Features I'd personally like to see:
– possibility for server owners to specify the range of experience stages and whether bots are allowed or not
– possibility for users to apply multiple filters that could be copied and pasted; for example only servers with starting exp stage <= 10 and ending exp stage <= 5 and (client version 8.0+ or client version custom)
– possibility for users to display servers added since the last visit
- Server owners can say "Bots allowed" or "Bots forbidden".
- You can copy the URL after searching and bookmark it or send to a friend. It will keep your search criteria.
- New servers since last visit is a great idea, love it! Thx
Cant find the link anymore?
But judging by the screenshots I still thinks its way too big. Or at least, "servers per page" too few. 12 servers on a single page is not very much. Especially on higher res monitors.
I think the LOOK is great, but the amount of servers page is way too low IMO. Please note its IMO. Others might not think so.
Yeah, sure Otservlist looks dated, but it does its job. I can see 50 servers per page, at a time without scrolling. Going from that to 12 is very much not worth it for me at least. Looks is not more worth than functionality IMO.
Still. keep up the good work. Some people will use it, even if I dont.
No link yet. I will first unveil the secret feature I've been working on, and invite people to try it together with the rest of Tibian.
Glad you like the look & feel, even though it's too spacy and stuff.
I understand what you're saying tho, I'm also very comfy with otservlist's style, it's easy to scan with your eyes. But you just can't elegantly present important information like map type, tags, server custom icons, etc.. into such a thin table. We have to give servers more space to convince you to play them. We're missing good servers because, with otservlist's compact format, they can't show us stuff we want to know!
Will do a compact view option as well, around ~30 servers per page. Later, will also let you customize servers per page yourself to 50 or more.
They don't have the same attention, because you can't really advertise there with their pre-defined options.
For instance, my server has a feature to decrease the exp you gained based on two factors: the exp you currently have (yes, not by level but by exp instead) and also by the amount of time you are killing the same monster.
The best option would be to have 'custom' as experience option but that simply does not exist. Also you have nowhere to indicate the map nor other critical details. A few years ago when we advertised on otservlist we just had a feeling that no matter what we inserted in the description, our server wasn't receiving the proper attention just by it's tittle. The tags you have inserted seem to be a good alternative though.
Detecting fake players is all about machine learning anomally detection, but this is not how xinn does in otserverlist. I could come up with a solution if presented with enough labeled data (in order to perform supervised learning) that would be more than suitable but it would have to be written in python as I heavily rely on sklearn lib. From what I can see, the historic of players could be the only info required but having also days open could also boost the accuracy.
Filtering is all about considering the differences we have: custom/global, versions, exp. Filtering by tags can also be a plus
I think we should have two types of guides, one for quick starters and one for 'Pros'. I would highly recommend making a guide on ovh instead of digital ocean, I use digital ocean myself because it looked better and gave me 100$ to start with but it took 2seconds to a friend of my make a ddos attack and @$%$ my server up. He said ovh has by default a redirection system that onces you are hit with ddos they switch the attacks to other server and preserve your applications running, even that they are not reachable anymore. That makes ovh the best option for quickstarters, because they will be protected by layer 7 attacks.
Thx for the input!
Custom exp option already possible. Owner's note can be added to explain how it works in your server (great for your use case). Stages coming next.
Machine learning is way out of scope for this project. I'd be willing to release the entire online history for all servers if anyone wants to play with it tho. Honestly, I'll just make it a public JSON API, because why not?
For now, I'm still left without any solution to detect fakes. Also, I will not ban servers that fake. I will simply hide their online count or show a warning. For servers we trust, I will show a green V (for "Verified"). For suspicious servers, I will simply not show that V. Not guilty until proven guilty.
Guides, will be up much later and might be community-editable. Community user profiles will link to OTLand profiles if possible.