BF3 Server - Thinking of Renting Your Own?
Discussion
We rented a couple of servers from Multiplay, initially, 64 and 32 slot servers. Their admin are friendly and their control panel is functional. I am not new to running servers, and was looking to build a relationship with them for the long term. When we started, EA/DICE had rolled out Server Patch R3 which was released within days of going public. I have been Beta testing the servers (as well as their game) since early September. As all of you are aware, there were initial problems with rubber-banding/lag on the 64 player maps - especially Caspian, due to it's massive size. By server patch R5, we started to have a problem with Quick Play - it was not sending players to the server. This was actioned by the release of R6, which allowed players to arrive at your server, but the game now became unstable, and was crashing servers, causing everyone to be kicked.. after a crash a lot of players were not coming back.
More patches were released, namely R5 and R6, but since these changes, now the servers would not fill up at all. After long discussion with our server provider, we were told that it is an EA/DICE problem and there was a workaround.. you have to set the following parameter in the server console to allow two people ONLY to play
vars.MaxPlayer 2
then when you have two people in the server (i.e. one of them is you to attract another player from QuickMatch), then type in "vars.MaxPlayer 4". When you get to 4, then rinse and repeat until you get to 32/64 and your server fills up.
Then with the introduction of Patch R7, we started to endure MAJOR server crashes. Our servers would be fine until they were full, then they would crash. EA admitted there was a problem but also pushed through another mod which made the servers nearly impossible to fill. Out came R9 and R10 in short succession. R10 has forced the change of admin settings which prevent the start of the game with less that 4 players in it. So if you join a game (as a server admin) to make your server look like it has people in it, as QuickMatch send another player, as soon as he joins, he is frozen and has to wait for another 2 members to join. So he leaves and all you end with is hundreds of joiners who leave because the game doesn't have enough players to start the game. That variable was settable by admins to allow the game to start, command below cannot be mofidied.
vars.roundStartPlayerCount 4
EA's response is that statpadders were going on empty servers with no one playing and using the server to pad-up. It actually takes much longer time to run around catching flags on your own and you earn much less points compared to a busy fragging session in a populated server.
Patch R10 also denies the password protection for a Ranked Server (which ours are), and there are another number of bugs since the beginning, including not being possible to reserve slots for your Clan and friends.
There are many threads on the subject, I would advise reading as much as you can if you are contemplating renting a BF3 Server. As it stands, EA/DICE are taking money from server admins for a Beta product which should have been tested before release:
Stat Padding Conversation
Empty Servers
Server Patch R9
Server Patch R10
Overclockers UK have their own server.. it's permanently empty for the same reasons: http://battlelog.battlefield.com/bf3/servers/show/...
So tomorrow marks exactly one month since the game was released.. we've seen 1 game patch and 10 server patches in less than 30 days and there are more to follow.
If anyone here would like to play, you can us (temporarily) by searching FUBAR 24/7 (oh the irony!)
More patches were released, namely R5 and R6, but since these changes, now the servers would not fill up at all. After long discussion with our server provider, we were told that it is an EA/DICE problem and there was a workaround.. you have to set the following parameter in the server console to allow two people ONLY to play
vars.MaxPlayer 2
then when you have two people in the server (i.e. one of them is you to attract another player from QuickMatch), then type in "vars.MaxPlayer 4". When you get to 4, then rinse and repeat until you get to 32/64 and your server fills up.
Then with the introduction of Patch R7, we started to endure MAJOR server crashes. Our servers would be fine until they were full, then they would crash. EA admitted there was a problem but also pushed through another mod which made the servers nearly impossible to fill. Out came R9 and R10 in short succession. R10 has forced the change of admin settings which prevent the start of the game with less that 4 players in it. So if you join a game (as a server admin) to make your server look like it has people in it, as QuickMatch send another player, as soon as he joins, he is frozen and has to wait for another 2 members to join. So he leaves and all you end with is hundreds of joiners who leave because the game doesn't have enough players to start the game. That variable was settable by admins to allow the game to start, command below cannot be mofidied.
vars.roundStartPlayerCount 4
EA's response is that statpadders were going on empty servers with no one playing and using the server to pad-up. It actually takes much longer time to run around catching flags on your own and you earn much less points compared to a busy fragging session in a populated server.
Patch R10 also denies the password protection for a Ranked Server (which ours are), and there are another number of bugs since the beginning, including not being possible to reserve slots for your Clan and friends.
There are many threads on the subject, I would advise reading as much as you can if you are contemplating renting a BF3 Server. As it stands, EA/DICE are taking money from server admins for a Beta product which should have been tested before release:
Stat Padding Conversation
Empty Servers
Server Patch R9
Server Patch R10
Overclockers UK have their own server.. it's permanently empty for the same reasons: http://battlelog.battlefield.com/bf3/servers/show/...
