So you may have noticed that the vanilla servers have been down for quite some time, this is because I was working pretty intensely up until the end of university, so I couldn't find any time for them at all, and there was no one really around to pick up the slack. I have more time on my hands now, and I don't want this to happen again. So Scatterbrain's going to co-run tf2 with me, so there should always be one of us keep an eye on the servers. I also hope to get a couple of people involved aswell, to make sure there will always be someone to fix or check everything. Our servers should be reliable, and I don't want people to think that they will just disappear from time to time.

Rotation or mapvoting?
Before we can really move on this though, I really need to hear from you guys about what you want from TF2. The biggest thing I need to ask is do we want to keep a set rotation? A rotation that's probably going to continue to be made by me, based on player feedback and the server's map rater. Or should we get with the times and just go with mapvoting? If so, is there any methods of doing this we should think about? Personally, I like our rotation, but I suppose that's no surprise

SpApoints
Do we keep them? Can we still keep them with mapvoting and how? Do prices need to change?

Plugins
So we have a couple of plugins like a losing MVP board, medics starting with 75% uber during setup time and stuff. What else can we do?

Competitive
Despite our servers being in hibernation, the highlander team has been very busy, and it's been a lot of fun. I wanted to explore the possiblity of setting up a second team, it might be a stretch to accomplish, but if we have two teams they can sub and support eachother. It would also be really good for practise aswell. We could also do a 6v6 team too, but that would really depend on if we have the players who would want to do that. It would also be really good to have a community highlander again from time to time, just for some fun. All depends on who wants to play.

Fundays
They're not very high on the priority list but, I'm really keen on having the odd fun server night from time to time. I'm hoping it wont be too hard to bring back. If my memory serves, we had Saxton Hale, dodgeball and a few other wierd maps like ice rink, train grid, whacky racers, and balloon race. We can expand on that maplist aswell. If anyone's had some experience with Saxton Hale servers, come speak to me about what maps we should run. Otherwise any suggestions for fun gamemodes?


So even you haven't got much to say, I'd like to hear from as many of you as possible. I know not many of our players check the forums regularly, so maybe you would be so kind to link some of them here? Hopfully after this I can look at what we can do, and I'll put up a steam announcement when the servers are back in action. TF2 just isn't the same without SpA servers

I keep it short without having spend a lot of thoughts about it now, it is just tooooo hot here atm

mapvoting from a suggestion of popular maps , like on other popular servers.

Points only to get reserved slots
Nothing, TF2 pure ,like god thought it should be played when he invented it.
No opinion, being busy with highlander and playing public. Need the public to think i would be good .

No opinion, for me public TF2 and some highlander matches are enough.

hey guys..

nice to see you 2 are back in business..
I just want to leave u some short feedback aswell.
If u want to discuss or have questions, just gimme a shout in mumble or on steam.

- first of all.. I think at the "re-"start, one server is enough
it will be difficult to get some solid regulars back on the servers..
(to have not only f2p-guys who will never come back and dont know what to do.. )
and u will seperate them when both servers are not filled

- it doesnt matter if u have rotation or mapvote when there are "shitty" maps in it
I suggested some things to the rotaion a few months ago (I have saved a textfile if u need it again)
but I rly prefer a mapvote-system with only great maps in it
(some quick-ideas: dont use keys 1-3, start at 4; and a (2nd) decider-vote if 2 maps have the same number of votes, no random)

- remember map-(playing-)times; PL- and Att/Def-maps need a bit more time and 5CP-maps a bit less

- SpA-Points.. why not?!

- Plugins.. losing MVP is ok.. (and what Dunken said ) maybe I dont know about other cool things

- Community Highlander is fun but u can think about it when the servers are running with enough regulars on it

- Fun? I dont have fun while playing TF2 (kidding aside.. I dont like mods or custom-maps very much)

.. over and out ..

cu later

Of course any plugins we go for should never effect the actual gameplay itself, just stuff for convenience. The 75% uber on setup plugin give medics no extra advantage. It just allows someone to switch to medic towards the end of setup time and still have an uber ready as if he had been waiting in spawn for the full time. I hope that's pure enough in God's eyes

Fair point about having two servers. Reason I think we have two is so we have an overflow server case one is full, so a group of people can still join and play. It's also good for quick tests. Sometimes we have very few players at all, sometimes we have loads (especially for updates) You're right though however tripp, so what I'll do is launch Dell, and then launch Tavish about a month after Dell, so people will learn that Dell is our primary server. How's that?

Yeah I still have a text file saved on my desktop with your name on it tripp. I'm not sure if it's the same one? Mostly talks about maptimes and rounds right? I should have looked at implementing some of those before. After we get the servers running again, we can look at tweaking rounds and times. Obviously I'll need to fix attack and defense rounds sooner than later.

Community highlander shouldn't be too hard to setup, a lot of people who don't usually play tf2 might want to play. A few people were interested on Carrot's thread but you're right servers first! It wont be easy, but we've got some really good regulars that not many communties are fortunate enough to have, so there's hope yet!

ok.. cool man..
but maybe add a #1 and #2 to the names and leave out that "vanilla"-thingy
(cause 1. most ppl dont know exactly what vanilla means and 2. vanilla is without any unlocks so I think its just wrong )

They can look like this:
Specialattack.net :: #1 :: Dell Conagher
Specialattack.net :: #2 :: Tavish DeGroot



we can talk about it in mumble.. I will be on around 19 CET
cu later

Sounds good, think I'll do that.

