Lets Unit !!!

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MEAT
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Lets Unit !!!

Post by MEAT »

With more and more forums dying and people leaving it's time to unit.
The UT Server Browser looks like a graveyard with all those empty dead servers.
There's no need for all those dead server with rankings above 200?
And it's not going to get any better unless we join together and consolidate what we have.
No one is playing them, let's get rid of them. And what players (if any) that play them will have
to find and play the more populated servers. What a better way to unify UT.
And the same would happen with dead forums.
It's not like the early days when we were busy and servers were needed.
We're at the end of an era and it's way over do...unless you can think of something better?

Just a thought...no need to attack the messenger.
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Creavion
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Re: Lets Unit !!!

Post by Creavion »

With the crash and death of nalicity [since beyondunreal overslept to make backups] a big part of the UT community died or they just did split up into countless smaller communities. Beyondunreal never ever tried to bring NC back, although we all know, how important it was for all of "us". But if you look at UT3, it mostly died rather quickly. "We" are however working on a "solution" to boost the lifetime of UT a little bit up. However people like me never play online, in fact I dont even call myself a real gamer, more a modder and "tester of my stuff".
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Metalfist
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Re: Lets Unit !!!

Post by Metalfist »

I like the idea, but it's also kinda undo-able and you have also have different settings/mods etc.
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MEAT
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Re: Lets Unit !!!

Post by MEAT »

Metalfist wrote:I like the idea, but it's also kinda undo-able and you have also have different settings/mods etc.
Ahh yes, different settings/mods/game types.
Currently there are different settings/mods on each server...but very few.
Most of which belong to dead servers that get no play.
I'm saying we first clean the slate of all the dead servers on our UT browser.
Basically remove those with rankings of 200 and above. (dead/which means they get no play).
And start afresh with what is left (your better servers/populated servers).
With anything successful you need change and compromises.
Why do we need 300 snipers servers when only 20 are populated?
Consolidate settings/mods if we have to keep it interesting and build out from
there...and maybe UT will become popular again.

I'm talking about unifying UT99...keeping it alive.
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Feralidragon
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Re: Lets Unit !!!

Post by Feralidragon »

MEAT wrote: (...)
Most of which belong to dead servers that get no play.
I'm saying we first clean the slate of all the dead servers on our UT browser.
Basically remove those with rankings of 200 and above. (dead/which means they get no play).
And start afresh with what is left (your better servers/populated servers).
(...)
Why do we need 300 snipers servers when only 20 are populated?
(...)
I'm talking about unifying UT99...keeping it alive.
Well, I totally downright disagree with this aproach. Even that those servers may be "dead" they have every right to exist and show up as any populated server, and that wouldn't fix anyhow the UT current status, instead it could even agravate it because people would see "less servers" to play.
What if I suddently openned a server? And if even dead I wanted it to show up to play with friends and other people at times?
Plus, if it wasn't about this quantity of servers, Epic would have already closed their master server for UT, don't you think? So they should exist or we would be screwed.
UT has a tab called "Populated Servers" or something, which filters only servers with players, I sugest whoever is annoyed with dead servers to use that tab, for something better you have gametracker which bans servers with fake playercount, and sorts them however you want.
There are many ways to filter those servers, but it's done in the client.

"Cleaning" whatever servers is not the solution and is an absolutelly "no no", and it violates your right to broadcast your server stabilished by Epic Games itself when released this game. Think about that a small bit.


What this game needs is simple: active developers and active players, both of them, and a "central community" as a repository form like moddb (karma, review and evaluation system, active and "trusted" servers list to join like ut-slv has, a MOTW like unrealsp has, etc), where a forum is just an extra. I even already thought out in the features and even how to make them, but as always, time and money are needed and many of us do not have it, and Shade is pretty much inactive to do anything of this here.
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MEAT
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Re: Lets Unit !!!

Post by MEAT »

Fact is UT is "downright" dead. It's not going to rebound and become popular again.
What you see in players is pretty much all we're going to get. Sure we get the occasional "new" player
but at the same time we're losing older players. People move on, newer games come out, it's a way of life.
And if I was a "new" player coming into UT and I saw all these empty servers, well I would think "this game is dead"
and I'd probably move on. If anything this is a way to attract and keep newer players.
Listen, I'm not trying to reinvent the wheel...I'm just trying to clean it up abit.
By bringing our small groups/community of players closer together and starting anew.
You want active developers? Bring them together so they'll work together, two minds are better then one.
You want active players? Bring them together so they'll play together.
Anyway, is unifying indviduals into a group the answer?
Who knows...unless we try.
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Re: Lets Unit !!!

Post by JackGriffin »

This problem is as old as humanity itself. One large tribe will always be of greater benefit than multiple smaller tribes, but time and again humanity begs for the splintered groups. You just can't fix this, force it, or coerce it into being. Hell entire nations and empires have disintegrated over this single issue.

