Vercetti
2012-06-09, 00:52
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.)
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.)