servers on saturday

[Di3for3v3r]

Guy's,

I just see that our server are set to private, on Saturday's most of the people can play at this day so, why set it on private so soon ??

if we just zet it private 30 min before the campaign starts with an admin announcement that we need the server for our own private event every saturday.
So the servers are open for public longer and also easyer to populate, AND the announcement wel make people curious of wath we are doing no ??

Just a wild idea !!

[.Sup]

You have a valid point. I have been working on maps for strategies since this morning and it was conveniently set to private as I am changing maps frequently but I agree it could be open for public, I'd say until an hour before battleday. That brings us back to the previous discussion about seeding our servers.
If you see servers locked and nobody is on just send a reminder to one of the server admins
memberlist.php?mode=group&g=176

[Di3for3v3r]

You have a valid point. I have been working on maps for strategies since this morning and it was conveniently set to private as I am changing maps frequently but I agree it could be open for public, I'd say until an hour before battleday. That brings us back to the previous discussion about seeding our servers.
If you see servers locked and nobody is on just send a reminder to one of the server admins
memberlist.php?mode=group&g=176

ok thanks .Sup, I will

[matsif]

as a TA I would rather take them down early and make sure they are in a decent state the night before rather than have something getting delayed on saturday because they were still public due to RL issues or someone forgot to turn off a plugin. Then you all start screaming for our heads.

[knorren]

as a TA I would rather take them down early and make sure they are in a decent state the night before rather than have something getting delayed on saturday because they were still public due to RL issues or someone forgot to turn off a plugin. Then you all start screaming for our heads.

I agree on this, take them down and get everything working way before battle day starts, then it will be less problem, hopefully!

[Ghoul]

as a TA I would rather take them down early and make sure they are in a decent state the night before rather than have something getting delayed on saturday because they were still public due to RL issues or someone forgot to turn off a plugin. Then you all start screaming for our heads.

That is what I did since I've been messing around with the servers all week.

[Gwynzer]

Wow, that server admin link is ridiculously out of date :p

On a Saturday the servers should really it be under TA control. The earlier they are set up the better. However i also agree that it's the best day for populating them and shutdown announcements etc could bring more people to us.

We should certainly investigate and work out where the middle ground will be for best time to close them down.

[Ghoul]

I wasn't sure I'd be here to turn off all the stuff I added to procon Saturday morning hence why I did it the night before. So far, the EU server has been easiest to populate around SBT+12 and once populated it stays semi full for 6+ hours

[.Sup]

I would leave the settings intact, just remove the pass on Saturdays.

[Gwynzer]

@Sup: Not if you want to have a even somewhat decent server that will actually populate. The server currently runs on "Classic" settings which means that people will join thru the quickmatch feature on battlelog.


Regarding saturday use of server: I think todays farce has shown that the server needs locked down way ahead of time. Despite being set up ahead of time by TAs have the settings still ended up being completely bonkers and we've got no idea how some of the stuff ended up screwed.

[Necromancer]

Regarding saturday use of server: I think todays farce has shown that the server needs locked down way ahead of time. Despite being set up ahead of time by TAs have the settings still ended up being completely bonkers and we've got no idea how some of the stuff ended up screwed.

Time has nothing to do with it.
Ya need to find the problem, or at least know how to fix it. I don't think simply locking it 2 days in advance is going to set everything straight.

I overheard in the past that BF servers tend to frak up irreparably. I'd suggest to make a server preparation protocol that will start by completely killing the BF4 server process on the server and restarting it.
Then TA goes by a check list to change all values. Check list should only include values that needs to be changed, no need to include 100% vehicle spawn delay or 100% player health if its already set to it by default, that would only make whoever goes by that checklist to skip steps and miss settings.

Don't know how much time it takes for the server to start and configure, but i'd guess no more then 15 min?!

[o1oo1]

inb4 http://warcon.vip-gaming.net/

[Gwynzer]

Completely killing the server (as far as we can) was already part of our protocol, it has to be in order to change passwords and set stats unlocks. The problem we had this time around is that since last campaign, dice have included a "Classic" gamemode. This is one of the modes that is set on the Server Providers panel and unless we change it in the right box there it will stay stuck. The gamemode filter is what sets us the base settings we work do and change things from there.

We've never had to change it before. We're usually set to normal and have to change some settings and we're ready to go. Classic changes a bunch of ridiculous things and we can't control them via procon for some reason. Teamkilling settings get broken (wot), some settings that we can usually change don't work (wot???), having it so 100% of people need to be ready before the game starts (??????????). None of these things were noticed prior as you just don't pick up on these things being wrong when you have 1 or 2 TAs joining the server to check things are set up right.


I think our protocols for setting up the server are generally pretty good. Last campaign was maybe a bit borked because not all TAs had the right access to do what needed done, which is why passwords etc were rarely changed. I think BF4C2 and prior all went pretty well though, bar teething problems that may come up when bringing onboard new people and trying new providers.

We've learned our lessons from yesterday, will add more steps to our checks and better our documentation. For now though we're still going to push for having the servers down well ahead of time, until we're sure we have actually hit everything and all of the team are comfortable with the entire process of setup.






The most annoying thing about the entire process is we don't know who's at fault for a lot of the things as all the server stuff is hidden from public view. Is it DICE's fault for having certain settings locked down? Is it our provider who don't like us changing certain values? Is it ProCon for being a poorly made tool? Or is it all on the TAs for not being able to configure things properly? If we had the ability to run our own servers we could probably answer that problem and take better steps to stop them from happening in future. For now though sometimes you can do things a certain way and it works, but if you try it the same way again it doesn't. It's ridiculous.

[knorren]

inb4 http://warcon.vip-gaming.net/

Warcon has everything we need and more.
It restarts the server and puts it in "Match mode", saves results after each round and you can edit settings really easy.
Also you can move players easily to the other team, not sure about commanders though since they are usually not used in match play.
Just download the program from the link posted above and start it, and you can see the GUI.
Here are two pics for the lazy ones!
Warcon Server Setup

Warcon Server Settings