major [10-18-16] Update - Steps In The Right Direction!

[Roy 10,832 / 0]

 

 

Hello. It has been a while since I’ve made an update post, but here it is! There are many things to talk about. In the end, we are doing our best to improve. Anyway, let’s go!

 

Division Updates
Rust
As many of you know, we’ve recently promoted @Slotter as a Rust manager. Since then, he has been doing a great job at building and finishing up the server. We’ve never had a complete Rust server until now. From what I’ve seen, VIP/Supporter perks look great as well.

 

The only thing lacking is the hardest part of managing a server: the population! While we do get around 10 - 12 players during our peak, a majority of those players are already in GFL (no “randoms”). In my opinion, having around 10 - 12 GFL members on the server should definitely spark more population. Unfortunately, it appears Rust acts differently than other games such as CS:GO where 10 - 12 GFL players can likely fill a server. One thing I have noticed in Rust is that when we do get randoms, they usually stay connected for a long time. This will help a lot once we find out how to bring in randoms.

 

Lastly, let’s talk about some things to help populate the server. The first thing that comes to my mind is advertising the server through such mediums as websites and word of mouth. Perhaps trying to get a popular Twitch streamer to actively play on the server would help as well. There are also two server browsers for community servers (Community and Modded) and we could try changing which one we show up under to see if that helps. Other than that, I cannot think of anything else.

 

Garry’s Mod
In my opinion, Garry’s Mod is the best game to try to expand into at the moment. With CS:GO and TF2 generally suffering, Garry’s Mod is fully community-based and a company like Valve won’t come in and destroy community servers. Recently, we promoted two Garry’s Mod Division Leaders (@Spookytime666 and @Zebra) and I’ve definitely noticed an improvement (e.g. things are starting to get done). This is great to see. Of course, I still believe we need to improve on things.

 

First, we should be focusing on Supporter/VIP perks. While we are already doing this on TTT #1, I’m not sure if this is being done on the other servers. GFL is in a state where donations are very important, especially with the decline of ad revenue we are receiving monthly. A question I’ve noticed has been asked is whether we should provide “pay-to-win” perks. PTW (Pay-To-Win) perks are perks that give a player an advantage over another player in gameplay. While I don’t believe we should be offering perks such as “You do 150% more damage than other players”, I believe we can offer slight advantages to a player. For example, on Purge, if we had a Supporter/VIP class slightly stronger than the default classes, that should be fine.

 

Second, we need to get MOTDGD ads added to our servers. Initially, I was going to add the ad to the loading screen, but I’m reconsidering that (keep in mind, this would give us a lot of money if successful). However, once a player connects, an MOTDGD window should be opened with an ad playing (Members+ being immune). This will likely increase our ad revenue.

 

Third, expanding into more servers such as DeathRun and Jailbreak. We have succeeded with these servers in the past but unfortunately stopped showing interest in the servers resulting in them dying. We should definitely try these again and keep them up-to-date and long-term stable (e.g. long-term correct management).

 

Lastly, each server should have FProfiler. Only super admins should be able to use the FProfiler commands. FProfiler will help us see which server addons are causing low performance for the server and client. Even if a server isn’t experiencing performance issues, it doesn’t hurt having it on the server just in case an addon is added in the future resulting in poor performance.

 

To conclude, our Garry’s Mod division’s future is looking bright. Focusing on the things listed above, in my opinion, will strengthen our division. I do, however, still believe there are other things to improve on as well such as bad/inactive admins.

 

Team Fortress 2
With the recent promotion of @Mercer, we should get the ball running in TF2 again. As of right now, we will be setting up two new servers. These servers will be Freak Fortress 2 and DeathRun. In my opinion, these game modes are the best to expand into. They are both popular in TF2 and shouldn’t require a lot of admin activity. DeathRun is also very easy to set up.

 

I’ve also seen a YouTube video recently where a (Twitch?) streamer visited Valve’s Headquarters and was told that they are currently working on a new server browser for TF2 and possibly other Valve games. I have sent an e-mail to the main TF2 developer asking if this is true; if so, if there is any more information available. I have yet to receive a reply. However, if this is indeed true, TF2 community servers may see a big improvement (the current server browser is extremely broken).

