[George]

Honestly I think we need to move the US server from LA to somewhere mid-US if possible.

Also, there's no reason we can't have a US Rockford and an EU Rockford.

Even far east coast would be solid. I'm damned ok with getting a 120 or less ping to the server, and if its east enough eu players could get lower pings as well. Its a true and utter fucking shame that the EU community has basically quarantined the US server, because its why I joined this community. I don't know about others but my play time has drastically decreased since we can't hold a stable US pop server. If its a choice of playing with a 200+ ping, and less than 30 fps on a full EU server or sit with a nice 80 ping, and 60 fps on an empty server, I'll choose neither. Got better things to do than not enjoy myself.

Having the server more mid/eastern would mean that EU players that want to player later at night, when most of the EU pop is offline, can join the US server and help increase numbers. But, as the server is currently in US west, it makes playing on it from Europe horrible.

[Katyusha]

Honestly I think we need to move the US server from LA to somewhere mid-US if possible.

Also, there's no reason we can't have a US Rockford and an EU Rockford.

Even far east coast would be solid. I'm damned ok with getting a 120 or less ping to the server, and if its east enough eu players could get lower pings as well. Its a true and utter fucking shame that the EU community has basically quarantined the US server, because its why I joined this community. I don't know about others but my play time has drastically decreased since we can't hold a stable US pop server. If its a choice of playing with a 200+ ping, and less than 30 fps on a full EU server or sit with a nice 80 ping, and 60 fps on an empty server, I'll choose neither. Got better things to do than not enjoy myself.

Having the server more mid/eastern would mean that EU players that want to player later at night, when most of the EU pop is offline, can join the US server and help increase numbers. But, as the server is currently in US west, it makes playing on it from Europe horrible.

Thats why i'm saying like an east coast server could solve some problems.

[Nev]

Or just keep it the way it was?

To be frank, there is a very low population of European players able to play during the US evening/night. Only those pulling all-nighters or waking up at 3am. Closest thing we have to Europeans are those dang Canadians living above us who share the love having it hosted in the US.

For example, playing at 6pm here on the West Coast is 2:39am in the UK, which is already a huge gap and only gets bigger as you move east. Making it hosted in the Central time zone isn't going to fix that gap and would just be a waste of time to find a new dedi host and have Burnett and them go through the process of setting it up and what not.

I love playing on a server with players from all around but if it comes down to it and we have a large enough American playerbase coming back during the summer I'd rather play with US based players to enjoy smoother gameplay.

[George]

Or just keep it the way it was?

To be frank, there is a very low population of European players able to play during the US evening/night. Only those pulling all-nighters or waking up at 3am. Closest thing we have to Europeans are those dang Canadians living above us who share the love having it hosted in the US.

For example, playing at 6pm here on the West Coast is 2:39am in the UK, which is already a huge gap and only gets bigger as you move east. Making it hosted in the Central time zone isn't going to fix that gap and would just be a waste of time to find a new dedi host and have Burnett and them go through the process of setting it up and what not.

I love playing on a server with players from all around but if it comes down to it and we have a large enough American playerbase coming back during the summer I'd rather play with US based players to enjoy smoother gameplay.

But clearly the US server isn't getting the numbers and keeping it the way it is isn't going to help.

 There must be a higher chance of an increased player count if we move the server more eastern as there will be be both US and European players.

[Overlewd]

Rockford for US, EU has their server. If they'd stop whining about how they have to deal with the Ping the US players always have to deal with, that'd be great.

Why do you say that like we can't have rockford for both EU and US? Also your problems don't alleviate other people's problems.

Do you really think having Rockford on both would fix the population issue?  Right now we should be focusing on bringing new players in.  The US market is very wide, but they will not come if all they experience is an empty server. 

I've had three very good candidates when Rockford first opened.  They were excited to be on board, happy to play.  But then the newness of the server waned and the EU crowd moved back over to v33x complaining that they don't have a EU Rockford.  Each one of the players I was working with ended up on an empty server and stopped playing because they were bored.

Adding a third server would not solve this issue, it would just make it so much worse.  Heck, I haven't played much this week because I've been bored myself.  I've spent hours only sitting around with no other players.

