Roly is already working on a GB community server and it looks like his plan may be to go with Classic Casual. Since I prefer Classic Competitive, I decided I might as well offer my server particularly for the use of my fellow duders. I spent much of the last week fighting with problems a recent beta update brought to the CS:GO servers for a lot of admins, but today's launch update seems to have resolved them. Because of that, I still have a few things I'd like to tweak, but we should generally be good to go here.

As I mentioned, this server is Classic Competitive. It can handle whatever number of players we want, but I'm starting it at 18. We'll adjust up or down, from there. Though smaller numbers of players tends to mean a greater level of skill required, I've also always found it a bit boring. Fine for truly competitive (as in tournament) play, sure, but not for fun. And just because we want Classic Competitive doesn't mean we don't want fun.

The only real differences between Classic Competitive and Classic Casual are:

Competitive: 30 rounds per map. After fifteen rounds, teams swap sides (I've set ours to 20, but will adjust if it feels necessary). You start with slightly less cash, but can carry significantly more. No taser. You must choose to buy a defusing kit. You can buy vests and helmets. Friendly fire is enabled. Player collision is enabled (so that you can't run through each other). Alltalk is disabled (meaning teams can only voice-chat within their own team so they can strategize, though everyone can chat via text.)

Casual: 10 rounds per map. Start with more money, but have a lower maximum amount you can earn. Allows the taser. Everyone gets defusers for free. No vest or helmet. 50% damage. No friendly fire. No player collision (so you can run through each other). Alltalk is enabled, meaning everyone can always hear each other, no matter what.

Note that these are really the ONLY differences between the two modes. Casual does not mean that you run around in silly hats shooting each other with nerf weapons and Competitive does not mean that everyone is super hardcore and super serious and playing in a tournament. In fact, a lot of the competitive servers I've been on recently are pretty silly and fun. Don't let either the words "competitive" or "casual" scare you off from either one. They just offer a different feel of play. I can't tell you which is right for you. Only which is right for me. And for me, that's actually competitive. But mostly because I like having the choices for armor and defuse kits and I like having to be careful not to shoot my team and not being able to just run through each other (I feel it changes the pace of the game so people don't gung-ho-style it for the center of the map with reckless abandon). However, I've been playing a lot of Casual, too, and it's just as damn fun.

I'm sure we'll see plenty of cross-over, too. I definitely plan to be around on both servers and I suspect there will be some cross-over in admin-rights. I don't plan on this server being a home for racist, homophobic, mean-spirited jerks and if we have the volume of community to keep the server active, it should have an admin around most of the time to keep things sane.

Trying to connect to the server but cant seem to connect?

@scarace360:

Yeah, it had to be rebooted for a moment, to update the configuration. All good, now. Let me know if you find any problems! :)

Also, if this ends up conflicting with what is decided for the other server or if the geography of it (Dallas) becomes a problem, we can always adjust things. Whatever benefits a community most and keeps it active and alive for fun times.

Jumped in for a little bit, got my ass kicked. Sorry for whoever it was I did friendly fire to, lol I thought I had the jump on a red dot on the map and just shot through that door. I'm a complete noob though.

So far after almost 3 hours my experience has been either dominating and feeling lucky or getting completely destroyed. Anyway will definitely jump back in to get better.

Well, east coast would be way more playable for me, but i'll probably still end up preferring european servers because of the ping.

Then again, i could hold my own well enough just now :). Anyway, thanks for putting up the server, had fun.

Had lots of fun. Thanks for the server!

@Redsox44 said:

Jumped in for a little bit, got my ass kicked. Sorry for whoever it was I did friendly fire to, lol I thought I had the jump on a red dot on the map and just shot through that door. I'm a complete noob though.

So far after almost 3 hours my experience has been either dominating and feeling lucky or getting completely destroyed. Anyway will definitely jump back in to get better.

Same here. My experience since I've started playing again has been completely owning people and then sucking so bad for so long that I'm convinced my "ownage" was just random ass luck.

But man, is it like riding a bike.

@clush said:

Well, east coast would be way more playable for me, but i'll probably still end up preferring european servers because of the ping.

Then again, i could hold my own well enough just now :). Anyway, thanks for putting up the server, had fun.