The truth is that getting "everyone" into one spot would (literally) add years to the game. Is it going to happen? Nope, and I'll show you why:

Put your money where your mouth is and tell Hook and Herm you want to merge with them. Hook has a few deemer players, so does Herm. Add yours in and that's a rocking server. Will it ever happen? You tell me.......<waits for an answer>.......

I thought so. I don't mean to come across as "dickish" but old transgressions are never set aside no matter what people say to the contrary. I wouldn't expect HoF, ~V~, WINGS, and Q's group to feel any different than you or Hook. It's just not gonna ever happen and it's not worth discussing. It just highlights the issues we all have with each other. Mega groups would only make that worse.

The only way groups ever merge is when one gets put down solidly by another clan and the membership jumps of it's own volition like it happened with WINGS.
So long, and thanks for all the fish
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Re: Lets Unit !!!

Post by Creavion »

MEAT wrote:Fact is UT is "downright" dead. It's not going to rebound and become popular again.
All I can say for now "we" are working on something to counter the problem. Have a little bit trust.
About to be non-active
My very last UT map project: CTF-FacePalm (tropical CTF-Face remake)
Why do I leave? click here
What I want to do next: Joining an UDK team (uncertain however) and improve 3D modelling and texture editing skills
Thanks to those who visibly supported me until/at the end!
My reactivated account on indiedb.com.
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Re: Lets Unit !!!

Post by UT Sniper (SJA94) »

UTs Not dead far from it ,there is still around 700 -1300 people playing online.
It seems to have a lot of life for a 12year old game. with any hope after all Exams and stuff has finished this year people will return.

I think its good to have some "Dead severs that way you can learn the maps, mods ect.
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Re: Lets Unit !!!

Post by JackGriffin »

My guess is that number is closer to 350-400 if you account for multiple names to the same person, bots faked as players, etc. I can't imagine it's truly much higher than that.
So long, and thanks for all the fish
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Re: Lets Unit !!!

Post by Sp0ngeb0b »

Far from that. Over the period of a month, I've recognized a total number of 1400 INDIVIDUAL players on my Grapple server. Every day, there are plenty new players joining.
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Re: Lets Unit !!!

Post by JackGriffin »

No way SB. I worked a while for Schlong over at HoF and saw their AKA logs daily. They are consistently between 4 and 7 in the top ten list of all UT servers and I can assure you they do not use fake bot players. We had occasion to critically watch the player list for a while and they had (maybe, and I'm being gracious) 150 active players when you scrutinized the player joins (discarding multiples). It was a core group of 40-50 or so players with the dropoff after that being steep to the 150 mark. I can be comfortable with that number too because I needed to track fakenicking players trying to proxy so we used something I made to track them without their knowledge that didn't use IP or NexGen ID. They had no idea we knew they were who they were, and still don't most likely since ACE came shortly on the heels of this and cured the issues causing problems.

BTW with #1 servers listed like this:
http://www.gametracker.com/server_info/ ... 7.22:7777/
it's no wonder a true estimate can't be gotten looking at the master server. The server is listing a max of 2147.5m players....I'm thinking that's a little high.
So long, and thanks for all the fish
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Re: Lets Unit !!!

Post by Sp0ngeb0b »

As I said, my database saved around 1500 entries in a month. For identifiyng it uses Nexgen ID. Ofcourse I know the Nexgen ID is easy to change, and I've also seen some 'double' entries, but maximum not more than 100. Still leaves around 1400, for skecptics atleast 1300. I can confirm that mostly there are the 'core' players, and most of these 1300 players just joined one time. But it still shows that there are still plenty of players playing this game.
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Feralidragon
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Re: Lets Unit !!!

Post by Feralidragon »

I believe in SpongeBob, specially since let's see a simple fact:
- When we released the CMP2 + XPickups at BU, the number of downloads was so high it got to the top 5 most downloaded stuff there for about 2 months (thousands and thousands, ask Creavion, he was the one who noticed this), and we know BU is the community with the most active "UT series" players and that the pack was actually big in filesize and many players didn't download it for that reason, many were from clans like HoF for instance, and the top was also about UT2k4 and UT3 mods and maps/mappacks.

So, if it got this much downloaded, being for UT and being a big pack which MANY UT players didn't download at all, it wouldn't make sense non-UT players download the pack if they didn't play or thought in playing the game. Another big sized pack, NW2X:
ecoop downloads: 412 (far surpass what the number of total players Jack there alone)
moddb downloads: 2.258 (far surpass even SpongeBob playercount, and even if someone lost the pack and downloaded it again, it would be like Sponge said: around 100 to 200 less)
And there are other repositories with this so I don't even know how many more there are.

And for record, both packs are still being discovered and downloaded.
Just giving these 2 examples since they are 2 perfect examples of how "unlikelly" they were to be downloaded considering their big filesize, and even so check the values so far.

Want even a better example? http://www.facebook.com/pages/Unreal-To ... 2787456609
Even if only 5% of those people still play the game, we're still talking about thousands of players.

