I know, this sounds like sacrelige--more servers is always better, right? We want LFS to be popular!

...But 90% of the servers are empty. Lots of servers is okay, but if the player base isn't there, it just spreads people thin and no one ever sees anyone else online. People are always complaining about how few servers have people in them, how they join an empty server and race for 3 hours without seeing a single other player... Clearly there's a problem.

Basically, my theory is that if we had fewer servers, the average server would have more people in it. Simple. I know having lots of servers around the world is good, because it ensures players around the world can all get good connections, but I see lots of "server teams" that run 3, 4, or more servers, all from the same location, and these servers are the ones that seem to be empty the most. I know you have nothing but good intentions, but we just don't need you.

Currently it seems like we usually have around 375 public S2 servers online at any given time. Assuming 15 player limits on average, that's 5625 players that can be supported. Our typical daily peak player load is only around the 600 mark--even if players spread themselves as widely as possible, that's only 1 or 2 people per server. Even with the all-time peak, around 1,000 racers, the average is less than 3 racers per server, and less than 1/5 the total capacity. In addition, the nighttime low of 100-200 players means there are actually more servers than players--even in the widest spread, the majority of servers are completely empty.

So, if you run multiple servers--consider shutting some of them down. I don't want to tell the individual servers to shut down, but if you're running more than one, I'd personally ask that you cut back to just 1 or 2. It may actually be better for the community in the long run.

it wont be as big of a problem if all the servers are running different cars/configs. Which helps give more variety for people, but i do agree theres alot of empty servers around.

Scawen already encouraged people not to use all-cars servers, but many people use them anyway. Seems like they are not interested in racing and just want to play around with some cars (which is OK, considering they payed for this game, so they are free to do as they like).

I agree, it's not only the number of servers that cause a problem, but also the lack of proper server configurations.

We have tons of GTR/FO8-Servers. Which is fine, as both are quite popular.

But then we have tons of servers with no car restrictions. And these are usually empty, as they will not allow proper racing. So, these servers could be reconfiguired to only support certain classes (even if it is MRT only, it won't get less visitors than "none") or should be shut down.

EDIT:if you own a server and want to drive with different cars, you could always change the allowed cars, if you are admin...

There is lots of servers which doesnt allow players change the track and its on default Blackwood and thats annoying if car allowed are what you rarely find like FZ50, or roadcars in general. And theres massive amount of empty servers which has Blackwood and all cars, thats stypid. Why couldnt first joining player change the cars allowed? Or option to servers make preset car combos to choose. That would prevent silly combos made by first joining player, it could be free selection too. But I doubt that servers which arent taken care now would even use that option. But it would ne nice, you could make the race you want.

I think the situation is quite okay. In fact, I wouldn't change anything.
When I want to play I search for an empty server with the car class I want to race, set up the track I want to race on and start racing. After 5 minutes people begin to join and 15 minutes later we have a nice group of players.
I never join nearly full servers. These usually only attract those die-hard "I want to take you over NOW because I was momentarily 0.3km/h faster than you!"-drivers. At least that is my experience.
Also it's much easier to drive with three other drivers than with 19 other drivers in turn 1.

Vain

I wouldn't say too many servers is a problem really, you can just filter out the empty servers, and if you can't find what you want, you can join and empty one. But then it isn't empty anymore, and will appear when other people have filtered out empty servers. Basically, we just need more people online, and for people to be more experimental. Reversed tracks, remember those? Treaded tyres? There are miracles waiting to happen.

ya but still its a waste

i mean last night i forgot to turn the empty filter back on... 300 servers were running.. 20 of which had people in them.. now honestly people .. common, whats the point

and that doesnt even include private servers!

If you look at the population history http://www.lfsworld.net/?win=h ... icensed_history&t=182 you can see that since the first month or two after the release of S2 alpha, the max/min number of online racers has been slowly but fairly steadily decreasing(it's more apparent with the minimum numbers). Meanwhile the number of available servers has increased at about the same rate! So theoretically you have a smaller and smaller population getting more and more spread out.

From what I've seen on the server list though, people tend to congregate in a few "popular" servers. However, I do see a lot of all-car servers with groups of 2-5 tooling around. So maybe Scawen is right about that kind of server. I've never run a server myself, are all cars turned on by default? One thing I know about most people is that they're lazy, so maybe the default setting should be a class like TBO or GTR.

i've had some INCREDIBLE races on all car servers in the past. i was using the mrt and some other guy was using the equivelant of a toyota supra street car. (don't rememebr the LFS name of it)

i think we were on blackwood. we had nearly identical lap times but he'd roast me on the strights and i'd roast him inthe corners.

speedfreak227

Quote from cannonfodder :

If you look at the population history http://www.lfsworld.net/?win=h ... icensed_history&t=182 you can see that since the first month or two after the release of S2 alpha, the max/min number of online racers has been slowly but fairly steadily decreasing(it's more apparent with the minimum numbers). Meanwhile the number of available servers has increased at about the same rate! So theoretically you have a smaller and smaller population getting more and more spread out.