Junco made me do this..

Rotation or mapvoting:
Rotation with the Map Rate plugin.

SpApoints:
Keep em for the reserved slot.

Plugins:
GB.CritVote
SourceMod Anti-Cheat

Competitive:
N/A

Fundays:
Maybe bring back melee sundays? some dodgeball?

Also, please name your first born server after the late, great Mister Jane Doe.

Haven't been playing for a while, but here goes:
Map vote vs. rotation - Not sure how these voting plugins work, but if they keep players for voting for the same 4 maps all day everyday then why not. Never really had a problem with the map pool or rotation though.

SpA Points - Reserved slots were good, it also had its moments when people bought 2fort or hydro for a couple rounds. It was great, but it was also the quickest way to empty the server.

Plugins - Not that familiar with them, since most of the time I've been playing on SpA, and the other servers I found were filled with gems such as "funny quake 3 killstreak sounds" and "pro as heck stat counter that spams your chat window every second". Crit Vote could be handy though (if there won't be a separate no-crit server), and the ones previously used were neat and simple additions.

Competitive - Never played, probably never will, so no comment on that.

Fundays - They were fun like once a month, mainly dodgeball and melee with random presents. Not saying I'd play them now, though.

Hey guys, just a few thoughts, as Junco made me aware of this thread.

Rotation/Mapvoting
Is it possible to combine those two? Having a vote (starting with "4" or, the F-keys) would imho go a long way for a more interactive playing experience. The maprotation could kick in if the vote fails.
Just out of curiosity, do you set a map-rotation and manually change it from time to time, or does the maprating effect the rotation automatically? The latter (if possible) would be a good choice in my opinion.
I'd also recommend sticking to basic, popular maps on the rotation (pl, plr, cp, att/def), basically meaning little to no maps in ctf-mode, or "special cases" like Doomsday.

SpA-points
Get lost of that bloody need for a spray permit!
Has been one of two reasons why it took me quite long to decide to register on SpA. Go for Golden Gibus-sprays everwhere.
Other than that I'd say keep 'em for reserved slots. Class limits are there for a reason, so I don't think it's a good choice to circumvent 'em. Maybe a voted "class-kick" for douchebags blocking slots might be nice... Or maybe just to kick Junco out of the pyro-class, if he is destroying my beloved mini-sentries all the time...

Plugins
I'd say they are fine as they are (both mvp & the medic-thingy). Especially mvp has a motivational character in my opinion.
CritVote would be nice (random-crits are plain annoying imho), yet haven't seen them EVER voted off on servers with such a vote. In my opinion it's the players that make this plugin useless.
Personally I'd like the instant-building thingy they have in MvM for the setup-time, yet I think that would be too much an advantage for the red team. Having his sh...stuff set up in time is part of the challenge for the engi.

Competitive
Stick to the way things are handled right now. Special events like a community-highlander can be announced manually. Wouldn't worry about that too much.

Fundays
Yeah, fundays! Dodgeball! Lovin' it, missing it... ^^
Once the second server is up and running again, maybe you could pick a day for one of the servers for a funday. Then you'd still have one server running on standard-rotation AND as the second server will also be populated again by the regulars, there might actually be some people for fundays. Dodgeball with just 1 or 2 people on each team ain't that fun at all. Also need to level-up my strange Persian Persuader, but in my experience maps like Degrootkeep ain't that popular. Yeah, yeah... The other modes like Saxton Hale could run there, too. I just prefer dodgeball...

Maps
In the last moments when the vanilla servers and event server were up I configured a mapvoting plugin which starts a vote at the end of the map, with 2 random maps from each gamemode.
After this vote a 2nd vote round runs for the 2 most voted maps to make a definite vote. Worked quite nicely, wouldn't mind to have it running again when servers are up

Spapoints
Coming to spapoints, not sure if its possible to combine it with the plugin mentioned above. I do love spapoints, and make it more fun for people to donate and become active (even more fun if we get to implement it into more different games somehow).

Competitions
Would be nice join some leagues etc, to show SpA is still around and attract new people again also. Not sure which are still running though.


Just wondering still about the servers we had running before, why they were so empty all the time

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<@[SpA]DonDonDon> someones gotta love me, and that someone is me

The main reason for this is that it keeps the work down for server admins - if players are here long enough to actually have SpApoints in the first place then they're probably not going to grief the server with meatspin sprays. But if we're going to be a smaller, tighter community in the first place then there might not be the need for this kind of preventative measure. So, we'll think about it.

(No comments from me yet, other than to say there's some good ideas here. I'm keeping everything in mind )

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ュ~ちゃんgamer.jp Pinky: true genius
ュ~ちゃんgamer.jp Pinky: doesn't make sense
ュ~ちゃんgamer.jp Pinky: till you're senseless

The highlander team is active in most of the leagues Maybe you meant 6v6, I would be up for that too i think.

since i´ve been out for a while i let my thread diesorry for that
plugins are fine (radio?) btw is votekick on or off? quite annoyig to call for admins all the time
mapvoting is a must have imo and i agree with cordo on the spraytag thing
quickplays vs regulars:
i agree with the tripper won´t be easy to get some regulars back in again just like that i think for that the servers have to be full first (sadly prob with quickplays)
reserved slot based on spa points sounds good setting a map maybe though you can argue about tha

How would a spray permit for registered users on the forum sound?

Ideal if SpA points are out.