heroman758

Merc, it was like 4 am and we were messing around on the dock. I farmed up a ton of points just blowing up the SI that ran up the dock, plus we were given a little to have some fun as well. There were just 2 of us on the server so it wasn't causing a big problem having a pile of gnomes and cola. Were this something that happened during a regular match that would definitely be an issue, but I don't think its much of a problem when there were two of us having some fun. I also kinda like Mercs idea of making gnomes and cola and gas cans really expensive though... because if a gas can cost like say 40 points, we might be able to enable them on finales for a new twist. Plus, buying a gnome would be a testament of mad point farming. It would be fun!

For those of you who don't have to do that job thing so you can keep doing that living thing, consider sticking around for the late night fun times! They're always a blast and we sometimes do crazy things! I present to you exhibit A: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=698494156 By the way, a bountiful supply of gnomes and their six packs no longer seems to crash the server! Join us. You know you want to.

Well, would we be able to integrate other versus game types into the 3rd server? For example mutations like Taaaaaaaaaaaaank! and Versus Survival? Things where you dont require any additional downloads since they're a part of the game. Theres a ton of fun mutations that work with versus that would be fun to mix into the regular competition we have now.

Could a possible thing causing crashes is the buy system being flooded? Say like 4 or 5 people buy a heal at almost the exact same time, while infected are doing things like upping a limit might overwhelm the server?

Removing the AWP from regular spawning seems fair. I dont remember who it was that pointed out the AWP is pretty much the only defense survivors have from the plethora of high pouncers there are, but I see that as a pretty valid point. Making it harder to get though would make things a lot fairer. A team that has the AWP from the get-go is pretty much guaranteed to reach the safe room (not always, but usually). Maybe raise the price of the AWP to like 15 points? It's not that hard to farm up, but significant enough to make it a fairer game in those opening moments.

Gandalf I'm facepalming sir. And Carlos, it should show up on the Steam Servers list of the main L4D2 menu. Its joinable, its just really buggy still

I'm talking specifically about the weapons that do not come as default guns. So just the 4 I mentioned. Basically, things need balancing. I played for an hour today and didn't get more than 20 points as infected because my rocket charger was being shot down before I could touch the ground. Someone on our team managed to get enough booms to buy a tank, and was half dead before touching down after their rocket spawn. The AWP specifically is just something that tips the balance of the game too heavily towards the survivors. It shouldn't require pure luck (the person missing a one-shot kill) to get in and land a hit for every single class. Boomers, yeah whatever. Chargers and jockeys? Tanks even? It's too much.

Hey guys, I think in the interest of balancing things out, the Counter Strike guns need to go. Just as clarification for those of you who are not sure which weapons those are, they include the MP5, SG552, Scout, and the AWP. The MP5 and Scout are pretty much awful weapons. It takes a lot of bullets from these guns to kill the weakest infected (even takes two scout shots to take down a boomer in a lot of cases). I don't know anyone who prefers to use these guns over things like the Silenced SMG or the AK47, so we really don't need to keep them around. Not a huge loss. The SG552 has a cool scoping mechanism for an assault rifle, but in all honesty, most players using a laser sight on the AK47 achieve much greater results than the SG552 can provide. So it's basically just a neat addition, but not the most effective weapon and so it isn't used too often by choice. Now the heart of the matter, the AWP. It should be no surprise to people to hear that the skill level of a great deal of players on the server is really freaking high. Add that to the ability to fire the AWP as if you were firing the hunting rifle with the pushback glitch, and you've got a recipe for total annihilation. A gun that can kill 4 of the 6 infected classes in a single body shot + insanely fast firing speed + near aimbot level accuracy = one nigh impossible obstacle to overcome. As fun as using the AWP is, and as satisfying as it feels to gun down that smoker who just grabbed you instantly is, its super unbalanced to be able to stop over half of the infected teams attacks without batting an eye. When someone good with an AWP is playing on the other team, you're basically forced to resort to just chargers and maybe some lucky smoker pulls. Nearly everything else fails to come close. Then, the charger can only take 3 hits tops (2 if you hit them in the chest or head with any of those shots), and the jockey can take only 2. That's basically just enough time to touch the ground from your rocket spawn before dying just like all your buddies. I've played games before where we barely touched the other team over a period of ten minutes simply because nobody was able to survive long enough after spawning to land a hit. For those of you who hate the idea of giving up the AWP, know that you can achieve the exact same effect with the AK47. Many people prove this is true, but it gives the other team at least a fighting chance in the game, since all infected classes (except the boomer) can take more than one hit. 2 or 3 competent aimers using the AWP can shut down an entire 10 person team from doing any real damage without multiple tanks. I've heard a couple rebuttals saying that we should keep the AWP, and just raise its cost to something like 30 points to offset how powerful it is, then remove it from spawning into maps regularly. I don't know if that's possible, but might be worth looking into. Honestly, I think disabling the Counter Strike guns is just the best way to go about balancing things out now that the general accuracy level of our regular populace is getting really high.

