#Why Are the Servers Nearly Empty

1 messages · Page 1 of 1 (latest)

pearl hill
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I realize players are being migrated from Google Play Pass, but why are the servers so empty of players? Lately, I've had to wait five to ten minutes to get even one player to join an FFA I host. Anything I can do?

surreal magnet
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Hosting can be tricky depending on the settings you're using. What sort of games are you running?

pearl hill
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I've not changed settings for quite a while. But it's not just hosting, it's every game no matter what I do like restart or restart my phone, etc.

surreal magnet
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None the less. Just trying to troubleshoot this with you. What settings are you running? What map, caps, fixed etc.?

pearl hill
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Thank you, we're talking about weeks of servers with few players at all hours, Classic Map games. Doesn't matter mods, fog, blizzards, auto or semi-auto setup, etc. Just sitting and waiting whether or not I'm hosting...

surreal magnet
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Sounds very odd but, I have to think if it was a widespread issue that we would know about it and more people would be vocal about it. I have to assume right now it's an isolated issue so I'm trying to drill down and see what's making you an outlier. Are you getting a lot of disconnection issues? These are public posted ranked FFA games I'm assuming?

tall kindle
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Man, I hate when this happens. The player base isn't large enough compared to the settings available 🙄

uneven violet
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At some time periods the server is super active

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While in other time periods it isn't.

pearl hill
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Yes, publicly posted ranked FFA games. Things were a bit better today, and I wonder if it's because I was one of the last rolled off the Google Play Pass connection. Thanks for your concern and help.

lofty cliff
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% of players that had play pass is absolutely tiny (so wouldn't be a factor)

Common reasons for seeing drop in games available would be;

  • an update recently released (not the case here) - but it often means some players on new version and some on old, so playerbase split across versions until forced update is applied
  • for finding games, you may be using too many filters (try clearing filters to see how many games are available overall for you to join)
  • for hosting games, you may be restricting who can join (e.g. by min rank or max rank is the biggest factor there)
  • a lot of players stick to 60s games, if using longer turn timers it can take longer to fill (especially at higher end of turn timer settings)
  • if you were spamming the report system (e.g reporting everyone you ever encountered in games) you may be unintentionally blocking yourself from a lot of players games (this isn't very common at all, but a possible "self inflicted small player pool" issue)
  • sometimes manual/semi-auto will take longer to fill, just because it's a longer draft selection before starting which discourages a fair chunk of players
  • obscure gamemodes can be a factor (70% domination & speed blitz are notably difficult to host for, because they're not very popular)
  • a fair chunk of the playerbase are US/EU based - so there's some times where peak play times in Asia for example will be potentially very low player counts

It can also be easier to look at joining another lobby with identical or near-identical settings, it means you've got the extra player (host) already there - and closer to a full game (premium players especially tend to host rather than join, more because of convenience than anything, but still plenty of other similar lobbies quite often)

It'd be good if creating a lobby that's identical to another one prompted you to join it instead, could be a good risk idea

pearl hill
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Thank you for that very thorough and helpful answer. The only issue I might have is semi-auto or manual hosting, however, for weeks it was still not seconds to a minute to fill a game, but five minutes... ? Seems to be going a little better now.