Side note (nothing meant by this): It's amusing to hear you guys talk about back in the day. "Back in the day" for me is summer of 2001 and 2002. And I'm pretty much in the middle... I've been around a bit, but I'm not really an old timer either.

Wow.. I've been around Jiggly since before I was even engaged...

Yes, and I was in even before him (both in Jiggly's, and sadly, in this world, and also sadly, engaged - three times - albiet, pre-jiggly.)

But since we're talking NS, I think "back in the day" is post 2003 at least. It's true, we've had better, but we've also had a lot worse. (Although, the TFC room is worse than ever.)

I've not run the stats to see how the rines are doing in ages, but I feel they are doing a lot better, generally.
_________________
"Now son, you don't want to drink beer. That's for Daddies, and kids with fake ID's." -Homer
Thothie

I can attest to that.


Jiggs is always in some rut or another as well as server status goes. Its more of a sin function than a downward slope.

Skool just got out though - everything goes to sh*t in the summer, as all the kiddies come out to play.

We need to hire this guy as our "anti-summer kiddie" admin.
_________________
"//this would be a good place for 'SHIT!' or some other colorful verbal indicator of dismay." - Half-Life SDK Comment Line
Thothie

I was just talking about back in the pedal days, when fans created a completely unrelated jiggly tribute server cause jiggly lagged to hard, soon both servers would be pretty much full, but skelly took it down.


I used to play on The Lunixmonster from 2.0 ish to around 3. something, before TLM it was nano gridlock or [WHO]modified... Now it's teh jiggly cause TLM is waaay cashed

Defender has too high of standards......on a pokemon forum...

For the stacking, I sometimes issue pretty short bans for consistent stackers. Usually when two or more superheroes stack multiple games in a row, I'll issue a short ban (hours) with length depending on how many games everyone's had to endure before I grow a grey hair.

The last time I played, there were mostly newbies who would continually stack aliens. I'm still not sure what to do there. force random ends up stacking teams the same as or worse than natural stacking 9/10 times.

One advantage of an OA stack is that most of them have microphones which gives them a lot of power over newbies. This power can be used for good or evil -_-;

Amen to the randomizer stacking worse than players do. It does happen.

The problem is, kicking/tempbanning won't solve stack/f4 problems. It will just piss people off, and they will want to break the rules even more. (It's a gross generalization to be sure, but people who don't play by the rules generally don't do any better when the enforcers of the rules, well, enforce.)

I'd rather scream "chicken" at the pussies who want to f4, or switch teams to unstack if necessary. Honestly, that seems to be more effective than wielding "power". And THAT sort of thing, any player can do. Just step up and say "man, f4ing isn't funny."

say no to f4ing and recycling kids

-unless your gorge rush fails.
-your sg rush fails because people are getting ammo.
-the rines shoot down your third and second hive.
-your idiot com says he's too poor for upgrades cos he's just spent 80 res locking down a third hive
-3 noobs go fade and die when you have 1 rt and no second hive
-it's a ridiculous stack and has been for several games
-any other cliche bs ns situation

Its unfortunate but undestandable that the owner/admins dont really care about the llamas especially the tfc. I havent tried NS, but it appears to me that it gets monitored more by knowledgable admins. Where as the tfc one gets monitored once in awhile by less knowledgable admins. This in turn allows for small spurts of gaming for the regulars the frequent the server.
Im surprised jiggly even keeps the tfc server alive. Instead just lets it rot in hell for the regs.

Going down hill? Shit we have been there. In fact we are half way digging our way down to hell....

Only those that don't remember the original 32-player 2fort server say it's been going downhill. That got so bad, I had to shut it down. The problems now pale in comparison to those of the previous incarnation of the 2fort hell hole.

As for NS, I am very quick to just ban offenders - it's too easy to destroy NS games and unless you've played NS, you probably have no idea what I'm talking about. In fact, you're probably asking yourself why I don't apply these rules to TFC. Because in TFC, individuals can make an enormous difference on multiple levels. In NS, if you don't play as a team, everyone loses.

If OA really does make NS games unplayable, I have no problems permabanning anyone with that tag. However, experience has shown me that this isn't the case (yet).

/official response

I've been tracking the skill on Jigglies using Goobametrics.

190 181 167 137 120
175 103 125 88 188
177 133 93 185 97
185 191 97 150 106
134 113 139 111 146
84 161 169 193 190
160 173 153 124 200
199 114 149 161 182
80 157 186 197 129
187 88 98 112 197
156 186 102 184 162
120 155 118 131 96
166 172 136 133 96
117 138 176 100 97
181 157 98 104 180
157 120 132 94 143
142 161 104 125 167
187 150 191 113 163
159 177 150 115 79
137 146 170 181 110
125 173 111 95 129
112 160 164 176 125
123 99 194 86 163
164 132 84 166 148
142 126 153 153 128
176 155 144 91 113
93 142 115 77 190
115 78 77 97 125
173 187 97 175 106
105 184 130 86 165
154 128 158 197 169
179 88 173 124 111
119 146 76 166 122
91 141 184 102 166
96 166 165 138 189
110 170 145 169 97
160 152 125 95 165
150 131 121 98 98
101 77 122 86 136
190 85 187 176 158
178 146 108 162 154
127 196 198 108 179
131 129 87 129 172
76 115 144 179 125
79 125 168 77 104
98 152 86 198 107
116 129 79 178 143
105 103 145 160 108
157 186 118 177 106
164 121 197 97 192


Graphed:
(y)
|
|
|
|
|_________________________^_______________
|
|
|__________________________________________
1AD

Pretty constant.

OA are non-negative/neutral 95% of the time, and tend to get stacked against on account of them being sophomoric.

As for the 5%... think the last time I raged against them was when an OA in a stacked team spent 30 minutes building a slow wave of electrified tf's into alien hive. I don't give a fuk if 95% of the players do think it's funny, it pisses off the people who take NS more seriously and sets a precedent.

And while we're banning people ban zoe for using funny names

I second what Thresh says, except on the electrified TF push. Even for some of the serious players(Long Way), that was one hell of a fun game. OA exists to have fun, not ruin games.

An example of stacking has been going on today. For about 2-3 hours straight, TAK and Tabasco haven't been on a different team. At all. If one goes one team, the other closely follows. Even when they ended up going separate teams in the beginning, one would quick F4 to join the other. Would be ok if there were other good players to go against, but when it is full of not-so-good players, it's an obvious stack. If people really think the server is "going downhill", they need to do something about it themselves. Not just keep destroying it and hope someone else fixes the problem for them.

/rant

TAK and tab are usually good about evening the teams, but today, it was just ridiculous. I was playing for a while, and every single game the two guys stacked.

It's not fun to get rolled over and over and over and over and over.