Should we have a contest-specific Gameday, or add a 4th?

[Armadillo of Doom]

Like the title says. A few people in the contest thread have raised the issue of burn-out, and it's something that I've been chatting about as well. Despite the fact that we've had many server-owners offering testing, and our donors can schedule events any time they wish, our formal weekend Gamedays remain the most popular. I think it would be better to add a 4th, rather than bump out one of our regular sessions. Be we have mostly filled the weekend. So what do you all think? Is a contest-specific Gameday needed? And if so, when should it be scheduled? In order to preserve it for the weekend, the only times available are Friday and Saturday evenings for the U.S. So lemme hear your thoughts!

 

[TMP]

IF we schedule one more, we might as well schedule 7 every week XD.

 

[Hanz]

I think there has to be one, but it doesn't matter for me if there will come a 4th gameday, or change another to contest-entries-only.

Edit: But I think there will be a lot of entries, so maybe 2 gamedays will be necessary? Make a 4th gameday and change another gameday to contest-entries-only?

 

[TheDarkerSideofYourShadow]

A few people in the contest thread have raised the issue of burn-out... our formal weekend Gamedays remain the most popular. I think it would be better to add a 4th, rather than bump out one of our regular sessions. Be we have mostly filled the weekend.

Yeah, gamedays have been filling up very quickly lately, such that if you don't submit your map within 2 days or so of Snark posting the thread, you're S.O.L. What you many have to do is schedule both evenings as contest nights. Though playing so many of the same style maps may increase the rate of player burnout (partially offset by the addition of two gametypes in this contest, as compared to payload), it would be nice if the community still kept normal gamedays for all the other style maps. Additionally, you could have special rules with the new timeslots, such that submitting a map to the contest gamedays does not disqualify you from submitting a map to the normal gamedays.

 

[Mar]

Well how about 4 game days, but you can only have sumbit 2 entries period for all 4 gamedays.

 

[Icarus]

Friday evenings, please. I won't be able to make it to any of the Saturday nights

 

[A Boojum Snark]

Having a contest-only testing is the absolute worst idea. You want to prevent PLR/CTF burnout? Then WHY would we have a testing that is ONLY them.

I don't think we need to do anything special at all, though I would not be opposed a fourth testing day, though it should be like any other. Already, part of how I make up the schedule is after I sort out the timeslot requests I try to separate maps that are the same gametype, so this wouldn't be any different for me keeping PLR/CTF separated from each other.

As for too many in one day... we have plenty of submissions, I'm sure there will be others getting in before the day is full.

 

[MungoKing]

I agree with Boojum. I vote for a fourth normal gameday. No contest specific things.

 

[eerieone]

i´m against a fourth GD, when the daycount of testing overweights the count of days of mapping it feels strange to me

i rather vote for more substance,
i.e. don´t submit a new version of a map, when the change has only be a minor one adressing just a single issue in your alpha.
that way we
a) don´t get tired playing the map
b) keep the count of gameday-submissions down

 

[Mar]

I agree with Boojum. I vote for a fourth normal gameday. No contest specific things.

Four game days, but you can only make 2 submissions? How about that?

[quote="eeireone]i´m against a fourth GD, when the daycount of testing overweights the count of days of mapping it feels strange to me

i rather vote for more substance,
i.e. don´t submit a new version of a map, when the change has only be a minor one adressing just a single issue in your alpha.
that way we[/quote]


@eeireone: Who will be the judge whether or not the change you made was worth testing the map again?

Also, you don't have to play every gameday. We need to expand gamedays past the TF2maps.net crowd and get more people involved in them.

We should really get someone (preferably a mod or someone of high reliability) to post the gameday event on the steam forums and the interloper forums and any other forums that cater more specifically to TF2 mapping.

 

[A Boojum Snark]

We need to expand gamedays past the TF2maps.net crowd and get more people involved in them.

We should really get someone (preferably a mod or someone of high reliability) to post the gameday event on the steam forums and the interloper forums and any other forums that cater more specifically to TF2 mapping.

We have 700 and some members, about half of which are online at any given time. That is way more than enough to fill the server when the event announcement goes out (we often have people sitting in chat complaining there is no room to get in). There is little need to go out into the web and post about our testing events.

(and honestly, I wouldn't want anyone from the steam forums at my test, they'd probably be useless for feedback)

 

[Mar]

True dat.

On another note, why doesn't this thread have a poll with the options?

 

[Ida]

I vote for a contest specific gameday because I absolutely despise the ctf assault mode and I want to play as little of that crap as possible.

 

[Waif]

A normal gameday on a week night would be cool.
Yet to me, any extra gamedays a good gameday

 

[zpqrei]

I vote....YES! On the EU server please!

 

[VelvetFistIronGlove]

I think if we expand the game days, it should not be to another nght in the week, but by finding someone to run a different list of maps on the other server, so that there'd be a gameday on the US server and one on the EU server. Judging by the number of people waiting to get onto the server during a gameday, we wouldn't have a lot of trouble filling both servers.

 

[The Political Gamer]

On gamedays is there anyway we could bump the server limit up to 32? That way more people could participate it the testing. Ether way could you make a admin command for that?

 

[Shmitz]

Since 24 is the number that Valve maps are balanced around, going to 32 wouldn't actually be the most accurate test number.

However, some people do try to design their maps to accommodate 32, so it wouldn't be a bad idea for our server to support that. I'm just not sure if it's possible (or beneficial) to change the player max during gameday.

 

[MungoKing]

When you buy servers you pay per slot. So like $0.99 per slot/month. So, as far as I know you wouldn't just be able to bump up the slots on your server unless you're running it personally, like in your house.

 

[Loc_n_lol]

May be have a mini-gameday every weekday (1.5h or 2h instead of the usual 3hours ?), or (largely debatable) have double gamedays on weekends (with both EU and US servers being played on the same days, but not necessarily at the same time) ?