So tomorrow marks exactly one month since the game was released.. we've seen 1 game patch and 10 server patches in less than 30 days and there are more to follow.
If anyone here would like to play, you can us (temporarily) by searching FUBAR 24/7 (oh the irony!)
Apart from bugs, the problem of servers not filling up is most likely due to there being too many servers for the normal number of concurrent players. Unless you are part of a largish clan who have enough players to seed the sever you are better off saving your money and using someone elses. Dice have actually said there are too many severs for the demand.
I hear what you are saying but if you look at the dates when the server patches roll out, the effect is instant. One minute your servers are full, then after the patch they're empty. We thought initially that they might be overscribed, but after getting the email from the host to say the server was ready (we were just waiting for the email), when we went online both servers were full and we had to kick to join.
Don't take my word for it, read some of the links, it's really unnaceptable. Rumour has it that R11 is ready from Monday which is when my contract ends. Then I would have to pay another £100 to the GSH for another month..
The questions is; would you?
Don't take my word for it, read some of the links, it's really unnaceptable. Rumour has it that R11 is ready from Monday which is when my contract ends. Then I would have to pay another £100 to the GSH for another month..
The questions is; would you?
There are undoubtedly problems, but bugs aren't the whole story. If you are relying on the quick match and people randomly joining from the server browser then you will struggle because you are in competition with all the other empty servers. Initially the server listing showed 150 server, but these would be the same (for whatever filter settings) each time you ran the query. If you happened to be in those 150 servers then chances are you would always get traffic. If you weren't then chances are you would always be empty. They changed that so that the lists were somewhat randomised to make it a bit fairer.
I regularly play on one particular groups servers, and they are nearly always full or well populated. Most people who go there look for them specifically though, and have their servers bookmarked and as such they don't have to rely on the quick match or lists to get populated.
Personally I wouldn't bother with renting a server since there are too many in competition already. The thing about not being able to move at the beginning is silly though. They should just have made it like BC2 - non-scoring below 4 people, then at least people can join without sitting idle for ages.
I regularly play on one particular groups servers, and they are nearly always full or well populated. Most people who go there look for them specifically though, and have their servers bookmarked and as such they don't have to rely on the quick match or lists to get populated.
Personally I wouldn't bother with renting a server since there are too many in competition already. The thing about not being able to move at the beginning is silly though. They should just have made it like BC2 - non-scoring below 4 people, then at least people can join without sitting idle for ages.
tank slapper said:
There are undoubtedly problems, but bugs aren't the whole story. If you are relying on the quick match and people randomly joining from the server browser then you will struggle because you are in competition with all the other empty servers. Initially the server listing showed 150 server, but these would be the same (for whatever filter settings) each time you ran the query. If you happened to be in those 150 servers then chances are you would always get traffic. If you weren't then chances are you would always be empty. They changed that so that the lists were somewhat randomised to make it a bit fairer.
Yes, since R7, the QuickMatch settings were changed to allow for 300 randoms which meant that although it doubled the amount of tier one searches, it was more random. Because our server was called FUBAR, we were at the front of the list alphabetically, and so always populated.. then R7 reduced the amount, but we still had regular players which we had built up until recently.tank slapper said:
I regularly play on one particular groups servers, and they are nearly always full or well populated. Most people who go there look for them specifically though, and have their servers bookmarked and as such they don't have to rely on the quick match or lists to get populated.
Personally I wouldn't bother with renting a server since there are too many in competition already. The thing about not being able to move at the beginning is silly though. They should just have made it like BC2 - non-scoring below 4 people, then at least people can join without sitting idle for ages.
And you have hit the nail on the head. Because we are not recognised by not having an in house Clan to get the numbers up (there are four cost contributors and players), the main traffic we rely on is from QuickPlay. In the first two week we did have a regular group of people playing, but as the server kept crashing due to R7, we lost a lot of those.Personally I wouldn't bother with renting a server since there are too many in competition already. The thing about not being able to move at the beginning is silly though. They should just have made it like BC2 - non-scoring below 4 people, then at least people can join without sitting idle for ages.
The BF2/BC2 sandbox with freedom to move is what EA is currently considering. At least this way people could still fly around and play with the game - even if they are not scoring points.. why they didn't do this from the start makes no sense and it would also deal with stat-padders. We have noticed that since the "four players needed to start the game" that the stats-padders now arrive in bigger groups and do the same
I've kicked about twenty in a month, but bigger groups are easier to spot, because generally they squad up and hide somewhere to do it. I have just been informed that patch R10/2 is being readied for release and guess what.. we will be able to modify (again) the amount of player allowed to start the game
Decision time.. by tomorrow I need to decide - either way but once bitten...
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