 

Counter-Strike: Global Offensive
I do not have anything important to discuss with our CS:GO division at the moment but I will in the next couple updates. After talking to @Ariistuujj, he pointed out that CS:GO MG had the “empty” tag in sv_tags. What this basically means is that the server was tagged under “empty” at all times (even when not empty). To the server managers, I would strongly suggest checking your sv_tags on your server and ensuring they are 

1. Up-To-Date
2. Unique
3. Properly set

 

I, or possibly Ariistuujj, will eventually make a post explaining the sv_tags command further and why it is so important.

 

Other than that, while there are other things going on, they are not ready to be discussed.

 

Pirates, Vikings, & Knights
A while ago, we setup a server in PVKII. For the first couple weeks, it never filled up. Afterwards, it had a three-day span of continuous population. While this was awesome to see, I knew it wouldn’t last and I was right. PVKII isn’t a stable game. There are usually around 3 - 4 populated servers at a time (peak).

 

A big question is, “Will this server be taken down?”. Currently, it is not generating any donations, at the same time, it isn’t really costing us anything either. Our machines are already underloaded. Therefore, my answer to that question is “The server will stay up unless our machines start to become overloaded again and the server isn’t generating income”. 

 

eSports Team Success
A while ago, we introduced our first eSports team. While the launch of this eSports team wasn’t smooth (e.g. a lot of complaints), I strongly believe we have succeeded. From what I’ve seen, the team is great. Great skill, sportsmanship, etc. and it’s almost perfect for GFL. With that said, there are things GFL’s core will need to do to help this eSports team succeed even further and I plan on getting those sorted. Although, some of these things are very difficult to achieve.

 

Overall, I just would like to say a big thanks to our eSports team’s roster!

 

OVH Back-End
In the past couple updates, I’ve briefly mentioned that we are working on a new back-end system for future OVH machines. Before going further, we want to eventually attempt to move off of NFO. I’ve explained in many times in the past, but to sum it up: Basically, OVH offers better hardware than NFO and that for more than two times cheaper. While having our servers run on these OVH machines sounds like a dream for GFL, there are many concerns with moving our servers off of our NFO machine.

 

1. I’ve heard a couple stories about server owners moving off of NFO to OVH and completely losing their player base on the spot. While I find it hard to believe that even transferring the GSLT over can’t (at least temporarily) move over the old player base, it’s definitely a big concern.
2. OVH’s current datacenter close to the USA isn’t a great location and unless we get our IPs geo-located to Chicago or another populated area, we aren’t going to move our US servers. This is due to the Server Browser issue I’ve explained before.

 

@Ariistuujj found an article stating that OVH plans to expand into the US. A more specific location would be Vint Hill, Virginia. Initially, my heart sank and I was highly upset that this wasn’t close to Chicago. However, after thinking about it, Chicago has became very saturated for game servers. More specifically, NFO. A few years ago, I feel game servers were more spread out (e.g. we had populated US servers in the East Coast, West Coast, southern, and northern). However, when I look at GameTracker now-a-days, I see NFO - Chicago a majority of the time. Honestly, if we have the money, I think OVH’s US location isn’t a bad option to at least try to expand/move to.

 

As for the back-end system we are building, it is Linux-based. This is also being developed by Killer-Banana and I. However, @SPOOKY-Banana is doing a majority of the work :D. Having this developed in Linux will open up a lot of features for server managers including advanced debugging (e.g. using SourceMod Accelerator for server crashes). Since we will have full control of the machine, we can make it so server managers can see their server’s CPU usage in real-time using a command such as ‘htop’. 

 

A more descriptive list of features will be posted in the future along with guides on how to use the new interface (basically Linux tutorials). Many server managers will understandably panic over this since they may not even know what Linux is. But honestly, this stuff isn’t difficult to do and considering there will be full server guides available on the GFL forums along with support (e.g. Technical Administrators and other server managers), there really shouldn’t be any issues.

 

To conclude, we unfortunately still have no ETA on when this back-end will be done. However, I am hoping it won’t take too much longer. This system will strengthen our server’s back-end and with full control come many possible features that can be used to improve our servers. With that said, the adage “with great power comes great responsibility” also plays a part in developing this system.

 

IPS 4 Application
One thing GFL has been severely lacking in is the fact that we have no official forms (e.g. player/admin reports, ban appeals, admin applications, etc). While I agree this should be a high priority in GFL, it’s not as simple as a few of you think. It really depends on what we want to do. We have a few choices:

• Implement this with our IPS 4 application - Long Process
• Buy A Forms Addon - Short Process, $40.00 Purchase, and Features are N/A
• Look Into IPS 4 Databases - Short Process, Free, but Features are N/A and possibly wouldn’t meet our needs
• Modify (Code) IPS 4 Databases or Forms Addon - Long-ish Process and if modified right, would meet our needs

Personally, I believe 1 and 4 are our best options. However, I’m not sure what we’re going to do. I still need to talk to Denros.

