Project Reality Forums

Something I don't understand and after a brief chat last night I've decided to post and ask about it.

There are many players that love the Mumble playing experience, but for whatever reason no server has managed to get close to TG's quantity of Mumble players.

Reality Teamwork was successful until the end of the summer 2009, when the players just seemed to dwindle away.

PMC worked for a short while.

Alpha project managed with lots of work and adverts here to get a few weekend Mumble nights running, but once again just kind of dwindled away.

UKWF has managed to get a full server for their Saturday Mumble nights but the rest of the week its very quiet (mumble wise).

My impression is that because of all the languages in Europe that Mumble is less successful.

Or is it that as not many people are on a servers Mumble channel other players don't bother starting up their mumble - which leads to a Catch 22.

I know I am not alone in craving more Euro Mumble use, as my ping is a bit 'limit' for TG.

Yeah I know, I would love to see more mumble use in EU, cos its just a pure win app, but to be honnest it has been tryed and tryed and it hasn't worked. Like you sayed Ploddit there has been 3 servers that have tryed to be "Mumble Only" and they have gone away. I just think it cant be done.... YET!

RT's players didnt dwindle down or something...the server got shut down remember?

Id love a good mumble server. And i know lots of people who wants that aswell.

im always on mumble wether there's noone in mumble or rich of mumblers. if more could've done this aswell we might not have this "problem."

end of conversation

sweedensniiperr wrote:im always on mumble wether there's noone in mumble or rich of mumblers. if more could've done this aswell we might not have this "problem."

end of conversation

Fixed.


But yeah, sometimes i play with people in TS 3. And i just CBA to use mumble. Unless others are on. I wish more people would seed mumble i guess?

CroCop wrote:RT's players didnt dwindle down or something...the server got shut down remember?

Yes and no, I was there seeding alot and it wouldn't fill, so there was little point in continuing, it's infact still there today.

Wicca wrote:But yeah, sometimes i play with people in TS 3. And i just CBA to use mumble. Unless others are on. I wish more people would seed mumble i guess?

So, if I read you correctly, you want other people to do exactly what you yourself can't be bothered to?

As to the discussion in general, I doubt different languages could be the main reason, seeing how most of the people use English in voip anyway, but they might well contribute to the situation. Whenever I'm on, Pelitutka seems very populated on Mumble, with practically everyone talking in their native Finnish.

since the death of iGi and TnT I have not had a particularly great experience on any Euro servers, especially in regards to mumble. We europeans are just disparate I think, we Brits tend to play with teh Americans because they are a huge pool of english speakers.

the TG experience is unique as the TG community is huge, the admin team mature and experienced and their support in websites etc is very well done; its hard to replicate something that has been going for years.

There really are too many servers for PR atm, aroudn 6 of them have 64 slots but only get like 12 people per night, if they all just shut down and merged....it should logically become a 64 player server

I'm always on mumble as well. Wether or not the server has mumblers. I dont understand. When TG's not filled up you'd expect more people to use Mumble. But somehow most of them only get on mumble when they are on TG. Same as with teamwork in a team. That happens the most on TG. But when TG isnt filled most of the other servers can reach that level. I dont understand that

We just need to promote more mumble use. I can start asking squad-members to get on mumble when ever I squad lead. That sort of things might help out.

EDIT: Agree with Rudd. Didnt play much on IGI before they died out but TNT used to be my home. It had the same level of teamwork and coordination as TG and mumble use of mumble! Why isnt that "need" transfering to someone else!

For the record.

RT was shut down by Space, the creator of RT. The license is currently held by me. RT have no plans to relaunch.


As for a new mumble server, the only way you can make it work is to fill it every night, if not it will just be another failed server. Find good fair rules and merge instead of breaking apart into even smaller communities.

Thanks for the clarification Himalde. However I'm sure I still see an RT server in the list?

I was helping out with Alpha's weekend events using Mumble, they did work but it was very labour intensive, for me anyway one good mumble TEAMwork night a week is alot better than none.

