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Team Fortress 2 - Server Scoring

teamfortress.com — One of the things we've been thinking about for a while now is how to improve the player experience around finding a server to play on. It's a tricky problem because our master servers need to ask a game server for its details, and that server can lie to us if it wants to.

Who dugg this? Made popular Mar 13, 2009

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  • Fabbyfubz, on 03/13/2009, -0/+77"Oh hey, this server only has 31/32 people!"

    Connecting............................................................................................................................
    You have been kicked: Reserved Slot

    "FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU-"
  • Ramzy, on 03/13/2009, -0/+75The server hosting business is surprisingly volatile and childish. When my TF2 server managed to obtain the #1 rank on GameTracker, within the first week, we were repeatedly DDoS'd. The DDoS's were a constant issue, causing our server to lag, crash, and completely empty out. After dropping a few spots down in the ranking, the DDoS's magically stopped.

    Once we made our way to #1 again, lo and behold, the issue began to happen again.

    Overall it's a cut-throat environment with all sorts of server operators working with their players to sabotage, screw up, or generally take down their direct competitors. Some clans resort to griefing a competitor, and basically emptying out the server due to the overall mood and general unhappiness caused by their players attacking people in the server, while other, more sophisticated servers resort to botnet attacks and the like.

    So yeah, it's actually surprisingly in-depth and retarded, what happens on the back end... And there's no doubt in my mind that, if there's a way to exploit a server via joining / rejoining (and ultimately delisting them), some one will most certainly do it.
  • Jeepy, on 03/13/2009, -0/+44Thank god I'm sick of seeing a server with really low ping and 22/24 people only to join and find out it's 6 clan members on each side spouting non-stop on all-talk. I don't give a ***** how drunk you are or what your cat is doing.
  • FredWP, on 03/12/2009, -2/+46I hope they kept in mind that you can simply join/quit flood servers to make a server get a very bad score.
  • vsujohn2, on 03/13/2009, -0/+3628/32 Steel Hlstatsx.... sweet! Join...
    1/32.. I'm the one.
    ***** false player counts!
  • Hyunk, on 03/13/2009, -1/+36I hate when servers lie.

    This seems like a good thing.
  • vega27, on 03/12/2009, -0/+35Im really happy what the TF team is doing with this. It solves and age old problem that has plagued PC FPS Games since forever~


  • XXXXXXXXXXXXXX, on 03/13/2009, -1/+26You think Valve is dumb enough to record 1000 joins/leaves from a single steamid?
  • cwocfic, on 03/13/2009, -0/+22Did anyone else notice that the blue line is actually gray and the red line is purple? Or did I just discover that I'm color blind....?
  • harpoonhank420, on 03/13/2009, -1/+20Dugg for the graph being TF2 style
  • vsujohn2, on 03/13/2009, -0/+16Lol @ Playing TF2 at work. And I thought I was bad, just surfing digg/random blogs at work..
  • ceredron, on 03/13/2009, -0/+16yeah. I'm an admin on the No Heroes TF2 servers, and we get minor DDoS'd all the time. In fact, the man hosting our servers (Papa Savage) basically lives, breathes, and sleeps updating and running our servers.

    We've had people routinely try to hack in, guessing Rcon *****, doing all sorts of nasty things to take us down. Nobody ever really knows why.
  • TheMAZZTer, on 03/13/2009, -0/+16Well they can start rating players too if it becomes a problem.

