AFK kicker

Yeah, I will notice spec will have a lot of people in it and server is full, maybe somthing like if your spec for more than 2 rounds except admins/donators you get kicked.

You're a afk kick.

Yeah that would be a nice idea let's wait for ^ to see what they think

I know I can kick the afk but there are also people that are just sitting in Spec cause they don't like the map or some stupid reason like that If they aren't going to play get off the server and make room for people who want to.

Or they could get donator. The whole point of us offering it is because the server doesn't always have empty slots. I have no plan to kick people if they go afk, we already have a auto spec if someone is afk.

There are good points for each argument.

My suggestion:

If the server is full and there are several people in spectate for multiple rounds, I would suggest a warning be issued to allow those in spectate to join in the game by the next round. If they do not, you can kick them indicating a full server and user is in spectate.

Automated methods may sound good but there are too many issues with implementation. And please correct me if I'm wrong but how often is there a full server with several people in spectate? Once a week? Once a day? Only during weekends?

I refuse to kick people for afk, I will punish admins if I see them kicking people in spectate because they are imposing their own rule. I agree that we want active people but I want a full server. As soon as I say it's ok for admins to kick people in spec, you're going to have admins kick people who are recording demos, admins overkick the player count so it goes too far below and it doesn't go back to full, ect. We sell donator for a reason, we need the money and if they need in, they can part for $5/month to get guaranteed access.

Good point.

Thanks Josh.. I'll add a FAQ on this subject.

people have to stop thinking this is a game and more of a business, we do not want our servers to be convenient to other people, they can't get in? begging YOU to kick AFK's? this is a great opportunity for YOU to tell them the great deals and offers donater can get them.

We might as well just start having everyone sit in afk and not play because it's a business. Not a game.

If this is such a huge problem then this might be a good time to open up a second zombie escape server.

Matt, You always seem to do this when I talk about money. We are only alive because of admins and donators paying money to us to keep us alive. If someone wants to join our server and go afk, let them. The population is what brings people in. If we go from 52 to 40 and people chose to join another server that happens to have 43 people, I am going to be mad.

This.

I know I've kicked AFK people before, but I would always send out a warning first to have the people in spectate say something. The ones that didn't would be put on the AFK list to be kicked if an open slot was needed. And to put aside Josh's worries about the server population dropping due to kicking AFKs, people would join to take their spot almost as fast as the AFKs were removed.

Personally I find the AutoKicking (with X seconds/minutes of being AFK) after server gets full sounds really nice.

About having lots of spectators... PlagueFest has the AutoZombieRespawn option, wich I like, but its not suitable for all maps (due to the lack of shortcuts, teleports or the presence of AFK Killers on the map), so many times, on many maps, people prefer to spectate over getting killed repeated times or just to see the game from otuside when they know they won't be abble to catch up alive with the human vs zombie action that its wayahead.

Indeed. I believe an automatic AFK kicker should be implemented, at least to some extent.

Every map with an AFK killer has respawn disabled, by the way.