Decreasing playerbase

[iRobot]

A toast is a little informational popup. Ideally you'd need to give each patch a version to differ them.

BW Pro 2.5 has been updated to Patch 3.14b - For changelog visit the forum

You could even give your reasoning for each change, rather than just blanket posting "Assault rifles: Recoil increased by 50%.", you could specify why you have made this change, what you plan to achieve by it, etc.

would help people understand your changes a little more and help visually shape the direction the game is headed and balancing.

[Azarael]

Don't they automatically get clued into an update, because of the package downloads?

[iRobot]

I see you did the first already, love how blunt you are about it.

LS-14 rockets were shit

Re package downloads, depends entirely on peoples cache settings, internet speed, and simply whether they pay attention that well. Sometimes it's just skins you're downloading.

A visual notification is a more clear way of finding out about a change. "oh, the game has been updated, I wonder what's different, lets go find out"

[iZumo]

Redownload isn't clear at all to those who don't know the package contents, which is probably most of the players.

[Azarael]

We're a species good at pattern recognition. 5 packages change frequently: BCoreProV55, BallisticProV55, BWBPRecolorsPro, BWBPOtherPackPro and BWBPAirstrikesPro. I'd be very surprised if that hasn't been noticed.

[taries]

Since I got new PC week ago, I can give you feedback since i had to download all things, the largest packages was textures for skins: Velvet,July,Lillian,Rocket, then some BW content and some other textures (HourIndus was the big one i think), I am not sure if its necessary to add that skins as thing that must be downloaded, they are really nice Aberiu did a lot of work on them, but some ppl just might be like: "Omfg, so much big ass downloads with things i wont use, pff fuck this shit". And i have around 330Kb ADSL net, so not really fast if I could imagine having slower net it must be terrible.

[Azarael]

I'd be surprised if all of Aberiu's skins combined came to a larger filesize than BallisticRecolors3TexPro. That said, I'm not setting anything in stone with that comment. Feel free to discuss this generally.

[Skaldy]

Most people will still just impatiently press OK on any server notice you do - they just want to play. For example, one of the first things a banned player usually says is "I haven't actually read the rules..."! You can't force people to read or care about the updates, and that's their decision. Updates are clearly posted here for those who are interested, and that's all that matters. I can't see it as a primary cause for dissatisfaction with the mod, the server, or the learning curve.

the largest packages was textures for skins

The initial download sizes are no worse than many other UT2004 servers. That's what the cache is for. A greater concern to me has been that the large skins affect performance quite a lot on older machines. I certainly found that using "Force Models ON" under Freon improved in-game performance. Although I care less about that now because I have a new PC too.

[iZumo]

You can force people to read those. Just count the time between message showing up and OK button click and divide it by number of words. It would surely be the world record if sbdy could read 100 words / second.

[Azarael]

Even that won't work. They'll just tab out for 30 seconds. About the only thing I can think of that WOULD work is actually forcing them to answer questions on the rules before they can enter the server. I would have it first come up with a screen detailing the rules and allowing you to click OK. Upon clicking OK, you'll be presented with the questionnaire, which will session ban you if you fail.