Valve only reacts to actions, not facts and im not disagreeing with OP.
There are still large communities that have their servers populated almost 24/7
and that's because of the large community base they built over the years - it's
not easy work.
There are only TWO options here:
Play the game by the rules made be Valve, adapt and invent.
OR
Community operators like the ones petitioning in this mailing list need to
create a dynamic or change as a whole that will force Valve to revert or mutate
the quickplay change.
This is what created the problem in the first place - custom servers that did
not enhance player experience were on quickplay and kids bitching on the forums
made them create this change.
So if we want Valve to be forced to change the rule again - we as community
servers need to create a drastic change that forces Valve to do something.
Petition on the list hasn't got a single response from Valve in a long time.
THE PROPOSITION:
The only thing that I can think of is abuse the quickplay system as much as you
can, put your custom mods servers on there with all the fucked up crazy custom
plugins and game modes on a quickplay map, and when the quickplay list starts
to become a cesspool (in words of players bitching on the forums), Valve will
be forced to make a change and that change might help us as community ops.
-----Original Message-----
From: "hlds-requ...@list.valvesoftware.com"
<hlds-requ...@list.valvesoftware.com>
Sent: 2/6/2015 10:16 AM
To: "hlds@list.valvesoftware.com" <hlds@list.valvesoftware.com>
Subject: hlds Digest, Vol 46, Issue 9
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Today's Topics:
1. Re: Rethinking the community quickplay ban (Anthony James Duncan)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Message: 1
Date: Fri, 6 Feb 2015 17:14:28 -0000
From: "Anthony James Duncan" <anth...@kinevonetwork.com>
To: "'Half-Life dedicated Win32 server mailing list'"
<hlds@list.valvesoftware.com>
Subject: Re: [hlds] Rethinking the community quickplay ban
Message-ID: <000901d04230$5dbb8c20$1932a460$@kinevonetwork.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
Hopefully Valve would then use that opportunity to restore a little more power
the Valve Community ?Moderators? and a system that?s similar to upward/downward
fast. So if you receive enough negative reports you?d lose 20-30% of the
quickplay traffic instead of someone with positive feedback getting 5-10%
priority.
From: hlds-boun...@list.valvesoftware.com
[mailto:hlds-boun...@list.valvesoftware.com] On Behalf Of 2xcombatvet
Sent: 06 February 2015 16:49
To: Half-Life dedicated Win32 server mailing list
Subject: Re: [hlds] Rethinking the community quickplay ban
Olsen, I agree with the blacklisting servers. But there are soo many scammers
and hackers out there that if you are running a really good server. Some A
holes could just come along and blacklist your server and negatively effect ur
server that u worked so hard on... And trust me there are a lot!!!! Of people
who go around and just ruin servers just for fun.
Sent from my T-Mobile 4G LTE Device
-------- Original message --------
From: "E. Olsen" <ceo.eol...@gmail.com>
Date:02/06/2015 11:39 (GMT-05:00)
To: Half-Life dedicated Win32 server mailing list <hlds@list.valvesoftware.com>
Cc:
Subject: Re: [hlds] Rethinking the community quickplay ban
That's my point, though. Even if there are servers who break the rules (there
always will be), putting the power back into the hands of the players by making
their personal blacklist work with both the server browser AND quickplay solves
that problem all together. If the server IS breaking the rules, and that
rule-breaking also detracts from the game environment, then more and more
players will blacklist those servers, they will lose traffic, etc. etc.
Let's keep in mind, some of those rules are now even being (technically) broken
by Valve themselves. I asked on this very list a few months ago if the
quickplay policy against class limits was still in effect, since Valve added
the ability to do so via vote to their own servers, but got no reply. Does that
mean every time a class limit vote passes on a Valve server, that they are
technically in violation of their own policy?
That's just an off-the-cuff example showing how certain things (like class
limits) are ridiculous to have rules "against" for receiving player traffic.
I've yet to see or hear of a single server who imposed class limits as a
"punitive" measure - most server operators do so in order to tailor the
experience to what their players want to see. In that, they are doing
absolutely the right thing, and the players should be able to decide for
themselves (via their own blacklist) if they like those "tweaks" a server
operator makes, or if they want to never set foot on that server again.
...and frankly, that goes for most of the "rules" in place - customization was
the lifeblood that kept people playing TF2 for years and years. Instant
respawn, 32 players, custom maps, custom game modes....none of that is/was
"bad" for the game. It was simply "different" - which means some people like
it, and some don't....the only difference being that for the last couple of
years, Valve has been pushing "their" version of what they think the game
should be (which is made all the more tragic, as I doubt many of them play
anything but DOTA these days), as opposed to allowing each individual player to
decide on their own the game style/mode that they prefer.
Valves' current approach to the game is synonymous with handing a restaurant
patron a menu with a single meal option on it, and only telling them about
their other hundreds of meal options if they happen to notice the fine print on
the menu that tell them those options exist. The vast majority of people simple
see that, and think "I guess that's all I can get", otherwise known as the
default effect <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Default_effect_%28psychology%29> .
Diversity should be brought back and encouraged again. All Valve need do is
give the players a "Never show me that server again" button that works across
the board, and they can sit back and watch the cream rise to the top.
I'd love to see an active mapping & modding scene again, but this years-long
push to homogenize the game is damaging to the very thing that made it great.
It's been long enough, TF2 team. Time to start treating community servers with
fairness again.
