Remove 4 players setting to get out of pre-round ?

Hey all,

Most servers out there run in ranked mode, and there has been a fair bit of negative sentiment regarding the latest server update (PC and consoles). It seems to be centered around the 4 players setting to get out of pre-round. This is not PC only, this also affects 360 or PS3 platforms, I hope you understand that.

Source : http://battlelog.battlefield.com/bf3/en/news/view/2832654787636097951/ [battlelog.battlefield.com]

We now enforce a minimum player count of 4 on both PC and consoles (PC previously had no such limitation while console servers had 2 players as the limit) to be able to exit preround on Ranked servers. You will still be able to move around freely in preround, but the match doesn’t officially start (and thus no stats are affected) until at least 4 players have joined. This goes for both PC and console servers. This will make it harder to easily use Ranked servers as boosting servers.

If you're a server admin or one of this devoted player going on your favorite clan server or a random one every morning to populate it you may undestand why I make this thread and why I would like to see this setting changed in a next server update.

Main reason stated above is : "This will make it harder to easily use Ranked servers as boosting servers."
If players want to make some stats padding, they will find another way to do it. Harder for them ? Maybe, but please note that it is also much more difficult for server admins to populate their servers than it used to be.
Most communities that do not have a large number of members get a good game started on their server by seeding with players hanging out with the intent of attracting other players more likely to join a server with players on it than an empty one.

But what about Flagrun, Knife Only, Pistol Only and other Boost servers ?
The problem will be the same, players in violation of Battlefield Rules of Engagement / Rules of Conduct are still playing the way they want. That's not fair, and some "badmins" should just have the Ranked Icon on their server status removed for a while.

Why changing the rules for all, when the problem is due to some bad admins and some boosters ?
What about disabling score ranking on these servers when reported ?
And what about disabling the ability for a booster to join any Ranked server if reported in the future ?

You may know that some Procon anti boost / statspadding [phogue.net] and adaptive server size [phogue.net] plugins exist.
Can't you find another workaround like this to avoid this server update ?

I've tried to use GetSatisfaction but it isn't supported anymore [getsatisfaction.com] so sorry for reporting here.
This is not a petition, no need to answer to this thread a +1. ;)

I hope that this thread will be read, because all my friends, PC server admins, are just in trouble right now when they try to start their server.
And to end this long thread, why a "blue post" ? Because this is the voice of a part of the community, not all of them just the smallest part of the community, but one of the most important to my eyes : Server admins.
And I think that this is a way to help them.

Thanks for reading, thanks for the server admins and thanks for the devoted players populating the servers every morning.
I need to say that I use some content from different members all over the boards to explain my point of view because of my poor english, so sorry for mistakes.

Have a nice day.

Edit : Removed the blue mark, it's my thoughts.

Agreed.

The 4 player limit is almost like DRM; it screws over the players/server owners while only acting as a slight inconvenience for the boosters.

wait a minute where is the mark on the thread?

Finally

BF-B0t, thanks again for your help in this matter.

I personally have a small server (16 slots) that I am renting to play with my 2 brothers and a couple friends (5 players in total). The server is almost never visited but by us only and we are never more than 3 on it at any given time.

Since that last update, there are no reasons to play on it anymore as we never tally enough players to start the ranked games. This is now a big waste of money for me as I took a 1-year subscription and cannot get out my contract until its end.

If this limitation stays at 4 in the future, I can guarantee you that I won't be renewing this contract as many other small severs admins will probably do. This is taking our fun to play together in a nice environment, and will probably hurt your server sales very soon.

I don't think that it is a good move at the reason behind this setting is flawed in my opinion. Also, in order to have my server being used in boosting, I had installed plugins from phogue.net (the ones mentioned by BF-B0t) to avoid such a problem.

I certainly hope that you will reverse this decision and that we will be able to play again.

Sincerely.

Its a pain in the rear. Starting up servers (your own) means you have to wait for ages.

It was like this in BF2, but then it was 6, and if someone left, the game ended.

I think it should be 2 at the min, or at least if it was 4, to let the admins choose if they want it to be a lower number.

Time/knife/pistol/ servers will still run fully, as the people want to do them, will go there, as there isn't that many of them.

I agree with the Mod here, and having the padding servers have the ranking removed, or at the least, no points allowed:

But what about Flagrun, Knife Only, Pistol Only and other Boost servers ?
The problem will be the same, players in violation of Battlefield Rules of Engagement / Rules of Conduct are still playing the way they want. That's not fair, and some "badmins" should just have the Ranked Icon on their server status removed for a while.

Since this update,its very hard now to make start a server,i get a 24 slots server,and since the update it take more than 2 hours to get it started.

I agree with the fact of the stat pad players,but players who really want to boost should be abble to do it,with over way. (for example on servers which do flag run no kills)

For me you can problably reduce it to 2 players start. It should be surely,more simple to lauch a round.

If there is no issue about the 4 players start,i should surely no paid again for my sub server.

Best regards from a french battefield fan.

It is inadmissible, 4 players it is far too much to launch a server. Another trick to make money by eliminating the competitors! When server will be too often empty. You will soon propose us server made in Origin also?!! It is worth nothing, a modification which serves has nothing. Before making your putting has days, to look at the number of empty server before looking at the number of player BF3! To administer a server is a pleasure, you spoil our personal investment since of long month which allowed us to preserve a certain way of playing in front of all these cheaters' servers. I am French, and I also think that it is the end of the French servers. (Google traduction :) sorry)

Agree with pretty much all of the above.
As a clan server admin EA have now virtually killed our clan server(as well as many others). We as a clan try to run a fair and unbiased server with real admins not bots, we try to weed out anyone we find of padding, boosting or unwanted behavior before it becomes a real problem to the servers reputation. Why did EA insist on painting every player as a possible cheat just because servers go live with 1 player starts. Do they not realise that a servers ranking/reputation relies on it's up-time during actual gameplay not with just someone sitting idle on it. Rather than enforcing the stupid 4 player start on legit servers why don't they spend more time listening to the vast majority of players who DONT cheat/boost and just want to game for fun within the rules.