    Players who join and quit more than they play will be given lesser influence in ranking servers, eventually having next to nothing if they troll a lot.
  • NoodlePDX, on 03/13/2009, -0/+14<3 valve...

    i went to visit their headquarters at random like 10 years ago, and they were so excited to have a visitor that the receptionist went into the back room and came back out with a TF2 shirt for me. i still wear the shirt to this very day for bragging rights at geeky gamer events :D
  • dalittle, on 03/13/2009, -0/+13xbox is for noobs. Upgrade to a PC.
  • Chompy, on 03/13/2009, -0/+13Clearly you've never played/dealt with the people involved in any online games, ever. Cherish your innocence.
  • flintmecha, on 03/13/2009, -0/+12Wow, that happens to you, too? I always thought it was just a side effect when I try to play at work, since that's the only place it happens for me, due to maybe the office network not being that great for this sort of thing. Interesting.
  • vsujohn2, on 03/13/2009, -0/+11Everything they do on that blog is TF2 style.
  • bigteebo, on 03/13/2009, -3/+14Any time you see 31/32, you are guaranteed it's a full server. What I hate is when you join an almost-full server, download the map, jump through all the hoops, and THEN you are kicked off due to reserved slot. Oh, and I'm sick of all the 1-map 24/7 servers.
  • 360photo, on 03/13/2009, -0/+11One map servers rule if you only have small amount of time to play (and want a certain map) I hate it when I join a server to have a quick game of 2fort or something, only to go through all the hoops and have it switch to a map I hate 5 seconds after joining.
  • daithiocoinnigh, on 03/13/2009, -4/+14I really don't see why somebody would spend their time doing that.
  • Chompy, on 03/13/2009, -0/+10..but not before you wasted time loading the map!
  • mizike, on 03/13/2009, -0/+9"At least figure out some way to block my join BEFORE my computer loads the map."

    Or spends 5 minutes downloading "hilarious" sound effects. I totally agree with you, checking to see if the server will actually let you join should be the first step in the process, not the last.
  • TheMAZZTer, on 03/13/2009, -0/+9I HATE reserved slots. This may force the development of "nicer" systems (IE they would show the server as full in the browser if the only slots left were reserved, so I wouldn't try and join and get kicked out. Members could use the console to bypass this and jump in.)

    Current way it works is just annoying. At least figure out some way to block my join BEFORE my computer loads the map.
  • RafiParrr, on 03/12/2009, -0/+9I agree, but I think this is easily dealt with by adding a "server score" box in the server browser, so players can sort by server scores and choose to block servers below a certain score. And then everyone's happy!
  • flintmecha, on 03/13/2009, -1/+9MATH, ***** YEAH
  • mizike, on 03/13/2009, -0/+8yeah WTF, there's always that one random 6 year old kid; think it's the same one? can he really be everywhere at once?
  • Mejogid, on 03/13/2009, -0/+8@daithiocoinnigh
    Perhaps not an issue with TF2 due to the general good spirit of the game, but I wouldn't be surprised to see that kind of action blossoming out of inter-clan rivalries or spite. That said, it looks like this was done using historical data and I doubt anybody could have made such an effort before the technique was announced.
  • KingKeys, on 03/13/2009, -0/+8Man, I've just stopped joining any servers with less than 5 slots open because of this.
    I mean jesus, isn't there some sort of technique to display exactly how many slots max are available, excluding reserves??
  • mizike, on 03/13/2009, -0/+7Actually, I love knowing there's 24/7 dustbowl there when I need it. Reserved slots are beyond annoying though, it can't check for that first? really?
  • FredWP, on 03/12/2009, -1/+8I also hope servers can't simply reset their score by restarting or doing something really simple.

    I mean they were able to fake player counts, why not fake they are a new server every few minutes...
  • Jektal, on 03/13/2009, -0/+7You forget how long TF2 was in development...
  • Pssdoff, on 03/13/2009, -0/+6Valve really puts a lot of thought and effort into making good games that are fun to play for a long time. How long has the Orange Box been out and they are still making improvements and releasing updates?