 

Other than that, @denros and I (mostly Denros) got a Server List up and running on our main forums, which is great to see! In the future, I hope to eventually code a machine’s list that will list our future OVH machines along with the hardware and possibly even the current CPU/memory usage. Each server will have a machine assigned to them indicating they are being hosted on that specific machine.

 

While there are many other things that we can add onto our IPS 4 application, I don’t have any to announce at the moment due to lack of information & planning. I will eventually discuss them in future updates, though.

 

Player Time Tracker
I believe coding an advanced and fast Player Time Tracker will benefit GFL. For example, we could add a feature that automatically alerts the server manager when an admin has been inactive for X amount of days. I also feel implementing this into the website (e.g. IPS 4 Application) would be beneficial.

 

We’ve been facing issues regarding inactive admins and an excuse I see often is “I didn’t even know they’re inactive”. Well, with this Player Time Tracker, that shouldn’t become an issue.

 

More information will be released in the next upcoming updates about this.

 

Board of Directors Reformation
As most of you know, @Kim and @Santahiggle have stepped down from BoD. To fill the void, the BoD team has decided to promote @Dano and @denros (officially) to the BoD group. While many questions are being asked about this, let’s go back in time when the BoD group was created. Initially, BoD was created to be like the ex-Council rank, but with less load. For example, we weren’t requiring BoD members to play games. Instead, they only needed to be active in non-game applications such as the forums, TeamSpeak 3, etc. Unfortunately, due to lack of interest for GFL or personal issues, this didn’t work out for members in our BoD team.

 

The communication with the BoD team and staff has been very poor. Therefore, something eventually had to be done. I’ve seen a few people question the BoD team’s existence and recommended just removing it. That is not an option. BoD has a lot of access; access that I don’t want <BoD to have. Another question I’ve seen asked is why we don't have the Trusted group vote for future BoD members. Recently, we’ve been holding final votes in the Trusted group for promotions. While from a Trusted group view, this would make sense for future BoD members, the BoD rank is an extremely high rank and it requires a lot of trust from not only GFL, but from me as well. BoD promotions will be kept between the BoD team.

 

With Dano and Denros being promoted to BoD, I feel the BoD team as a whole will become more active since we have mostly active members in it. Both Dano and Denros have done much for GFL and I, along with many others, am confident that they both will do great as BoD.

 

To conclude, I feel this BoD reformation will strongly strengthen GFL, especially with knowing we promoted active users who are great at communication.

 

Personal Update
Vacation
I will be going on a family vacation from October 22nd to October 29th. I apologize for the very short notice. I will have my laptop with me on which I will still be able to do things for GFL in the case of an emergency. 

 

New Job
As I’ve said in the past, I will be getting a new job. I’ve been waiting for around  1.25 months now due to drug tests failing (on their end, not mine). I’ve had to take three drug tests… With the last drug test, they said they were very confident it wouldn’t come back as failed and after I come back from vacation, I will be trained.

 

With a combination of this new job along with things in life I have to do (e.g. get signed up for school), I won’t nearly have as much time for GFL. With the new BoD selections, I feel confident that becoming less active won’t harm GFL.

 

TL; DR
We’ve had many changes take effect in our game divisions recently. Firstly, Rust got a new manager (Otter) and is finally completely setup, however, we still need to find ways to get the server more populated. Second, Garry’s Mod had two promotions (BigTime388 and Zebra) and things are starting to get done. Though we still need to focus on things like Supporter/VIP perks, MOTD Ads, expanding into new servers, and finally ensuring all of our servers have FProfiler. Third, with the promotion of Mercer in TF2, we can try to get the ball rolling in TF2 again. Setting up Freak Fortress 2 and DeathRun will definitely benefit us. Valve is apparently working on a new server browser for TF2 as well; I am trying to get more information about that from the main TF2 developer. Fourth, while there are things going on in the CS:GO division, I have nothing to announce at the moment. I would like for managers to check their sv_tags to ensure they’re up-to-date, unique, and properly set. Finally, our PVKII server has been suffering recently in population. However, that was expected with a game such as PVKII (e.g. only three - four servers populated at a time at peak). We will be keeping our PVKII server until our machines start to become overloaded.

