[hlds] When will quickplay return to a level playing field?
As we approach the 2-month mark since Valve's servers were made the default servers for all quickplay players, can the TF2 team give us a time frame when they will return the system to a level playing field for all servers? As it stands, the players who want to avoid all community servers now have the ability to do so simply by clicking the Official Server Only button, so is it really necessary to keep driving nearly all quickplay traffic away from community servers? In fact, a better question would probably be - is it in TF2's best (long-term) interest to do so? Helping players find a home server where they become a regular creates long-term players, and since so much emphasis (in the design of the UI) has been placed on guiding players to use quickplay, the longer that community servers are effectively excluded from that traffic, the more long-term players the game will likely lose. The players that only want random games with random people on Valve servers now have the option to make sure that's all they get, but preventing the rest of the player base from experiencing all the diversity that the TF2 community can provide is both unnecessary and unfair to those of us who have never broken any rules, or violated any policies. With that in mind, please consider leveling the playing field again asap by including all community servers by default, and let the players decide for themselves if they don't want to be a part of that community. Thanks, guys. ___ To unsubscribe, edit your list preferences, or view the list archives, please visit: https://list.valvesoftware.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/hlds
Re: [hlds] When will quickplay return to a level playing field?
What about something similar like before where valve servers had an advantage over community servers with new players being sent to them (due to the valve server score boost)? Except this time just make it so all new players get sent to valve servers by default. And then after a certain amount of hours played it either defaults to all servers or pops up a message asking if community servers should be included and explaining a little bit about the other quickplay options and how to access them. I talked to plenty of players who weren't aware that quickplay search can be customized or that you need to click on the gear icon to bring up advanced search options. There's plenty of people who hate crits or default respawn times and yet they're not even aware of this functionality being part of quickplay. Or perhaps that's on purpose and maybe that's the reason why the icon is so tiny... On Thu, Mar 20, 2014 at 7:31 PM, Jason Tango jtrun...@outlook.com wrote: As we approach the 2-month mark since Valve's servers were made the default servers for all quickplay players, can the TF2 team give us a time frame when they will return the system to a level playing field for all servers? As it stands, the players who want to avoid all community servers now have the ability to do so simply by clicking the Official Server Only button, so is it really necessary to keep driving nearly all quickplay traffic away from community servers? In fact, a better question would probably be - is it in TF2's best (long-term) interest to do so? Helping players find a home server where they become a regular creates long-term players, and since so much emphasis (in the design of the UI) has been placed on guiding players to use quickplay, the longer that community servers are effectively excluded from that traffic, the more long-term players the game will likely lose. The players that only want random games with random people on Valve servers now have the option to make sure that's all they get, but preventing the rest of the player base from experiencing all the diversity that the TF2 community can provide is both unnecessary and unfair to those of us who have never broken any rules, or violated any policies. With that in mind, please consider leveling the playing field again asap by including all community servers by default, and let the players decide for themselves if they don't want to be a part of that community. Thanks, guys. ___ 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
Re: [hlds] When will quickplay return to a level playing field?
