DontCamp.com

Super Wabbit · Posted: Fri Apr 04, 2014 1:53 pm Post subject: Uncle Sam Wants You!

Anecdote:
So the server died last night after everyone left early in the evening. We got up to 15 players right before prime time. Since Dontcampers made up a sizable portion of the server's population, when we all left, the server could never reach critical mass and we missed our window to populate the server.

In this day and age, seeding is what makes servers populated. It is extremely important to have as many server seeders as possible on the server as early in the day as possible. I can't stress that enough. The more people we have seeding, the more likely we'll have and keep a populated server. Of all the popular servers out there, you'll notice that they have several seeders on early in the mornings. Given the anecdote from above, it is likely that we would have had a full server last night had we all decided to seed instead of disconnecting.

The seeding we're talking about isn't the kind that you do when you're at your computer and wanting to play Battlefield and you're just running around on an empty server. That is simply called waiting Wink

. Seeding is done when you are not around and your computer is idle. The seeding tools we have for this allow you to idle on the server without getting kicked for being idle on the server. The tools also keep the game minimized which keeps your power consumption down (barely more than your computer at idle). If you typically leave your computer on during the day then Server Seeding is for you!

Think of server seeding like a Folding at Home program that uses a person's computer while they're not there. The best part of seeding is that it does the work for you so when you're ready to play in the evening, we then have a full server of fun.

***Some of you have the anti-idle seeding tools but most of us aren't using them. Can you all let us know what is holding you back from being a sever seeder? I fully understand that there are plenty of circumstances that would preclude one from seeding. Let me know what they are so that we can devise alternatives. If you have any reservations or questions about seeding, let me know by replying to this thread. PM's are cool too.

NTolerance · Administrator Joined: 13 Jul 2005 Posts: 1044

I'll admit that there's a level of silliness to this. I'm not a huge fan of such silliness, but we've been gathering data on how to have a populated server in the current era. We need to forget all notions of how a server community was run in back in the DC/BF2 days. Back in those days there were less servers, and it was much more difficult to run a server. The technical expertise of this community combined with the lack of other well-run servers made it easy to simply have a full server nearly all the time without needing to seed.

These days it's trivial for anyone to purchase and run a server from a provider like NFO. If you look at the data on gametrackers.com you can see that most servers (maybe like 90% or more) are empty 24/7. No one will join an empty server so they stay empty forever. But server renters keep paying for them anyways. The providers must love this since they make more profit off of idle servers. EA loves it too since they get a cut. This is another huge difference from the old days where the server software was available to us directly.

Even the most popular BF4 servers employ the tactic of seeding. The server I just linked has at least seven seeders 24/7 and is always populated by mid-afternoon EST. Once the server has 20 or so active players the seeders can then disconnect and the server will eventually become full. The Pure Battlefield community is doing a lot of things right - they have seeders along with tools (superior to my own) that are open-source and can help us out.

Again, it's important to remember that times have changed regarding how communities interact with this franchise. In many ways it's silly or unfortunate, but we still enjoy playing the game and this is the ONLY way any server (including ours) will be populated.

Dynamite Dan · Posted: Fri Apr 04, 2014 3:22 pm Post subject:

Here is my opinion on seeding (based on experience)

If there are 3 of us seeding the server, and a 4th player joins. The game has started. However, as soon as the 4th person realised that the other 3 players are just idle, he / she will get bored very quickly and leave.

Me personally, i usually get time to game between 7pm and 11pm GMT. Unfortunately, this is the seeding time for Dontcamp, Then i am left with a choice, try and seed Dontcamp and run around empty maps for 2 hours, and then go to bed? or play on another server? well ive tried the first and have become tired of it.

I will gladly have BF4 running the seeding script if i am just watching youtube or playing FTL, But I will have to stop seeding if i want to play BF4 with actual people or give KSP a go.

Super Wabbit · Posted: Fri Apr 04, 2014 3:38 pm Post subject:

Dan, you raise a good point. If you're trying to play BF4, you shouldn't run around an empty server. Again, you are no longer seeding at that point but waiting for a game to start. If you're actually available to play BF4, go play BF4 where ever you'd like. Don't sit and seed as an actual player.