Also Rudd does have a point so many quiet/empty servers seem a little pointless.

I guess with all the impending mortar excitement I just see using them via an SL channel to be nearly an obligation to maximise their efficiency.

Also with TS3's excellent whispers groups (allowing individual SL's to speak to other SL's but long to set up) it is another temptation away from Mumble.

A large group of us used to hangout in a Mumble channel and join servers 'en masse' that was an improvement although not ideal.

Changed the title as I thought by it this was about actually having a new Mumble server in the EU, rather than having a game server (running PR) that played used mumble a lot on like TG.

I have to agree its a little disappointing that no EU servers really go for mumble these days, although there are a few reasons for why its so and why TG dose.

One of the big reasons (but not the main one) for EU players/servers not using mumble as much as NA is because there is a bigger language barrier, multiple languages over the EU makes talking to people less attractive, epically if anyone on there isn't speaking your own language, epically one you dont understand. How ever most of EU players to speak and understand English and really what a new mumble server should aim for.

The next big reason for who not so many EU players use mumble is that to simply put it, pretty much all the EU servers are not as team work ordinate as TG is, and any that are don't have a big enough player base to keep it running which is no surprise tbh since TG are in a league of there own. RT was the closet thing we (the EU players) have had to TG and when it was up and running it was grate but now its not running any more, there isn't really anything for EU players like that around. Without a teamwork heavily orientated server that encourages not just squad mates to work together, but squads to work together, possibly with a commander like TG dose, the use of mumble isn't as appealing to a lot of players and when there is only a few players on mumble since most of the players can't be bothered to run it, the few players that are on mumble find it pointless when the rest of the team are not on with them, naturally.

There are a few other small reasons about but thous two are the main ones, the first one isn't really so much of a major problem but it dose make it harder for a Mumble server to work.



So what can we do to make this happen?

If anyone is really serious about getting up a EU Mumble server, first what needs to happen is we need a decent server (64 players on a reliable and fast system, note we only want one server, 2 is too many) and that needs to be serup and running well with a good map list (which I'll go into in a bit).

The next thing that needs to happen is you need to get a dedicated player base for this new server. RT was quite successful in pretty much crating a community from scratch with just the appeal of something new. I would suggest the same thing but with one big difference. Instead of encouraging players to come and join, encourage entire clans to make it there new home. By this I would offer the clan some kind of deal, like the prospect of giving the clan leaders ingame admin and give them a set of rules so they can't abuse it, give the clan leaders also a reserved slot, giving the clan members is too much without them giving anything back (which I'll go into in a bit) and maybe some other good things here and there, not to say if they do join and the server is successful, they will get a really decent place to play with there clan where they have some control over it as well. On top of this we also invite the normal pubbie to come and play and fully welcome them to the servers, giving what you can to them as well.

I strongly recommend you do not try and have a single clan run this, having clans being part of this is fine but having a clan run it will go down the drain big time, unless its a very large clan. A clan member/leader of course can run the server/community but its essential its that it stays separate and non-bias to any clan other than the clan(s) can be part of it. If a single clan runs this, other clans will most likley not want to join and epically pubbies will not want to have much to do with it and it will fail, trust me I've seen it happen so many times before.

Next step I would take is going down the same rout TG has, supporting members (ie, people who donate to keep the server running) get a reserved slot. This gives the opportunity to normal pubbies and to clan members to get a reserved slot in there name and also if the server is 100% full, having players kicked for them to be allowed in like TG dose. You would need a minimum of ?5 a month or something to get a reserved slot, how much you ask for minimum is up to you but it needs to cover your costs and you dont want it too high. Also if a player donates double that he gets 2 months etc although I would encourage players to setup a monthly donation on paypal which they can cancel if they decide they no longer want a reserved slot. Of course if money is not an issue for keeping it running you wont need to bother with this.

The next is ingame admins. For a server to run well you need decent ingame admins with a clear head and that can handle situations well and that will be playing on the server a lot so you have at least one admin on at a time. You do not want to many admins and having clan leaders as admins you might have enough on its own but I would look for a few people not attached to any clan to also be admins.

