I don't generally post to this list, but I would like to add some statistics from my community. McKay already posted some of them, but here are some more numbers.
We run 3 dedicated boxes, and about 20 total TF2 servers. Of those, 14 are quickplay. The quickplay servers are mostly vanilla, with some various donor perks that don't affect gameplay whatsoever. In the last month we have seen about***140,000 unique players* and *475,000 individual sessions*. We're not a gigantic community, but we're definitely not small either. At least 2500 players have > 24 hours of play time on our servers, and I don't really see those players disappearing--at least not right off. Our community relies 100% on donations, so a temporary decrease in quickplay traffic wont affect us at all in regards to keeping our servers up (no ad revenue). But looking at our server list this morning, I noticed that our Chicago system which usually has 7 servers full around this time of day instead has 3. If we're unable to keep our servers full, I'm sure the donors will eventually start to dwindle as well. Now there's no real way for community owners to fight back. Really our only defense is to post to the mailing list and hope our message is read by a Valve employee, but that alone doesn't create change. If we can all band together behind a single solution though, it certainly wouldn't hurt our cause. That said, let's get the ball rolling on some ways we can help Valve combat players getting matched into terrible quickplay servers, without ripping apart the communities which make this game so great. Here are a couple of my ideas: *1) Quickplay ID Grouping* Have the ability to register a community/group ID to associate different quickplay IDs. This way if one server breaks the terms of service, they can all be shut down fairly easily. Of course, this incentivises good communities to use this option, and the troll/spam/greedy ones not to use it. I think that's fine. Prioritize traffic of those communities who have > 2 servers on the same group ID, and make it a little bit harder to start out without a community ID (sorry new folks, but I don't see an elegant solution here for you). *2) User-based voting* For all users matched through quickplay, have them actually rate the server they were connected to once they leave. A simple 1-5 star system and a "flag as abusive" button to start a ticket would be great. If a user has already rated that server, show their previous vote and allow them to change it. By not allowing the same user to repeatedly vote on the same server would help cut back on people down-voting other communities just to get more traffic sent to their own. This can work with the first idea to rank communities as a whole. So if you run a solid community and launch a new server, it wont be so hard to fill it up. You've proven your worth, and you shouldn't need to do it with every server launch. But if you run a poor community, it will affect all your servers. *3) Un-check the box *Everyone else said it. Don't pick valve servers for people by default. I think it's totally fine to have that option available, but pulling all the players away who don't really understand what that means doesn't seem fair. I believe new players are already being matched to Valve servers with super high priority, until they spend a few hours in the game and get a feel for what a 100% vanilla, un-moderated server is like. Good! Keep doing that. Just don't grab the players who aren't new to the game, but haven't learned how to connect anywhere without quickplay button. ~ rann _______________________________________________ To unsubscribe, edit your list preferences, or view the list archives, please visit: https://list.valvesoftware.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/hlds_linux