I'm not sure how much of a difference there would be, these days. Either way, I agree -- your ping was about 30% higher than would be preferable. However, with two servers available (mine and Roly's), it could always be a possibility of having one moved to the EU. Or if there is enough demand (would be amzing, but seems unlikely with the GB community's fickleness), could just open a third server for EU players in the EU. If there were enough people to keep it populated, I wouldn't mind paying for it.

Well that was fun playing some shiny new CS :)

@Redsox44 said:

Had lots of fun. Thanks for the server!

@tekmojo said:

Well that was fun playing some shiny new CS :)

Agreed. It was a blast and despite having a ton of people from GB and randoms on the server all day and night, it was unusually civil (compared to the other CS:GO server's I've played the last week). I really hope the server stays alive and can be a go-to 24x7 place to find some lively play. This is what I've been looking forward to - a renewed excitement for CS that waned a lot after CS:S (even though I did play that a lot, still). As long as there are some good communities to be a part of for CS:GO, I think I'm going to be at this for years... again... :D

Oh shoot! I'll get on this tonight after work. I'm terrible at CS, especially after so long away, but I do enjoy the game.

Ill be on after work today as well. Hope to see the rest of the maps.

@tekmojo said:

Ill be on after work today as well. Hope to see the rest of the maps.

Yeah, I reduced the number of rounds from 30 down to 20, because I got the feeling from playing on other servers last week that people got bored after that point and left. Of course, it's set so that when a definitive win has been achieved (ie, the other team can't possibly win no matter how many more rounds are played), we move on to the next map. Maybe after the newness of CS:GO wears off, I'll crank it back up. For now, there seems to be a ton of mapvotes and I think that's due to the "oh man, I wonder what XYZ map looks like now!". Which I can TOTALLY understand! :D

Sorry for the ultimate noob question, but how would I go about joining the server?

Never mind... Got it!

Hmm seem to be getting this when trying to join, as using the Console as its not appearing in the lists.

@Khemitude: favorites on your server list and add server

Added but still sending me back to main menu

Thats the same for me right now, think thats why its empty because people arent able to connect.

@Khemitude said:

Hmm seem to be getting this when trying to join, as using the Console as its not appearing in the lists.

SPOILER WARNING: Click here to reveal hidden content.

] connect 68.232.175.171:27015

Connecting to public(68.232.175.171:27015) ...

137.495: Sending UDP connect to public IP 68.232.175.171:27015

Invalid GetHostVersion(), expecting 11740, got 11730

Unknown command "joingame"

Steam rolled out a new client update within the last hour. No way for admins to know that they need to update their servers, but I believe that is what's required. I'm updating mine at the moment, but now I'm seeing another error regarding reservations. Anyway, I think it may require more time to finish the update (I know it can take 20m or more). Typical Valve.

Looks like it's working, now. Must have taken extra time for the update to complete.

Anyway, that's god damn frustrating. There's NO POINT to maintaining a server that is not the latest version, because all clients must be automatically updated via Steam *anyway*. So . . . Gah. Hopefully they add some sort of "upload your shit, bitch!" beacon for admins. :)

Gah curses now the servers full now! I shall get on!

Had a great time tonight lads!

got a few screenshots (including hay getting shot whilst on the shitter) that i'll throw up after work

Peace! x

This server's awesome.  Just what I was looking for in a CS server.  Keep it simple and keep it great.

Yeah, I had loads of fun in the short time that I jumped on. Trying to get back into CS mode (it's been a looong time since I played properly - I only played a tiny bit of the beta) but playing with fellow bombers is never going to be a bad experience. Thanks Branthog for running the server! I'm sure there's loads more fun to come.

I had a blast earlier! I like how it is only 20 rounds, I feel 30 tends to drag a little.

Fucking Valve. Our server was JUMPING all day long. Then it started to die out quickly. I eventually got suspicious again. Looked at Steam Download section. Yep. They updated the client AGAIN. Twice in the same day. Which means updating the server a second time. Sorry for everyone that was having a blast and couldn't connect. Hopefully it'll be connectable again in 20m.

@SSully said:

I had a blast earlier! I like how it is only 20 rounds, I feel 30 tends to drag a little.

