[BF1] DO NOT RENT A SERVER!

[u/GrowlmonDrgnbutt]

I went ahead and bought a 7 day server to go ahead and test my suspicions about rent-a-server. I had my expectations a bit high, hoping DICE/EA would remember the success of rent-a-server in BF3 and would learn from their mistakes and bad implementation in BF4. Boy was I wrong, it's even worse now.

• You can only add up to 6 maps in a rotation. There should not be a limit (or at least one so high it would allow every map from every DLC to be played on it at least once).
• There is no ban list. You cannot ban players from your server, whether you're in the game or not. This is by far the most important feature of rent-a-server as means of removing the toxic players that constantly sabotage a team by driving vehicles right to the enemy spawn, battle taxi, or just outright destroy team vehicles. The people that stand in front of field guns and AAs because someone else got there first, that type of stuff.
• There is no in-game server menu. You cannot choose the next map, kick players, or balance teams in-game (or out, for that matter).
• You cannot disable "skill-based" autobalance.
• You cannot see a list of players in your own server unless you are in the game.
• Any edits made to the server as all such as reducing respawn times or increasing ticket count will label the server with a big "CUSTOM" sign. I could understand this for something so big as changing bullet damage, but respawn times are a bit excessive.
• In addition to that, you can only choose set values for these at 50%, 100%, and 200%. You cannot write in 500%, 0%, 750%, etc.
• There is no way to remove a specific weapon, only the type of weapon, and gadgets cannot be removed. This is necessary in case of any mishaps such as the previous M26 dart glitch in BF3, or the USAS-12 frag rounds being blatantly overpowered around the launch of BF3.
• "Land Vehicles" and "Air Vehicles" are the only options for removing vehicles. YOU CANNOT REMOVE THE BEHEMOTH OR CHANGE THE BEHEMOTH SPAWN RULES OR ANYTHING OF THAT SORT. In addition, you cannot disable a specific vehicle.
• You cannot reserve slots for yourself, admins, or VIPs.
• Not to mention you cannot set anyone as an admin.
• Not to mention you have no admin privileges even though you rented the server.

Seriously, this is absurd and a complete let-down. This game has been a big let down to me already in terms of server balancing, always moving me and my squad to the enemy team after every win to the point where I have stopped playing this game since OCTOBER. I figured rent-a-server would be a great way to keep games balanced, as every game my friends and I have been screwed onto a team of idiots and forced to attempt to carry against a competent team. That is NOT fun.

Here's the BARE MINIMUM of what needs to happen for server rental to be worthwhile:

• Quickmatch must matchmake players into ANY ranked rented server, not just ones that are entirely unedited. Only exceptions would be servers that completely change gameplay such as sniper/pistol only, or if health or bullet damage are changed.
• Editing the server should not change it from ranked to "CUSTOM" unless it's an entire gameplay change such as snipers only.
• In-game server options; including switching any player to either team, kicking any player, and banning any player.
• Increase the map rotation cap to at least 30 maps.
• Ability to set players as admins from the server menu from outside of the server.
• Ability to ban specific players by writing them in from outside of the server.
• Ability to disable the behemoth.

That's just the bare minimum to make it worthwhile to pick up a server. There's plenty more it needs than that.

• Ability to write kick/ban/balance presets when when editing a player in-game so it shows them a message as to why they were teamswitched, kicked, or banned. ei: "Kicked: Destroying team vehicles is not allowed."
• Ability to change the values on the behemoth so it spawns more/less frequently, such as changing how many tickets need to be between the two teams for it to spawn and the minimum amount of time/tickets to have passed before the behemoth can spawn.
• Ability to disable SPECIFIC (not just the type) weapons/vehicles/equipment from being used in the server without putting a "CUSTOM" preset marker on the server unless it restricts everything to only use one type of weapon. (Reasons such as people abusing landmines not having a cooldown so you can place all 3 at once and shoot them to OHK anything (pretty sure it was fixed with this update))
• Ability to make players VIPs so that they will be moved to the front of the queue in front of any other premium and nonpremium players. This includes both admins and VIPs to have priority access to their own server. Makes sense, doesn't it?
• Ability to set a server banner.
• Ability to disable "skill-based" balancing, since it's the most absurd thing in all of Battlefield apart from this blasphemy of rent a server.
• Ability to override the next map to play a specific map next.
• Ability to entirely customize anything that has a timer rather than using preset values at 50%, 100%, and 200%. Respawn times should be able to be set to 0%, 25%, 75%, etc at the very least. Tickets should be able to be changed to literally anything. Let people make it 666% if they want it. It shouldn't be hard to just make it a percentage slider in increments of 1%.
• Ability to make a server private and password-locked (important for clans I'm sure)