Once you have your player base, with a mix of a clan and pubbies , you give them a say in how the server is run. Set up polls for the map list, let them vote for that favourite maps (with not giving each person one choice, give them 3 or 4) and the top 10 or w/e go on the list in a rotation you could also have a vote for. Can also have polls for server settings etc and could possibly have new polls every few months on map lists etc.

The next thing is you might want to do what RT did and basiclaly start up a whole new community on anouther forum, but IMO what might be best is to do everything on the PR forums. If you ask and show potential you might even be able to get a sub forum in the server areas for your server.

Also for conquering the language barrier, I would stress the main language to be English since that is the most common language even in the EU, but at the same time allow people to speak in there own language with having at least a SL speak English and have different squads for each language.

I would also do what RT has done which is to obviously make it a mumble only server and also try to enforce it. This will drastically add to the appeal of the server and providing its well admin, has a load of players in it and is teamwork orientated, it has no reason not to succeed.

For enforcing people being on mumble, I would look into someone possibly making a server script that checks for players in mumble and in game, IP against IP and if there is not a match, it kicks the player who is not in mumble, but only if the server is full or almost full so people who are not on mumble can help fill up the server, but when the server is popular, it enforces it to give the players who want to play the right way a chance to get in




I think that pretty much covers everything, good luck to anyone willing to take on the challenge

Both PMC and Alpha achieved some level of success with clan affiliation working pretty much exactly as Rhino described.

SM kicks is a minefield that has had many discussions (Please no more in this thread), from my own experience if an admin is monitoring BF2CC/AD and using non mumble kicks there will virtually always be a space for a Mumble player. Also if a server is successful donations do normally cover running costs enough to avoid the NEED for SM's and a kick system.

However what I find interesting and worth contemplating is the idea of trying to use here to communicate, this forum is naturally the hub of PR, with just a very small minority that rarely visit.

The CO point is a good one, even if a CO is not directing the team strategy totally but just trying to assist and encourage TEAMwork (as opposed to squadwork) it does increase a team spirit, although where most players are not used to a CO it does take time to get people on board, so in the ideal world a CO would always be present at least during peak times.

For enforcing people being on mumble, I would look into someone possibly making a server script that checks for players in mumble and in game, IP against IP and if there is not a match, it kicks the player who is not in mumble, but only if the server is full or almost full so people who are not on mumble can help fill up the server, but when the server is popular, it enforces it to give the players who want to play the right way a chance to get in

Having spent hours monitoring Mumble and kicking (from 60/64 only) that'd be a dream .... but more scripts often seems to lead to more server instability.

Rhino has a great point and if I ever where to try and set up such a thing that'd be the way I go as well. Like Ploddit said, PMC and Alpha both tried it with the clansystem. I'm not sure why both of them failed. On paper it was just like RT. Maybe they didnt had the people to seed the server. Best thing would be for one of the major euro servers to adopt and change to a more mumble oriented/teamwork oriented server rather than to set up a new one.

I think that the language barrier is indeed a big problem for non-english speaking servers regarding mumble, but not the only one. If you all haven't noticed Pelitutka has a nice amount of players on Mumble almost daily, definately one of the top Mumble servers after TG and BigD if I recall correctly.

Almost every finnish player on the server is also on Mumble nowadays, unless they are in their own clan's squad and even then at least their squad leader is almost always with us on Mumble's SL channel. Unfortunately most of the players are accustomed to speaking only finnish as it's only finns on the channel. The occasional non-finnish player that decides to join our server's channel usually gets frustrated rather quickly. Things would probably be different if a large portion of our regular player base were english speaking.

It wasn't too hard when we first started encouraging people to use Mumble, since we were and still are a small and cohesive community. If you were in a squad where others were on Mumble and you were not you would have been missing out a lot of information. Of course there are always the few that just won't use Mumble for whatever reason no matter what and those that just can't seem to get it working, but that's a whole different issue. Although we have yet to reach a full 64 players on Mumble (or 64 finns on server for that matter) I think we are doing pretty well, considering that our population is less than 10% of London's metropolitan area.