@yinstarrunner said:

This server's awesome. Just what I was looking for in a CS server. Keep it simple and keep it great.

@bibamatt said:

Yeah, I had loads of fun in the short time that I jumped on. Trying to get back into CS mode (it's been a looong time since I played properly - I only played a tiny bit of the beta) but playing with fellow bombers is never going to be a bad experience. Thanks Branthog for running the server! I'm sure there's loads more fun to come.

@OmegaPirate said:

Had a great time tonight lads!

got a few screenshots (including hay getting shot whilst on the shitter) that i'll throw up after work

Peace! x

Agreed. A lot of fun this morning/afternoon. Hopefully valve gets this update/connect thing fixed that a lot of people (including us) are encountering. It's the only thing that keeps killing our fun times when we have tons of people on. Anyway, I'm dead tired. Been dealing with valve stuff too long today. Time for sleep. Hope you all have fun tonight, if you hop on again. Otherwise, I'm going to be back on really early in the AM again.

While I don't think it's necessary, I was wondering if you'd considered putting up a super simple password on the server to insure that people playing on it are all actually from the GB community or the GB Steam group. I guess it wouldn't really matter none, just asking.

Btw, I tried the server the other night and it was pretty nice. I like that if there are bots, you can take control of them when you die. Though. . . I really really hate playing with bots -_-;;

Playing with all of you guys yesterday afternoon/night was the most fun I've had playing Counter-Strike in a long time. Thanks for the great server!

I'll try to join the duders sometime this week or weekend (look for 8bucks50).

Glad to know there is a server ready as I prefer classic competitive as well.

Do community servers just not track stats like the Valve playlist does or is there sometihng else?

@Plasticstars said:

Playing with all of you guys yesterday afternoon/night was the most fun I've had playing Counter-Strike in a long time. Thanks for the great server!

Plastic snake is best snake

@Fobwashed said:

While I don't think it's necessary, I was wondering if you'd considered putting up a super simple password on the server to insure that people playing on it are all actually from the GB community or the GB Steam group. I guess it wouldn't really matter none, just asking.

Btw, I tried the server the other night and it was pretty nice. I like that if there are bots, you can take control of them when you die. Though. . . I really really hate playing with bots -_-;;

Unfortunately, I don't think there are enough GBers who play regularly enough to keep the server populated. If those proves to change, I'll certainly consider modifying it. But for now, the majority of the players *do* seem to be from GB, with some strays filling in the gaps to keep it lively. (I'm remembering how quickly our BF3 servers died.. :/ ).

@Plasticstars said:

Playing with all of you guys yesterday afternoon/night was the most fun I've had playing Counter-Strike in a long time. Thanks for the great server!

Agreed. I have played way more CS:GO post-launch than I expected I would. Mostly due to how fun the crowd has been on this server. I played during the final week of beta and was really disappointed at how uncivil it was. I mean, even for CS. I'm cool with profanity and some trash talking, but the racist and homophobic crap combined with the down-right meanness was making me think twice about getting back into some long-term CS.

But once I got the server going, I've found that even the non-GB people have been really damn cool. Out of like 300 players that the server has seen in 48hrs, I've only experienced two three guys who were much of a problem and all calmed down with the nudging of other players to do so. I haven't had to kick or ban a single person.

CS servers are pretty fucking useless without good people on them 24x7 and so far it seems we might end up with that kind of a community here (for GBers and guests alike). If you ask me, *THAT* is the true old-school CS experience. :)

@jessej07 said:

I'll try to join the duders sometime this week or weekend (look for 8bucks50).

Glad to know there is a server ready as I prefer classic competitive as well.

Do community servers just not track stats like the Valve playlist does or is there sometihng else?

Only servers listed in QuickPlay are ranked and use matchmaking. I believe non valve.net official servers *can* join in QuickPlay lsit, but I'm not sure how, yet. I suspect that, given time, the community will draw up a much better solution for ranking and tracking and it'll become the standard, valve's system be damned. (Hopefully something globally; not just per-server "RankMe" plugin).

