lol @ John.
Let's make this a serious discussion instead.
Indeed, many providers sell their servers based on FPS rate (the higher fps, the higher price). Most providers are just doing this for getting more money, nothing else is changed on those servers and mostly the servers are _not_ running at best performance.
Performance is primarily based on tickrate and not FPS -- I am not arguing that point. Different people have different views on the subject, however, and clearly Valve does think that FPS is a factor in performance, in one way or another.
I personally feel that 250 FPS is just fine, but when I tell the server to run at 500 FPS, I don't expect it to run at 250 FPS, if the OS supports higher (and the server previously did run at higher). Customers expect the same, and those who purchase based on FPS rate (right or wrong) will be understandably confused and annoyed that the number is now lower. Even if a server provider doesn't explicitly sell based on server FPS, customers frequently ask about it and test it, so all will be affected by this.
If there's a solid reason for halving the FPS instead of using the existing fps_max tweaking knob, and for not allowing this unexpected behavior to be overridden, then I welcome hearing it. Regardless, I would still appreciate the opportunity to override.
Also this one is not valves problem. Valve is here to get the best performance out of their games and to make the best gameplay for the customers -> _not for making the game the best way to sell gameservers_
Valve is also trying to sell a product here, and it depends on server owners to support its product (especially now, with the massive influx of new TF2 players). We should not feel ashamed to give Valve our feedback.
Its the same thing like when they limted the tickrate to 66. Many people cry, some try to "hack" tickrate 100 and some people are just using this chance make better servers - you decide your side =)
You appear to be assuming that this was the right decision for Valve to make, but I question that. It seems to be a stopgap solution to a bug that was released in the most recent update, and I don't think it has been given much testing.
Did you notice that Valve started setting the multimedia timer to 1hz granularity a few updates ago? I did. It led to higher CPU usage across the board for me, because I was previously running at a lower granularity to achieve 250 FPS for a class of servers. They appear to be attempting to partially revert it with this one, which indicates that they re-thought their previous decision. Everyone is fallible.
Also if anyone from valve is reading this mailinglist, some reply why exactly this change happend would be interesting. I'am recommending this update but it would be really nice to have some more information on this.
I would love to hear more, as well. -John _______________________________________________ To unsubscribe, edit your list preferences, or view the list archives, please visit: http://list.valvesoftware.com/mailman/listinfo/hlds_linux
