UT2004's devastated community and UT2007's future

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Wowbagger

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rulerofNali said:
If I re-registered then why is is nicetry's account dated long before this thread even began :lol: . I'll post my conspiracy theories as Naliking. Oh don't worry I have no intentions of staying here. Just passing through until UT2007 draws closer.

And WoWbagger seems to understand that these bot counting tactics are cheesy! :D

- naliking :) -

Hm yea well, dont expect me to join your fanclub tho ;)
 

Israphel

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PsychoMoggieBagpuss said:
I was going by IP addresses ;)

What you mean they're the same person...and infact there's only ONE person who really thinks that UT2k4's player numbers actually matters? :eek:

What a let down...I thought that this was a big issue and that at least 4 people had been fooled by Epics cunning and evil ploy to make us buy a game that in reality no-one...absolutely no-one plays.
 

rulerofNali

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PsychoMoggieBagpuss said:
I was going by IP addresses ;)
Sure, if you were going by IP addresses then you would not have used the term re-registered, and you would know it was not me :D, unless by some astronomical coincidence we had the same IP. You would also have to assume the conspiracy that I registered several months ago in anticipation of this thread and in anticipation that I would have to abandon my old naliking account.

You just don't want to believe that people find this bot counting cheating cheesy.

- naliking :) -
 

Nunchuk_Skillz

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LOL! You guys are still beating the crap out of the dead horse.... In fact, I'd say you've moved on to humping the dead moose. :p hehe
 

hal

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rulerofNali said:
Oh don't worry I have no intentions of staying here. Just passing through until UT2007 draws closer.

And WoWbagger seems to understand that these bot counting tactics are cheesy! :D

- naliking :) -

Don't let us keep you hanging around here in the slums then. :eek:

No, I think just about everyone understands that a portion of the bots are counted on Gamespy's stats. We just don't happen to agree with you on the reasons why and have made a much better case than you have.

You're advancing some of these theories as though they are fact, yet many of them just don't hold up under scrutiny. They flat-out don't make sense.

To nicetry:

I agree that the CSports numbers appear to be more accurate. I don't think that matters a whole lot to anyone though. Like i said, the majority of those reviews/previews you cited were refering to the number of demo downloads.

I agree the stats have been totally problematic. I seem to remember UT's stats being up and down, though not as much as the UT200x series. That needs to be solved, especially since Epic seems to be keen on adding a lot of extra online functionality to the UT2007 GUI.
 

Wowbagger

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hal said:
That needs to be solved, especially since Epic seems to be keen on adding a lot of extra online functionality to the UT2007 GUI.

Exactly!
It seems theres some nice stuff being added to the stats whats worrying me is that they promised a much better stats with UT2004 and it still sucked.

BF2 has a very nice and working stats and they had over 370000 accounts 2 weeks ago when i checked.
Im not sure if theyre using Gamespy for that tho but i know for sure that i would like Epic to handle it themselves if possible.
 

rulerofNali

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hal said:
Don't let us keep you hanging around here in the slums then. :)

No, I think just about everyone understands that a portion of the bots are counted on Gamespy's stats. We just don't happen to agree with you on the reasons why and have made a much better case than you have.

You're advancing some of these theories as though they are fact, yet many of them just don't hold up under scrutiny. They flat-out don't make sense.
Actually all my theories hold up under scrutiny. They contain motive, opportunity, awareness and action, backed up by real world data. I never said my theories were facts but they are logically more than likely what happened, and it's the conclusion that an Objective observer would come to. Plus it can NEVER be denied that bots and perhaps demo players have been used in order to give the appearance that UT2004 is hanging with the big boys like Battlefield 2, Wolfenstein , Call Of Duty, CounterStrike, and even the likes of Quake 3 .

But I think we can bring this all to a close by advocating that they remove this Bot counting as players feature from UT2007. Your site has Epic's Ear, so let them know that you don't want this feature. Let the game stand on its own merit. Is this not something we can all agree on? :)

And that is my final word on this subject...hopefully.

- naliking :) -
 

Sir_Brizz

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Some of us just don't give a **** and never will.

I don't know about you, you seem VERY preoccupied with the stats. I, and everyone I know, almost never look at Gamespy stats. I have looked on there maybe 4 times since UT99 came out. I REALLY don't care if it's in UT2007 or not, I'll still play it. I'll buy it because I love UT and I'm sure I'll love the next one, not because Gamespy says that 400,000 people are playing two months before release. :p
 
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hal

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rulerofNali said:
Actually all my theories hold up under scrutiny. They contain motive, opportunity, awareness and action, backed up by real world data. I never said my theories were facts but they are logically more than likely what happened, and it's the conclusion that an Objective observer would come to. Plus it can NEVER be denied that bots and perhaps demo players have been used in order to give the appearance that UT2004 is hanging with the big boys like Battlefield 2, Wolfenstein , Call Of Duty, CounterStrike, and even the likes of Quake 3 .

