Roy

@Snoopy The Community Advisors rank would be the new Moderator rank. There's no point in keeping the rank when in reality there was only one person (Major Push) in it as the primary group.

Yes, they are considered the same level now. This Technical Assistant rank wouldn't be like the regular "developer" rank we saw before. In fact, I'm hoping we can also make "developer" a badge (along with all the other team member groups). That said, all TAs should be trustworthy and has proved to us they are here to help GFL. From what I've seen, everybody I've listed under the TA group has showed they want to help GFL and they've many done things to help us.

@Thomasdavid097 I feel "Head Admin" shouldn't be an official forum rank though. Maybe a badge or something for the server when the GFL Core system comes out. The less IPS 4 groups we have, the easy it is to manage.

Also, I guess you're right about the Admin application times. One and a half week doesn't sound like a bad idea considering it shouldn't take over a week and a half for DLs, etc to give their input on the admin. If a DL does have an issue with the admin, shouldn't they be able to "hold" the application to get more input on the specific admin?

Thanks.

3 minutes ago, qDogg said:

Also, when they are implemented, where would team leaders stand on this new rank system?

We'll talk more about that in the future. I'm hoping we can have team leaders, etc be a badge rather than a group. One of the big reasons I did this was to cut down on actual groups.

Thanks.

I would like to implement these ranks as soon as possible. Why? Well, I'm going to start getting really busy and I feel initializing the rebuild of GFL will really help.

Many of you already agree to these ranks. Please give your input on them.

Thanks.

Admin Apps won't be going away, but unless if they get the DLs approval, the admin app must be up for at least three weeks (for discussion, etc) until the admin can be accepted.

Thanks.

Also, after talking to @Major_Push, I believe it would best to change the following:

Server Managers (2)

Definition

• Suggest admins to the Division Leaders and wait for approval from them.
• Admins must make an application and wait at least three weeks (after the application being submitted) before being added. This will give other Admins, Division Leaders, etc time to discuss an admin.
• Can add admins before the three week mark if the Division Leaders approve.

Thanks.

Well, from what I've seen, there are many issues at the moment. Although, I will admit, I do think a few of the issues people list are just overreactions, etc. I see issues just by reading some of these posts. There's no reason to call each other out in this thread (even in the Server Admins+ section). Leave it to a PM with the Council/Division Leaders or whatever. Also, as long as the manager/admin does their job, there is nothing wrong with being in another community. If there is, well, you can count me out. Considering I've made other communities/websites that host gaming servers (in fact, I made another one recently). As long as it doesn't interfere with GFL, there isn't a problem (if it does, then yes, it is a problem).

Anyways, the important thing is, we see there are problems. I've been pretty busy recently (the entire TF2 situation, work coming up, etc) and I believe the Council will need to step up and take care of these core issues. I'll talk more about it later.

P.S. I'm going to start getting things done I've listed in the Updates section.

Thanks.

Sadly, it seems a lot of the TF2 players are unhappy with the removal of Valve servers and the Quick Play system (proof here).

Players have to calm down and give community servers some time. It hasn't even been 24 hours yet and everybody is flipping out.

Now yes, I will agree, the amount of bad servers outnumber the amount of good servers. The truth is, back when Valve killed off community servers a few years back, they surprisingly killed off the good community servers while the bad servers still survived. If Valve gives community servers a chance again, many great community servers will start being made again. That said, Valve has announced on the mailing list that servers will require a valid Steam account to access certain features in the future. What does this mean? I would imagine if Quick Play gets added back (which it likely will), Valve will do their best to disqualify the bad servers from the Quick Play pool which will help great community servers like ours a lot.

This is just my opinion. I guess we'll have to wait and see how it goes.

Thanks.

I would like to add additional information as well. Currently, a majority of the TF2 players are upset at two things:

1. There's no easy way to go into a server. Currently, if you want to play something like pub, you need to find a server in the community server browser.
2. Valve pub servers aren't a thing anymore.

A big Reddit post was made pleading to fix these two issues.