 

Although when we launched our eSports team we received a lot of negative feedback, I feel we have greatly improved since then. Our eSports team has been a success for GFL and it’s great to have them in GFL. We need to make a few changes to help them go further, however, I plan on getting them done. Unfortunately, those changes are very difficult to achieve.

 

As mentioned before, we have a new back-end system in development for future OVH machines. This back-end will be based in Linux and will open up a lot of potential with managing a server (e.g. we have full control now). OVH is currently expanding into Vint Hill, VA, US and I believe that location will be worth trying out.

 

While forms such as player/admin reports, admin applications, ban appeals and so on should be our main priority, it is a very difficult task to achieve. We have a few ways to achieve this difficult task, although we are currently unsure on which would be the best way. I will be talking to Denros about this to see which option would be the best for us. Other than that, I plan on creating a list of server machines we have along with assigning each server (from the Server List) to a machine (will tell users what hardware the server they play on runs). Developing a Player Time Tracker would also help get rid of inactive admins and such.

 

With the recent BoD changes, I feel our BoD team has strengthened. Many Trusted members have been questioning the existence of the BoD rank and why they can’t vote on future BoD promotions. As for the first question, I do not feel comfortable with giving the Trusted group as much access as the BoD. While yes, they are “Trusted”, the BoD has a lot more access than them. As for the second question, each BoD member not only requires trust from GFL but from me personally as well. BoD promotions will continue to be discussed between BoD members.

 

Finally, I will be going on vacation from October 22nd to October 29. Although this is a very short notice, I will still have my laptop and will be able to do things in case of an emergency. I will also be starting my new job after my vacation resulting in me becoming less active in GFL. I still feel the new BoD team should be able to keep GFL up and running fine.

 

Conclusion
To conclude, there have definitely been a lot of changes to GFL. In my opinion, we have been slowly strengthening, but with a more active BoD team, we should be able to strengthen much quicker. While there are still many things to work on and discuss, I feel focusing on the topics in this post will benefit us.

 

Google Doc

Thanks for reading!

[Otter 880 / 10,435]

As of right now, I'm taking a small break from Rust (I'm still looking into things in my own time). It might be beneficial to update the server advertiser in CS:GO/GMOD/CS:S to include Rust. 

 

 

[BunnyFox 318 / 8,341]

2 hours ago, Slotter said:

As of right now, I'm taking a small break from Rust (I'm still looking into things in my own time). It might be beneficial to update the server advertiser in CS:GO/GMOD/CS:S to include Rust. 

 

 

 

I have also noticed that when I launch Rust to join GFL's server, it doesn't show up under my 'Recently Played Servers' list. Does this mean that the server isn't showing up in the server lists? Or am I just not seeing it?

[Pyros 1,796 / 30,750]

I still think your tl,dr was long

 great update on the BoD team and gmod division

[Bigtime 322 / 6,475]

@Roy currently we are working on bringing back Deathrun (Not a big secret, most know already) then there are some other oldies I want to bring back. We haven't decided if/when we want to do Jailbreak again.

 

With what you said about the MOTD Ads, I'm all for them and have been wondering when we were going to do them. Now if you were to add them to the loading screen would it be possible to maybe have the add just be in a corner of the screen? Also you say members+ are immune to the ads(I figure this is to encourage people to apply for member) but does that mean someone who is member+ can't see ads? If they can still choose to see them I would enable them just to help out.

[Roy 10,832 / 0]

53 minutes ago, Spookytime666 said:

@Roy currently we are working on bringing back Deathrun (Not a big secret, most know already) then there are some other oldies I want to bring back. We haven't decided if/when we want to do Jailbreak again.

 

With what you said about the MOTD Ads, I'm all for them and have been wondering when we were going to do them. Now if you were to add them to the loading screen would it be possible to maybe have the add just be in a corner of the screen? Also you say members+ are immune to the ads(I figure this is to encourage people to apply for member) but does that mean someone who is member+ can't see ads? If they can still choose to see them I would enable them just to help out.

Initially, I was planning on having the ad as a pop-up. Now thinking about it, we could easily just do it in the corner. The problem is, I never could get the loading screen with the ad to consistently load (e.g. the ad/page would only load 1/4 of the time).

 

We can definitely add a feature so that Members+ can have the ads load if they want to support GFL in the loading screen.

 

Thanks. 

[OGMartin 302 / 5,204]

How does one look at said ads? I have nothing better to do in life.