Custom servers add great additional elements of gameplay that many new
players are in some ways being driven away from because so many of them
stick to the quickplay list. I'm pretty sure we can all admit that the
server browser can be intimidating, thousands of servers, with only a
smidgen of information about the place.
I agree, it's the responsibility of the operators to put forth the
effort to populate the server, if it means getting on and mass-inviting
everyone on your friends list on Steam then that's what you've got to do.
I know of some communities that used faked player counts to get off the
ground before the Policy of Truth issue blew up like this; but they did
it for a the first few weeks and didn't need it after that point because
they provided a great place to play and the server populated itself on
the name alone. I will gladly turn a blind eye to the use of faked
player counts in that situation, because out of thousands of servers,
even mass-inviting may not improve your odds much.
Using it to keep the server populated for months, or in some cases, the
entire lifespan of the server so far, that's an issue. Use those
ever-important critical thinking skills. What's keeping players from
coming back without them?
1.) Do people get scared off by poor server performance or atmosphere?
2.) Are people deliberately making it a poor environment?
3.) Hackers and glitch abusers running amok?
It's the responsibility of the operator, and anyone they may appoint as
administrators of the server to get people to come back. If you have to
rely on faked player counts exclusively, frankly, your server probably
sucks.
tl;dr if your server sucks, people won't come back; make it suck less
and they might.
On 5/4/2012 7:13 PM, Team BOOM! wrote:
Since we're all taking about Quickplay and the "Policy of Truth", I
wanted to hear your guys' thoughts about getting your own server
populated and how it's our responsibility to fill our own servers.
While I don't disagree with that statement, this is now more difficult
for custom server operators than ever before. Bear in mind all my
servers meet Valve's Quickplay requirements, but because of Quickplay,
I haven't considered a custom server for a while, even though I really
wanted to run a couple. Here's why.
If you run a relatively stock server that meets Valve's requirements
for Quickplay, you get the Quickplay traffic, simple enough. But if
you alter "certain" things that customize your server without
cheating, like adding some slots or lowering the re-spawn times for
people who like that stuff, then not only will you be blocked from
getting Quickplay traffic, but your server will actually be competing
against Quickplay for it's share of users who may like your custom
server but will never see it in the Quickplay list.
Many newer players will never see your custom servers, or even know
about them unless they experiment with the server browser, so I can
see how Quickplay can hurt communities who have always run custom
servers that don't meet Valve's requirements.
Correct me if I'm wrong, and I very well may be, but I believe most of
the operators cheating with bots and fakes are doing it to draw
Quickplay traffic to a custom server that would otherwise miss it. So,
like many people on this list have said here before, if Quickplay just
had a custom tab with options, I bet all the people who feel they need
to cheat the system to get the Quickplay traffic for their custom
servers would stop immediately because they would get a share of the
traffic naturally.
Now eliminate or reduce the 636 Valve-run TF2 servers competing for
our players that are currently showing up on my server list and that
would help even more.
Just my 2-cents. Your thoughts?
- Mike
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