Anyway, I think it's going to take some time for plugins to be moved to CS:GO. Then longer for them to be thoroughly tested. Anything I roll out to this server will have to be fairly well vetted, before I'll risk an unstable server on something new, though. :)

Hell, as it is, Valve keeps updating the server and the client and making every server unplayable for everyone until everyone updates. Just happened for the third time since launch. Took a 24-player packed server for 8 hours down to 0 people in a heartbeat. Bastards! :)

Hope to see you here this weekend, though. I work on weekends, but will try to be around!

Thanks to my awesome cable at my new place, I actually ping really well to US servers from Sydney (150ish usually), so I might actually give this a go with you guys.

Been digging playing CS again, especially playing comp style without actually playing comp (no way I'm good enough for that anymore)

Had a great time playing tonight. We should keep the server populated, if only because the GB community is so much more tolerable than the general CS community.

And big thanks to you, Branthog, for setting it up

Thanks for the server. It's been loads of fun.

Cool! I'm in.

Unfortunately, I think you got in just as things started to die out for the night, Cap. It was jam packed for the 12+ hours before that though. Even had to ban five guys from a clan who jus couldn't control themselves (TKing, shitty general behavior, etc). Hey, we even broke the top 1,00 servers (#871). I'm thinking that once the updates slow down, so that servers are more reliable and not having to refuse connections and clients aren't constantly crashing, we'll see more stable server-populations throughout the days and nights.

I'll be back on again Friday. Hope everyone has fun if they're on, in the mean time.

@Branthog: poo! and i am crashing alot today, perhaps because of the update as I wasn't having any problems yesterday.

Been having alot of fun on the server. Still hoping we can get some non stock maps in there.

@scarace360 said:

Been having alot of fun on the server. Still hoping we can get some non stock maps in there.

I'd love some fun maps (snow or something). I know it's a "competitive" server, but snow is pretty damn competitive. :P

There will eventually be more maps out for CS:GO, but at the moment there are only a couple or so custom maps (such as 747, assault, etc) and they all have glitches and bugs and some incompletely aspects to them. Some of the old maps also appear to be coming out at a later point, if you look in the default CS:GO configuration files (there is a reference to assault, for example).

As soon as some new maps are out (and complete, stable, reliable, etc) we'll definitely add one or two for variety. Personally, I still miss militia and cbble, too. :(

@Branthog said:

There will eventually be more maps out for CS:GO, but at the moment there are only a couple or so custom maps (such as 747, assault, etc) and they all have glitches and bugs and some incompletely aspects to them. Some of the old maps also appear to be coming out at a later point, if you look in the default CS:GO configuration files (there is a reference to assault, for example).

As soon as some new maps are out (and complete, stable, reliable, etc) we'll definitely add one or two for variety. Personally, I still miss militia and cbble, too. :(

This seems like a good plan. I know I get pretty tired of half-completed custom maps and such (which is honestly the state most are in for CS: GO), so I'm personally fine with a more selected and well-groomed choice of maps.

But yeah, militia, season, and a few other good-ol-maps would definitely be great to have on the server, once they're released.

I guess everyone has plans for Friday night, because the server was jumping most of the day and died by early evening. That's okay. I mean, *I* would have plans on Friday night, too. I'm totally not a loser with no life. No, seriously. I'm actually on duty right now (and am until 6:00 AM Monday). That is TOTALLY the only reason I am not out being awesome. Yep. That's the ticket.

However, I'll jump in here and there and see if the server is alive and I'll stick around to play if it is. Also, I've found that if the server is empty and you hang around for about half an hour, it'll eventually start to fill up. So if you're alone when you join, don't give up right away. You'll have lots of cool people to murder in the face, soon.

I'll hang out a bit tomorrow to try to get some action in there. Most people game earlier on Saturday.

Nice, I was hoping there would be a GB server at some point. I'll hop on in a few minutes. Thanks for doing this!

"You are banned from joining this session" or something like that.

Only 1 person was on the server when I tried to join, so I'll try later if others are on it... but does anyone know why I'd get that message?

Look forward to playing with you guys :)

@jessej07: That was me :) Playing by myself...

Man I used to be really good at CS when I was in high school.

I bet I suck ass now.

I'll see if I can tear myself away from TSW for long enough to find out.