But I think we can bring this all to a close by advocating that they remove this Bot counting as players feature from UT2007. Your site has Epic's Ear, so let them know that you don't want this feature. Let the game stand on its own merit. Is this not something we can all agree on? :)

And that is my final word on this subject...hopefully.

- naliking :) -

I guess we'll have to agree to disagree about the merits of your arguments. But I think most people that read your arguments and then the questions and comments that I've posed about them would have to agree that your assertions are purely speculation.

I'm all in favor of removing the bot counting regardless of the reason that it is there. So, I can at least agree with you on that point. :tup:
 

Wowbagger

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Sir_Brizz said:
Some of us just don't give a **** and never will.

I don't know about you, you seem VERY preoccupied with the stats. I, and everyone I know, almost never look at Gamespy stats. I have looked on there maybe 4 times since UT99 came out. I REALLY don't care if it's in UT2007 or not, I'll still play it. I'll buy it because I love UT and I'm sure I'll love the next one, not because Gamespy says that 400,000 people are playing two months before release. :p

I agree 100% 400000 or 4000 it doesnt matter but what matters is when you cant find a good game on a server running standard maps/settings.

I started up UT2004 to checkout Spoondogs excellent map and took this screenshot.
It looks basically the same as 6 months ago when i quit playing UT.

ctf_servers.jpg


Now it IS important to realise that UT will never get as many servers and players like CS, CS:S or BF2 (something i really hate to admit) but thats ok as long as theres enough people and servers running on normal settings/maps.(and for me, full CB ladders and cups)

And i hope Epic, if theyre gonna run official servers again, do it with the full game and all maps (and why not some of the excellent maps the MSUC has/will brought us?)

Not like they did with UT2004, running Demoservers.
 
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Sir_Brizz

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some mutators that are not on the whitelist are not necessarily gameplay breaking.
 

JaFO

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rulerofNali said:
...
But I think we can bring this all to a close by advocating that they remove this Bot counting as players feature from UT2007. ...
And I still say that asking them to remove bot-counts is futile as it would require additional coding as well as extra execution time.

Instead of merely returning player-count it would have to check to see if each player was a bot.
It would have to recheck again if a player was removed since a player that leaves is automagically replaced by a bot (provided playercount < minimum playercount) ...

Compared to simply counting players and recounting them as soon as anyone really leaves the server that is quite a bit of code that could be used for better things (like more efficient net-code).
 

rulerofNali

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JaFO said:
And I still say that asking them to remove bot-counts is futile as it would require additional coding as well as extra execution time.

Instead of merely returning player-count it would have to check to see if each player was a bot.
It would have to recheck again if a player was removed since a player that leaves is automagically replaced by a bot (provided playercount < minimum playercount) ...

Compared to simply counting players and recounting them as soon as anyone really leaves the server that is quite a bit of code that could be used for better things (like more efficient net-code).

A person new at coding could code that fix in several minutes. You increase the count when a player enters a game and you decrease it when he leaves a game. When a bot enters a game you don't increase the count and when the bot leaves you don't decrease the count. In fact a coder would easily be able to code it so that you don't even have to do any external comparisons to check to see whether it's a bot or a person, provided Epic did their C++/unreal script programming part properly :D. So the overhead is minimal at best, even if you resort to the comparison method.

For a query you just have to return the current total and certainly do not need to do any additional calculations/recalculations or recounting at any time. There would be no noticeable difference in performance. The only difference is that for UT2004, people would immediately notice that only a tiny amount of people actually play this game. For UT2007 it might actually help the game.

It's a trivial issue and one that is easily removed as easily as it was added. ;) .
 

Sir_Brizz

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rulerofNali said:
A person new at coding could code that fix in several minutes. You increase the count when a player enters a game and you decrease it when he leaves a game. When a bot enters a game you don't increase the count and when the bot leaves you don't decrease the count. In fact a coder would easily be able to code it so that you don't even have to do any external comparisons to check to see whether it's a bot or a person, provided Epic did their C++/unreal script programming part properly :D. So the overhead is minimal at best, even if you resort to the comparison method.

For a query you just have to return the current total and certainly do not need to do any additional calculations/recalculations or recounting at any time. There would be no noticeable difference in performance. The only difference is that for UT2004, people would immediately notice that only a tiny amount of people actually play this game. For UT2007 it might actually help the game.

It's a trivial issue and one that is easily removed as easily as it was added. ;) .
Whatever happened to you not posting here anymore? We were so glad.

So where is your backup? Have you written something you can show us, since it's so simple to do that anyone could do it?
 

Swerto

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WOAH WOAH WOAH....

All I have to say is 2k4 devestated community????? 2k4 wasn't as good as 99 but it still was better than 2k3!!!

And 2k7 better be good!!!!! that conquest game mode looks kind of sketchy