Maybe server suppliers like Rackage, Branzone etc. will soon be removing BF3 servers from the rental market as the revenue will surely drop as clans are not willing to rent servers that are going to remain empty for most of the time waiting for players....

EA please listen to us, you are effectively killing off clan servers that you rely on to purchase any future products you release. Maybe you need to think about this, otherwise BF4 is going to be played SOLELY by the cheaters/boosters you are trying to remove...

2 boosters not ok, 4 boosters is ok

I have no problem with the 4 player as I understand the reasons behind it, it's the fact that the blurb said youcould move around at the start which you can't do on Gunmaster maps, you are stuck in one place. If we could move and run around and have a "pre-game" time were points and kills don't count then 4 player starts would be more liveable with. Other games do this - mainly BC2 had this as an option that no points counted until a certain number were on. Surely a feature from frostbite 1.5 could be used on frostbite 2.

This post has been hidden by the Battlelog administrators.

I am a co-owner of a 16 man server and while it was fun while it lasted, I opted to unrank our server for private matches and filming machinima.

I was going to re-rank it at some point but as it stands right now, There's no incentive to pony up the money for another year subscription, our current subscription ends in roughly 3 weeks time and we WON'T be reinstating it.

It's been a long year and a fun year but something has to give with all these silly decisions being made.

Sadly, It's the minority who caused DICE to take such drastic measures, Had there been a PROPER server reporting feature, We might have seen all these flagrun only servers shut down.

Oh well.

Our squad does not operate a server anymore, bu when we did, it was hard enough to get that populated under the old rules.

Small servers are usually empty or have a waiting queue 6 km long after the patch. no chance to get into a decent game on the fly anymore....

Having only a limited time a day for gaming, this setting is extremly annoying, since I either have to wait my time through the waiting queue or hang around in an empty server waiting for three more guys with a lot of patience...

Thus more than 20% of the 2 hours of gaming time I usually invest are spent waiting -> NO FUN!
Since fun is the only reason I game, it might force me into another game.

Time is money, as they say, this waiting time might be less money for EA and more money spent elswhere for me ... a loose loose situation nobody really wants, or do they?!

It should be up to the server owner for the player limit for the game to start. Good job dice.

Origin shame! 4 Players to live server!

I have just started renting my own 32 man server and yes it is a nightmare trying to get games started. This 4 players to start is now making my server empty all the time now. I dont agree with flag runners only servers and will never host one. This unfortunately is punishing the new server owners who are trying to make a popular favourite map rotation. If I can't get my maps started then why should I pay for the server and waste all my time trying to make it better. 2 player start would be better than 4. No one wants to join an empty server, give us a chance!

Thanks a lot for this new thread ! I hope is not a lost cause. +1 or whatever you want. Launching our servers is very embarrassing now for us. 4 players settings isn't the better idea who has set in place. We're talking about the nemesis. This should be changed and blocked ! Dice, we remind you for doing boost with friends or another players, they can be 8 players so not compulsory 4. Think to modify the nemesis and block it for example at 500 ( this who already is very awesome).
About our servers, i can tell you is very hard now to launching it very quickly. We took them easily more than 1 hours than usually.

So don't worry about administrators when they play at 2 together. Just think to change point's politic.

Thanks for you understanding.

Thats good imo

Only bad for boosters :p

Hey all,

Macaco_Nappa a dit :
wait a minute where is the mark on the thread?

This is not my main part of the boards, this is not my decision to pin something or not. ;)

fuwack a dit :
I have just started renting my own 32 man server and yes it is a nightmare trying to get games started. This 4 players to start is now making my server empty all the time now. I dont agree with flag runners only servers and will never host one. This unfortunately is punishing the new server owners who are trying to make a popular favourite map rotation. If I can't get my maps started then why should I pay for the server and waste all my time trying to make it better. 2 player start would be better than 4. No one wants to join an empty server, give us a chance!

HmS_Cardinal said:
Having only a limited time a day for gaming, this setting is extremly annoying, since I either have to wait my time through the waiting queue or hang around in an empty server waiting for three more guys with a lot of patience...

LegioPN said:
I personally have a small server (16 slots) that I am renting to play with my 2 brothers and a couple friends (5 players in total). The server is almost never visited but by us only and we are never more than 3 on it at any given time.

LOLGotYerTags said:
Sadly, It's the minority who caused DICE to take such drastic measures, Had there been a PROPER server reporting feature, We might have seen all these flagrun only servers shut down.

Nedarbski said:
The 4 player limit is almost like DRM; it screws over the players/server owners while only acting as a slight inconvenience for the boosters.

kronenbourg73 said:
Starting up servers (your own) means you have to wait for ages.
It was like this in BF2, but then it was 6, and if someone left, the game ended.
I think it should be 2 at the min, or at least if it was 4, to let the admins choose if they want it to be a lower number.

I hope that your team members, your friends or some server admins will be able to keep the thread alive. ;)
Feel free to share the link if you think that the content is clear enough.

Thanks for your constructives comments.