Well the lag on the servers is caused by a severe lack of hardware to back the servers up....  It will handle like 1 full server, but then when ppl start getting on the others, it just kind of chokes out.

I have plenty of extra CPU kicking around and would be willing to host a tempest server for a while until WDF gets the new hardware in place, although I'm not entirely sure thats an effective solution.

Because favorites will have to change etc...

But as far as it being stable, and helping the other servers be stable... it would help in the short term.


Unfortunately game servers are not cheap, especially not 30+ slot TF2 servers.

So short of hosting them on your own hardware (like Temp 1 -> 3 + scrim) there is little that can be done, unless someone wants to purchase servers for The Tempest group like DonkeyPunch did...

You do know we have other, more powerful, servers coming along right? Give it time. And i have no idea what lag you guys are talking about. I almost never get lag and i'm on the east coast.

Personally i home all day long and it is impossible to get a tempest going during the daytime which sucks, sometimes id like to get a little killing in during the middle of the day. Most evenings cept for 1 or 2 days a week at least 1 server is going, tonight is a suck night no servers are going. Really they should all be full every evening idealy.  Summer always brings the numbers down alot so i guess you have to work a little harder to get those other people into the servers. I understand the frustration i see the same complaints mostly over and over and that is the shitty lag when a server gets full or when more than 1 server is running i personally get some rubberbanding issues in choke points of maps and only on the tempests- so ya it is tempting to go play somewhere it runs smoother but i wanna play with the people i know. 2nd issue i see people bring up is complaints when they notice its 1000 and not 50 (like most servers) kills before you get points, people see it get discouraged and leave,  yesterday i saw it happen twice in 30 minutes on my team alone in 2 fort.

Snob and I are on #2.  Come play bitches.

The new servers are not going to affect your latency...

the new servers will address the rubberbanding/freezes due to the hardware being too slow right now...

faster servers don't make the internet faster...

As far as Tempest 4, it shows up in regular  Internet list of servers....

Tempest 1 2 and 3 are currently NOT I repeat NOT showing up in the Internet list of servers...

James,

You're certainly not the only one who has noticed the recent downturn (for whatever reason that might be).  That said...

I completely sympathize with lag issues, and think they might be the most actually remediable cause of the problems (as opposed to a general downturn in TF2 players, or summer vacations, or other things out of anyone's control).  Be that as it may, exactly which money tree are you expecting the Tempest community should deflower to pay to improve things?  Should we take up a collection?  Offer premium services (oops, besides the reserved slots I mean)?  Or was this your roundabout way of offering up your own hard-earned cash?

Does this "player tree" grow right next to the money tree?  I realize server improvements might make them more attractive to random players, but the servers will always be populated more often than not by non-{pDs} players (as it should be.  Could you imagine if 85% of the players on a given day had {pDs} before their name??).  Each server already advertises joining {pDs} on a pretty regular basis, I don't know how much more personal solicitations will help.  In the end, we have to rely on non-{pDs} regulars to get the servers to thrive, not pointless recruitment till we're blue in the faces.

No offense intended to BelligerentPimp, but what has he been doing to get people onto the servers?  I can't speak for anyone else, but the Steam event notifications aren't seriously about to get me to drop whatever work or other non-TF2 related activity I'm doing and jump right in (hands are usually too sticky anyway).  As a community, making some time to play is doable, but none of us are employees, and our obligations to Tempest will never meaningfully extend beyond a game we like and people we enjoy it with.  As I'm sure is the case with plenty of people, if they get tired of something, they'll just go do something else.

And with all due respect, who the fuck are you, going after WDF? like that.  We all have lives and obligations that frankly take great precedence over a ten month old online game.  That means our ability to play will vary as well.  Forgetting of course that this community wouldn't even exist absent your "ghost in a uniform," it continues to exist through his diligence, time commitment, and major financial support.  Once again, I don't see you breaking out the checkbook or volunteering your time to improve the situation, so please, helpful suggestions and offers to help are I'm sure appreciated by all, but flaming a man on his own community message board takes cojones.

So you and Leon have the tournament angle covered.  Great!  Now, you say Tempest was supposed to be "nooby friendly."  How can we make that happen?

The problem is, any game like this has perhaps 30-40% of its core playerbase that would join the game solely to help "fill the server." (and I'm being generous there)  The overwhelming majority won't be constructively prodded into anything they don't want to do.  All we can do at the end of the day is make the servers a fun place to play and people will join and want to come back.

The servers need more reliable administration, but I'm not willing to throw anyone under the bus since I'm not privvy to the details behind the problems in the first place.

Im in Europe still so I take some responsibility for not being there to try and fill the servers. Anyhow as for the servers being empty you need to be patient to fill them up. Somebody has to bite the bullet and be the first one in. Once there are 6 players in a server they usually fill up soon after. While it is true the servers are running on old hardware we should take solace in the fact that there will be new ones up soon. Patience young grasshopper.

Edit:  Not playing TF2 makes me sad inside. At least you people have TF2. Think of poor Dark here alone in Europe without his gaming rig to play games on.