UKCS Mega Game Servers

by **Barbaric** on Mon Jan 27, 2014 4:54 pm

I'm not saying it is or isn't a problem, my previous comment was the first time I've posted in this thread. Regardless, the phrase "stacked" is mentioned a lot on server 8, so many players obviously do feel it's an issue.

It's just annoying how this forum is made essentially useless (as with the CS:S ones) as whenever anyone raises any issue, on any server, the same couple of admins always reply straight away singing "la la la, everything is fine, we know best, you are wrong", when it's clear from their responses they don't really have much knowledge on the issues they are always so quickly dismissing.

by **mfodor** on Mon Jan 27, 2014 5:06 pm

Barbaric wrote:I'm not saying it is or isn't a problem, my previous comment was the first time I've posted in this thread. Regardless, the phrase "stacked" is mentioned a lot on server 8, so many players obviously do feel it's an issue.

It's just annoying how this forum is made essentially useless (as with the CS:S ones) as whenever anyone raises any issue, on any server, the same couple of admins always reply straight away singing "la la la, everything is fine, we know best, you are wrong", when it's clear from their responses they don't really have much knowledge on the issues they are always so quickly dismissing.

I was able to find maybe one post that fits your description. All the rest were either agreeing that there is an issue, and/or outlining possible problems with some suggestions to fix it.
Your mileage may and obviously does vary. Perhaps you're a cyclist. No, wait, I'm a cyclist. Now I'm confused.

Steam · by **Ger-h** on Mon Jan 27, 2014 5:46 pm

Can we go back on topic.please

by **nevvy** on Mon Jan 27, 2014 6:11 pm

Perhaps the questions you should be asking are:

- will auto assign prevent steamrolls? The answer is no.

- Will autoassign stop me from playing with my friends? No.

- Will autoassign stop those nasty stackers from choosing teams? No.

- Is a boring deadlock always better than one team losing? No. If it doesn't matter who wins, why bother keeping score?

Note this is all my opinion. Feel free to burn me.

I'm usually right though

by **Xerxes** on Tue Jan 28, 2014 11:56 pm

I think, all comments notwithstanding, that Nevvy has hit the nail on the head here: Forcing auto assign isn't a silver bullet.

No matter what we as server administrators do, there will very often be an imbalance between teams. This is inherent when you have 32 players of different abilities playing at any one time and to assume that forcing players to join teams based on when they click on the join button (as auto assign puts you onto the smallest team at the time) would alleviate this would be a mistake. Similarly the perception of a team balance being one sided or not will vary from person to person and from situation to situation and is highly subjective - to the same end having one or two vocal players saying that there is a stack and encouraging others to think so doesn't necessarily make it true. Furthermore having auto assign enabled makes it harder to break any imbalances as players aren't free to move from one team to another.

Speaking as my role in UKCS it has always been a core ethos that we try to allow players to play without intervention from us as much as possible, and enabling autoassign would work against that ethos. We appreciate that many of UKCS' players are friends and want to play together. Forcing them to join particular teams (outside of the remit of scramblers and other automated systems) would also stop them being able to do that. We [as admins] also have to be cognisant that only a very small proportion of players use the forums and it is most often to raise issues, and we do have to take into consideration the rest of the player base at the same time.

by **SkeletalBOB** on Wed Jan 29, 2014 1:00 am

Not sure why we're going over the same points again and again, both Nevvy and Xerce's are right, auto-assign has been discussed both here and in private, it's not going to happen. There was a plug-in that made Red respawn at 5 secs and blu at instant still, that might be looked into. If I catch anyone spec stacking on a full server they will be dealt with firmly and fairly, as should every other admin on 8. Now admins are aware of the problem and players who use the forums are aware we're trying to combat it the problems aren't as bad as they once were. With people who don't ever really play on 8 coming in to have their word can we close this thread now, not that their input isn't welcome as it is. But the abundance of people now coming to the defence of those saying stacking is a myth etc (in essence it is) won't help actually dealing with the problem and instead makes those who brought the problem to the forums feel as if their input is being put to one side. Apologies if I came across strong just now, 4 hours of BF3 after not playing it for a year turns me into some crazy marine by the looks of it.