Hey I've noticed a GC #3 server on the server list. Is this the new build you were talking about?

Hey I've noticed a pattern for some of the lag issues. There seems to be a significantly higher chance people will lag on certain maps. The ones I've noticed are: ~Dark Carnival - Highway (first map) ~Parish - Bridge (finale) ~The entire Hard Rain campaign ~Swamp Fever - Swamp (second map) and Shantytown (third map) ~Dead Air (finale) [rarer than the rest] It could just be that these maps have more objects to render within player visibility, or maybe there's something else behind it. It might be worth checking into. Also I have no noticed any severe lag issues over the last couple weeks, but I've been distracted playing LA Noire so I don't have any reports to give.

Apologies for this set of reports, I forgot to grab the server numbers. I've added that to the above info to get section! January 27th 10:09 AM - 2 people online, Max ping ~140, frame rate drops 10:14 AM - 2 people online, Max ping ~140, Server nearly crashed 6:51 PM, 20 people online, Max ping ~240, Rubberbanding issue January 28th 1:30 - 3:00 PM, between 10 and 20 people, Regular ping spikes above 400 February 2nd 10:30PM - 12:00AM, 9-20 people, Very severe frame rate drops and a couple rubberbanding instances (don't have times on those specifically, sorry) February 3rd 10:45AM - 12PM, 20 people, Max ping ~280, Frame rate for infected crippling, Survivors were somewhat impacted as well February 4th 10:45 AM, 8 people, Max ping ~440, Delayed actions making aiming nearly impossible for both teams 11:30 AM, 10 people, Max ping ~300, Server crashed *additional note: the other server's point system was also down at this time February 6th 8:33 PM, 20 people, Max ping ~250, Rubberbanding issue 2 AM, 18 people, Max ping ~400, Really bad delay in actions along with some scattered frame rate drops February 7th 2:15 AM, ~18 people, Max ping ~250, Delayed actions for infected team made hitting enemy players difficult

Hello GC people! I'm putting together a log of the significant moments of lag within the servers, so that hopefully we can root out what is causing them! If you can, please help me compile a fuller log as I cannot be on the server all day long. While playing, keep a piece of paper next to you or your phone or something and just write down any moments you see that could be added to this log. Here's what to look for: Significant gameplay problems ~"Rubberbanding" - The server jumps backwards a few seconds. Sometimes it is preceeded by a quick freeze of the server, but you'll still be able to move around. ~Frame rate drops - If the game is moving like a stop motion film, this is probably a frame rate issue. Make sure to double check with the rest of the server to make sure its a server wide problem and not just you! ~Delayed Actions - The server is responding to your button presses, mouse clicks, etc. with a noticeable delay. A big one is not being able to aim accurately because your character is not moving at the same time as your mouse is. ~Ping Spikes - Look for server-wide ping spikes. If a large number of players suddenly jump into red pings (200+), then note that down! ~Server crashes - These may or may not be related, but report when they happen just in case so we can cross them off the list What to note down for your reports: ~Time it happens - Write down what time the specific event occurred. We will want to convert it to Central Standard Time (CST) since that is the physical server time. If you just want to use the time checking command in game to find the time that works. Otherwise, write down things in your time and convert them to CST when you post. ~Number of players online - This can help us figure out whether the problem lies with traffic in the servers ~Maximum ping you can see - Sometimes the server may lag just because one or two people's pings go off the deep end. Note down the highest ping you can see just in case that contributed to the issue. ~Server number - Push "H" and check the server number really quickly just so that whoever is looking through the logs doesn't look at the wrong server by mistake ~The Problem that happened - What the actual thing that happened is. (i.e. Frame rate drop, Ping Spike, etc.) If you think of any other information that the general public can gather, please share and I'll add it to this post. Thanks in advance for helping us make the GC servers better!

Sometimes there is time to message you, and sometimes its just a really noticeable spike. I'm starting a new thread for the lag/glitch log so that others can help add to it in a more visually appealing place. Would you or someone else be able to mark it so that it stays near the top of the forum, so that others who report stuff can find it easier?

Oh my gosh... that video... I'm dying of laughter.... aaaaah... Just for clarification, this is a "no using rocket/ghost glitches to phase yourself into places" problem? Or does this bar us from doing things like standing outside the elevator on Dead Center's finale to boom or landing on the raft in Swamp Fever and blowing up too?