Obviously, I would prefer if Valve servers didn't come back. However, there are sadly a lot of bad servers out there in TF2 who are giving community servers a very bad name (especially to the TF2 player base).

As for number one, you can technically show the old quickplay menu by typing "OpenQuickplayDialog" in the console (without the quotes).

What are my suggestions to the Valve team?

1. Bring back the old "OpenQuickplayDialog" menu and add it as an item under the "Find a game" again. That said, make it for community servers only.
2. Develop a system that disqualifies "bad" servers (e.g. overusing MOTD Ads, pay-to-win, etc) from the quick play/casual pool. 
3. Whatever you do, do not bring back Valve official servers unless this change goes months without any positive effects. Bringing back Valve servers will put us where we were before and honestly, will destroy the last chance to revive community servers.

Community servers need time. Since Valve destroyed community servers a few years ago, most good communities have died. Oddly enough, the "bad" communities have stayed populated. These bad communities need to go. They are literally turning the TF2 player base against every community server.

Anyways, yeah, that sums up my opinion on the situation right now. Let's hope Valve can make the right choice :\

Thanks.

Another Exciting Update

The update was a success for community servers! From what I've seen, new players will be directed towards the server browser. That said, I don't see as many Valve servers in the server browser.

We currently have two PayLoad servers, one is which is full:

The other one is having issues logging into an account. Therefore, it is empty. This is likely due to the item server, etc being down in TF2.

Come join us @ 162.248.92.77:27015

Thanks.

Hello Server Admins+, I would like to address a few import issues. To be honest with you, I’m going to be harsh in this post, but the things I’ve been seeing are very unacceptable.

Server Mismanagement
I believe this is a very important topic to address. Many of our servers are currently mismanaged. First, let’s talk about my definition of “mismanaged”:

1. Server has no active manager.
2. Manager isn’t fixing critical issues leading to population lost.
3. Manager isn’t willing to listen to all suggestions from other players.
4. Manager is making poor choices that a majority of the player base disagrees with (e.g. bad admin picking, etc).

Number one, if a server has no active manager, that means server content isn’t being updated or fixed (e.g. updating maps, adding new content, etc). Servers that aren’t being managed likely have no population and if they do, it is likely dying. If a server is dead and we cannot find a person to correctly manage the server, we should likely disable the server until we can find a good manager and focus on our servers with healthy managers.

Number two, this is the biggest issue I’ve noticed. There have been servers I’ve seen with issues that have been causing population to heavily decrease. I haven’t fully addressed this to the server’s managers and Division Leaders, but I will after I write this post. I’ve seen critical issues take weeks, even months to be fixed, which is completely unacceptable. And yes, I’ve witnessed these servers have a major population drop since these critical issues began. If you cannot fix or even address issues completely killing the server you manage, then you’re mismanaging your server. 

Number three, firstly, I receive reports from players about server managers not considering their suggestions. Now, yes, I get it, there are a lot of bad suggestions. However, I disagree with completely ignoring them. I want every suggestion to be considered in the future. Yes, you don’t have to implement them, but at least write a nice and valid response stating why the suggestion wouldn’t work for the server(s) you manage. This will generally make players more happy seeing the Server Manager at least consider their suggestion. That said, if this goes to plan, it will eliminate the “Server Manager not listening to my suggestion” reports. Once our GFL Core IPS 4 application is developed, I hope we can implement a fully developed suggestion system. This will make it much easier to see suggestions being made and if the Server Manager is actually taking their time to address some of them. If they are not taking the time to address the suggestions, then I would say they are mismanaging the server(s) they manage.

Number four, this issue has existed for a very long time now in GFL. A big issue I see is poor admin picking. From what I’ve seen and heard, the number of bad admins has been rising. It’s coming to the point where bad admins are pushing players away from the servers. Here’s my opinion on what a “good” admin is:

• Active within the community (Forums and TeamSpeak 3).
• Does their job (e.g. mutes mic spammers). 
• Treats all players equally. Doesn’t give players special treatment because they are their “friends”.
• Generally acts like just another friendly player (e.g. not power hungry or rude), but knows when enough is enough and action must be taken.
• Reports abuse to the appropriate managers and addresses suggestions from players to the Server Manager(s).
• Generally likes welcoming new players and willing to communicate with them on TeamSpeak 3, etc.