Simply everyone in this thread is right, it is something the admin team are aware of and it is being looked into if there are ways to address this without tampering with what is already a good formula for a server. In the meantimes if you catch someone stacking and spec-swapping to stack let myself or an admin know if you notice them doing it consistently.

by **Snowbat** on Wed Jan 29, 2014 8:00 am

I spend a fair amount of time on 8. I'm usually to be found on either 2 or 8 and yes, BLU most often loses.
But then the team switch happens, BLU becomes RED and mostly, the team that was once RED and now BLU loses on it's turn too.
I have to agree: I have seen games where BLU barely manages to push leetle cart to the first cap while when team switches, they struggle to keep leetle cart away from the final terminus, but most of the time, RED wins.
That's just a part of Payload: if you're BLU, the probability is high you'll lose. I always go Medic when I'm BLU (or Pyro if the spychecking is inexistant) but I'm not a miracle man. Even though I'm trying to keep all my teammates alive and über whoever is available and a good choice then, most of the time, we'll still lose (and having 5 Snipers doesn't help)

The thing is, friends joining the same team happens on every server, steamrolls happen on every server and stacking happens on every server.
This is why we have a scrambler for: it should kick in when the steamrolling reaches a certain level of ridiculousness.
The best thing I can do as an admin who is relatively regular to 8, is to keep an eye on people who stay in SPEC waiting for a spot on RED to come free and ~~ban their ass!!1!!1~~ kindly ask them to either join the team where there's a spot, or leave (and kick them if they refuse to comply)

by **rgslane the trackpad** on Sun Feb 09, 2014 9:14 pm

Snowbat wrote:That's just a part of Payload: if you're BLU, the probability is high you'll lose.

Only with instarespawn on.. but i dont want to reopen a can o'worms here

I've always found stacking to be worse on servers which are started by someone- they'll say "+starting server #X!" and a load of people will join, waiting in spec to join that person's team.

by **SLAINE** on Wed Feb 12, 2014 8:49 pm

It's generally the same players, I could name a handful. So hopefully, given time, these players will either tow the line or p' off somewhere else. Long live Blu

by **Dr Gonzo** on Thu Feb 13, 2014 12:04 am

I've been playing on these fine servers for over 5 years and while I don't condone stacking, I've tended to look the other way when it occurs, albeit with some ~~foul-mouthed~~ gentle abuse

Tonight however was a new low as I watched player after player sit in spec and wait for a slot in red to appear.

The map ended very quickly with lots of lols and woops from brave team red.

Is this the UKCS ethic? Is this a second home? What must new people think when they join our servers?

I'm not sure what the answer is but surely things can't stay the way they are...

I've attached a screenshot of tonight. I'm not proud of myself for doing this but i do it in the vain hope that it provokes a reaction or perhaps embarrasses a few people (sadly I don't think it will).

If you don't know the players, open the image and check the two teams collective skill levels. Blu team - 54,661 and Red team 150,942

Hugs and kisses

by **Binerexis** on Thu Feb 13, 2014 12:34 am

Dr Gonzo wrote:I'm not sure what the answer is but surely things can't stay the way they are...

I've been online for the last few hours and would have been happy to help if I was told there was a problem. It's been said before that the admins can't be everywhere at once but we certainly can't be where there's a problem if we don't know there's a problem.

Here's the answer: Add me on Steam and contact me when there's a problem. I'll jump onto #8 as soon as I possibly can and solve the issue. If I am not online or not responding then try to contact another admin through Steam. Obviously, you should try to contact an admin in game by putting @ at the start of your message before going through Steam as admins already in game can respond quicker. If there are no admins online whatsoever and there is a repeat offender causing problems, take a screenshot and send it to me in a PM through the forums. If you take multiple screenshots, please crop them into one image. From there, I will handle the matter personally. If you would rather I didn't handle the matter personally, you should send the screenshots to the TF2 Admin Team via forum PM and it will be handled from there. Please also provide the times that those repeat incidents occur.

TL;DR - Grab hold of me somehow, I'll come on the server and start sorting things out. Send all incident reports to me.

by **Slavechild** on Thu Feb 13, 2014 9:45 am

Maybe I should start playing server 8 again :/

by **Berath** on Thu Feb 13, 2014 11:19 am

Maybe I should as well.

I'd be happy to play on any overpowered side to help lower the skill level

Seriously though, I think people that do this miss out on half the fun of TF2. What joy is there is steamrolling a bunch of strangers when you could be dominating your best mate or seeking revenge over a crafty backstab.

by **Slavechild** on Thu Feb 13, 2014 12:52 pm

I'd be happy to play on any overpowered side to help lower the skill level

I have an engineer setup just for that :wink:

Looking back at the screenshot I noticed

face on red, he's sort of a wildcard when it comes to comparing teams based on stats/points as he's ranked number 1 on the UKCS servers. After playing with and against him I wouldn't count him as anything more than a standard player so just keep that in mind if you're trying to compare teams based on stats.

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by **jacobcak545** on Thu Feb 25, 2021 6:47 pm

UKCS Mega Game Servers

Force Auto-Assign on #8

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