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FakeDetector

The Truth about WU servers

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3 minutes ago, Retrograde said:

Transparent discussion is welcome.

 

 

Why were bdew's posts deleted then? Bdew had nothing to do with what im talking about. Just sayin~

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To clarify:

My interest in Sklo's mod is not an indication of integrating it into WU. 

 

My stance on this issue has been that we cannot force servers to report accurate counts. I had not thought to look at it from the client-side perspective though, which is as far as my interest goes with this. I haven't had time enough to look at the mod yet, but I think I see where it's going and it does warrant some investigation on if we are using the best possible source for player count data.

 

We will not be flagging servers or doing any other sort of indication based on any source of data that we do not fully control. The reason for this is simple: We do not control the data. If we were to flag servers for not matching a criteria, we would risk flagging servers that may be affected by things that are out of our and the owner's control. If we were to flag servers that do match, there's always a chance that scheme could be abused in some way and yield more false results.

 

So TL;DR: My only interest is the accuracy of the data source and if we can improve the accuracy of the client by using it.

 

There are other things that I would love to find a way to make happen, which include providing the full cluster count as well as more information or a description of a server. I plan on giving at least the full cluster count a look when I do the data source used by Sklo's mod.

 

I hope that settles everyone down a bit.

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6 hours ago, Sanfrid said:

The people saying this is a dumb idea or doesn't make a difference are dead wrong. The majority of people who start WU are looking to join a server that's got an actual playerbase and not one that's flat out lying. It happens in other games? Big deal...I want this fixed. Population of the server is the number one thing people look for first. If there is some software that can hide the dishonest players client side then please implement this.

 

I agree with Sanfrid.  This is like a plague and needs to be resolved asap.  There are a lot of honest servers out there, and this is just ruining the game for those people.  The server count is something people look for in a server when picking one to join.  They want a thriving community, not see a server with a bunch of players that aren't really there.  If there is a way to resolve this, please implement.

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I don't really see why this is a big issue. If you join the server and it is not what you expected. Then by all means try another. Why not belong to 10 servers?  We never had an accurate count of players in WO. and there it was more important, so why is it so important here?

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Something else I will add is that I don't want any servers "blocked" from showing up on the login screen because of this issue. I want to make my own decision about choosing what servers to log onto irregardless of "inflated" player counts since the content of the server, how it is run, updated, timers, yadda, yadda, yadda are what I base the desirability to play there upon.

 

=Ayes=

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2 hours ago, Ayes said:

Something else I will add is that I don't want any servers "blocked" from showing up on the login screen because of this issue. I want to make my own decision about choosing what servers to log onto irregardless of "inflated" player counts since the content of the server, how it is run, updated, timers, yadda, yadda, yadda are what I base the desirability to play there upon.

 

=Ayes=

 

Did you read my post a few back from yours? :)

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This might interest some. Might not interest others, just throwing it out there as an idea that worked for us.

 

We removed our server from all lists back at the end of last Nov, or maybe first of Dec iirc - "you cant see us and you never will be able to". We went to invitation only as we got wayy too many undesirables when we first opened it up. We work it like this -

We had 8 initial players, each of those players got 3 slots. They can use those slots as invitations to people they know. They are responsible for those players. If players they are responsible for cause issues, the player that caused the issue is removed and the responsible player is docked a slot or more depending on circumstances. After its been shown that players that were invited under those slots are decent people they were given slots and they invited people in. This allows for a very high quality server with extremely minimal player disruptions, most if not all of which are mistakes and can be readily fixed without issue. I honestly have no idea what our current player count is as I never bother to look or care, but I think there were like 87+ last time I logged in a couple days ago, actively playing, running around having a good time. Since we instated this I have not seen a single issue that could not be easily and readily fixed or made right.

 

So what does all this have to do with player count - Player count doesnt matter - a high quality server with decent people is what matters. The option to blacklist servers based on x criteria is a mountain of problems just waiting to make a gigantic mess.

