Huge drop in BF4 servers -- wow.

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markym
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Huge drop in BF4 servers -- wow.

Post by markym »

I used to see 32 Seattle servers in my browser -- now I see 12 and I've watched it dwindle down day by day. Gametracker had been tracking on about 9,500 servers at game release today they are tracking 8,700 thats an 800 server loss or about 8% server cancels. And I see more and more dropping off each day. I'm guessing a lot of people just got fed up with the rules enforced on them with the "official" server stuff and running a server in general which has indeed been no easy task since BF4 launched. I guess the only good news is for those of us who hang tough that's more traffic for our servers.

Meantime the Premium early release for China Rising has been a huge disappointment. There just are not enough Premium members to even get our server to half full when I've run CR and most servers running CR now are empty --- another huge EA fail because they gave away CR with all the preorders but didn't release the game early to Preorders so those of us with Premium could have some people to play with. The really bad release of the full game has a lot of people undecided about Premium purchase and I don't blame them. These expansion packs can really hurt servers if there are not enough people with the expansion.

Sometimes I wish EA would just ask Server/Clan admins for our advice -- we would have been fine with just a few days early release of CR for Premium members and let the preorder folks with CR play earlier with all of us.

Thanks for reading -- please feel free to share your thoughts on my rant. Thanks mates!
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Re: Huge drop in BF4 servers -- wow.

Post by Cyberbang3r »

Even though your right the number is higher than the normal drop-off rate, the first month after release is usually a big drop anyway. The fact is populating really sucks at times and it's why most hosts lack in customer service when they sugar coat BLAZE and DDOS reports.
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Re: Huge drop in BF4 servers -- wow.

Post by TacTicToe »

Personally I regret even buying BF4, been a huge disappointment for me. I wont be buying any of the DLC for this game. Have the premium for BF3, wont make that mistake again. With the problems that plague the latest EA releases, and the costs to run a server, the lag, the bugs, just all the problems in general, I just can no longer justify sending EA any more of my money. We are already at what R14 for a game this new? Ridiculous. If you really believe at this point that you are not PAYING EA/Dice to beta test their games, then you are kidding yourself. So many times I have come here to order a BF4 server, then I read thru all the problems plaguing your servers, and I click the 'X' on the order window and just can't do it. Personally, I have more fun playing BC2 and BF3 then I have with BF4. I don't think I have even logged a full hour of BF4, just can't get into it.

Trust me, you have no idea how badly I was looking forward to playing the new BF game. Honestly, BF4 is more hype then anything. EA simply will not be getting any more of my money. The next big thing I was looking forward to was Titanfall. Since Respawn signed with EA to be the publisher, I now have to rethink that one as well. Still no word if they are going to release stand alone dedicated servers, or is it going to be more of the same money grabbing crap that we have come to expect from EA? Only RSP's can rent servers with crazy high surcharges? Blaze backend crap that make the game unplayable? Only time will tell how disappointing Titanfall will be.
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Re: Huge drop in BF4 servers -- wow.

Post by FourTwoFour »

I already uninstalled the game + canceled our server.
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jaythegreat1
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Re: Huge drop in BF4 servers -- wow.

Post by jaythegreat1 »

Can you blame server owners? It's hard enough to get a server to start... then it bleeping crashes after a couple hours.
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Re: Huge drop in BF4 servers -- wow.

Post by 10-78 Busterking »

As for the game, I'm having a blast, over 80 hours logged.
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Re: Huge drop in BF4 servers -- wow.

Post by FAST »

Gameplay and maps are worse than BF3. I would rather play bf3 over 4. It's not fun at all. Hell I rather play Bad company 2 over 4.

Servers are just garbage and broken. I would shut them all down if I could but I am only one guy in a very large group. I probably would be executed for doing that ;)

I thoroughly enjoyed BF2 and 2142 back in the day and haven't played much of BC2/bf3/bf4 sadly. I just can't get into it. The original makers of Battlefield series were let go in 2006 by EA so draw your own conclusions from that.

Having said that I do hope they make another futuristic battlefield because that would bring my gunship memories from 2142, (played so much of it became 1st in the gunship for a few years just total fun) but I am not sure if they will ever do this.

They also killed the 2142 game with their last broken patch which forced me not to go back.

Don't game a lot but when I do it is only CS:S/global offensive. Valve always made reliable games. They are not as complicated as battlefield but enjoyable FPS.
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Re: Huge drop in BF4 servers -- wow.