Help us seed outside of your normal gaming hours, that is where the benefit comes into play. Seed while you're at work, or while you run to the grocery store, or while watching an opera. Seed while you're not home!

With these seeding tools we need to have people seeding at all hours. If that happens, there is a very good chance, Dan, that you will have a populated Dontcamp server to play on.

To Dan's other observation: 3 idle players and one player joins and then quits. There are a lot of BF4 players out there looking for low-pop servers. Either they are looking to unlock something or don't want a meat grinder. What we have noticed is that we'll see a cascade of players join the server at once which will get a proper game going. This cascade effect of players will not happen if we aren't seeding 24/7.

it is alos important to make connections with the various clans that join the server. Why? Because they have friends and friends join off of friends. The more people we get to favorite the server and the more people we have seeding will see us reach a critical mass to populate the server.

NTolerance · Administrator Joined: 13 Jul 2005 Posts: 1044

ProfessorZ · Posted: Fri Apr 04, 2014 4:19 pm Post subject:

I'll be available to seed once I get the Naval Strike DLC in a few weeks.

NT's app is easy to get working and I found no ill-effects of letting BF4 run in the background. Smile

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Super Wabbit · Posted: Fri Apr 04, 2014 4:26 pm Post subject:

Thanks for chiming in Z. Makes sense you're not seeding since you don't have the DLC.

NTolerance · Administrator Joined: 13 Jul 2005 Posts: 1044

Further evidence that seeding works:

This is after myself and Wabbit left our systems seeding after going to bed last night. I woke up to a full server. However, with only two of us seeding I don't expect this to work every day (being the weekend probably helped). This could also be due to the Carrier Assault gametype being popular right now.

Super Wabbit · Posted: Mon Apr 07, 2014 9:16 am Post subject:

Our ranking on Game tracker is the highest I've seen yet at 89%

http://www.gametracker.com/server_info/74.91.112.88:25200/

Thanks everyone for seeding, keep it up! On another note, we're no longer running Naval Strike. Partly because I'm burned out on it and partly because our non-premium players can't play with us yet. So we're only doing stock maps and Second Assault.

Thanks everyone for helping us seed, we're seeing a noticeable up-tick on population.

Super Wabbit · Posted: Mon Apr 07, 2014 1:22 pm Post subject:

And now we're empty. Maybe I should apply the whole "a watched kettle never boils" routine...

NTolerance · Administrator Joined: 13 Jul 2005 Posts: 1044

Four seeders on this morning.

Super Wabbit · Posted: Tue Apr 08, 2014 1:56 pm Post subject:

Hey guys! I'm seeing a bunch of you seeding and it makes me so happy!

We now have some extensive logging going on with the server. We're not sure just yet what info we're getting, but we have a lot of it! We're hoping this will help us tailor the maplist and some server setting to further promote having a populated server for as many hours as possible.

If you have any feedback let me hear it!

Butter · Posted: Tue Apr 08, 2014 11:58 pm Post subject:

I really like how this initiative is data driven!
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EDT sucks.

3rdRcn · Posted: Wed Apr 09, 2014 7:57 am Post subject:

I don't get the time to play but I don't have a problem seeding whenever possible to help out.

Super Wabbit · Posted: Wed Apr 09, 2014 9:47 am Post subject:

Awesome 3rd, thank you!

NTolerance · Administrator Joined: 13 Jul 2005 Posts: 1044

Super Wabbit · Posted: Wed Apr 09, 2014 1:28 pm Post subject:

We now have a Procon plugin that can auto-balance seeders so that it can balance real players more effectively.

Dynamite Dan · Posted: Fri Apr 11, 2014 1:14 am Post subject:

I was running this last night, even though I had BF4 in windowed mode and minimised. I still got kicked for being idle. Do you have to be spawned onto the map and not in the deployment menu for this to work?

3rdRcn · Posted: Fri Apr 11, 2014 7:45 am Post subject:

NTolerance · Administrator Joined: 13 Jul 2005 Posts: 1044