Who said that creating, building and eventually maintaining a community is
supposed to be any fun. It is what you make of it, I suppose, but it's not
always fun. If all the administration and management isn't your cup of tea,
then you're in the wrong business. Attention to detail is a big part of a
running a successful community and if any one aspect is ignored, the
community eventually starts to deteriorate. Like I keep saying...the
community isn't about you, it's about the players. Sometimes you have to
sacrifice your own satisfaction to appease and satisfy the community's
needs. If you're doing it solely for the purpose of being looked up to or
to feel that players consider you "above the rest", you're doing it all
wrong.
This is a huge problem nowadays. Server operators feel they are somehow
above the players and should be treated as such. It shows in the attitude
of a lot of people on this list, which I'm sure echoes throughout the the
rest of the server operator population that doesn't participate here. It
also obviously shows in the subsequent actions that server operators take.
Yes, you run servers so that people can play Valve's games. But guess
what? So do so many other people. And a lot of them are satisfied with
what Valve does with the game and the servers. I'm sick and tired of
hearing the argument that without people to run thier servers, the games,
and subsequently Valve, would die. Do me a favor and refresh your Server
Browser. Does anyone see a shortage of servers to play on? That argument
needs to stop right now. None of us are special, nor do we deserve anything
for running a server. You made the choice to run a server. If you don't
like the direction Valve is taking us, make another decision to stop running
that server, it's simple. You aren't above the players, but you're free to
keep thinking that as your servers sit empty. I've always heard that it's
lonely up on that pedestal, anyway.
This new ranking system serves to directly address this problem as it will
force server operators to live up to a higher standard and give the players
what they want. That's what Valve has always been about, at least in my
eyes. It's what the Custom tab was all about but was shunned by the people
who thought it would hurt their servers. I don't recall any of the players
complaining about it, though. When server operators broke that system,
Valve removed it because, at that point, it served no purpose. It wasn't
helping players like it was originally intended to do. Players began to
complain that custom servers were still on the Internet tab, but they never
complained that the Custom tab existed. Most server operators didn't even
give that system a chance before they decided they were going to work around
it, anyway. Even though it's gone, I still see a lot of the tools that were
designed to work around it still available and in use on tons of servers.
That goes to show that people don't care about their communities, only the
well being of their precious server.
I'm not saying that every server operator fits this description, but I feel
that more do than don't. This is now being dealt with.
Bad servers aren't the problem, I agree. Bad servers are a symptom. The
problem is bad server operators. And this solution does a lot to give
server operators incentive to run better servers...honest servers. Servers
that players want to play on, not servers that the operator wants to play
on. Yeah, yeah, you pay for the server so you'll run it however you want.
Fine, play by yourself. But be honest about what's going on or pay the
price(read: be delisted). With the way the ranking system has been
described, it seems to me that it is the players who are deciding what the
players want, not Valve...and thankfully now, not server operators. Read
that blog post back over.
What types of tools are you looking for to promote your community? It seems
like between Steam and the rest of the Internet, there are more than enough
tools to promote your community. If you can't find a way to get that job
done, you're not trying hard enough. I think that's a very poor excuse for
tricking players into joining your servers anyway. People aren't using
these tactics because the right tools aren't available, they're using these
tactics because they can and because they either lack morals or think it's
the right way to build a community. But mostly I think they're worried
about how their server population reflects upon their own personal status.
I won't try to put words into Valve's mouth and I obviously don't speak for
them, but you said:
*Is Valve saying they want server admins to WORK to keep their servers
popular in some sadistic way?
*
Uh...shouldn't that be a given? You said it at the beginning of your
response. "Work is involved." Just because you set up a server doesn't
mean it's supposed to or going to be full all the time. We'd all like for
that to be the case, but the reality is different. You have to give people
a reason to come back. You have to differentiate yourself from the rest in
some way. It's the players who will ultimately make or break your
community, not Valve. You can be the catalyst for your community, but
without players, where are you?
And no, I'm not saying that you need a team of people who can be on-call to
fill your servers all the time. I'm only suggesting that it's one good way
to get your server(s)/community going. If people see that there are always
players in the server, in the future, they'd be more likely to join that
server even if it were empty because they'd assume that more people are
probably only a few minutes away. You shouldn't have a problem with this
anyway. If you started a server in the first place, I'm going to assume
that you wanted to have a place for you and some or all of your friends to
play. What other reason would you have a server? Oh yeah...to measure your
status in the world.
For instance, there is a group of servers that I play on. They are almost
always packed full at the times I want to play. Sometimes I'll notice that
they're completely empty, though. I still join one of their servers because
when I do, someone else joins. Then two more people join. Then five more
people join. Then, before I know what happened, it's full. And that all
started by me making the Server Browser show 1/24.
Those other 23 players may not have joined for the same reason I did,
though. I think a lot of them joined because A) there was a slot open and
2) because the servers in that community are operated well and are a
pleasurable place to play. They give me a reason to come back, just like
they gave almost all of the other 23 players that came in after me a reason
to come back. Yeah, there are a few that joined because they saw an almost
full server, but the majority are players I've seen there before. They had
a reason to come back besides it being a full server. So the guy(or gal)
that joined when it was 3/24 may be the guy that seeds it next time. Same
as the person that joined it when it was 23/24 because he/she found it an
awesome place to play and hopes that he/she can get a good game going the
next time around. Each person may have their own reasons for returning to a
server, I have mine. But I guess I can't say specifically what those
reasons are other than I just like playing there with the others that join.
And this community in particular doesn't "cheat". They run an
honest-to-goodness community and have never done anything to alienate the
playerbase. They aren't the only community I frequent that I can say this
about, either. I'd like to know how you came to the conclusion that these
servers you've researched "cheat". Could you also provide some
clarification on "cheat"? I feel like you may be embellishing a little bit
to help your side of the argument, but I'll wait until you clarify and/or
qualify that statement before I come to that conclusion. Good communities
are solid and their servers stay full because they are straight-up with and
good to their players. Maybe my definition of a good community differs from
yours.
Either way, you still haven't defined what you consider to be "the problem".
-Richard Eid
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