Incentives for joining less-populated servers

[kxait]

Usually when there's no big event happening, server one will be full and server two a ghost town. This leads to players not being able to connect and play with others, and having to spend lots of time at the entry screen. What I'm proposing are some things that would encourage players to join less populated servers and play there:

• Different maps on server one & two - I've seen with New Year's Eve that when server two switched to Westhill and server one was on South City, the population was more or less split up. This could open up the possibility for players to choose where they want to play, instead of being constrained by the map rotation.
• An extra monetary bonus for playing on a server that has a much lower population than the other one - Maybe not necessarily added money from driving, but a discount on fines applied only to the suspect? Maybe waived rental fees, or lowering the money deducted from speeding excessively. This would of course have to be carefully considered.
• Implementing togglebable cross-server chat would likely make players feel less lonely, though it could create a lot of unnecessary spam. Making this toggleable and prepending a (*) or something similar before the message could differentiate normal messages from XSC.
  

[SO•Audiojack]

It would be good to implement some sort of incentive. It's never fun to go on Server Two if it's completely empty or has a couple of AFK people.

In an empty server you don't get much use of fine discounts, and once you get the ball rolling more people will join and therefore you won't need the incentive any more. I think maybe a carefully considered bonus to money received from driving could help. It has to be enough to make a difference, but may be hard to balance.

+x€ to every cash income on a server with less than ~10 people could suffice, after that disable it as the people driving will draw in more people by itself. This might also help bring users to the servers on more quiet times altogether.

I'm fine with the different maps too, not sure about the cross-server chat implementation at this point.

[◄Chuck►]

If history has taught us one thing, it's that it's impossible to have more one populated server. If that ever happens, then under very, very exceptional circumstances, like an actual happening LFS update or an event like Gumball. But for the regular day, it's simply impossible. People simply want to join where everyone else is.

[SO•Audiojack]

(2019-01-13 15:52)Chuck Wrote:  People simply want to join where everyone else is.

That's true, that's why the incentive would have to be pretty strong but then pulled out fast when it has achieved its goal of getting a few players on the server.

[Titan]

i would be for server 3 with a money bonus, on special days I also saw that both servers were full .. that alone decide the players..

[Metagross]

I like the idea of both servers not having the same track.

[Brendon]

(2019-01-13 21:32)Metagross Wrote:  I like the idea of both servers not having the same track.

+1

[Sadie]

Server one and two used to have different maps back in 2011/2012 iirc.

Was the same issue back then, people joined the server with the map people prefered.

If this get's implemented again, it will probably only be a tempoarly solution before everyone gets back to the prefered server.

[SO•Audiojack]

Different tracks are an okay consideration but it doesn't work as an attraction by itself. It's not that harmful either though, so it could still potentially be implemented. You would just still need something else that's so attractive that a player is willing to drive on a potentially empty server to gain something.

[SIMOX]

There aren't enough people playing LFS to fill both servers, except during gumball. Even if there are 400 players at peak times, 50% of that is demo users. And some people don't like cruising so they will chose other servers.

[SO•Audiojack]

(2019-01-14 13:02)SIMOX Wrote:  There aren't enough people playing LFS to fill both servers, except during gumball. Even if there are 400 players at peak times, 50% of that is demo users. And some people don't like cruising so they will chose other servers.

It doesn't matter if they aren't both full. Still, I know for a fact that there are people that spend long times trying to get into the full server instead of going to the empty second one. Players which may potentially be able to populate the second server together to some extent if they weren't all flocking to Server 1

And yes, I am one of those people who keep refreshing the server online players list waiting for someone to leave.

[pandakid]

Is it possible that server 2 would be able to serve as a queue for server 1? And if a gap opens in server 1 they'd be prompted if they want to take that space, and reserve it for them for 15 seconds or so? Is that even possible or nah?

[[TC]►Adrian◄]

(2019-01-15 16:52)pandakid Wrote:  Is it possible that server 2 would be able to serve as a queue for server 1? And if a gap opens in server 1 they'd be prompted if they want to take that space, and reserve it for them for 15 seconds or so? Is that even possible or nah?

I doubt it's possible.

[Dino]

How about:
Income on less crowded server = Base rate 1.0 + [(Amount of players online at the more crowded server - amount of players at the less crowded server) * 0.01]

Practical example:
Server 1: 40 players
Server 2: 10 players
-> 30% money bonus income on Server 2; +6 turns into +7,8

Of course, might be impossible to get that working. But I'm not coder so who knows.

[GT4tube]

no pls.

[KaraK [T]]

(2019-01-15 19:36)Dino Wrote:  How about:
Income on less crowded server = Base rate 1.0 + [(Amount of players online at the more crowded server - amount of players at the less crowded server) * 0.01]

Practical example:
Server 1: 40 players
Server 2: 10 players
-> 30% money bonus income on Server 2; +6 turns into +7,8

Of course, might be impossible to get that working. But I'm not coder so who knows.

I like this

[Titan]

server 3 with money bonus ... everything else is nonsense ... there is the server full of the most bonus ...

You sell the tc cash only because of real money

[[TC-R] Adam]

just promotes server jumping, the bonus idea does

[AOR Nova]

(2019-01-15 22:14)Adam Wrote:  just promotes server jumping, the bonus idea does

Adam said it, he's right, people will end up jumping servers.

It's fair to say that the community isn't yet big enough to reliably fill both servers, with or without incentives. Putting incentives just draws the people out of current servers, it doesn't bring offline people to the game.

When the main server is full during peak hours, probably a dozen of people are waiting for a slot to join in. Totalled that would make it about 50, which would in theory fill both servers quite nicely, but I sense that it is still lacking a few more people for that "reliability" to fill both servers every time - again you would need a buffer amount of people to make damn sure 25 people are in each server, and even then 25 isn't considered active enough for some people.

This leads back into the main cause of why people don't join the alternate server. There's just not enough people, or at least willing people to be a server sitter.

In an ideal world you would want 66 people; 33 in each server, and both are equally populated with slots available. But we need an additional 27 active people atop a full server 1 (38), which just isn't happening unless an event is on.


In TL;DR,
incentives would split an already small group of people, and
A full city driving server makes TC Citydriving what it is.
For two active servers you need the community to grow and warm to cruising more, or to host events or have different layouts on each server.

[◄Chuck►]

I actually prefer one full server and one empty one over two half-filled servers as the tracks would look awfully empty. And most tracks first start to come alive when there's more than 30 players. Imho, 40 isn't even enough for Weston due to its size.