Would love to see the ability to filter results based on presence/number of
bots in the game and likewise for real humans excluding bots. I presume access
to player GUIDs is not given by the query interface, so we can't check for
bot-like GUIDs (BOT1, BOT2, etc.). But even just filtering based on ping == 0
would be enough to remove most of the garbage servers that ONLY have bots on
them.
Clients should be able to set filters that operate on players/bots
independently, making it easy to specify criterion like >0 real players, 0
bots, etc. Ideally, the player count should distinguish between the two as
well, but that's a bonus rather than a must-have.
----
Bots are seen as a necessary evil to inflate the appearance of activity to
invite real activity but they equally contribute to the problem by lying about
real server activity and making us dig manually for real players who are
consequently spread out among bot-laden servers. The worse part is that badly
configured servers never bother clearing out those bots even when real players
are around and those servers falsely look more attractive than servers with
more real players and fewer bots. This promotes wider distribution of players
among the servers to everyone's detriment, such that well-configured servers
with good map variety etc. can never compete with servers that always have bots
and cycle the same boring 3 maps over and over, or simply use an obscene number
of bots even while several humans are online.
Server browsers have the ability with the right filters to bring good servers
back into the spotlight so that at least some communities can grow and improve,
while coercing bot-laden servers to be a little more fair to more concientious
servers by using bot quotas instead of ever-present quantities or even applying
a little creative server monitor usage to give non-bot-supporting maps airtime,
adjust bot quantities dynamically, etc.
Right now, whoever uses the most bots and/or masks their bot-ness best wins and
by wins I mean suckers in a few players for long enough to teach them UrT is a
dead game full of bot-only servers, and finding better isn't worth their time
if it's even possible. In the end, everyone looses, because while almost no
one will join an empty server, there are only slightly more people who will
stick around in a server with only bots. The picky players must then follow
after the careless/clueless players, and that growth can never migrate to
better quality servers. Servers are rewarded for catering to the lowest common
denominator with no penalty for giving a shitty experience to the wider
majority of their audience.
Even if UrTConnector is not in a position to truly combat that overall dynamic,
it could at least enable its users to seek out the special few servers that
perhaps only occasionally manage to fill up with real people and keep or at
least turn the bots off.
Original issue reported on code.google.com by HonoredM...@gmail.com on 29 Dec 2013 at 11:20
Original issue reported on code.google.com by
HonoredM...@gmail.comon 29 Dec 2013 at 11:20