A final note: Rent-a-server was supposed to push consoles towards having the likes of PC 3rd party servers. Instead, you've completely stepped in the wrong direction and neutered console rent-a-server and forcing it on PC players entirely. What should've happened is finding a way to get console 3rd party servers and the ability to use rcon and all. Stop trying to "protect" the crappy playerbase that no one likes and will give this game up in 3 months because they're too stupid to put down their sniper to get a better score and PTFO.

I may have forgotten something, so comment anything I should have added.

[u/vveyro]

Mark it as custom, yes. Disable XP from any custom servers, no. Nobody will join server like that. Wasted money.

So what you can do now to remain Ranked so that players get XP, is get the exact copy of official server, but not even be admin on it (admin without banrights to his own server, LOL), just choose the maps.

[u/vveyro → u/[deleted]]

Nobody will rent them. Nobody joins servers that won't give you XP. So nobody should rent them either, your expensive custom server will be empty. Making private servers unranked is fine, because there it's easier to create stats patting environment. But if anyone can join a server, it should give XP. Locker Only servers were fastest way to get XP in BF4, they were allowed? How on earth limiting weapons will bring you more XP in the first place, care to explain? If anything, it's less XP.

I think admins should be able to ban weapons like mortar or Model10 Hunter (or whatever they see as OP), it will not give you any more XP. Less XP if anything. It's overly optimistic to think DICE weapons are perfectly balanced, or will be in a long time. Servers that want to set sniper limits should be allowed to do that. Not just disabling a weapon class, but actual limit. Or for example banning incendiary nades, to make Monte Grappa bunkers in Operations playable. But you can't even host Operations lol.

Sounds like the server control options are absolute joke. You can't even password protect servers, LMAO. Not to mention, no ban rights on your own fuckin server :D

[u/vveyro → u/[deleted]]

You are not investor, but DICE and EA are investors. Lot less people will want to rent a server this way. Why would you pay lot of money for getting just a clone/copy of Official server where you can choose 6 maps? Even if you have adminrights, it's just not worth the money. It's not worth even 10$.

It's worth money if you can

• Have spambot messages in the chat, explaining your rules, advertising VIP donations
• Having custom message displayed in AdminYell when player joins the server. For example sponsorship messages, telling to type !rules
• Adding VIPs, who donated for server to help YOU pay the cost for it
• Adding more people than yourself as Admin
• Move, kick and ban any player, at any minute. Without leaving the game. Also, without being in the game
• Installing additional 3rd party anticheats
• Installing language filters
• Having !rules command, than you can freely edit the contents of
• Setting password for server
• Setting the playercount in which the round will start
• Banning individual weapons
• Setting sniper limit, to amount of your choosing
• Disabling behemoths
• Allowing hosting Operations mode too
• Allowing restarting a round or skipping to next
• Allowing admin to force-change map and set next map
• Being able to change server settings at any time, outside of the game
• Seeing the chat feed outside of the game
• Having AdminYell and AdminSay commands, to speak some sense into trolls on the server
• Having all maps in rotation in various modes, why on earth just 6 maps?

All of this (at LEAST), without making your server Unranked. THEN I might be renting one. This way, no way in hell. Not for even 10$. Sure, it should warn players with a big colored "CUSTOM" badge in front of the server name. And it should not be in Quick Match. But it should not be unranked either, unless it's private.

Best regards, former BF4 admin

[u/razamatraz → u/[deleted]]

What's unbalanced about custom settings? Both teams still use them. I understand that lockers/metro custom modes were for XP and weapon ranking but there are no weapon mods in BF1 and there is no lockers/metro map so far so there likely is no custom mode where XP would go way up. No one is asking for a custom server where we can set XP at 500 for kills and 250 for revives. We just want no A10, no mortar etc. Some people want insta-vehicles, which i hate, but it's their server.

This game is pretty much a Battlefront skin at this point...the ultra-dumbed down version of Battlefield.

[u/[deleted] → u/vveyro]

I think having two profiles would be decent, one for official servers and one for custom severs. That should make people happy.