I agree that the game should be played the way it was designed. TF2 is a difficult game these days. It was designed to be a 24 player game with a respawn timer, but has been convoluted into, well, a load of mud. I honestly wish Valve would have taken a heavier-handed approach. I can't tell you how many players i see on our servers complaining that "the respawn time is too long" because I haven't altered it from the default. To the average player, all of those convoluted servers with altered respawn timers are "the norm". My server that conforms to Valve's own limits is the one that looks strange to them.
I'm all for the modding community - they should be able to do what they want. But I believe a "pure" server should be exactly as Valve intended it to be. No mods, no plugins, no bull. No changes to gameplay, player limits or what not. Valve caves too quickly to the player/server admin, and in the process they lose the vision that made them the leader in this space to begin with. While I still think L4D is a crap product from a server point of view, all their other work has been groundbreaking from a gameplay perspective. For that they should be commended. But a lot of what Valve does is the same of what I see with the more junior people that work on my team (at work, not on my gameservers). They do a terrific job for 95% of the job. But when it comes to the last 5%, they fall flat on their face - And THAT'S the stuff that people remember. 95% of the work is getting all the pieces in place and put together. The last 5% is the "polish" that everyone sees. Documentation, Support Models, QA, UAT (User Acceptance Testing), and the like. Valve needs to work on that 5%. They should start by sticking to their own vision instead of trying to make every person who wants no respawn times happy. Personally I think L4D would have been a great product all around if they did one thing - Left the "community/server operators" out of it. Valve is capable of hosting as many servers as they need for this product, and since the very nature of the game is not incredibly "community friendly", I see no reason to include communities as their target audience. Mindless zombie killing isn't my kind of game, nor do I see how this game will ever be adaptable to any sort of community play. It's not a competitive game by its own nature, and it's those kinds of games that foster community play - not this l4d stuff. Seriously, do any of you guys see the need to start a Left 4 Dead clan? I certainly don't. Anyway, that's my thoughts, like 'em or not. ________________________________________ From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of SakeFox [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, December 04, 2008 10:31 PM To: Half-Life dedicated Win32 server mailing list Subject: Re: [hlds] Left 4 Dead Update Available i don't like stopping for red lights. there a complete waste of our time. This is something that is forced upon us and it shouldn't be. We should have the right to chose what is restricted to us. Who's with me? lets all just start ignoring them and complain that they should be removed for existence. BAWWWWW!!!! Formologic23 wrote: > No dude, it's not, grow up. I love Valve games, and almost play them > exclusively. I was stating as to why I didn't want to support THIS > PARTICULAR GAME. I didn't say that I wasn't going to play it. You should > learn to read instead of taking the English language out of context. I pay > for servers that I continue to not be able to control. So therefore, I'm not > going to support this particular game by PAYING for servers. Never said I > would stop playing the game, or I hate Valve. > > Once again, grow up dude. > > -----Original Message----- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of msleeper > Sent: Thursday, December 04, 2008 4:51 PM > To: Half-Life dedicated Win32 server mailing list > Subject: Re: [hlds] Left 4 Dead Update Available > > Oh great here we go, another 200 thread long "I'm never supporting Valve > again!" email chain. > > On Thu, 2008-12-04 at 16:46 -0800, Formologic23 wrote: > >> Why on earth would you lock the Versus difficulty? That is a pretty lame >> forced update in my opinion. Normal is too easy, and most of the people I >> have talked with prefer to play Versus on Advanced. So why would you LOCK >> the difficulty? I really am considering shutting down my servers because >> > if > >> I can't have control over them (including the clients to a certain >> > degree), > >> then I really am not interested in supporting this particular game >> > anymore. > >> I love the game, but seriously, this is ludicrous. >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> To unsubscribe, edit your list preferences, or view the list archives, >> > please visit: > >> http://list.valvesoftware.com/mailman/listinfo/hlds >> > > > _______________________________________________ > To unsubscribe, edit your list preferences, or view the list archives, > please visit: > http://list.valvesoftware.com/mailman/listinfo/hlds > > > _______________________________________________ > To unsubscribe, edit your list preferences, or view the list archives, please > visit: > http://list.valvesoftware.com/mailman/listinfo/hlds > > > _______________________________________________ To unsubscribe, edit your list preferences, or view the list archives, please visit: http://list.valvesoftware.com/mailman/listinfo/hlds _______________________________________________ To unsubscribe, edit your list preferences, or view the list archives, please visit: http://list.valvesoftware.com/mailman/listinfo/hlds