 

People are going to inflate numbers, they are going to cheat, they are going to do all manner of nefarious things that will be offensive to someone. Welcome to life. You cant code this out. You can however be a bit more selective about your servers reputation, be more selective and sensitive to how you deal with issues that are sure to arise and above all , make sure people are having a good time. Playing Wurm is a long term kind of thing, most people are simply not into a long term commitment to a game, so if they are looking just at numbers, odds are they are not going to be there long anyways.

 

If you have a good server, if your server is appealing, you will get and retain players - If your server is dependable and fair - you will get and retain players, If your server is a place to enjoy the time you spend there - you will get and retain players. word of mouth, a bit of plugging here and there, it all adds up - but you as a server owner - its all up to you.

 

Player numbers are meaningless if you have a desirable server. Do we have the highest population server out there? Not even close. Do we care? Not in the slightest - its not a competition, its a game where we like to do what we like to do. If all someone is looking at are the number of players, do you really want them on your server?

 

Just saying -  Its a different perspective - Might work for some people, might not for others.

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I am glad that i can say, my servers are always showing the real player count.

There are no bots, just for a short time you can find 2 or 3 alts, that because GM´s login in beside ther playerchar for helping others.

The value of 20-30 players at our server are real, i am just not be happy if you see at the login server 4-6 players because the others are divided up to the other maps.

 

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9 hours ago, Keenan said:

Did you read my post a few back from yours? :)

 

Yes. Perhaps some message within it was not clear to me?

 

=Ayes=

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20 hours ago, Ayes said:

Something else I will add is that I don't want any servers "blocked" from showing up on the login screen because of this issue. I want to make my own decision about choosing what servers to log onto irregardless of "inflated" player counts since the content of the server, how it is run, updated, timers, yadda, yadda, yadda are what I base the desirability to play there upon.

 

=Ayes=

 

21 hours ago, Keenan said:

We will not be flagging servers or doing any other sort of indication based on any source of data that we do not fully control.

 

s/flagging/blocking - essentially the same mechanic.

 

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Wanting to stay out of this but I guess I'll quickly have my say >.>

 

Valoria does not fake its numbers incase there are people out there curious whether we do or do not. My opinion on this is that play count to me does not matter. As a few people have said previously, its not a competition. Whether something is done or not about this I can't see it having any effect on Valoria or any other server for that matter. It's not going to cause a flood of new players to other servers or cause servers that to use this loophole to close down. The only thing it will do is shuffle around the servers on the launcher and really how important is that anyway.

 

I will add though, I love the idea of having server descriptions. I think that regardless of where a server is listed on the launcher - descriptions will be great! Every server offers something different and a lot of new players cannot tell these differences until they go around and join each one.

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I got no problems with alts and using them, i just don't like how some servers are lying about their actual player populations, its misleading. Seen some nasty things happen in Wyvern like players making alts and building 1x1 sheds in peoples' deed perimeters and the mayors can't do anything about it :(. But i suppose that's lack of GM assistance, not about the lying of the server's population :/.

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2 hours ago, Nukacola said:

Seen some nasty things happen in Wyvern like players making alts and building 1x1 sheds in peoples' deed perimeters and the mayors can't do anything about it :(

 

That's was a very common occurrence even on WO, many years before WU became a thing.

 

It's not technically against the rules, and trying to police things like that leads to pretty much infinite drama. So yeah...

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I am still trying to figure out why the actual player count is really a big deal. It never mattered in WO unless you did PVP.   No one gets paid more or gets anything extra if they have the highest player count.  People may login thinking it is alot more players than are shown but they will decided for themselves if it is the right server for them.  Really you could login to a server with 200 players but none of them are near where you are so it still seems empty.

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On 9/14/2016 at 0:00 PM, FakeDetector said:

 

Now I don't expect this post to be open for a very long time neither will the WU devs do anything against this but i hope maybe one of Wurm Devs will think for a second and see that such servers will
ruin this game. But I guess in the end every server will be faking its own player count and all will have 254/255 players....