Post by soja »

We have canceled most of our servers, sticking with 1 for now(we have our dedis anyway, 1 server isn't much more expensive).

Maybe it was because I came into BF3 a few months after it was out, but you guys are right, just over 1 month in and 14 patches.....wtf???

I still enjoy BC2/BF3 every now and then, but 4 is just bleh.

I decided not to buy premium after experiencing the game and its glitches, I might still pick up second assault though.
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Re: Huge drop in BF4 servers -- wow.

Post by markym »

Thanks for sharing your thoughts guys, I've got almost 300 hours into BF4 -- can't believe I've played that much, well really I've been in our server that much trying to keep it full and up. It's been a ton of work.
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Re: Huge drop in BF4 servers -- wow.

Post by [WDT]TardFarmer »

Yeah same issues here, Our server is usually full but it is official so we can't police the racists. Currently we are thinking that we will cancel the server when January comes around. If we could just kick/ban again I will probably keep the server. I love FF On and a lot of other tweaks but I am willing to sacrifice the customization for an "official" server that actually gets traffic if we can keep the racists off our server.

The NFO firewall works ok, it's more steps that I would like and I have to give users access to the control panel which I don't like. Players ip's change so I could inadvertently block a player who pulls a smacktards IP after the dhcp lease expires.

I rented a small server for Rush maps, infantry only and hardcore settings and we can't fill the thing so I will be canceling that at the end of the month. DICE/EA really screwed the server admin community and has demonstrated that they don't care about our input.
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Re: Huge drop in BF4 servers -- wow.

Post by Edge100x »

[WDT]TardFarmer, also, when it comes to control panel access, also note that you don't have to give users access to the whole thing -- you can give them access to only the Status and Firewall pages, if you'd like.

DICE has our feedback on the top three complaints right now, which are the Official kick restriction, tickets and other settings causing "Normal" to be lost, and performance concerns. We've also provided feedback on the other concerns that we've seen people mention, documentation mistakes that we've noticed, and many game bugs. Keep it coming!
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Re: Huge drop in BF4 servers -- wow.

Post by [WDT]TardFarmer »

Edge100x wrote:[WDT]TardFarmer, also, when it comes to control panel access, also note that you don't have to give users access to the whole thing -- you can give them access to only the Status and Firewall pages, if you'd like.

DICE has our feedback on the top three complaints right now, which are the Official kick restriction, tickets and other settings causing "Normal" to be lost, and performance concerns. We've also provided feedback on the other concerns that we've seen people mention, documentation mistakes that we've noticed, and many game bugs. Keep it coming!

You and your team have been awesome Edge! I keep hammering home (i.e spamming your forums) witht he official kick restrictions as I am hoping you keep raising the issue with DICE, I am really really hoping they will listen to the GSP's and server admins on this and make concessions.

Are we able to block more than 10 ip's at a time on the FW? My concern with the FW and giving users access is that they may inadvertently block all traffic to the server rather than making a custom rule. :) Does DICE know we are blocking via firewall? If so I wonder how much longer they would permit that.
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Re: Huge drop in BF4 servers -- wow.

Post by Edge100x »

[WDT]TardFarmer wrote:You and your team have been awesome Edge! I keep hammering home (i.e spamming your forums) witht he official kick restrictions as I am hoping you keep raising the issue with DICE, I am really really hoping they will listen to the GSP's and server admins on this and make concessions.
I also recommend posting in the EA/DICE forums, as different people may be reading those, and they might respond better to clients posting directly.
Are we able to block more than 10 ip's at a time on the FW?
We can add more rules than that on our end if you need us to.
My concern with the FW and giving users access is that they may inadvertently block all traffic to the server rather than making a custom rule. :)
That is definitely a valid concern. It's something that you can undo pretty easily, but it would cause a service interruption.
Does DICE know we are blocking via firewall? If so I wonder how much longer they would permit that.
I believe that they know this and I'm not sure if it's something they will continue allowing.
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Re: Huge drop in BF4 servers -- wow.

Post by commandotimmy »

we have already canceled one server, and are looking at canceling the second. We are a very small gaming community and we just don't have the volume to get our servers up and running. Official is great for this, however you cant police it at all.
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Re: Huge drop in BF4 servers -- wow.

Post by jaythegreat1 »

commandotimmy wrote:we have already canceled one server, and are looking at canceling the second. We are a very small gaming community and we just don't have the volume to get our servers up and running. Official is great for this, however you cant police it at all.
Unfortunately we might have to go back down to two.... unless DICE fixes idle timeout, we are screwed.
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