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"Their heads are green, and their hands are blue,
And they went to sea in a Sieve." - Edward Lear
On Thu, Sep 26, 2013 at 10:11 PM, Jason Tango <[email protected]> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I know this has been brought up many, many times....but it would seem that
> with the maturity of the server registration system that Valve is now in
> a perfect position to fix this issue which both negatively impacts
> long-established servers, AND prevents server operators from moving to
> better/improved hardware.
>
> I'm talking about the way server favorites work in the server browser.
> Specifically, the fact that if - for any reason - a server operator needs
> to change their server's IP address, it disappears from all the users
> clients who have added it to their favorites over the years.
>
> That may not seem like a big deal, but it absolutely IS. It takes months
> and years to build up a strong base of server regulars, and that base is
> virtually destroyed if you change that server's IP address.
>
> For example....we recently had the opportunity to acquire hardware at a
> significant discount at another server provider that was a significant upgrade
> from our current hardware (from a Q9400 to a E3-1270v3 with a samsung Pro
> SSD) for the same price we were currently paying per month. Wanting to
> give our players the best possible experience, so we decided to make the
> move.
>
> To prepare, we ran a message for 30 days on the current servers informing
> the players the servers were moving (and the new address). After that 30
> day period, we flipped the switch, and shutdown the old server, bringing
> the new ones online (the 1270v3 is ridiculously powerful, BTW).
>
> Now, these are servers which had previously stayed full for 18+ hours per
> day on a regular basis, with a 24-hour average population (according to
> HlStats)
> of 21 players.
>
> After the first 30 days, the 24-hour average is now down to 6 players, and
> they only fill up roughly 4-6 hours per day.
>
> And therein lies the problem. We did (we believe) what was absolutely the
> right thing in that we chose to upgrade our hardware solely for the purpose
> of giving our players a better, smoother, more state of the art gaming
> experience. The server runs wonderfully (3 full servers uses less than 7%
> CPU!), and the players who ARE playing on them regularly comment on the
> improvement to frame rate, stability, and map load times.
>
> The only thing on our end that changed as far as server configuration was
> the IP - and it has essentially KILLED the traffic to those servers,
> forcing us to basically start over from scratch trying to build our
> server traffic back up (and no, we don't run any of those atrocious MOTD
> ads or anything - our servers are supported by donations only).
>
> The fix, it would seem, would be relatively easy. Why not tie the server
> favorites to the server registration information instead?
>
> Connecting the favorites to IP address does nothing but prevent server
> operators from upgrading/moving to better equipment and/or datacenters, and
> severely limits the options we have to improve the gaming environments
> for our players. I, for one, won't be upgrading/moving anything else if it
> means I have to change IP addresses. It's simply not worth the traffic
> loss you incur as a result.
>
> Please make this a priority, Valve. The time has come.
>
> Thanks.
>
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