As I said before, the problem is not that the official servers only option exists, the problem is that it is on by default. People too lazy to use the browser are too lazy to use options. Again I would like to suggest automatically un-checking the official servers only after 4-5 hours of play. Anything that requires manual intervention will not solve the problem. For anyone arguing community servers are inferior again, I refer you to this post. https://www.mail-archive.com/hlds_linux@list.valvesoftware.com/msg74795.html On Mon, Mar 24, 2014 at 5:03 PM, 1nsane 1nsane...@gmail.com wrote: What about something similar like before where valve servers had an advantage over community servers with new players being sent to them (due to the valve server score boost)? Except this time just make it so all new players get sent to valve servers by default. And then after a certain amount of hours played it either defaults to all servers or pops up a message asking if community servers should be included and explaining a little bit about the other quickplay options and how to access them. I talked to plenty of players who weren't aware that quickplay search can be customized or that you need to click on the gear icon to bring up advanced search options. There's plenty of people who hate crits or default respawn times and yet they're not even aware of this functionality being part of quickplay. Or perhaps that's on purpose and maybe that's the reason why the icon is so tiny... On Thu, Mar 20, 2014 at 7:31 PM, Jason Tango jtrun...@outlook.com wrote: As we approach the 2-month mark since Valve's servers were made the default servers for all quickplay players, can the TF2 team give us a time frame when they will return the system to a level playing field for all servers? As it stands, the players who want to avoid all community servers now have the ability to do so simply by clicking the Official Server Only button, so is it really necessary to keep driving nearly all quickplay traffic away from community servers? In fact, a better question would probably be - is it in TF2's best (long-term) interest to do so? Helping players find a home server where they become a regular creates long-term players, and since so much emphasis (in the design of the UI) has been placed on guiding players to use quickplay, the longer that community servers are effectively excluded from that traffic, the more long-term players the game will likely lose. The players that only want random games with random people on Valve servers now have the option to make sure that's all they get, but preventing the rest of the player base from experiencing all the diversity that the TF2 community can provide is both unnecessary and unfair to those of us who have never broken any rules, or violated any policies. With that in mind, please consider leveling the playing field again asap by including all community servers by default, and let the players decide for themselves if they don't want to be a part of that community. Thanks, guys. ___ 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
Re: [hlds] When will quickplay return to a level playing field?
It would be really nice to get some input on this from Valve. Since the change every day gets worse and worse for player activity on my servers thanks to the QP changes and lack of new players having the ability to find my servers. You can view the beautiful downward trend caused by these changes: http://i.imgur.com/uvlq056.png If anyone else is running the Player Analytics plugin just edit data/sessions.php and change 30 DAY to 90 DAY. I'd love to see the same trends from other communities to help reinforce this bad change for all server ops. On Mon, Mar 24, 2014 at 9:09 PM, Robert Paulson thepauls...@gmail.comwrote: As I said before, the problem is not that the official servers only option exists, the problem is that it is on by default. People too lazy to use the browser are too lazy to use options. Again I would like to suggest automatically un-checking the official servers only after 4-5 hours of play. Anything that requires manual intervention will not solve the problem. For anyone arguing community servers are inferior again, I refer you to this post. https://www.mail-archive.com/hlds_linux@list.valvesoftware.com/msg74795.html On Mon, Mar 24, 2014 at 5:03 PM, 1nsane 1nsane...@gmail.com wrote: What about something similar like before where valve servers had an advantage over community servers with new players being sent to them (due to the valve server score boost)? Except this time just make it so all new players get sent to valve servers by default. And then after a certain amount of hours played it either defaults to all servers or pops up a message asking if community servers should be included and explaining a little bit about the other quickplay options and how to access them. I talked to plenty of players who weren't aware that quickplay search can be customized or that you need to click on the gear icon to bring up advanced search options. There's plenty of people who hate crits or default respawn times and yet they're not even aware of this functionality being part of quickplay. Or perhaps that's on purpose and maybe that's the reason why the icon is so tiny... On Thu, Mar 20, 2014 at 7:31 PM, Jason Tango jtrun...@outlook.comwrote: As we approach the 2-month mark since Valve's servers were made the default servers for all quickplay players, can the TF2 team give us a time frame when they will return the system to a level playing field for all servers? As it stands, the players who want to avoid all community servers now have the ability to do so simply by clicking the Official Server Only button, so is it really necessary to keep driving nearly all quickplay traffic away from community servers? In fact, a better question would probably be - is it in TF2's best (long-term) interest to do so? Helping players find a home server where they become a regular creates long-term players, and since so much emphasis (in the design of the UI) has been placed on guiding players to use quickplay, the longer that community servers are effectively excluded from that traffic, the more long-term players the game will likely lose. The players that only want random games with random people on Valve servers now have the option to make sure that's all they get, but preventing the rest of the player base from experiencing all the diversity that the TF2 community can provide is both unnecessary and unfair to those of us who have never broken any rules, or violated any policies. With that in mind, please consider leveling the playing field again asap by including all community servers by default, and let the players decide for themselves if they don't want to be a part of that community. Thanks, guys. ___ 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
Re: [hlds] When will quickplay return to a level playing field?