These six bullets make a great Server Admin. However, not every Server Admin is like this. Admin picking needs to improve and Admin reports need to be handled well. Once we get our GFL Core system developed, we’ll have official admin reports, etc. Other than that, I see Server Managers make decisions based off of either a couple of their friends or entirely themselves and a majority of the server’s player base disagree with it. This should not be happening and if it does, the server is being mismanaged.

To sum up, servers are being mismanaged. Whether it’s because the server has no manager at all or the manager isn’t managing it correctly, it needs to improve. Division Leaders are responsible for the managers they select and I hope things start improving after they read this post.

TeamSpeak 3
This is the next thing I want to talk about. I’ve been receiving many messages concerning our TeamSpeak 3 server recently saying how messy it is, etc. To start off, the main issue I see with our TeamSpeak 3 server is the fact that everybody has different strong opinions on how it should be setup and in the end, there will be a group of users who are upset. 

So, there are a couple questions we need to answer:

1. Do we want TeamSpeak 3 to become more known to the public? For example, when a user joins TeamSpeak 3, should they immediately notice a public room full of users?
2. Should only Server Managers+ have TeamSpeak 3 admin? Should there be official TS3 admin applications?

There are also users who are completely fine with our current setup for TeamSpeak 3. I believe a majority of us have to agree on one final and stable direction for our TeamSpeak 3 server. We still have to move the TeamSpeak 3 server off of our old SQL machine, once we move it onto our new machine, that may be the time to make correct changes to it.

Communication Within The Higher Ups
That brings me to the next topic, communication within the higher ups (e.g. Division Leaders, Council, etc). Communication has improved compared to 4 - 6+ months ago. However, I still think we can still further improve. For a short amount of time, the Council was heavily communicating with each other. We went into the same TeamSpeak 3 channel every day, talked about current issues and how we can solve them, etc. Sadly, that stopped happening a month or so ago. Although, we now have another place to communicate with each other and that has been working out. But I still think it can be improved. 

Now, eventually, we plan to code an official ticket system. This ticket system will include suggestions, etc and it should solve a problem similar to the #3 problem under “Server Mismanagement” for Higher Ups. Each suggestion (good or bad) should be listened to. Like I said in the “Server Mismanagement” section, you should always write some a nice and valid response to every suggestion explaining why or why not it is a good idea.

[Personal] My Schedule
I just wanted to give my schedule starting next week. I start work on 7-11-16. I will be doing the same thing I did last year, but this time, I will be working three days a week instead of four. I will also be working 8 hours a day and will be unavailable from 7 AM to 4 PM Mondays through Wednesdays.  

Overall
I just wanted to give another small update. There’s still a lot of things that need to be improved on. However, first, we need to discuss the main issues and from what I’ve seen, these are the main issues.

If you have any questions or concerns, feel free to post in this thread.

Google Docs Link

Thanks.

Update

"Meet Your Match" was released here (the game update itself hasn't been released yet).

For community servers, I believe this is literally a hit or miss situation. I have faith in the TF2 developers since at one point, they were managing community servers just like us. I would like to believe they wouldn't hurt something that has made them who they are today (e.g. I'm sure managing community servers in TF2 played a big part in becoming Valve developers). 

I will post more updates as time goes on. This is very exciting and I am hoping for the best! Though, if this is a miss, I'm going to be very upset and I won't want anything to do with TF2 itself personally.

Thanks.

Notes

• Moved the Surf Timer database from the old server to the new one.
• Updated the GFL-Core pack.

A small update. Let me know if anything is wrong!

Thanks.

Hello everybody, so I know the "grand opening" of DarkRP just started. However, I've been monitoring population and this is all I've seen:

14:26:22 ID Name                            Group
         9  qDogg                           superadmin
         4  Cypher                          admin+
         12 OtakuSupreme                    superadmin
         19 KEEMSTAR                        vip
         16 Sasha Grey                      superadmin

Literally only GFL regulars are on the server. This was the same issue we had on OVH. On OVH, we got to 24/100, but most of the players were GFL regulars. There should be random (non-GFL Members) people joining at that point.

