What's up with the Toplist system?

[DRW]

Hi everyone,

I'm really trying to figure out what's happening with the toplist system, I've used this many times before around 2017-2019 and this was a great feature that helped servers increase their visibility while being quite affordable. Usually you added your server to the list and maybe 70-100 servers were in front of you, but you know, people ended up not paying or overlooking this so the queue was much faster, maybe 15 days.

I believe it's been 160-180 days (so >160 servers) since I added my server to this system, still over 100 servers are in front of us, then I seem to see the same servers time and time again in the front page. I heard something about hosters abusing this system and adding the host to the toplist then selling a package with a higher price for the advantage.

6 months and god knows how much time is left, maybe an additional 6 months... it's too much time to look forward to, even more not knowing how much time there is left, at that point it's not really worth the hassle.

I don't know, I understand it's being successful, this is a lot of demand it seems, though I see you don't want this to happen as you tried to prevent this kind of abuse by hiding the server queue. This is also affecting the ones that don't abuse it, because personally I don't have hope I'll see a day when my server enters the toplist, or I'll just forget about it and miss the e-mail, it's always >100 servers, you might as well hide it completely at this point.

I'm a software engineer, I worked with PayPal and similar paygates, I know their APIs provide the tools necessary to at least authorize the payment then do it when the time comes, this could definitely help filter out filler servers and removing the need to be constantly attentive for the toplist e-mail (because after 6 months I'm pretty much checking the list every week or two), then maybe: increasing the price, expanding to 25-30 servers, blacklisting certain abusers (You're probably doing it but just in case), I'm sure you've talked about this and got more ideas, but the problem persists.

Personally I'm not that frustrated, the toplist alone is not nearly enough to make a server succeed, but luckily I had an old playerbase to start with, I can't imagine being a completely new 0-player server.

Thanks for reading this unnecessarily long essay >:),

DRW

[The_GTA]

Hello DRW,

I think that talking about values and ideals like you do is necessary in today's times. 

[Carlos Dorelli]

Your essay is :Oing really necessary. I've seen a lot of stupid people abusing of it.

There's a hosting company here in Brazil called FlipHost that automatically add tons of servers in the queue to sell faster the toplist when they reach the time to pay and that's it. They also increase the price to sell faster the hosting with the toplist activated.

This full system need's a rework and fast because now it's impossible to normal people (I mean people that are starting now a server) to reach this :Oing queue. It's totally unfair.

These hosting companys should have an authorization and if there's the same IP with a different ports on the queue this must be analyzed by the staff.

[DRW]

2 hours ago, Eldremor said:

Your essay is :Oing really necessary. I've seen a lot of stupid people abusing of it.

There's a hosting company here in Brazil called FlipHost that automatically add tons of servers in the queue to sell faster the toplist when they reach the time to pay and that's it. They also increase the price to sell faster the hosting with the toplist activated.

This full system need's a rework and fast because now it's impossible to normal people (I mean people that are starting now a server) to reach this :Oing queue. It's totally unfair.

These hosting companys should have an authorization and if there's the same IP with a different ports on the queue this must be analyzed by the staff.

That's crazy, maybe making users firstly authorize the payment then automatically charge them when the day comes would surely help.

First, this would completely remove the 24h (I don't know if it was changed) reservation time that is given to servers that miss their chance. You authorize, then you can either cancel (which would instantly give your spot to the next server) or just pay.

Second, this would add some risk to the transaction for people who mass subscribe their IP to the list for monetary gain because for sure they won't fill every single IP/port they register. Also, this would make the transaction easier for people who can't wait for the server to be listed in the top 20.

I personally think it's not that hard to make that happen, but I would happily help if needed.

Also I'm sure there's plenty of servers with the same e-mail related to a shady hoster or whatever, but I understand that manually checking this might be a lot of time, and I don't even know the scale of this issue.

[Storm-Hanma]

increasing price for top list system  will be help full!

[Carlos Dorelli]

44 minutes ago, Khadeer143 said:

increasing price for top list system  will be help full!

I think that's not the way. The MTA Staff team should add more criteria and increase moderation to avoid too many repeat IP's. Check that the server is not fake and is on a hosting list as I said, etc.

Raising the price would only make it difficult for people to follow the line correctly. The problem is the abuse of it. There should be an IP blacklist and others (if it doesn't already exist).

[Storm-Hanma]

4 hours ago, Eldremor said:

I think that's not the way. The MTA Staff team should add more criteria and increase moderation to avoid too many repeat IP's. Check that the server is not fake and is on a hosting list as I said, etc.

Raising the price would only make it difficult for people to follow the line correctly. The problem is the abuse of it. There should be an IP blacklist and others (if it doesn't already exist).

Agree