It sucks that the US server didn't start out as well as we could have hoped, but I don't see adding another EU server making it much worse (can't get much worse than 0, bluntly put). As mentioned before, the fact that it's a US West based server makes the assumption that EU players will jump-start the server and play on it, overly optimistic in my opinion. There are few things that will ever convince me to play on a 250+ ping server, and I'd rather deal with an old map and bad fps than with high ping like that (some disagree with me, but looking at server pop I am sure a lot of people agree with me as well). The EU rockford server was full like an hour after announcement and v33x still had 30 players, showing that EU population also has potential for expansion. Restricting EU players from playing on the better and newer map just because "it will make them populate the US server" isn't right in my opinion, or at least not with the ping EU players are currently getting on the US server.

tl;dr for many people, high ping is worse than slightly lower fps, and it's not right denying EU players the better map just to try and make them populate a server that makes it uncomfortable to play due to ping, when there is a possibility to play on that same map but without the bad ping.

[Innovative]

Rockford for US, EU has their server. If they'd stop whining about how they have to deal with the Ping the US players always have to deal with, that'd be great.

Why do you say that like we can't have rockford for both EU and US? Also your problems don't alleviate other people's problems.

Do you really think having Rockford on both would fix the population issue?  Right now we should be focusing on bringing new players in.  The US market is very wide, but they will not come if all they experience is an empty server. 

I've had three very good candidates when Rockford first opened.  They were excited to be on board, happy to play.  But then the newness of the server waned and the EU crowd moved back over to v33x complaining that they don't have a EU Rockford.  Each one of the players I was working with ended up on an empty server and stopped playing because they were bored.

Adding a third server would not solve this issue, it would just make it so much worse.  Heck, I haven't played much this week because I've been bored myself.  I've spent hours only sitting around with no other players.

It sucks that the US server didn't start out as well as we could have hoped, but I don't see adding another EU server making it much worse (can't get much worse than 0, bluntly put). As mentioned before, the fact that it's a US West based server makes the assumption that EU players will jump-start the server and play on it, overly optimistic in my opinion. There are few things that will ever convince me to play on a 250+ ping server, and I'd rather deal with an old map and bad fps than with high ping like that (some disagree with me, but looking at server pop I am sure a lot of people agree with me as well). The EU rockford server was full like an hour after announcement and v33x still had 30 players, showing that EU population also has potential for expansion. Restricting EU players from playing on the better and newer map just because "it will make them populate the US server" isn't right in my opinion, or at least not with the ping EU players are currently getting on the US server.

tl;dr for many people, high ping is worse than slightly lower fps, and it's not right denying EU players the better map just to try and make them populate a server that makes it uncomfortable to play due to ping, when there is a possibility to play on that same map but without the bad ping.

Yesterday i new record was set of new players. Thanks to Rockford turning EU, That has to stand for something?
Personally i don't mind playing on US Server, but i think That the fair way of both continents having Rockford would be if EU Rockford just replaced the un-optimized V33x.

[Stomm]

So your argument for adding an EU Rockford is that you don't want to deal with a higher ping?

So you want to take the one chance the US server has of having players (a better/new map only on that server) and get rid of it?

This whole argument has been based off you guys saying that Rockford is unplayable due to EU pings on the US server. The US Players deal with the high pings every day when we play on EvoCity. It makes driving crap, it makes shooting crap, it even makes walking crap! But we deal with it, because we go where the players are. Can't you EU players, just once, do something similar? Play a map not because of the ping, but because of the experience.

PS: Kansas City is pretty smack dab in the middle of North America, and if I remember what an old engineer said, is also sitting on the lines that form the backbone of the internet in the US. (Totally not wanting the server there because my ping would be like 5. No sirree.)

PPS: Can we get Rockford fixed yet? I mean the systems like jailing and whatnot

[Overlewd]

So your argument for adding an EU Rockford is that you don't want to deal with a higher ping?

So you want to take the one chance the US server has of having players (a better/new map only on that server) and get rid of it?

This whole argument has been based off you guys saying that Rockford is unplayable due to EU pings on the US server. The US Players deal with the high pings every day when we play on EvoCity. It makes driving crap, it makes shooting crap, it even makes walking crap! But we deal with it, because we go where the players are. Can't you EU players, just once, do something similar? Play a map not because of the ping, but because of the experience.

PS: Kansas City is pretty smack dab in the middle of North America, and if I remember what an old engineer said, is also sitting on the lines that form the backbone of the internet in the US. (Totally not wanting the server there because my ping would be like 5. No sirree.)

PPS: Can we get Rockford fixed yet? I mean the systems like jailing and whatnot

Yes my argument is that me and other EU players don't want to deal with higher ping. And there is nothing wrong with that argument whatsoever. And your argument for not having the EU server is because you've had to deal with high ping so everyone else must now deal with it as well. The US server had quite a while now, without an EU server and it evidently didn't help much.

And yes I'd rather have the current large playerbase be given the good, newer map, which will refresh the interest of people and maybe make some leavers come back to limelight, instead of keeping that playerbase with the same old boring map in hopes that maybe in a few months the US server will have a playerbase of its own (and that line of thought isn't working, based on US rockford populations before).

