I agree with you, Darren. There are sites out there that seem to be the go-to places for TF2 item trading and news and so on. I'm sure it'd be possible for some talented folks to virtually take over the whole community server thing from Valve and make a service that feels like an essential tool for any enthusiastic TF2 player.
TF2 is a great way for people to get into level design but I am concerned that budding mappers will find it very difficult to get their maps tested and played should community servers dwindle to insignificance or become very hard to discover. Matt (worMatty) On 1 November 2016 at 21:37, Darren VanBuren <ad...@theoks.net> wrote: > I don't frequently host servers for multiplayer Source games except among > my friends but here's my two cents: > > Almost every game developer is becoming hostile to community-run servers, > especially the largest ones. TF2 is unfortunately one of the few shooters > out there that actually still has a server browser at all. > If you look at the most recently released popular shooters, they're almost > all exclusively played through matchmaking. Some let you rent a server.. > from the developer for outrageous prices, but it was easy to spot the > decline over there, starting with restricting custom servers to "registered > game server providers" only. > > Ever since, like 2 years ago, when Quickplay in TF2 started having an > option to ignore community servers, which eventually became the default, > things have been going downhill big time. > But having community servers that can be created for free at all still > gives a little hope that things could turn around. > Unfortunately the continued comments on this list, that what has been done > to community servers is not something the people that play on and run the > community servers want, have fallen on deaf ears. > > However, this is definitely an opportunity where something *can* still be > done about this, because the option to run a community server, and linking > people to join a specific server from the web, still exists. > Even if Valve does nothing to bring community servers back into the view of > players in-game, > I could see a community-run site where there might be a server list, with > links to join them, and also a button to just choose one near you, maybe > like how Quickplay used to work. > > > > On Tue, Nov 1, 2016 at 1:50 PM, Tim Anderson <twjander...@gmail.com> > wrote: > > > For those of you not hosting TF2 servers, you may not understand what > > the issue is. Over the past couple of years, the TF2 team at Valve has > > been killing community servers by making them more and more difficult > > to find and reach, and content that did not work on community servers. > > Community servers went from being more populated than official servers > > to being less populated through these unnatural changes. > > > > A few months ago, Valve put every community server into a separate > > category at the bottom of the list (basically custom tabs 2.0) which I > > could not believe was being described as a positive for community > > servers https://twitter.com/4G_b4nny/status/729839464684490752 You > > even had server owners here thinking it was actually a good thing. > > > > And now this is the first Halloween update where community servers are > > completely excluded and even the most popular community servers are > > starting to empty out. > > > > Even if you are not hosting TF2, you should be more considerate and > > think about the possibility that something like this will happen to > > your server and game. > > > > John Schoenick or Eric Smith, if by any chance you are reading this, > > these changes will probably kill community servers for good. I've seen > > many of the most popular ones empty out for the first time this > > Halloween. If you want to just kill community servers, at least have > > the decency to tell us so we do not waste anymore time and money. > > > > > _______________________________________________ > To unsubscribe, edit your list preferences, or view the list archives, > please visit: > https://list.valvesoftware.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/hlds_linux > _______________________________________________ To unsubscribe, edit your list preferences, or view the list archives, please visit: https://list.valvesoftware.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/hlds_linux