On Fri, Feb 6, 2015 at 7:52 AM, spacebur...@gmail.com
<mailto:spacebur...@gmail.com> <spacebur...@gmail.com
<mailto:spacebur...@gmail.com> > wrote:
I get the feeling Valve simply doesn't trust the community to provide a quality
experience anymore. Some of it is justified, but lumping all the community
server providers with the likes of Saigns and Nighteam is hardly fair.
On 6 February 2015 at 13:30, Anthony James Duncan <anth...@kinevonetwork.com
<mailto:anth...@kinevonetwork.com> > wrote:
To be honest the new quick play rules don?t even seem to be followed at all, An
example being Skial now kicking people to make room of reserve slots if they
so happen to dare to block ads when the server is full.
From: hlds-boun...@list.valvesoftware.com
<mailto:hlds-boun...@list.valvesoftware.com>
[mailto:hlds-boun...@list.valvesoftware.com
<mailto:hlds-boun...@list.valvesoftware.com> ] On Behalf Of E. Olsen
Sent: 06 February 2015 02:11
To: Half-Life dedicated Win32 server mailing list
Subject: Re: [hlds] Rethinking the community quickplay ban
The thing is - the solution is as simple as can be. They don't need to
re-invent the scoring system, add server grouping, or even more server
penalties.....all they need to do is have a truly functional blacklist system
that works across the board on a player's client (i.e. a server that is
blacklisted will not appear in that player's server browser OR quickplay
destinations).
That small change alone would do what should have been done in the first place
- put the decision(s) about the quality of a server back in the player's hands.
Truly bad servers would naturally lose traffic over time, and the good ones
would rise to the top. Doing that would allow players to once again discover
custom maps & game modes that are currently effectively hidden from them, AND
give them the power to prevent themselves from ever being connected to a server
they didn't like.
The problem with any kind of automated system is that there are always those
folks who will figure out a way to game them - but players know a good gaming
environment when they see it, and that's where the judgment should lie - with
the players where it belongs.
On Thu, Feb 5, 2015 at 7:04 PM, 2xcombatvet <2xcombat...@gmail.com
<mailto:2xcombat...@gmail.com> > wrote:
I started cs go maybe a month ago after serving sometime in the military. I
didn't enjoy matching making seemed pointless when u can get sounds and crates
through PvP servers. So I got a server running 5v5 cevo config and my community
has grown to 60+ people with regulars always on server. So I had to buy two
servers now. Both are always full for the most part. I played a lot of cs 1.6
and TF1 didn't really get into tf2
Sent from my T-Mobile 4G LTE Device
-------- Original message --------
From: wickedplayer494 <wickedplayer...@gmail.com
<mailto:wickedplayer...@gmail.com> >
Date:02/05/2015 18:42 (GMT-05:00)
To: Half-Life dedicated Win32 server mailing list <hlds@list.valvesoftware.com
<mailto:hlds@list.valvesoftware.com> >
Cc:
Subject: Re: [hlds] Rethinking the community quickplay ban
I fully agree. I've seen some of my favorite servers drop like flies over the
past few months (and by extension the last 2 years), and the assimilation of
players into Valve-hosted servers is downright alarming. Having a
Valve-dominated server ecosystem only makes sense for three things: Dota 2,
CS:GO competitive matchmaking, and TF2 MvM Mann Up. It doesn't make sense for
PvP.
Truth be told, people are somewhat right about the game "dying", but only in
some very, very specific components of the game, one of those being
community-run servers. Here's an example: TrashedGamers' Chicago server. A few
months ago, it would fill up every night with players. Now? You're lucky to
find even 4 people playing on a good night. This is illustrated very well by
the HLStatsX graphs for the server, found at http://stats.trashedgamers.org.
Here's an image for people browsing very, very far into the future:
http://i.imgur.com/u8FCWMJ.png
What happened to the days of picking a server yourself through the browser? Is
it really that hard for the community? I think at this point the only real
solution is having to make people go through hoops to get to quickplay. All it
has done is open a can of worms, which Valve has tried to clean up after (with
the Policy of Truth memo long ago from Fletcher and other measures), but people
were still trying to cheat the system, which forced the hand of Valve. Reducing
its exposure would make it not worthwhile for people to keep trying to cheat
the system. There should be a better emphasis placed on the server browser. To
make it as usable, make scores visible in the browser, and let users decide for
themselves (unless they go through those hoops to get to quickplay). That way
people can pick a server that they believe looks good to them, instead of
chancing that the server they get placed on looks good. While we're at it, add
server grouping to the browser, so say if someone wants to view all the servers
"Organization A" has, because they look better than "Organization B", they can
pop open all of A's servers instead of needing to scroll through all of B's
servers, leaving them hidden. Similar named servers that aren't grouped
together by the server operator would be given a score penalty.
On 2/5/2015 3:11 PM, Tim Anderson wrote:
To the TF2 team,
It has now been over a year since the decision to essentially ban community
servers from quickplay by defaulting to official ones. Here are some facts of
what has happened since then.
- Player gain dropped 4% from the year before.
- UGC highlander teams dropped 17%
- Highly reduced map variety from community servers.
- Even top non-quickplay servers have drastically fewer players than in 2013.
You may have guaranteed new players a vanilla experience, but this is ruining
the experience for the rest.
Maybe nothing is being done because you do not see enough complaints about this
from reddit or spuf. This is because the problem is obvious when someone
connects to a pay to win server while it is not as obvious when a server is
dying over the span of several months because official ones are getting all the
new players.
Most of the people that I talked to even knew about this change so the thought
about complaining about it never crossed their minds. But just because they
never knew about it doesn't mean it wasn't a problem.
I hope you realize that this change is doing more harm than good. It may have
stopped some complaints but this is hurting TF2 in the long run.
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