I think the issue here, is...there really is no longer any reason for valve servers to be the default servers once a player has 8-12 hours in the game. The minority of players who only want those random pub games on valve servers now have that option - but the players who stick around in the long-term will be the ones that find a home server/group of servers, not those looking for the x-box live experience of random games with random people every time. Honestly, if the TF2 team could see the chaos and lack of teamwork that valve servers actually seem to encourage, I think they would take a step back and realize that it really doesn't do the game any justice. There is a reason some of the newer players have taken to calling community servers pubstomp servers - it's because community servers are where they fist come up against actual, cohesive teamwork - and they're used to a bunch of random players just doing they're own thing. Frankly - I firmly believe the long-term health of the game rests with community servers who provide diversity, supervision (to get rid of the plethora of hackers/griefers, etc.), and a much better experience overall (not to mention higher skill levels). In short - I agree with Mr. Paulson - give the new players a a few hours of mandatory play on valve's servers to get their feet wet in the game, and then open quickplay up to all servers by default and allow them to see all the diversity that's out there. You've given the players the option of going back to valve-only if they should want it, now lets rollback the mass punishment (that was really killing a mosquito with a sledgehammer), and give the server operators a fair shake again. On Mon, Mar 24, 2014 at 11:14 PM, Chris Oryschak ch...@oryschak.com wrote: It would be really nice to get some input on this from Valve. Since the change every day gets worse and worse for player activity on my servers thanks to the QP changes and lack of new players having the ability to find my servers. You can view the beautiful downward trend caused by these changes: http://i.imgur.com/uvlq056.png If anyone else is running the Player Analytics plugin just edit data/sessions.php and change 30 DAY to 90 DAY. I'd love to see the same trends from other communities to help reinforce this bad change for all server ops. On Mon, Mar 24, 2014 at 9:09 PM, Robert Paulson thepauls...@gmail.comwrote: As I said before, the problem is not that the official servers only option exists, the problem is that it is on by default. People too lazy to use the browser are too lazy to use options. Again I would like to suggest automatically un-checking the official servers only after 4-5 hours of play. Anything that requires manual intervention will not solve the problem. For anyone arguing community servers are inferior again, I refer you to this post. https://www.mail-archive.com/hlds_linux@list.valvesoftware.com/msg74795.html On Mon, Mar 24, 2014 at 5:03 PM, 1nsane 1nsane...@gmail.com wrote: What about something similar like before where valve servers had an advantage over community servers with new players being sent to them (due to the valve server score boost)? Except this time just make it so all new players get sent to valve servers by default. And then after a certain amount of hours played it either defaults to all servers or pops up a message asking if community servers should be included and explaining a little bit about the other quickplay options and how to access them. I talked to plenty of players who weren't aware that quickplay search can be customized or that you need to click on the gear icon to bring up advanced search options. There's plenty of people who hate crits or default respawn times and yet they're not even aware of this functionality being part of quickplay. Or perhaps that's on purpose and maybe that's the reason why the icon is so tiny... On Thu, Mar 20, 2014 at 7:31 PM, Jason Tango jtrun...@outlook.comwrote: As we approach the 2-month mark since Valve's servers were made the default servers for all quickplay players, can the TF2 team give us a time frame when they will return the system to a level playing field for all servers? As it stands, the players who want to avoid all community servers now have the ability to do so simply by clicking the Official Server Only button, so is it really necessary to keep driving nearly all quickplay traffic away from community servers? In fact, a better question would probably be - is it in TF2's best (long-term) interest to do so? Helping players find a home server where they become a regular creates long-term players, and since so much emphasis (in the design of the UI) has been placed on guiding players to use quickplay, the longer that community servers are effectively excluded from that traffic, the more long-term players the game will likely lose. The players that only want random games with random people on Valve
Re: [hlds] When will quickplay return to a level playing field?
I love how you guys are saying you want to develop the community you are trying to build, then the next sentence is that people are too stupid/lazy to find you guys. Can't have it both ways. Personally, I've got lots of time into the game and love quick play. I know I can get a vanilla experience without having to search for mods that I don't enjoy. I have a server browser for that. ___ To unsubscribe, edit your list preferences, or view the list archives, please visit: https://list.valvesoftware.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/hlds