From what I've seen on the server list though, people tend to congregate in a few "popular" servers. However, I do see a lot of all-car servers with groups of 2-5 tooling around. So maybe Scawen is right about that kind of server. I've never run a server myself, are all cars turned on by default? One thing I know about most people is that they're lazy, so maybe the default setting should be a class like TBO or GTR.

People aren't getting spread out. You don't see many servers with only a couple people on it. For very long anyways, either more people join them or they move on and try a different server.

What if scawen changes the default server config from all cars to, lets say ... TBO, maybe the server admins will be more willing to look over the cars configuration.

just a shot at decreasing the allcars servers ...

hi. LOL i think the problem with so many empty servers, is because so many members are also server admins. Kinda like All chiefs and no braves.
And since this is a real giving community, people that have the means will usually provide a server to let the rest of us play on.

Someone said theat the number of online playrs has decreases since the initial release date of S-2...
Notice the amounts of bad driver/wrecker complaints also have decreased too?

I do notice that WHen i have the server locator only look for populated servers, some times I'll see three servers, when I switch it to include empty ones too, it increases to like almost 200. I don't think the servers that allow all cars are such a problem. In fact, it's a good way to learn different cars and how they interact and get set ups for a variety of cars from people.
No, the problem is having like 5 Aston National- GTR servers. I can understand
having two servers cause the track/cars are very popular.

Actually the more I think about it, it seems the problem is that only very few people play LFS in comparison to Counterstrike and the LFS members seem to be spread all over the planet, so only a relative few players are in the same time zones. If you want more life in the servers, you have to bring more life to it. That or get everyone to change their sleeping habits
LOL get everyone in North and South America to work jobs on the 2nd shift.

LOL Xcnuse would have to go to night school...

I think empty servers is all about LFSs different nature compared to other online games. LFS is not about going to a server and having 15 minutes of fun. LFS is about training to a big race. In LFS you jsut can't go to a server and play for few minutes and still win. You have to train offline or play on the same server long. This why most of the LFS players don't play 5 lap races on a public server. This makes LFS servers empty.

I really don't see how "too many" servers could be a problem at all. I think Bob said it perfectly. People don't join empty servers. Once one person joins, it's not empty any longer.

I think Racer Y covered a good point too. There just aren't that many people who play LFS. There are generally under 1000 players online at any given time. One thousand players isn't much when you spread them all over the world and throughout the different time zones. I bet there aren't more than a couple dozen players from North America online during the times I play. In fact, I don't think I've ever played with more than 8 people online. ever. There just aren't enough players who are close enough to get a decent ping, who play at the same time as me, and who want to drive the same cars that I do.

You could shut down 9/10ths of the servers and it won't change the simple fact that relatively few people play this game. I guess that's one of the bad things about having such a niche hobby.

Only server I see and have played on that is using a correct configuration and car/track class is the DigiServ racing one. Admins are around too.

Servers like that are the most fun, and around this time of day people are playing in it. There are too many empty servers because (like what some here have mentioned):

-All cars are enabled
-Users cannot select their own track (restricted)
-Not enough people are playing anymore! Or at least that I see. (A patch would certaintly fill up the servers )
-Oval FO8 combination, getting overused now.....
-You are in the North American timezone and we hardly get anybody playing at our times. Sadly, the interest isn't around for NA drivers, don't know why.
-The veteran drivers never play online as much anymore, or not at all!
-I remember more people playing S1, at least in our timezone, I cannot see why it has died off for S2

I see it that people want to race on tracks they know and with cars that they have been using for some time already.

I drive mostly the gtr-class cars and f08 and sometimes the RA and fz50 but that's it. Of course it would be interesting to have a race in FOX at FE black reversed, but I have no experience of this combo. And if there is one server hosting this combo, I'd need some 30+ laps to get in touch with it to be at least enough competitive and not just a moving obstacle. And by the time I look for this server I notice just that there isn't one alive anymore.

