This is kind of a double-edged sword. On one hand, while I certainly hope this deals all the "quickplay ad farms" a death blow (although it wouldn't surprise me to see the more nefarious folks create some hack(s) to once again circumvent these measures), it's a shame that so many long-standing features of the game that legitimate server operators use to convey valuable information (and assist in community building) are being stripped out bit by bit because of the folks whose only concern is/was easy ad impressions. I still firmly believe the right way to approach the problem is by disabling javascript/flash/html5 in the in-game browser itself, and allowing the good old basic html MOTD to continue to function as it has for over 5 years. I'm not sure if Valve even cares anymore that this approach - while it certainly hurts the pinion farms - also makes it that much harder for legitimate server operators to build a community around the game. Our 5+ year old community is, and always has been, fueled by member support (donations) that pay the server bills, and this just makes it that much harder to get new TF2 players to take a good look at the value we've built into the community. TF2 team - please take the time and take a step back and think about what is in the best long-term interest of TF2. This game NEEDS communities built around it - they promote and build the game's audience, drive commerce within the game, and create and police the best servers so that they don't degenerate into free-for-all zones of racsim, bigotry, and a haven for hackers & cheats. Just about every major change you've made to the game recently, both in introducing quickplay in its current form, AND in stripping out MOTD functionality to prevent the kind of ad farms that quickplay made possible in the first place, make it actually seem like you are trying to not only marginalize the importance of those communities, but to remove all diversity from the game as a whole. Please think about it, Valve.
From: mc...@doctormckay.com Date: Thu, 7 Nov 2013 09:59:19 -0500 To: hlds@list.valvesoftware.com Subject: Re: [hlds] Coming soon: changes to TF HTML MOTD support Nobody forces you to go on servers that have ads. I fail to understand how the fact that some servers might use advertisements affects you personally when you can easily ignore them. Dr. McKaywww.doctormckay.com On Thu, Nov 7, 2013 at 9:51 AM, Saint K. <sai...@specialattack.net> wrote: Anything they do to battle them ad’s gets my vote. For all I care they disable the HTML functionality all together. Back to oldskool community building where one can only survive on donations. Donations means your servers are appreciated. Saint K. From: hlds-boun...@list.valvesoftware.com [mailto:hlds-boun...@list.valvesoftware.com] On Behalf Of 1nsane Sent: Thursday, November 07, 2013 3:38 PM To: Paul Lewis; Half-Life dedicated Win32 server mailing list Subject: Re: [hlds] Coming soon: changes to TF HTML MOTD support There wasn't much point to running MvM servers before. Even less so now it seems. Not like you can make a community around stock MvM. On Thu, Nov 7, 2013 at 6:12 AM, Paul <ubyu....@gmail.com> wrote: I imagine many communities will close up on using TF2 Quickplay, whether they will successfully move to a different game or game mode is another question though. I'm switching from having 23 Mann vs Machine servers to trying Slender Fortress. If servers switch to being non-reliant on Quickplay then in my view that's partly good, as Quickplay from day one was a bad idea in my opinion. It doesn't promote or offer options to join servers which are run in an unofficial way (e.g. custom gamemodes or custom maps). In the days of Team Fortress Classic players had to use the server browser, and those days were better in my view. Custom run servers saw more players back then than they typically do in TF2 these days. It's impossible to use the MOTD for even simple images and links, so is practically impossible for a community to make links to things such as donation pages to help them cover costs of their servers. I'm expecting to see the number of Quickplay servers drop by a reasonable amount, and possibly more non-Quickplay servers to open (custom gamemodes and/or custom maps). On 7 November 2013 11:00, Element <elem...@idle.tf> wrote: I run a group of servers which are funded from MOTD impressions resulting in my small community of players being able to play on servers setup the way they like, for FREE. My servers are in the quickplay pool to help fill the empty spaces for my community members, generating mostly full servers consisting of around a 50-50 mix of members and quickplay traffic. With my community impressions alone, server costs weren't quite being met each month. But when i added them to the quickplay pool, i was then able to use the advertising revenue to fully pay for my servers. But now this is not the case, thanks to valves latest and greatest idea.... I will NOT pay for these servers out of my own pocket, nor will i beg for money from my "free" community.... So thanks valve, you successfully killed my community, i guess my members will move to some other community... the Skial scum maybe? _______________________________________________ To unsubscribe, edit your list preferences, or view the list archives, please visit: https://list.valvesoftware.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/hlds _______________________________________________ To unsubscribe, edit your list preferences, or view the list archives, please visit: https://list.valvesoftware.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/hlds _______________________________________________ To unsubscribe, edit your list preferences, or view the list archives, please visit: https://list.valvesoftware.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/hlds _______________________________________________ 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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