Spectating

[Limi]

I've only recently bought a membership (Jolly Good Show Ol' Chap) so I may have missed this being written down somewhere. However I joined the server the other day and decided to be nice and wait for the end of the round before joining a team and booting someone out, but after maybe a minute or two I was told (can't remember who, but they were also spectating) that I had to join or get kicked.

 

Are we not allowed to just spectate? Sometimes I don't mind just watching a game play out.

[General]

Admins will tell you to join because the server is 22/22 and no other members can join, or if you sit in spec for long periods of time.

[Cinkadeus]

Here's the deal, when its 22/22, and say, 5 of those are non-reserved members, you're preventing reserved members from joining the server by filling that buffer spot. They need that spot to jump in and hit !jointeam. Admins are afforded this spot when they need it.

[ctrlfrk]

How badly would extra spectator slots affect server stability?

[Codrut]

How badly would extra spectator slots affect server stability?

 

 

very bad

[Sky]

How badly would extra spectator slots affect server stability?

 

Actually, the number of spectators in a server doesn't affect its stability. It's the number of active (survivor/infected) players that affects it.

Basically, once you're over the hard-capped 18 non-spectator player limit, server stability becomes an issue.

 

But, the general idea that admins are trying to enforce is that if a player doesn't want to play, they should probably disconnect, to free up

that slot for a player who does want to play, or an admin who needs to monitor something. If a player is removed because they're not a

member, then it's on them on whether or not they want to become a member, so they aren't removed.

Edited October 24, 2012 by Sky

[ctrlfrk]

If raising the spec cap to 10 or something won't affect stability then maybe it's worth considering. It would allow for situations like the OP's where you might want to let the round run to completion before jumping in. Personally I'd probably use it to spec while eating dinner after getting home.

 

I realise raising the cap won't remove the issue, it will still probably fill up, but you could still autokick non members, and maybe put a time limit on the last 2 slots so they autokick after 30 seconds of not typing !jointeam

[JackieChan]

We could always up the player limit a couple slots, but the main issue of people spec camping would be even more of an issue.

[Sky]

No, you're already at 20 player slots. Upping it more would most likely result in more frequent crashing than what is currently occurring.

Those russian servers running 12v12 crash a lot

 

If you want to get rid of the spectator camping, you could always have it remove a non-member when a member connects, so those extra

slots are only usable by admins and not standard members. I know it'd probably upset members not being able to go afk when they want

to, but it seems that the ability to go afk is being abused by the vast majority.

[Biggs]

I think that if the server is full, the server should automatically boot out someone from spec after 5 mins. Our CS:S servers have always had this--even for 'members'--after sitting in spec for some time.

[GravityKitty]

One of the servers I used to play on would boot out a non member as you joined the server to make spot for the member coming in. So even if the server was full, you could join as long as there were nonmembers playing.

Why couldnt we just do that?

 

And then we could still keep the afk slot*

[tonerrrr]

One of the servers I used to play on would boot out a non member as you joined the server to make spot for the member coming in. So even if the server was full, you could join as long as there were nonmembers playing.

Why couldnt we just do that?

 

And then we could still keep the afk slot*

 

It could be a limitation of l4d2...I figured Jackie would have implemented that already.

[Biggs]

One of the servers I used to play on would boot out a non member as you joined the server to make spot for the member coming in. So even if the server was full, you could join as long as there were nonmembers playing.

Why couldnt we just do that?

 

And then we could still keep the afk slot*

 

It could be a limitation of l4d2...I figured Jackie would have implemented that already.

No, I believe we preferred that players NOT get immediately thrown onto a team, because if a player joins in but is not actually ready to start playing, it can screw things up sometimes for that player's team.

 

However, it may be worth trying this out for a week or two to see if it works and does not cause issues with joiners being 'afk' for even a few seconds.

[Sky]

One of the servers I used to play on would boot out a non member as you joined the server to make spot for the member coming in. So even if the server was full, you could join as long as there were nonmembers playing.

Why couldnt we just do that?

 

And then we could still keep the afk slot*

 

That was actually a feature of sky servers; however, I had set it up so players were forced into spectator while loading, and once they had finished loading, they were assigned to a team automatically, to prevent their character from standing around while they loaded in. the afk slot was only in use while a player was connecting, but while the slot is in use, no other players can attempt to connect. The only limitation is only one player can be attempting to connect at a time; Or one for each slot you reserve for that.

 

If you want to see how it's done, it's part of the team manager plugin I released on Alliedmods @ https://forums.alliedmods.net/showthread.php?t=197436

Edited October 25, 2012 by Sky