Arena Time Limits...

[Original]

This is something that I have noticed before, but tonight it really came to my attention.

Both my arena maps came up in a row. While I love seeing both my maps being played I feel like the time limits might be a problem.
Not only for possibly causing a dislike for my maps or arena in general but for player count on the servers so I thought it would be good to draw your attention to it and see if something can be done.

Most maps seem to play out by either a number of rounds (King of the train seems to never last longer than 10 minutes - 2 rounds). CP maps I'm not sure about, I think we got 3 rounds of Japan, then a sudden death round and map change. Japan played for awhile but the server numbers stayed high.

The player numbers started dropping through my maps. Possibly because some people don't like them, possibly because some people don't like arena, maybe alot of it was because it was getting late.
But I think most likely because the time limit was like 30+ minutes. I think most people including myself can suffer through 10-15 minutes of a map they don't like (or gameplay they don't like) if they know another map is coming up soon, but when they see that timer at 20+ minutes they decide to log off.

So I was wondering if maybe you guys can cap the time limit for arena at 15-20 minutes. Personally I think that's a pretty good time to play a small map, get used to it and have fun. But even I was getting bored towards the end of each of my maps.

Not sure if it's possible to add time limits like that server side, but I think in the long run it might be a good thing for the server.

[captainAngry]

Let me shed some light.

Our default setting for most maps is 45 minutes or 4 rounds, whichever comes first. This has been tweaked quite a bit. Usually what happens is that four rounds pass and then the map changes. On maps that can take longer to complete, as long as the first round doesn't last more than 45 minutes, the map lasts two rounds (the map won't end until a round ends, even if 45 minutes is reached).

For specific maps, like King of the train, I have the time limits reduced and round numbers reduced. King of the train is set exactly like you said, 10 minutes and 2 rounds. The maps that have settings that are different from the default are changed either because people complained about it or because I felt that an improvement could be made. For King of the train I found that when the teams got too big, it took forever to win and, since that map is spawn camp city, it got old quickly. For rainbow it was because that map never fails to clear the server after a few minutes.

The server times for arena may be broken. I know, for instance, that arena maps don't follow the same round counting as the rest of the map types so they will never hit the 4 limit. Thinking about it now, It is also possible that arena maps aren't following the time limit and that an RTV is required to change from an arena map.

I think what we have set for most maps works fine. Both teams usually get to play at least once on each side and most maps don't last the full 45 minutes because of the round limit. If anyone has any input as to what we should set arena maps to, let me know. Also, if anyone feels that any particular maps should have different settings than what are the default, let me know.

[Original]

yeah, actually I think arena maps also last 45, wasn't sure I knew that after playing for awhile I'd look and there'd still be 15 minutes or so on the clock.
The round count deffinetely doesn't work. That's why I think their time limit should be 20 minutes. We probably played 30 rounds of each of my maps and it seemed like after about 20 minutes most people were begging for rtv's. (even the nominator and map creator )

To me 20 seems like a good universal time for arena, I could play arena all day, but much more fun with map changes. 20 min would still probably be around 10-15 rounds which can turn into alot of sitting out time.

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I probably should've named the thread arena time limits also, might've garnered more attention. I think the time limits and round count on all other maps/types works really well.

[captainAngry]

I don't think many people venture to this area of the forum so much. I'll change the arena time limit to 20 minutes. I have thought it was long for a while but I didn't really know what I should set it to.

I am still open to ideas about arena limits.

[Äusländer]

Arena time limits should be set to 20 minutes unless I'm doing really well, then let me beat down on people for at least an hour.