From what I've noticed so far, its not entirely dependent upon how many people are in the server. I've had bad lag with 3 and 20 people. Like I mentioned above, people's pings are regularly in the orange and red so I'm not sure how to utilize ping as a benchmarker, besides the fact that pings are generally a lot higher. I will start writing down times of day when the server noticeably hiccups, as well as players online and the few highest pings I can see. Hopefully that gives us a better clue to go off of!

Ok, I'm not sure if this has been discussed but I didnt see any other posts on the topic so I'll bring it up. There has been some significant lag problems on both servers over the last month or so. Everyone comments on it, and I know it wasn't always this bad. There are moments every single day where the game will freeze for a couple moments. I usually assume its just me, but then I hear six or seven others say things like "whoa lag spike" or "did the server almost crash" and I realize it was the server that froze up. Now I'm to the point where every lag spike has me waiting to count how many others bring it up. Not to mention the majority of people now have pings in the orange and red regularly. I'm curious to know what our options are to fix the problem? I know back from when I was an admin for a server in Minecraft that restarting the host computer/physical host machine sometimes helped the problem. Usually all we had to do was turn it off around the time server population dropped to the low (around midnight PST, 3 AM EST, 8AM for you English folks) and we would leave it off for 5 or 6 hours while people weren't playing. Then we started the computer up again after it had time to cool off and things would run smoothly again. Doing this like once or twice a month kept things running smoothly. If that wasn't working sometimes we had to have the connections to the host machine checked just to make sure none of the wires or receivers were wearing down, maybe make sure the hardware didn't need repairs/replacing. Basic maintenance, just to make sure the machine was operating at its best. I'm not entirely certain of what the setup for hosting the servers is, but if this is possible, trying it might fix some of the issues the servers have been having. If this isn't possible, are there other options we can take individually to make things better? I've already tried switching to ethernet (which makes your ping like 20-30 and its awesome) and I've used computers with very good processing power and the lag is still there, so I'm not so sure its a problem user-side. But maybe there is something we can do?

Yeah, its fair what Pump is saying that new players would probably get destroyed if they ended up a game with mostly members. However, the fastest way to learn is to learn from mistakes, and a Versus Survival is a less pressure gamemode that would allow newer players to learn if they really wanted to get good at the game. Besides, if Jackie or crasx is actually able to make it a potential regularly cycling map it could make for some interesting pace changes in between standard campaigns.

Hey, this is just something I think would go really well with the current condition of the server. Most of the people who play on our servers in L4D2 are essentially experts at the game, and some of the funnest moments are when the survivors are desperately trying to survive an onslaught of infected keeping them essentially at a standstill (for example, on The Sacrifice in the train yard or on the coaster in Dark Carnival, where teams can hold out for up to half an hour without being able to make any progress). Anyways, there is a Mutation built in to L4D2 called Versus Survival where the game runs like a standard Survival gamemode, but the infected are player controlled. This means that we can have a couple rounds of just fun, frantic chaos without having to worry about covering the people in back or having to push forward continually. I believe it may be possible to just incorporate the mutation gamemode into the current servers by just adding Survival maps and then having a command that switches the game into Versus Survival mode (if its not just straight up possible to incorporate the gamemode as is). It may also be possible just to put up a new server dedicated to it, but that may get less traffic. This could be really fun just to pit really good players up against each other and see just how long teams can last. There could even be a record board for the longest lasting teams!

Hey, I was recently playing on Server 1 and it would kick me after every single round that was played. I know its not a problem on my side because my game works fine on every other server that I tried. Is there something up on your end causing the server to kick people after round ends?

Thanks a lot Maestro. I guarantee you it wont happen again

So I screwed up... It was on the L4D2 server you guys run, map was the first part of No Mercy, and I was a survivor. In normal games and campaigns, you can jump off the roof down into the alley below and land on the AC units and live (taking anywhere between 20 and 50 damage though f/ the fall). However, this time when I jumped I hit an invisible boundry lined up with the AC unit and fell right down into the street and died instantly. It was never my intention to troll or to grief or even kill myself; I just wanted to take a shortcut to avoid all the death inside the apartment building... If I had known that there would be a boundry there, I would never have tried. I'm really sorry for that, and I wont be taking any shortcuts again because odds are this same thing will probably happen. Here's the other info you guys requested: My Steam name: Heroman758 Steam ID: STEAM_0:1:65140357 I was banned by MaestroPG for 0 minutes (which I think means perm... I hope not)