 

Would you like some cheese with that whine? 

 

What you are proposing is somehow limiting alts, er, bots right?  And that just won't fly. If someone is going to leave a CC game for a lame reason then they probably wouldn't stay long anyway. Leave well enough alone and go drink your whine someplace else.

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FakeDetector is xH20xParadox, a player who has been joining servers spouting on about how dishonest these servers are in damaging the community (And apparently stealing..?) He's going through the list, picking servers with spoofed players and has been spamming GL-Freedom chats alongside a friend of his about the situation with videos and self-imposed statistics that aren't even accurate (They keep saying the game is dying because servers are spoofing players LOL)

 

He tried poaching players from our server, literally stating that the player he has previously informed have since joined his server/community. They're literally cultish in their view, our server's admin went to talk to them on their TS and they wouldn't shut up about going on a holy crusade to fix the server.

 

 

I'd be warned, anyone who owns a server as, like I said, they attempted to poach players from our server, taking the convenient moral high-ground when in reality, they don't even understand the situation, or the actual cause to the downfall of players in WU in general.

 

This is literally some anonymous lel conspiracy protest kind of meme.

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I have to admit I wanted to stay out of this drama. Valoria does not fake it's counts but at the same time we also do not care what happens on servers that is not our own. I really don't think it has that much effect on anything and even if the only server stops counting theirs alts (yes Paradox claims there are multiple servers but there is only one right now) it will change nothing. Even with the correct count for their players they would still be on the top of the list. Does it really matter if a server is 1st, 2nd.. 3rd.. 10th on the server list?

 

What I did not appriciate today was Paradox joining Valoria and posting this in our GL chat. I've already said I want to remain out of the drama, that I don't care what other server owners do as long as they leave us alone to play. Using my server to advertise drama? I didn't think that was very polite. The least you could have done is asked for permission to use our GL for advertising.

 

Quote

I'd be warned, anyone who owns a server as, like I said, they attempted to poach players from our server, taking the convenient moral high-ground when in reality, they don't even understand the situation, or the actual cause to the downfall of players in WU in general.

 

Unforunately I've also heard plenty of reports and rumours of this. Several of my staff team (including some of my gms) and playerbase have told me that Paradox sends them steam invites randomly in the hopes of getting them to quit Valoria and join his server. Newsflash: this is not a competition. Play on your own server, mind your own business and maybe then you'll learn to lighten up.

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I think some people need to take a tablespoon, hell a truck load of cement and harden up, so what if some servers are "borking" their server count, who the hell cares, personally I don't play on anyone's server , I prefer to sit quietly on my own server I set up for myself, and build to my hearts content, no pvp, no nerf's no getting random attacks. I wouldn't even bother with a server at all. if  all the available mods were client side, instead.

 

 

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Meh.

 

Others have already said what I was thinking as I was reading through this, but

 

Player count =/= community.

Player count =/= reasonable admins, or stable servers, or insured longevity, etc. you get the idea.

 

I could be on a server with 150 people, all of whom annoy the living bleepedy bleep out of me, with admins losing their cool every other minute for reasons having nothing to do with me, and servers that sputter... but hey, there's 150 people.  No thanks.

 

Or, I could be on a server with 15 people, who have a sense of humor, enjoy helping each other when called for, are welcoming to newbs, with admins that are mature and grounded... and I'll take that over the previously mentioned 150 any day.

 

You might say, "but if they have 150 real people, they must be doing something right, so it matters!..."  Could be, or it's a congregation of 150 bags of feminine hygiene product you want nothing to do with.  It's entirely possible.  I'm sure there are documented cases.

 

I think what we should really be discussing is dark dungeons...   There are dark dungeons in the cave walls and we're here talking about player counts.

Edited by Reylaark
too many words
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xH20xParadox was correct on how to really see the actual number of players that are on the particular server at least. At least he knows the dirty secret to why Zenath's on the top of the list :p. I give him some props to standing up for what he thinks.

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Jumping in the convo a bit.

