now if we want to play on our server we have to seed it in the evenings the old fashioned way, when before, it was full in the early afternoons for the rest of the day.

Over the weekend i did some research and i found that there were LOADS of empty 32 player normal, 32 player hardcore, 64 player normal, server all empty, eg upto and above 300(most server browser displays). But for 64 player hardcore, less than 50 empty server came up, explaining why the server was full all the time on hardcore, given the changes above, it looks to me like hardcore is the only chance the server has of being full/being used.

Going to test normal today for the next few hours, if nothing, will try the alternative.

The sentiment around the BF3 server admin community is that there will now be many more empty servers.

Bloke has suggested to me what i already considered about a reduced player count, atm i am not going for this v much, but as i said before, i would look into it in 2012.

 

[Ki!ler-Mk1]

As of last patch, our server along with MANY others is broken and not displaying on battle log. Going to try a possible fix later.

 

[Ki!ler-Mk1]

Well in the interests of keeping everyone up todate, interestingly our gametracker rank has gone up while the server has been empty these past 1-2 days, i can only conclude from this that the sheer amount of servers in higher percentiles than us who had lower average player counts, but were higher from more historical data, were also empty and slipped many ranks over many servers.

We've gone up 2%(in a list which is at least 12,000 long)

(until 5 days ago game tracker thought we were 32/32 when 64/64 so its all meh really.

 

[VibroAxe]

As of last patch, our server along with MANY others is broken and not displaying on battle log. Going to try a possible fix later.

I'm assuming this has been fixed, but if not the patch notes made it quite clear that they wont show up in battlelog till they get updated to r10 by multiplay

 

[Ki!ler-Mk1]

MPUK said there has been a hotfix on battlelog, the servers didnt get updates. I still cant seed the server without 2 other people willing to actually play the game, due to the locked 5min idle time. for about 30 min or more.

 

[Ki!ler-Mk1]

Since this is the primary news thread now, i'll put this here.

Multiplay was unfortunately incompetant regarding the server renewal to correct duration with them only fixing the date (5 days after a ticket which they/i replied to twice) within hours of the incorrect expiry. Moved to the 7th of december.

And then on top of that, i have asked for the correct price for the next 30 days 3 times, the third change from them is this:
It makes no sense, but is rather funny.

 

[VibroAxe]

Why are we paying for a TS server? Granted it's only 46 but still...

 

[thatbloke]

Why are we paying for a TS server? Granted it's only 46 but still...

"we" aren't. Mk1 has a small one to use for himself, he pays for that himself

It shows up on the same invoice because it's on the same multiplay account

 

[Ki!ler-Mk1]

Its supposed to be 28p. Use it to talk to relatives and close friends mostly. Shame about skype not having push to speak.

 

[VibroAxe]

Ahh fair enough, figured there'd be a valid excuse!

 

[Ki!ler-Mk1]

Been a while since i posted a BF3 update here, it seems multiplay wiped off our stats(the graphs in clanforge) for no apparent reason, so we've got 1 week to go on.

The hardcore thing is just because the little success i had, was with it, no plan to keep it like that.

The last patch took us from 8-14 hours full every day for 3 weeks to empty all week, but for a single 2 hour session.

So after empty for a week, we're going to consult the people who've contributed to this, regarding an idea bloke is pushing for a way forwards

First though ill explain this strange change, for it is not fluid, but rather an attack by DICE on small gaming communities. In the name of preventing stat padding. Call it whatever you like tbh, here is the effect.




Previously we(I) could fill the server to 40 players within 1 hour(while watching TV(DVD), so no time lost), since this patch hit, i have never succeeded and indeed stopped trying after the 2nd hour on the 2nd day after the patch.

They changed the minimum players needed before players could move around from anything(1) to four(5 due to well, probably a bug) so, any communities who cannot get 4 people + 1 random, onto their server at the same time cannot even move around, and as a result those server stay empty all the time.

This was the only change, and yet, since the patch there are many more empty servers than there have ever been, though of course the amount of players available has also gone down(a lot) too, the server's gametracker rank took 3-4 days to start going down, i presume the delay was because so many servers had the same problem and were all going down, after a week empty, our server is still in the 85th percentile, meaning that 84% of servers registered with gametracker have average playercounts lower than us, and ours due to a bug which treated all players above 32 as ignored, has an average of 20(was 23), when it should have effectively been twice that, either way those numbers are fairly irrelevant, and only IMO show a way to compare our server's performance to others'.

I will be PM'ing contributors this week regarding blokes idea.