OK enough bragging If a lot of players on a server start using Mumble, especially the usual squad leaders and the most active players the rest are sure to follow. All you need is a little initiative and a change of mentality, no need to start a whole new server for that.

The only problem is that people don't bother trying. TG has a large community of supporting members and regulars who seed the server, any attempt made after RT simply doesn't bother doing anything like this.

If you want a mumble server to succeed you have to:

Get seeders(Clans, community members, etc.): People just don't join a 20 or below server.
Plenty of events: You need set timeframes where people can show up and expect the server to fill up. Don't make it into any special event, just have regular games at a set time.
Play AAS maps only in the beginning: People want to use mumble, it isn't used too much by insurgent forces, hence you play AAS so both sides can make use of it.
Use the 2 channel system
Strong moderation: If there's anything that kills a server it is lax rules and weak admining. If you can't foster the appropriate behavior on the server then it will happen as it doesn't just happen on its own.

cyberzomby wrote:Rhino has a great point and if I ever where to try and set up such a thing that'd be the way I go as well. Like Ploddit said, PMC and Alpha both tried it with the clansystem. I'm not sure why both of them failed. On paper it was just like RT. Maybe they didnt had the people to seed the server. Best thing would be for one of the major euro servers to adopt and change to a more mumble oriented/teamwork oriented server rather than to set up a new one.

PMC and Alpha failed because they gave up. You can't just run it for a couple of weeks and expect people to show up for no reason. With RT we seeded the server like crazy, had lots of set events, and built up a playerbase that would join the moment they saw RT on the list. PMC and Alpha didn't try to do that. We also turned a lot of people on to mumble by requiring it, and those people would show up because it was the only server of its kind, with heavy moderation that instilled good gameplay.

Alpha started of by doing Friday and Saturday nights which were advertised here, it worked - just a few times it was 64/64 mumble but midweek just wouldn't get going even with 20 or so guys seeding.

The plan was to use the weekend advertised map nights to build a community then it would run almost on its own, for whatever reason it would only fill when heavily pushed. I got the impression that people want mumble but CBA to seed or as you say tartan play with an unfilled server.

Anyway the futures bright the futures 0.95 .... obviously why I've brought this up now.

Some good points there Tartantyco

Tartantyco wrote:Plenty of events: You need set timeframes where people can show up and expect the server to fill up. Don't make it into any special event, just have regular games at a set time.

Yes this is a big point I forgot to mention. Plenty of open events will attract people and eventfully once the playerbase is there you can do closed events as well like TG dose

The events dont have to be anything extra special, just a time, place and maplist and everyone wanting to play as a team and be on mumble and your good to go!

Tartantyco wrote:Use the 2 channel system

I wouldn't fully agree on having this or not having this would make or brake the system, either or is fine tbh but 2 channels is probably better although a bit frustrating at times when team switched etc. RT only had a single channel and it did fine so its really w/e the players prefer (anouther thing for them to have input on)

Tartantyco wrote:PMC and Alpha failed because they gave up. You can't just run it for a couple of weeks and expect people to show up for no reason. With RT we seeded the server like crazy, had lots of set events, and built up a playerbase that would join the moment they saw RT on the list. PMC and Alpha didn't try to do that. We also turned a lot of people on to mumble by requiring it, and those people would show up because it was the only server of its kind, with heavy moderation that instilled good gameplay.

Indeed. I dunno much about the PMC and Alpha setup but from the sounds of it, just too small(?) clans which on its own is no where near enough. In my post I was talking about getting lots of clans in as thats a nice quick way of building up the player base while also concentrating on building up the pubbie base. I didn't see anything on these forums, at least not that I can remember of PMC and Alpha trying to build up there pubbie base which is essential for it to work well. Clans on its own will do ok but nothing like as well as having the pubbie base in the mix too.