Team Fortress 2, all sorts of connection issues

Streeteh · 18 Nov 2008 at 10:23

It's been a while since i've played TF2, i fired it up yesterday and everything was fine but now i'm having an utter nightmare.

Firstly, servers are showing as populated, but when i join they're completely empty which is making finding a game incredibly frustrating and secondly, 1/2 the time when i try to connect it kills my net connection for a while.

All other online games i've tried playing are absolutely fine, no lag issues, no connection issues, nothing. This includes the left 4 dead demo that worked perfectly for days.

Any ideas chaps?

craptakular · 18 Nov 2008 at 14:21

Could try forwarding the valve ports to ** static ip? Might help I dunno, it certainly fixed my L4D demo issues.

craptakular · 18 Nov 2008 at 14:24

I think the ports are 27000-27050, I forwarded upto 27090 I think, I'll confirm when I return from work.

Streeteh · 18 Nov 2008 at 16:20

Excellent, cheers mate. I'll give those a go and let you know how it works out. I'm on that god awful be*box which has less than groundbreaking standards of upnp so it could well be that.

lolwtfbbq · 18 Nov 2008 at 19:08

Oh yeah, some admins have bots on their servers to make it look populated - look at the player list first.

Streeteh · 18 Nov 2008 at 19:29

Vinni3 said:
Oh yeah, some admins have bots on their servers to make it look populated - look at the player list first.

It's not that there were bots, it's that it reported it as say, 13/24 players, i'd join and the server would be completely empty.

Forwarded those ports Oxy and it seems to have worked, cheers.

crunchyfr · 18 Nov 2008 at 20:34

i too have been frustrated with the phantom full servers seems to have started a few months ago ... seeing as i game a lot after midnight it can take ages to find a good server

a tip funfortress servers are usualy busy almost 24/7 plus theres stats and rankings
http://funfortress.hlstatsx.com/hlstats.php?game=tf

TheRedZealot · 18 Nov 2008 at 21:09

Oxy said:
*blah blah* signature *blah blah*

oxy

Duke · 18 Nov 2008 at 21:22

I know a few servers which look like they have players on, but are empty on joining them. Some used to have bots that sat on there and dropped when a real player joined, but this is just weird.

I'm not sure if that is the same issue you're having or not. It might be worth removing TF2 completely (inc the folder) and downloading it again?

craptakular · 18 Nov 2008 at 21:26

Streeteh said:
It's not that there were bots, it's that it reported it as say, 13/24 players, i'd join and the server would be completely empty.

Forwarded those ports Oxy and it seems to have worked, cheers.

cool, so its all working now?

craptakular · 18 Nov 2008 at 21:27

TheRedZealot said:
oxy

did you click it?

Streeteh · 18 Nov 2008 at 22:00

Oxy said:
cool, so its all working now?

The connection issues seem to be solved (i hope). However i have noticed 'phantom' players again, as in, a server that appears to be populated but when i join it's empty. I can only assume this is the aforementioned bots that leave the game as soon as i join, it makes finding a game rather frustrating at quieter times of the day.

Lydzor · 18 Nov 2008 at 22:03

It's a mod that server admins put on the server, just boycott them.

bledd · 19 Nov 2008 at 16:34

have also found the 'phantom players' servers

the thing is, they're good servers most of the time, but annoying to join them when it's 2am and they're empty :/

TheRedZealot · 19 Nov 2008 at 19:10

Oxy said:
did you click it?

we are equal now :cool:

SB118 · 19 Nov 2008 at 19:41

TheRedZealot said:
we are equal now

You son of a ..........

TheRedZealot · 19 Nov 2008 at 21:07

His sig warned you...