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Vercetti
2012-06-09, 01:52
In short, the queue will be fixed. We will start adding people to the reserved slot list.
I think reserved slots + aggressive join would be suitable for our servers and members, so we always get in fast.

After 8 months they finally did it!


http://battlelog.battlefield.com/bf3/forum/threadview/2832654489773065156/1/

Hi all,

there has been a lot of confusion around the join queue over the past week.

Let's first start with a discussion around the join queue itself. We have two old mechanisms.


The old Join Queue mechanism
This is a straight queue, with no prioritization. The first person to join the queue will be first to join the server when there is room available.


The new Join Queue mechanism
Players are divided into three groups:

1. Players on the Reserved Slots list
2. Premium players
3. Normal players

The "Reserved Slots" list is a list with player names. The list is stored locally on each server, and managed by each server administrator.

When a player attempts to enter a full server, the player will go into the queue. Later on, when a player leaves the server, one player from the queue will be let onto the server. The server will first pick a player from the Reserved Slots group; if that group is empty, one from the Premium players group; lastly, one from the Normal players group.
If there are several people in a group, the player who has been waiting the longest in a group has precedence.

In addition to this there is the "aggressive join" setting. If Aggressive Join is enabled, then if a Reserved Slots player joins the queue, a user on currently on the server will be kicked to make room for the Reserved Slots player.
The Aggressive Join setting does not apply when Premium or Normal players enter the queue.

It is common for clans and communities to use the Reserved Slots + Aggressive Join together; those who pay the monthly bills or otherwise support a server are on the list, and are guaranteed to be able to come in and play on their server. Others can play on it too if there's room.

(This is pretty much how the BF:BC2 queue worked.)


Bugs in the new Join Queue mechanism
There are two known bugs in Server R24 (which is currently running on all servers).
The first, and biggest, is that players who enter via the join queue will not get GUIDs. Also, "player.onJoin" events are not sent. This confuses some third party admin tools. PunkBuster does not always display these players in the "pb_sv_plist" output either. So-called 'ghost players' are caused by this as well.

We have identified the problem and developed a fix for this earlier this week. We expect it to go live sometime during next week. Until that time we recommend that server administrators who have problems with the new queue do not run third-party autobalancers or other similar scripts.

The second is that servers sometimes don't display the right number of max players on Battlelog. This seems to happen only to servers which run "adaptive server size" plugins. We are still investigating this. It is probably not related to the Join Queue at all, but the reports arrived at the time when we switched to the Join Queue mechanism - so, it's worth mentioning.



So which Join Queue mechanism is being used right now on the servers?
Most PC game servers, except those operated by BrainStorm Network and Multiplay, use the new mechanism. Once the GUID problem is sorted, all servers will switch to the new queueing mechanism.

I hope this answers most of your questions.


Regarding documentation around the Reserved slots, you can find the pre-release docs for Server R25 here:
http://static.cdn.ea.com/dice/u/f/bfbc2/tmp/BF3_PC_Server_R25_951364_Docs_ServerAdministrator. zip [static.cdn.ea.com]
(Server R25 is due for Monday-Tuesday next week. It adds support for Close Quarters maps.)

Vercetti
2012-06-09, 02:06
About the premium server setting, you can actually only accept premium players...... pretty lame.

The "premium players only" setting for a server is not really intended for servers that are run by the community. After all, one of the main goals of a community-run server is to get a lot of people to play on that server, and the "premium players only" filter does not have any upside - not like saying, "we want to have Close Quarters maps in the map rotation" where there is an upside (you can play Close Quarters on your server) and a downside (some players will not be able to play on your server). The "premium players only" setting is mainly intended for our internal use.

Shadowfox
2012-06-09, 11:59
Yeah, I saw yesterdat I was able to take a 'reserved slot' when I was in queue. Was only once though, all the other times I had to stay waiting in the queue.

Burning
2012-06-09, 14:02
I think we should have normal Que, so no prioritization for premium ,and reservedslot list + agressive. If thats possible, personally i dont really agree with Premiums getting priority.

Macknetic
2012-06-09, 14:46
At the moment queuing for a long time is not really a big issue for me personally. Most of the times we look for a server that has enough open spots for a small group of players and we jump in. Plenty of servers around to choose from.

That being said, it does happen sometimes that I'd like to join one of the OG servers, like Metro or Caspian, and it's full with 5+ players in the queue. In those cases I think Aggresive Join for OG members is justified. OG's pay for the server and maintain a good atmosphere on them as admins so they deserve to get in first.

Don't really need Premium priority. Not anyone wants or can afford to get Premium right away and they should not be put at a disadvantage because of that. However, looking at the info Vercetti posted there are only two options to choose from: everyone's equal, or a Members/premium/peasants priority ranking. Uhm... I mean those nice folks that didn't get the chance to buy Premium yet. Â*:wink: In that case the priority ranking option seems like a good idea to me. Because then our members get priority anyways, premium or not. Too bad for non-members without Premium.

Then there is the matter of Premium maps. Clan leadership has probably already thought of this but turning one of the OG servers that is not doing well into a CQ server really appeals to me. Conquest Domination promises to be very interesting so maybe a CD server with the four CQ expansion maps rotating? I'm betting it won't be hard to fill that server up.

Burning
2012-06-09, 15:01
I dont think it will be hard at all to fill any type of CQ server mack, probably Gun Game (What ever its called). TDM will be less favored. I think we should turn one of the 32 slot servers in 2x16, 1 with 24/7 Conquest Domination. And other with Gungame :)

Yepp3r
2012-06-09, 15:13
I dont think it will be hard at all to fill any type of CQ server mack, probably Gun Game (What ever its called). TDM will be less favored. I think we should turn one of the 32 slot servers in 2x16, 1 with 24/7 Conquest Domination. And other with Gungame :)

I totally agree.

Valheru73
2012-06-10, 01:31
What Burning and Yepp3r said ÂÂ*8)

C4b4nossi
2012-06-10, 10:01
@Mac: "Aggressive Join" only applies the "ReservedSlot" (Clanmembers and trials). "Premium" priorization ÂÂ*before normal players will be applied automaticly with the patch next week.

suggest #2 and #5 for CQ