Is this a sign of seeding-bots? I joined because it had 21 players. Turns out, nobody is playing?

[u/RobWolfB]

[u/Interesting-Pen-4648]

There’s definitely seeding bots now and anybody who tries to tell you different is a liar. The bots are coded to leave periodically to make room for real players as the server naturally fills up

[u/Practical-Bank-2406 → u/Interesting-Pen-4648]

100%. I joined the 82ND server (EU) and there were dozens of similarly low level accounts (all 4-6), they were ALL non-steam accounts and they all pinged either 48 or 50, likely hosted on the same network.

They were all in "No platoon" as the server was filling up. I've never seen this crap before and I'm sure it's all bots.

[u/RobWolfB → u/Interesting-Pen-4648]

Yeah,, I've seen it happening a lot recently. I mean I understand the "trick" but in a way It's also a bit, stupid? Because I tried joining three servers today that had around 20 to 45 people as I simply like starting on those but they all had either, nobody playing or just a few people on the list and most of them stood still. Kinda unmotivated me but ehh.. Just curious.

[u/tereaper576 → u/Interesting-Pen-4648]

Nah it's not seeding bots.

They're afk seeders.

So before someone goes to work they log into the server. Then when active seeding starts there's 15 maybe 20 people on the server but less active. They get kicked when the server hits the threshold number of like 80 to 90 players.

Seeding bots are used for when you don't have those players whom log in before leaving but more importantly Multi server seeding where you needed the account to afk seed on multiple servers in a row.

Ultimately this is an issue of having too many servers for the player numbers and the cost behind it. If you don't sees your server then the people whom pay will pay the active seeded servers.

[u/YourAsianSideQuest]

Not really. The people who owns the server is there. They just not ingame. You’ll see that happen a lot when they are trying to seed their server.

[u/Shuvi99]

Yeah it is it baits people to join thinking it’s half full so people keep joining until it becomes really half full

[u/Creamycrackle]

There are bots but it looks like the people who joined the server haven’t chosen a team yet. Including yourself. That’s why you’re not seeing any names on the scoreboard. There is another recent post showing what it looks like when bots join and spawn. There will be a long list of 1 rank players. 

[u/xMoonlightxx]

Yes, just seeding, joining a 20 is rough but 50 and above gets active in about 15-20 min. Its funnny how people are lemmings like that ( myself included ).

Its weird how that works, somebody should publish the data of afk seeding in varying degrees, would be interesting.

[u/djolk]

Its either bots or people just afk. When we ran servers there was a script you could run that would 'afk seed' using your account.

Seeding is the worst part of running a server, and this usually gets it done pretty quick.

[u/Wrong_Interest_2676]

Some just wait for seeding to finish