In LFS you need a lot of laps to be competitive and learning a new track isn't just a piece of a cake. So joining a server that has the maximum limit of players set to 6 and only 1 online...with some weird combo...no

[Story]
I remember the first times in AS3 with the fzr - just pure frustration, hatred and anger to learn the car . But now that I can actually drive the car/track combo it feels so great! To go through that again and then notice that there aren't any servers using that combo...makes me sad. Currently I am practising the Ky long with fzr and I can't get my tyres last for a lap (I can do more than 10 in AS3 with fzr using R2s). And I've done almost 100 laps offline in ky long . So I don't even feel fast enough to join! Or should I start practising online then...hmm...
[/Story]

...And it is always a thrill to start at the back of the pack in a race when there are 20 people in front of me! And then drive slowly to get pass the 1st corner pileup unharmed

Looking at the large number of private servers one could be forgiven for concluding that many racers prefer not to join public servers. I know quite a few racers who race almost exclusively on private servers. Until public servers become more organised and serious about conducting actual races I think there will be a certain proportion that will prefer to race privately with trusted friends. Everybody likes to have the ability to practice or play around online but many people are seeking a proper race. That means one class of car (or close, mixed classes), more than just the same old familiar tracks over and over again, and perhaps some races with a decent number of laps. I see so many servers with 3 lap races or 5 lap races and I think this discourages some racers. Once the inevitable 412 restarts have occurred, 3 laps is quite an anti-climax. :sleep1:

As Tweak has eluded to, the best servers are the ones that are up at the same time every day (or always up), are well set up for car choice and track variety, and manned by an admin regularly. More of these would serve the community well.

Having the option of fixed setups, which would be easy, drivable setups, would encourage people more to use a greater variety of track/car combos. Maybe this would help to get people on the empty servers.

When I look for a race, I always look for a car track combo that I know well and have a setup for. If already having a setup wasn't an issue, the amount of servers I could choose from would be much higher and I wouldn't end up on the same combos all the time..

LfS has a luxury problem. Sure, it isn't compareable to the numbers of players of Half-Life, but I know some car racing games, where I would be happy if there were 5-10 drivers online at the same time and only one server running.

Nevertheless I would appreciate it, if there were 2-3 "arcarde style" servers with track rotation (but no car rotation) and short turn races (5-7 laps) running. Allowed should be all cars up to TBO class and maybe the LX4.

I think that would be real fun and would appeal to many newbies, in particular if they used to play arcarde racer the last past years.

It's good they have lots of servers, but what LFS really needs, is a FASTER server list.
It takes 2 minutes to get 350 servers on LFS, but I could get 9,000 servers on Counter Strike in that same time.
PLEASE DEVS

I find myself playing on demo servers at night here in the states when the s2 servers are all foriegn, i dont know alot of german or many of the other languages out there. But the demo servers, I can find some decent races sometimes, and it lets me drive the gtt which is one of my favorite non gtr class car! Maybe they could set limits too how many servers created, and/ or te devs could pay the extra buck and set up offical servers, make a US Official with tbo class and maybe one other class or two, then a german official, and so on. that way it will be balanced between official and public servers might help but there still is no way to control how many ppl are on at different times.

Quote from nism0 :

It's good they have lots of servers, but what LFS really needs, is a FASTER server list.
It takes 2 minutes to get 350 servers on LFS, but I could get 9,000 servers on Counter Strike in that same time.
PLEASE DEVS

Erm, you must have no filters enabled? Scanning the entire list is not required, it is best to set it to ones where people are playing and you will get about 15-70 filled servers (depending on what time of day you want to race) refreshed in about 10 secs.

Counterstrike/Steam can refresh servers quick indeed, but think about the resources and money they have to make that happen (ie powerful servers all over the world, content providers, etc). For all I know, the master server which gives us our server list is just a computer hosted at Scawen's house or something (I can't confirm this).

Quote from Tweaker :

Erm, you must have no filters enabled? Scanning the entire list is not required, it is best to set it to ones where people are playing and you will get about 15-70 filled servers (depending on what time of day you want to race) refreshed in about 10 secs.

By scanning the entire list you can see all servers that are available, I always scan the whole list so I can decide the best place for me to race. Filters are fine if you are looking for a specific type of server but when you just want to see what's out there you need to see it all. Sorting by connection speed would be the handiest filter of all. Currently I have to wait for all of the European and American servers to refresh before I get anything local with a decent ping. I assume this is due to the geographical distance each server is from the Master server. If I could filter out all pings over 200 (75% of the server list) it would speed things up nicely.

Quote from Gunn :

By scanning the entire list you can see all servers that are available, I always scan the whole list so I can decide the best place for me to race. Filters are fine if you are looking for a specific type of server but when you just want to see what's out there you need to see it all. Sorting by connection speed would be the handiest filter of all. Currently I have to wait for all of the European and American servers to refresh before I get anything local with a decent ping. I assume this is due to the geographical distance each server is from the Master server. If I could filter out all pings over 200 (75% of the server list) it would speed things up nicely.

Gunn, You can probably get away with as high as 230... I've played on the optus servers and the Pacifica servers and sometimes they get that high of a ping, but there's really not any noticeable lag issues.
I don't filter the server list by car type. Besides, when I go online, I usually don't have any idea what car I wanna use. Well I prefer the RAC, but servers that offer that are few and far between.
LOL most of ther servers are GTR and for a change of pace you can join a GTR server. And when you get bored with that, there's always a GTR server to change things up with