This player count being off is the server counting different ip's if you log in multiple accounts and your ip don't change then the server want be off on how many people are logged in, but if you have a system where your ip changes for every account you login the server is going to treat them as a new player and up the count. This is the main thing people see when the player count is off on a server in WU. Lamin terms is if your router uses the same ip regardless how many accounts you log in then they will only count as 1 player on that server. If your router gives each client a new ip then each ip will count as a new player count.

 

The problem people are having is they want people to join their server and there are several reasons why this is a issue.

REASONS why people want people to join their server:

  • more people to play with better game experience
  • more people to buy items off their sell web site for those who charge to play on their server or items.

Why it is bad and a issue for false counts:

  • People look for more populated servers to make friends and have a better experience
  • false counts advertise people to unpopular servers and they have bad experience and waste their time playing and looking for servers
  • Makes WU look unattractive over time with a issue like this. How a Developer runs one of their projects reflects how they would run other projects they own. So it makes WO look just as bad.

I see both sides of the field

Dishonest side like the ability to falsify their counts to building up their server

Other side approach this in a honest fashion and it ruins their work in building up their server.

 

This is the down side and the reason for the post and the issue. Some looking for a buck and ratings other are trying to build a community and have fun some are not in it to have fun and meet new people.

 

The alternative for CC to fix this is change the WU from the WO version by making the game 1 steam account log in and making a perm mod that has been made a perm feature in WU and remove restrictions and that is to allow for a player to be fully jack of trades by allowing them to be any priest with no restrictions to their jack of trades side. Then no one needs 2 separate accounts. It is the only way this can be done based on how the game has been coded.

 

There is no way the game can be done to stop the extra game account counts when it is so simple and software out there to make your router  randomize many different ip's on a single PC other than having steam limit the number to 1 and fixing the multi wu client launching in the background.

 

So the big question that needs to be mad here is do people want to be able to run multiple accounts or do they want a accurate player count.

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Well DesolationV4 is intended to be a one player = one character server. At this point we have a large number of unique steam id's in our whitelist db and we strongly enforce the one char = one player rules because we want there to be no captive priests and spy alts this time around. 

 

We also run announcer mod, on a PVP server which is unusual, to help enhance the sense of people being around and about.

 

The thing is the high count number may attract someone to play on your server. The reality is it won't be enough to keep them on your server. To do that you have to offer them a fun game experience, a community that they want to be part of and an administration that they can trust to be fair and unbiased. If you don't have at least those things then the server won't last anyway.

Edited by Nappy
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Yea, the player count on a WU server may draw some players initially who want a more populated server to play upon but then soon enough they will decide if they want to remain playing there for numerous other more significant reasons. This is why I say this whole ability to distort player count is much ado about nothing of substance. More bragging rights from the server owners than anything else.

 

As for someone coming into another's server and making an issue about this or other things, just kick them out, delete the character and ban their Steam ID from your server. A minor nuisance.

 

Then on with enjoying the different options of each WU server that make them distinct from any other. That is what will build and retain player count, if that is even of any interest.

 

=Ayes=

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19 hours ago, Ayes said:

Yea, the player count on a WU server may draw some players initially who want a more populated server to play upon but then soon enough they will decide if they want to remain playing there for numerous other more significant reasons. This is why I say this whole ability to distort player count is much ado about nothing of substance. More bragging rights from the server owners than anything else.

 

As for someone coming into another's server and making an issue about this or other things, just kick them out, delete the character and ban their Steam ID from your server. A minor nuisance.

 

Then on with enjoying the different options of each WU server that make them distinct from any other. That is what will build and retain player count, if that is even of any interest.

 

=Ayes=

 

tfw you can't actually do steam ID bans, just IP bans, and all you have to do is change your IP and log onto a new character to get around it :>

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27 minutes ago, Huntar said:

 

tfw you can't actually do steam ID bans, just IP bans, and all you have to do is change your IP and log onto a new character to get around it :>

 

There are ways.

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