To level the playing field for server rankings, I'll share two methods at the end of this thread.

As of today, March 21, 2026, the situation is as follows:
#1 - ! DM17 - Banned on GameTracker
#5 - ! Retro FFA - Banned on GameTracker
#7 - ! 2x RAIL FFA - Banned on GameTracker
#9 - ! MegaRail TDM - Banned on GameTracker
#11 - ! ALT-Retro FFA - Banned on GameTracker

I like server ! RAIL 1v1 and play there occasionally. An old player showed me this server ! ALT-Retro FFA and said he liked it.
I didn't go to every server, but once I went to ! DM17 and ! ALT-Retro FFA and instead of real players I saw "players" standing motionless and shooting at one point. It reminded me of cloaking, which was popular until about 2005.

Yes, those who created servers and paid attention to the nuances in rankings understood the promotion mechanisms. You can resort to small marketing and technical tricks, or you can go into black hat methods with inflated online numbers and fake players.
And this is not the biggest problem when once or a couple of times per hour for 10 minutes you can see supposed players in Server Spider. Well, a bit of traffic will come from this Server Spider and from GameTracker — that’s not the worst thing.

But when I see 4–7 players in spectators, and this happens more often than once or twice per hour, and especially motionless players shooting at one point — that’s already a clear overkill.

I also don't understand why they're making identical servers, all carbon copies? It's just a bunch of copies of server ! ! ! ! DM17*ELITE'Z*
Yes, I also like this FFA concept on DM17, multi-jumps and 6-8 bots, but when I did something similar, I had about 15 modified DM17 maps, and the bots had different settings and moved differently (for which I have heard criticism several times from DM17ELITE'Z fans, saying that the bots are crap). But that's the point. Don't copy everything exactly; come up with something better or worse, but don't just make a copy.
I've recently taken a liking to server ! Freon ! Space Station BF6. It has one major problem—the learning curve. The problem is, players there spend years learning how to move along walls using lightning. Making the DM17's edge contours visible will make learning easier. Learning to move along walls takes 20 minutes.I first made this map for myself, then distributed my Quake build to everyone who plays there. I recently created a similar server, ! BFG-Box, but it came with a map like this, where you can see the edges. Is this a copy? It's a philosophical question, but I believe this is how development happens. I don't expect this server to become popular, because when ! Freon ! Space Station BF6 first appeared, there was a completely different player flow. There are almost no new players, and the old ones have already gotten used to playing there. But sometimes I see new players on my server and see that they're learning how to zipper-walk along walls very quickly. It makes me happy. It's just a thrill knowing I've made learning easier for someone else. I hope you get my point. It's not that I'm such a great guy. I'm saying that development lies in unique features, in your own unique traits. You don't have to copy everything.

I am contacting the creator of servers 135.125.234.220:****. Hey dude, are you serious?

1. GameTracker's punishment system has its own methods. I ask Excessive Plus management to develop their own methods for punishing "black marketing."
2. As I promised, to level the playing field for server ratings, I will share two methods:

1) Boost server name in Excessive Plus mod (I came up with this method on purpose):

seta sv_hostname ^0! ^1 ^2 ^3 ^4 ^5 ^6 ^7 ^0 ^1 ^2 ^3 ^4 ^5 ^6 ^o^b^6BFG-Box^s

2) GameTracker shows a live player, although in fact it is a bot (I discovered this by accident):

addbot Anarki 1 red 0 ^f^x00FFB2^0^o#80^F^x00F7C4#81^b^x00EFD6#82^b^x00E7E8#1D^F^x00DFFF#1E^f^x00D7FF#1F^f^x00CFFF#80^F^x00C7FF#81^b^x00BFFF#82^b^x00B7FF#1D^F^x00AFFF#1E^f^x0090FF#1F^f^x1A7FFF#80^F^x345EFF#81^b^x4D3DFF#82

or

zzzzzz-examplename.pk3 > scripts > bots.txt

{
name		Keel
funname 	^f^x00FFB2^0^o#80^F^x00F7C4#81^b^x00EFD6#82^b^x00E7E8#1D^F^x00DFFF#1E^f^x00D7FF#1F^f^x00CFFF#80^F^x00C7FF#81^b^x00BFFF#82^b^x00B7FF#1D^F^x00AFFF#1E^f^x0090FF#1F^f^x1A7FFF#80^F^x345EFF#81^b^x4D3DFF#82
model		keel/default
aifile		bots/keel_c.c
color1 		j
color2 		j
}