Anyways, I think this isn't our fault and I just want some of our Admins+ to do some testing. The issue may have to do with the server browser issue I discussed here.

To Server Admins+

• Try finding the server in the Garry's Mod server browser (under DarkRP) and reply to the thread answering these questions: Have you found the server? If so, how difficult was it to find? Did our server name stand out compared to the other servers in the server browser? Etc...

To DarkRP Server Managers+

• Try messing with the sv_region command. The documented values for sv_region is technically inaccurate (read the thread I linked about the Valve server browser).

Please keep in mind

• It is somewhat early to assume the server browser is the issue. Although, it is a Friday during the Summer. See how the population goes this evening.
• There are many other DarkRP servers out there.

Overall, I just wanted to throw this out there. Who knows, maybe tonight the server will populate. I just get worried when I haven't seen one random player join the DarkRP server while there are Server Admins+ on it for two hours or so (not what I am used to seeing).

I hope to see some results from Server Admins+! That is the main point of the thread.

Thanks.

Update

I've added back the RTD plugin. The issue was in fact the plugin giving "CS:S" weapons. For some reason, giving CS:S weapons causes a server crash in CS:GO. As far as I am aware, the CS:S weapons were never fully removed from CS:GO.

With that said, since giving guns with RTD is useless (we already have the "guns" menu), I decided to add grenades only.

Server Crash:

Error reading weapon data file for: weapon_m3
..\..\game\shared\cstrike15\weapon_csbase.cpp (1303) : Weapon '' script file not found, but its data was accessed. This error is fatal.

Fatal assert failed: ..\..\game\shared\cstrike15\weapon_csbase.cpp, line 1303.  Application exiting

RTD items to give (grenades only):

• Decoy (weapon_decoy).
• Flash Bang (weapon_flashbang).
• HE Grenade (weapon_hegrenade).
• Incendiary Grenade (weapon_incgrenade).
• Molotov (weapon_molotov).
• Smoke Grenade (weapon_smokegrenade).

Please report any more issues to @Thomasdavid097!

Thanks.

I have disabled the plugin (ata_rollthedice.smx) on CS:GO Surf RPG DM (US). When I get the time, I will test the plugin on my test server (e.g. keep rolling the dice until I find the roll crashing the server).

EDIT:

I'm pretty sure I found the issue. However, to ensure this is the issue, I will have to shut down the server and download the console.log file (I will do this when the server empties out).

The issue is simply the "give weapon" roll giving weapons from CS:S which causes a crash in CS:GO. This is also why it wouldn't crash often (chances of getting the roll and getting a CS:S weapon is rare).

Thanks.

21 minutes ago, GLOdysseus said:

I'd like to see the latency issues fixed in purge. The rubber banding is horrendous at times. I always see players complaining about the lag in chat.

 

This discussion/section has nothing to do with Server-specific issues. I would recommend posting this under its correct section (in this case, here).

Anyways, yes, as far as I am aware Purge has many un-optimized addons.

Thanks.

A lot of you are probably wondering what this section is for. Basically, the GFL Higher-Ups care about the direction of the games GFL host community servers in. In the past, we (along with other communities) have been giving suggestions to the Game Developers (e.g. CS:GO, etc). These suggestions have mostly benefited community servers as a whole.

For example, in the Summer of 2014, we e-mailed Valve about a suspected bug in CS:GO. This bug didn't allow any community servers to go above 46 players in CS:GO. After we contacted Valve about this issue, an update was launched that night that fixed the bug.

Another example is when we contacted Valve addressing a major bug in the CS:GO Server Browser (e.g. players would only receive around 100 - 200 community servers out of the 4000+ there was). After a week or so, a CS:GO update was released that fixed this issue for many players. The CS:GO developers were also kind enough to give @Roy (Gamemann) credit in the update.