Some time ago I openned a server to play with my brother, but I didn't realize it was broadcasting and openned, and believe me or not, in 5 minutes about 4 people joind the match, and if we didn't close it, more people would come with actually nice pings.

Plus, it seems to me you're only considering the top servers in a determined time interval, and perhaps the interval were you saw less players around.

Another thing: uK siege clan closed doors for a month or more (new forum in construction), once it reopenned but all the posts from the previous forum were lost, however pretty much all the players rejoined and the forum is still super active atm.


UT is not as "dead" as it seems. Sure, it doesn't have as much players, but it's all about building new mods and promoting them the right way I think, and talking about the game to your friends (Meat said to me to bring developers and players, and I brought since I started playing the game, even here at work a guy wanted me to handle the game to him after seeing me develop some stuff for it, you can guess what, and I develop AND play the game itself trying to contribute for it's long life, even if my contribution is small, is a "full contribution").

So if people actually keep playing the game, even at one time or another, it will enhance its life big time.

Want the players unified? Build something like I said: a website with a mods/maps repository, a rating system, reviews and whatnot, and make a forum for support, and voilá, success. Unless something like that gets to be built, there's no way to unify players at all.
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Re: Lets Unit !!!

Post by JackGriffin »

Feralidragon wrote:I believe in SpongeBob, specially since let's see a simple fact:
- When we released the CMP2 + XPickups at BU, the number of downloads was so high it got to the top 5 most downloaded stuff there for about 2 months (thousands and thousands, ask Creavion, he was the one who noticed this), and we know BU is the community with the most active "UT series" players and that the pack was actually big in filesize and many players didn't download it for that reason, many were from clans like HoF for instance, and the top was also about UT2k4 and UT3 mods and maps/mappacks.

So, if it got this much downloaded, being for UT and being a big pack which MANY UT players didn't download at all, it wouldn't make sense non-UT players download the pack if they didn't play or thought in playing the game. Another big sized pack, NW2X:
ecoop downloads: 412 (far surpass what the number of total players Jack there alone)
moddb downloads: 2.258 (far surpass even SpongeBob playercount, and even if someone lost the pack and downloaded it again, it would be like Sponge said: around 100 to 200 less)
And there are other repositories with this so I don't even know how many more there are.

And for record, both packs are still being discovered and downloaded.
Just giving these 2 examples since they are 2 perfect examples of how "unlikelly" they were to be downloaded considering their big filesize, and even so check the values so far.
I hate to play Devil's Advocate but let's roll with this. Downloads in no way equate to unique players. If we are going to use this as a yardstick, then let's get Skillz input on this. He's been running 'THE' download service now for years and I'm interested in what he has to say about UT-Files and the number of real players. My guess here is that players use file repositories as virtual servers and download multiple times, with a very large chunk of downloads are just these files being archived by people/groups. The closure of NaliCity scared a lot of old-time players and now they save everything released. I watch my logs and I see lots of IP's of downloads of Russian/Chinese too, and the players from there are very few.
Feralidragon wrote:Want even a better example? http://www.facebook.com/pages/Unreal-To ... 2787456609
Even if only 5% of those people still play the game, we're still talking about thousands of players.
"Like" as a yardstick? Seriously?

Hard numbers-
HoF gaming clan: 2 members
MHA Unreal (a currently rocking MH server): 10 members
The entire Multiplay gaming group: 1,474 "likes"
20K for UT is just a bunch of old former players driving by and hitting the button.
Feralidragon wrote: Another thing: uK siege clan closed doors for a month or more (new forum in construction), once it reopenned but all the posts from the previous forum were lost, however pretty much all the players rejoined and the forum is still super active atm.

UT is not as "dead" as it seems. Sure, it doesn't have as much players, but it's all about building new mods and promoting them the right way I think, and talking about the game to your friends (Meat said to me to bring developers and players, and I brought since I started playing the game, even here at work a guy wanted me to handle the game to him after seeing me develop some stuff for it, you can guess what, and I develop AND play the game itself trying to contribute for it's long life, even if my contribution is small, is a "full contribution").

So if people actually keep playing the game, even at one time or another, it will enhance its life big time.
We should get other opinions in on this. Perhaps KillerBee? He keeps an eye on his servers and knows who is who. Look, I was as shocked as anyone at the lowness of the real player count when it was actively checked. BTW, here's another one for you: The Pron Server. Everyone who played UT (it seemed) stopped by that server at least once to look at it. I have the AKA log from a couple of years ago to late last month. Total number of players? ~650, with a lot of proxy addresses in there I can see right off (when making a spot comparison with Dane's proxy list).
Feralidragon wrote:Want the players unified? Build something like I said: a website with a mods/maps repository, a rating system, reviews and whatnot, and make a forum for support, and voilá, success. Unless something like that gets to be built, there's no way to unify players at all.
It seems Shade is not listening, which is a shame. The base is here to do all that.
So long, and thanks for all the fish
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