Hosting Xonotic servers is pointless. Please fix the server list!
I have put a lot of effort into running my own server. Getting people to play there, setting everything up, finding cool maps and making custom mods take a lot of time. Multiple times I managed to get my server on top 5 most popular servers on xonstats. That is because I often joined by myself and invited friends to join me and eventually other people see activity and start joining too. But that's not always what happens. It only works if you do that before the evening, when the recommended servers aren't populated yet. If there is a lot of people on recommended servers, your server has no chance in competing with them. The reason is obvious. People mostly join servers that are highest on the list and have the most players and ignore everything else. The only exception are old and very popular servers like Jeff's and Regular's instagib.
So my server has always been at a disadvantage, because it's not in the recommended section. You have created an unfair system that makes a few servers very popular and when someone creates a new one and tries to make something different, their server will be empty, because it's never gonna be on top of the list. That happened to me and I've seen it happen to others. I want FSMP Teamplay to be added to the recommended section to have a fair chance in competing with other servers. Otherwise what's the point of doing anything for this community?
I see two ways to solve this problem permanently:
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Remove the recommended section from clients in next release. The simplest solution. Makes it fair for everyone, removes the responsibility of maintaining such list from the developers.
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Create an application process for adding new recommended servers. Write down the rules. Every server that meets the requirements gets included.