The truth is, community servers are dying and we are doing our best to communicate with companies like Valve to keep community servers alive (Valve has made many unfair decisions towards community servers in the past).

To sum up, this section is here to basically make everybody aware of our current opinions/bugs we see in games that, if fixed/implemented, would make community servers generally stronger.

If you have any questions, feel free to post here.

Thank you.

Type: Issue

Game: Counter-Strike: Global Offensive

Has this been reported to Valve: Yes, multiple times.

The Issue:

Currently, game servers in CS:GO running on Linux has poor performance when a high amount of players (40+ depending on tick-rate) are on the server. For GFL, there are many advantages running Linux over Windows. However, due to this limitation, we cannot run any of our machines on Linux.

Basically, Linux doesn't use the networking thread. The networking thread basically uses an extra 50 out of 100% CPU. 

Proof:

Read my csgo_servers Mailing List thread. The screenshots are broken on the mailing list thread. Please read below.

Here are the screenshots (in order from the mailing list thread):

2015-05-09_18-13-58.png

2015-05-09_18-14-33.png

2015-05-09_18-17-31.png

2015-05-09_18-18-21.png

2015-05-09_18-18-34.png

Overall: This is the main reason our CS:GO servers don't run on Linux. This issue still hasn't been fixed and was reported over a year ago. We have e-mailed Valve privately about this and we did receive a couple responses, but none of them were helpful (basically telling us to look into the issue further).

Thanks.

11 minutes ago, Snoopy said:

 

Isn't the quick play only for official maps though? None of our TF2 servers (excluding Browser.TF) are currently running official maps and there aren't really any plans to move any to official maps. They've always been very hard to populate (Unless you're lucky and in the right possition, like Skial) due to the sheer number of Valve Official Servers. 

 

If quick play is going to open up to custom servers with custom maps, such as our own, then I welcome this strongly. 

 

 

Servers are usually much more stable at a maximum of 24 players. Usually 32 players on one server makes the server very crowded and somewhat horrible to play on, especially on maps like Orange X3 where it's been left at a state where the map is easy on people with lower end PCs.

Yes, quick play traffic is only available for official maps. However, there is a chance Valve may finally remove Valve official servers from the community server browser. Although, I guess we'll have to wait and see.

We can always set up a new server with official maps. If a promising update comes out, we don't need to change a server to official maps, we can just create a new one and see if it goes well. For the past 3 years, QuickPlay servers have been very hard to fill and Valve kept making it harder and harder. However, back when things were fair for community servers, we had a very populated DustBowl server relying on QuickPlay traffic. I believe it even got to 10th in the world at one point (according to GameTracker). After an update that made Valve servers the main priority, our server slowly died off.

The trick was, get around 3 - 6 players in the TF2 server and then instantly it would fill to 24/24. When I say instantly, I mean there would be 6 players on the server and then 30 seconds later the server would be full at 24/24. It was crazy how fast the server would fill up! Eventually, after doing this for a week, the server would just fill by itself (no more work required on SoJa's and I's part). We obviously obeyed Valve's rules as well (e.g. no instant respawn, stock player counts at 24, etc).

As for Orange X3 at 24 maximum players, I never had a problem with it at 32/32. If custom servers do become populated again, it may be worth making another Orange X3 server at 32/32. Oh wait, I am getting too far ahead of myself, let's see what the update holds for us first...

P.S. Yes, I did "double-post". I felt this would of been better in its own separate post.

Thanks.

1 hour ago, SouRD said:

so is it safe to assume if we pool more players in our tf2 divison will a slot upgrade be forsseable in our future? 

ie: 24-32 players

I guess it depends on the server. Keep in mind, we aren't paying anything extra for slot counts. I believe the reason we reduced the slot counts was because servers weren't going above > 24 and it generally looks better when you see 10/24 instead of 10/32. 

I don't see a reason why not to increase the slot count on servers like Orange X3 if we start receiving more traffic. We used to host a very populated Orange X3 server on the West Coast of the United States that would be full 3/4 of the day (32/32).

Thanks.