Server Owner diary...

[ViciuS]

Good day everyone,

 

It is really hard, and i have really not a good way to put everything i have to say in a few words, but ill try to be as pragmatic and brief as possible.

I've been hosting a server for a week already. Actually since the release of the Multiplayer version. I've created from scratch a Spanish community of players, and we are proud of it, we have a well average of 25-32 players daily! And we did not advertise the server yet! Only by players who join from the server list!

which means we are a high part of the community and we are proud of it.

 

Now, since the community grow so fast with over 200 accounts created, i have decide to become more involved in it, and therefor share my experience during this last week as a server admin. And hopefully helping you guys to create a game that support people that have decide to create communities that loves to play your game.

 

My first impression when decided to create a server was, "Okay, this doesn't looks hard at all" Well, now i regret every single word in that statement. After 3-4 days learning from scratch with the very, very, very, (VERY) few and outdated information we have on internet about all the server configurations, and struggling by trial and error, and the many many updates, and errors, and incompatibilities, i have found somehow, a relatively good sort of configuration for the server. And I'm talking about basic configurations, like Loot Spawning, Zombie difficulty, and so on. PLEASE, don't misunderstand me, i know it's an experimental, within an Alpha. There's no complaining here. I just want to share my thoughts with you.

When first start the server, without much knowledge, one of my first attempts to configure the loot, and the zombie spawn plus the difficulty of the zombies, was based on my own experience and what i was expecting to be a small group of players. But soon enough, realize my perception of it was totally wrong. One of the mayor issues the server have is the way i have as an admin to deal with the loot respawn system. Since the community and the player base grow so fast, the configuration i used was quickly surpass by the amount of players that join the server. So, in order to adjust the values a WIPE was needed.

Now looking deeper into the loot respawn configuration. I've been having the next problem. The more new players join into the server, the harder was for them to find loot in the respawn zones. Because everyone who join before them loot all the stuff. Until the point the spawn areas were totally empty.
 

So in my second attempt, decide to Spawn the loot more often, and this create some sort of a "looting zones" Were players decide to base in some places close to good loot spawn point, and continuously loot the areas every time the respawn kick in. (But again, this was necessary to "restock" the spawn houses. (I do have the respawn set up every 3 hours) in game wich is around 3.45h in real life, again because i had a lot of new players joining and they needed some loot in the spawn areas. (Yes i repeat myself a lot because its needed to clarify i had this as a really annoying recurrent problem)

 

So, in my third attempt, someone i manage to handle a configuration where the loot spawn quickly but in low quantity, which create a situation where was more profitable to start looting several places instead of looting a single zone over and over. But A lot of players complain about the low quantity of loot. Sometimes they had to use everything they gather because they must to move from house to house to keep looting.

 

Long story short, i feel like I'm lacking a lot of tools to configure the server in the best way possible to be played online. Not to mention there's configurations in the server files that i have not idea what they do because i cannot find information anywhere. I also feel like a small server (Whitelisted) will work much much better than a public one. But this will eventually kill most servers when the ones who join decide to stop playing for whatever the reason, and those who couldn't join at the beginning are not interested anymore.

 

So in my opinion in order to help Server admins, i would love to see a tool that allows me to increase or decrease the amount, and how often the loot respawn in each chunk maybe. or region. Also a more customizable tool for the types of loots more categories of them and a better way to decide what spawn with more rarity than others. (I know there's one already) but i feel like we need a more customizable one.

 

And all of this is talking just about looting. I'm not even talking about tiles. A lot of players have to increase their skills by disassembling stuff. And since we don't have a way to respawn those, we have to WIPE the world. I would LOVE to have ASAP a tool that allow me to "regenerate" the world maybe. or better, to regenerate specific tiles or chunks.

And on the top of all i would like to say that, if for some reason there's a way to do anything of what I'm saying here. The lack of updated information is doing the job of creating a server almost impossible. At least a good quality one. 

Same way i talk about loot respawn i can talk about zombies. I will eventually edit this same post with more information, sadly right now im out of time. 

 

But just to mention a few more issues i had before i go for now...

-Admin tools in-game are really really un-organic to use, the item list its hard to manage and really unfriendly with the user.

-While try to help or check on players they can hear the admin character moving around even if you're ghost and invisible.

-You cannot see the players inventory

-Safehouse configuration works extremely bad. When you update a mod all the members in the safehouse and faction get removed from them. 

-Safehouse also have a respawn checkbox that for some reason after 15-20 minutes of check in, reset and you no longer spawn in the safehouse if you die.
-There's some types of food that have a mood and boring penalty of hundreds and keep growing while you hold them in the inventory

 

PLEASE for the love of dolphins, if you can someone make the looting configuration and the zombie configuration update in the server without a wipe world i wont need to ask Santa anything else for next Christmas 

 

As i said before i have to go, but ill keep updating this same post with more useful information. (hope it is) to hopefully help you Indie Stones to improve what its becoming probably the only survival game i would never decide to kill myself because im far away from my house, thirsty and hungry. And its faster to kill myself than try to survive and not losing all the work and time and love i put into my character.

Thanks for your time and your hard work!

[P_menta]

Hi, I have the SAME problems as you. I manage the largest server in Latin America. Why not try a soft wipe just in a single town? I can give you the script that will only delete Muldraugh as example. (vehicles are preserved).
You can notify that every 7 days IRL, the 5 cities will be wiped.
you can also drastically increase your loot respawn time after that...

[Noa3]

I can fully agree to this. I have daily in europe around 30-70 Players on my server and a big problem with 1. DDoS 2. Griefers wich drives around and destroy important buildings for the people like Petrolstations and Gunstores(needed to turn off fire) and just joins the server to shoot the players down, to easy respawn thanks to the savehouse system beside the player and then shoot them again after dead.

i whish i had tools to just take on a spectator mode and follow player with the cam around instead of running behind them