    Electronic Arts cares for nothing but rushing out their next bug-laden crapfest sequel. After owning an EA game for a month, it is about as enjoyable to play as Tic Tac Toe.
  • Drull, on 03/13/2009, -0/+6People should also use favorites.
  • WildTang3nt, on 03/13/2009, -0/+6Reserves on my clan's server work differently. Our server is setup for 24 players, but there are 3 reserve slots that let you overpopulate the server to 27/24. As players leave, it goes back down. Only people with reserved slots can take advantage of the extra slots, so usually there's only 1 or 2 extra people at most.
  • 360photo, on 03/13/2009, -0/+6Was going to type exactly the same thing but add in a weird six year old kid.
  • Nollind, on 03/13/2009, -0/+6Phenomenal idea. Valve is basically defining the type of culture they want to see within their games in a very simple way. Quick example. Many servers out there have "reserved lists" where "members" can auto-kick people to free up a slot for themselves. Great for the member, crappy for the person getting kicked. Based upon this new definition by Valve, this practice will be considered "bad" because it increases disconnects.

    On the flip side, if you're a "member" of a community that "reserves" slots, it's not like your server is going to disappear, since people can still advertise it on their website and connect to it directly. It's just that Valve will no longer "advertise" and broadcast your address/community for you.
  • TheMAZZTer, on 03/13/2009, -0/+6Noone was banned for unlocking achievements, just had their extra weapons taken away for a bit.

    Now if you were cheating, that would get you a lifetime VAC ban.
  • orirawlings, on 03/13/2009, -0/+5Agreed. They should simply make the "score" of each server available to the player, and let them decide what to play on.
  • PhoenixAvatar2, on 03/13/2009, -0/+5He's talking about reserved slots where the server says it has a slot open but as soon as you join the server kicks you back out to keep that slot open. It's something that's done with a mod and very annoying.
  • benbrooks101, on 03/12/2009, -3/+8This definatley isn't a bad thing.. But I wouldn't say it's good either.

    Limiting the amount of servers any player sees is bad for them as a player. People want choice, and if they are forced to only play on the very best servers, well.. That isn't much choice in my oppinion.

    I also hope Valve seriously thinks about the 'security' here. It will be so easy to get a server delisted unfairly.
  • Rikushix, on 03/13/2009, -0/+5Do you mean TFC?

    Pretty sure there would be no TF2 merchandise in 1999.
  • Unlgued, on 03/13/2009, -0/+5Xbox ports are important, to keep these people out of chat.
  • Mejogid, on 03/13/2009, -0/+4Really, they've been quite generous - any server that sees a majority of users disconnecting soon after joining (with a statistically significant number of players) probably isn't really worth playing on. I don't think removing the really bad choices from somebody's options (particularly for something that's simply meant to be fun and painless, like a game) is going to cause any serious harm, and unless there's actually a shortage of servers what damage could it do? They're only cutting off the bottom tail of poor performing servers - a few percentage points for a dramatic decreased in wasted time.

    Admittedly they could provide a checklist or something, but that means making UI and protocol changes for the ability to browse bad servers - is that really a useful feature?

    Given that this has been a one-off test, I doubt there's any chance of people gaming the system - they simply wouldn't have thought to do so before this announcement. Since they have gone and announced it, I'd imagine they'll make precautions for that sort of cheating behavior (eg. discount multiple connects from the same player if their play-time is suspiciously short).
  • Hortnon, on 03/13/2009, -1/+5My server just kicks people when someone with a reserve joins through console. So it's possible for the server to be at capacity with no donaters on.
  • mrbang, on 03/13/2009, -0/+4You need a check box in the filter to see if you want to list it by scores or not.
  • cawfee, on 03/13/2009, -0/+4I like it, and public well-populated servers will benefit greatly from this. Just wish there was also a way you as a player could give it a personal score that contributed a little bit to the overall rating.
  • PhrosTT, on 03/13/2009, -0/+4yeah i'm pretty sure the algorithm is tracking UNIQUE join/leaves. darrrrrrrr.
  • Wazzuper1, on 03/13/2009, -0/+4A quick game...on 2 fort? One of my favorite maps, but most of my games typically take hours to complete since both teams are so well defended.
  • Unlgued, on 03/13/2009, -1/+5:(
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