24 Hour Sessions

[Gabber]

I think that 24 hour+ sessions from now on should be organized in advanced, and furthermore reserved for special occasions.
We had our first 24 hour session in Atlanta (RIP), on January 8th of 2025

1st 24 hour sesh.png (892.45 KiB) Viewed 34 times

we had another one on May 31st and finally a 48 hour session dated November 28-29.

48 hour sesh.png (157.55 KiB) Viewed 34 times

While these sessions are a lot of fun, they also push us to our limit, and a community needs to know it's limitations.
Every single one of these sessions happened on NA, for reasons that should be obvious to everyone (in case you're retarded - NA is the only continent with enough players to consider pulling this off), naturally the other regions feel somewhat marginalized and don't really have a serious incentive to join, and furthermore these sessions draw attention and players away from the other regions, harming their sessions.

For these reasons i strongly believe that we should only consider any further attempts at these marathon sessions ONLY if they are planned out beforehand. We pick a date, see how many people are receptive to going for a marathon session on that date, hopefully get support from all the regions and then and only when we have it planned with a lot of receptive players do we go for it. This would maximize the chances a marathon has to be successful, remove confusion and friction from the other regions and let everyone actually prepare in advance.

Finally, i think a much more healthy goal is - instead of going for a lot of 24 hour sessions on one specific server, we really should just try to keep Castaway running 24/7 by just filling up the server that makes most sense at that time, as in - NA has it's 12+ hour session, then everyone switches and tries to keep SG full until EU starts filling up, then we play on EU before NA is back again. That's a 24 hour session in itself, except if all the regions are healthy - it would be a lot more logical and a lot less stressful for everyone involved!

[random]

Finally, i think a much more healthy goal is - instead of going for a lot of 24 hour sessions on one specific server, we really should just try to keep Castaway running 24/7 by just filling up the server that makes most sense at that time, as in - NA has it's 12+ hour session, then everyone switches and tries to keep SG full until EU starts filling up, then we play on EU before NA is back again. That's a 24 hour session in itself, except if all the regions are healthy - it would be a lot more logical and a lot less stressful for everyone involved!

This I think is the ideal. Preferably, when one server is winding down, people start to seed the next server as they go to bed. From what I've seen, the dead period seem to be between when one session dies and while another session hasn't started seeding yet, this is mostly evident in the gap between the end of EU sessions and the start of NA sessions though I think it happens for SG too.

If instead of letting your server die out when you get to 8 people, if everyone swaps to the next region (say late at night on NA, everyone goes SG) that helps get SG going faster. Same for SG->EU and EU->NA. In a perfect world there should never be a time where you go to the website and all servers are 0/24, at least one server should have a handful of people even if it's a different region at different times of day. I think the EU->NA is the toughest gap to close, it means either much longer EU sessions or much earlier NA ones but it can be done if we have people willing to seed it. Though from the bright side, if we get other regions helping seed the regions that come after them, this might mean earlier sessions for everyone.

If you want some motivation for this, consider that our loyalties are first and foremost to Castaway itself, not a particular server. Sacrificing an extra 30-40 minutes on the tail end of one session to go help another is all for the greater glory, and it is an honorable sacrifice.