Also "play map not for ping, but for experience" - except the ping directly influences the experience.

[Faustie]

While US numbers have been low lately, we're still going to keep the server and continue to push it. Why? Because until we hosted it, there was no real CityRP across the coast. It's not in an ideal location but the dedi itself and the extras that come with are excellent, and to move location now would probably be a waste of time and effort when we have other issues to resolve.

While it hasn't kept a lot of players on US itself, it has brought quite a few new players to Limelight, and that's a good start. Once the last polish is added to the dupe transfer system, we might then use a Rockford cycle, where it's on EU during EU daylight hours and US past 1-2am EU time. Those EU players who then wish to continue playing Rockford will be able to transfer dupes and play with the Americans.

What helps most of all, if you want a specific server to be up, is to 'vote' by playing on it and inviting your friends over. Each new player is a success for us, doubly so if he/she returns and continues to play past a dozen hours or so. We're also doing all we can to show new players how much we're invested in our community and gamemode: the change-log, we're planning new events, and so on.

That being said, if EU rockford continues to be highly popular I see no reason to remove it. We can simply cycle it if needed to help out the US players.

[SirWulf]

Yes my argument is that me and other EU players don't want to deal with higher ping. And there is nothing wrong with that argument whatsoever. And your argument for not having the EU server is because you've had to deal with high ping so everyone else must now deal with it as well. The US server had quite a while now, without an EU server and it evidently didn't help much.

And yes I'd rather have the current large playerbase be given the good, newer map, which will refresh the interest of people and maybe make some leavers come back to limelight, instead of keeping that playerbase with the same old boring map in hopes that maybe in a few months the US server will have a playerbase of its own (and that line of thought isn't working, based on US rockford populations before).

Also "play map not for ping, but for experience" - except the ping directly influences the experience.

Wow. Well based on that I should no longer play on the EU server because my 1fps on the city effects my experience. Guess what. I don't. Why? Because I enjoy the players, the environment, the group. Not the ping.

But, what I'm seeing here is that you'd rather kill a potential playerbase be for it gets started just so that you can get better frames.

I'm being honest here. I'm slow to anger but I'm getting close here. This is my last comment on this thread so I don't say something bad. I'm... disappointed.

[Overlewd]

I never said that the ping alone makes it completely unplayable, I said it negatively affects the experience, and based on that EU players choose not to play on v33x rather than US rockford (not all of them obviously, but a lot). I'm not saying US players can't enjoy playing on EU servers and that EU players can't enjoy playing on US servers. I also couldn't care less about the frames (it's a nice boost nothing more for me), I honestly just want the EU community to have a new map, I'd play on it even with the same or worse frames than v33x. I'm only even saying the things I said in this thread because the US server had a while to get going but the population is too low, and it's a shame for a such a good map.

I'll also stop commenting on this thread because I get overly defensive about my points of view on these matters and looking back on my posts it can make me look like an asshole, which is obviously not my intention.

[Mustang]

To be honest I don't get this whole 'OMG MY PING IS HIGH OMG' argument, sure it affects playing a bit but I'm happy enough to play on the US server and really I see no difference, I get around 40/50 FPS and around 200ish Ping and I'm living in the UK and really I don't give a shit, I'd just like more players to join US so Limelight can get a bigger player base. I stay up somenights to play on US and it's sad when it's 6/7PM over in the US of A and there's around 3 people on, if even.

[Soviethooves]

Gonna be honest. When the US Rockford was not fucked up and broken, it got a decent amount of players, and reached a low of 20ish players, lower at most 2 times a week. We were getting dedicated new members, a whole new experience with a new map and a new part of the community, and an overall great ping and fps for US players ( except me. My ping stayed the same...lel...). We even had EU players coming over to play when EU servers were empty. We had a good amount of people on up to 20:00 Central Time., but because it went downhill with a map change, we lost these players and are now on hold with the server provider, yet in the meantime while US tries to get a little love, EU already has another server up while US players sit in our glorious Freedom Liberty Chairs. Waiting for a server of our own.

[Innovative]

Guys don't forget we're all human there's no difference between us. At the end of the day the donations will keep flowing and servers will be paid for therefore everyone is happy and yeah if I can, I like staying up late on weekends to play with the US server. And they cycle which will be great because it works for everyone.

[The Rock]

I dont mind in having the Rockford in US server , but its always empy , if its to stay empy i perfer it to be in EU server , i do understand the US players , but what i see its gmod its pretty dead in US then in EU