One problem I see is for semi-large groups like ours: http://steamcommunity.com/groups/mypayload
1) If one member has all the admins blocked, none of the admins will be able to join the server. 2) If the member gets removed from the group there's nothing to stop them from creating a F2P account, re-joining the group (since it's public) and causing the same problem all over again. 3) If a user is blocked from a server, they'll just create and use a F2P account, avoiding the block entirely. Result: An annoying feature that's doing nothing other than allowing users to grief others and endless problems for admins. Users should never be permitted to block other users from servers they do not own or control, I think it's been well established in the past that something like that will be abused. We have around 12 admins, only one has access to the server console, if he's not around it could be a few days before the member preventing the admins from joining is removed but they could just rejoin the group using a F2P account and cause the same issue. If anything this feature should allow admins to give extra's to group members e.g. allowing sprays or in-game voting options if they are disabled, not blocking people from joining because of some other idiot. Just my 2c. From: hlds-boun...@list.valvesoftware.com [mailto:hlds-boun...@list.valvesoftware.com] On Behalf Of Chad Hedstrom Sent: Friday, March 16, 2012 2:45 PM To: Half-Life dedicated Win32 server mailing list; r...@valvesoftware.com Subject: Re: [hlds] New feature in TF2 Beta dedicated server update I would be extremely careful about how this is ultimately implemented in the production build. I am glad this is being introduced first in the Beta version. The Voogru servers are infamous for having blocked all of Something Awful users via their Lost Continents steam group, who, at least in the pre-hats era were a very large portion of the TF2 community. By banning anyone in the Lost Continents group, the Voogru servers were able to ban 2500-3500 players instantly and forever, despite a particular individual's actual interest or activity in the group. The Voogru servers have also introduced a number of innovative mods (e.g. Dodgeball) that can only be found on their servers, making it difficult if not impossible to play these game modes once you've been blacklisted. This has caused quite a bit of grief over the last four years since, you need to be in the Lost Continents group to gain access to features on their servers, but causes you to be blacklisted by another set of servers entirely. Even today I can't log in to Voogru servers after three years because of this group ban. To put it another way, what if three or four major server groups decided to ban anyone in a Reddit-related group? There aren't a whole lot, but there are enough "general interest" or "large community" groups out there that you could end up seeing admins adding Reddit/4chan/Something Awful/Digg etc general interest Steam Groups to the list, blocking huge chunks of your "High Value" playerbase simply out of spite. What if someone decided to ban everyone in the Holiday Sale Community Group (1.34 million users)? The Steam Summer Camp Group (460,000 users)? .... the Official Team Fortress 2 group (315,000 users?). Maybe consider introducing a "bug" that causes this feature to work only with groups containing less than 100 or 250 users? This is a great feature that has long been requested, but perhaps there should be some type of limit placed on this feature? I am in charge of a seperate 2,700 user steam group and would hate to see one or two users who I don't even know get the entire group blacklisted from the Voogru servers or similar. Most of the users in my group, I've never personally spoken to, and have no way of enforcing their behavior. Groups with less than 100 people in them, however, probably at least once a year speak to each other. Anyways, food for thought. It's always interesting to debate the big picture results of these kinds of changes. Thanks for introducing new community management features, I think this is a feature we've all thought about at least once in the past, and it's exciting to see more community management features being implemented. Hopefully this line of thought will continue with your CS:GO series. Chad On Thu, Mar 15, 2012 at 7:18 PM, Rich Kaethler <r...@valvesoftware.com> wrote: We have added support for Steam community blocking in the dedicated server. This functionality is in testing and is controlled by convar ( off by default ). If the convar is enabled, every new player at connect time ( once authenticated ) will be tested against the block list of every player already authenticated on the server. If any of the players on the server have blocked this player, the dedicated server is notified, and that new player may be kicked from the server depending on the convar settings. It is assumed that the most popular setting will take advantage of steam groups. To do this, use the new “sv_steamgroup” convar to set the group that your server belongs to, and set “sv_steamblockingcheck” to 2. With this setting only members of the group that “owns” the server may deny other players access to the server. If a group has been selected and “sv_steamblockingcheck” is set to 1, the console text will distinguish a new player that is blocked by a clan member vs a non-clan member. Here are the details of the options: sv_steamblockingcheck 1 = print results to console only 2 = kick the new player from the server if anyone already on the server who is a member of the associated clan has blocked the new player 3 = kick the new player from the server if anyone already on the server has blocked the new player 4 = kick the new player from the server if anyone already on the server has blocked the new player or the new player has blocked any existing player on the server sv_steamgroup Set this convar to the group ID of the group that this server belongs to. You can find your group’s ID on the admin profile page in the steam community. Please send feedback about blocking in dedicated servers directly to me. _______________________________________________ To unsubscribe, edit your list preferences, or view the list archives, please visit: https://list.valvesoftware.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/hlds
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