With all this talk about how Valve no longer cares and evidence of that
being quite clear, what is keeping all of you in the game? What is
keeping you all hosting servers?
Serious question.
It is clear from what I've read that this game is no longer fun and no
longer worth supporting. Every update that is added is not one that
favors any of you and normally punishes all of you who feel they are
legit server owners/communities, worked hard to stay on the straight and
narrow, followed all the rules and didn't abuse anyone playing on your
servers intentionally. All of your hard work, time, money, effort,
stress, and anything else ends up going to waste and you are constantly
getting screwed. You can't run the maps you want to run because your
communities would die with them and when you run only the stock maps in
the most vanilla way possible and by the rules Valve has imposed to keep
the community afloat, you end up hating to play because it really isn't
even that fun at all. You're tired of 2fort, tired of badlands, tired of
dustbowl, turbine, goldrush/badwater. Tired of 20 second spawn times,
tired of having to keep on to of whether or not your server is
registered to quickplay, tired of keeping in compliance with rules and
policies that Valve clearly does not enforce and uses just as a scare
tactic. Tired of the free publicity that these maverick servers who
shouldn't be in Quickplay, that break all the rules, and abuse the
community get due to dumb things like ads, quickplay placing them on
their servers, and how little effort they actually put in to building
their servers. What about you? You didn't do that at all to the player
base yet you get no mention at all!
You're tired of all of it. Tired of each and every update putting this
game closer and closer to other games that you hate because you knew
that this game was once so much more. It offered so much without being
so restricting and the playerbase gave back to it when Valve wasn't busy
adding things to help hurt EVERYTHING you came to love about the game.
The playerbase can't distinguish between a community server and a Valve
server and they only believe that servers are either Valve or shitty
ads-ridden hovels of admin abuse and general griefing. You want
something new and fresh, something that would have normally
re-invigorated the players on your community and else where, but without
actually having to change the game from what it is to do so. But if you
attempt to go outside of the norm with this game as it is now, you gain
nothing but empty servers that you pay all kinds of money for.
What is stopping you all from just packing it all up and leaving now?
What could possibly be so important that it warrants all this unwanted
stress and expense for absolutely nothing? All the emails and
badmouthing and outrage in the world will not change Valve's decision on
anything they've done and it is quite clear that TF2 is either a testbed
for other games to benefit or a cash cow and that is all. From
everything I've read in every email chain so far, there is more than
enough evidence to support that Valve has summarily turned their backs
on you all and they could care less. "Screw you, got mine." is all you
see every time you see a new email or update or preview or "feature"
that they add to this game.
So, I ask you, why do you still bother?
On Fri, Jan 24, 2014 at 9:35 AM, E. Olsen <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
Something else to consider - this is also essentially an abandonment
of the "server scoring" system, since (by making quickplay go to
Valve servers by default), even if your server has a sky-high score
(which, in terms of player satisfaction, would mean that it is a
high-quality server), it will still be bypassed for a brand-new
valve server that may not have a score at all.
I always thought the server-scoring system was such an elegant way
to do things. Why not simply remove servers from quickplay
eligibility that receive a consistently low score after 45-60 days
or so?
On Fri, Jan 24, 2014 at 12:30 PM, ED-E <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
I agree.
While I can understand why they added this option, why enable
this by default? Reverse it as "Including Community servers" and
enable it by default. Since the way it is now, it doesnt make
any sense anymore to press the "Quickplay rules" on us.
Another thing would be to make a separate "Community Mod's"
quickplay option for custom mods which have a certain server tag
in them (like FreakFortress or Randomizer and so on).
Even though we server owners invest more time and effort than
any of the hat and map makers out there, we don't get a single
dime from Valve. All we get is rules and punishments. And I
don't even have pinion or ads in general on my server to deserve
this.
Am 24.01.2014 17:42, schrieb ics:
This is my opinion as well. Communities slowly start dying
because their regulars cannot go to a populated server to
play on when they have time to play themselves. The regulars
get things started but quickplay was nice filling of the
servers.
67/96 players now on the regular servers, and not a single
quikcplay player. All players through favorites, history or
steam. Used to be 10-20% quickplay for us.
-ics
Lucas Wagner kirjoitti:
This exactly.
In my experience, quickplay was useful for filling
servers after you had 12-14 players on it, and retaining
already full servers. Regulars are what makes your
server successful, but quickplay can help bridge gaps of
inactivity by your loyal player base. This option will
only reduce the referrals (it remains to be seen how
much) meaning that seeding efforts will require players
to stay longer and servers will be more fragile and
susceptible to depopulation. It will add volatility to a
lot of communities and I'll be watching how their
servers fare in the weeks to come.
On Fri, Jan 24, 2014 at 9:32 AM, 1nsane
<[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>
<mailto:[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>>> wrote:
Unfortunately valve doesn't really need us anymore.
They can't
monetize maps or custom game modes. Once quickplay
was added with
its preference for certain "noob friendly" maps a
number of
valve's own maps (and game modes) stopped being
played. You'd
think they would want more variety so players stick
around for
longer. Other online FPS games tend to rotate
through all their maps.
At this point the only important part of the user
generated
content for them is the item creators as they make
the money. But
this seems to be shortsighted, like you said custom
maps and
custom game modes that valve previously loved to
take and add
officially to their games will now become a rarity.
On Fri, Jan 24, 2014 at 6:17 AM, E. Olsen
<[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>
<mailto:[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>>> wrote:
Agreed.
It's one thing to make such a drastic change,
it's another to
re-route 40-50% of all TF2 traffic away from
every non-valve
server on the planet in one fell swoop. If this
change stands
as-is, there's not a single server operator on
the planet that
will be able to launch a new vanilla server (or
almost any
kind of server, for that matter), because
unless a server
already has a following, it will never be able
to build up the
momentum when less than half the player base
will even be able
to find it.
Here's the thing, folks:
It's been proven time and time again that Mods
extend the
lifetime of a game (look at what Day Z did last
year for Arma
2). The diversity of TF2 is what has kept it
going all these
years....yet a change like this actively steers
half (or more)
of the current playerbase, and probably the
vast majority of
_every_ new player AWAY from ever finding a
custom map, mod,
or game mode.
If "official valve vanilla" is all you want -
then this change
is wonderful for you (and you should have that
"option"), but
should this remain the "default" setting that
every client is
now set to, Valve has hastened along the death
of the very
game they are trying to protect.
Why would anyone even bother creating a map for
TF2 now? How
would it ever see any kind of significant traffic?
How about custom game modes? We were hosting a
"King of the
Hill" server (using custom maps made for that
game mode) for
over a year BEFORE it became an official game
mode with
official maps - think anyone will or would be
able to throw up
a new server or game mode under these conditions?
I think we all understand why Valve thinks they
had to do this
- all the "Pinion Profiteers" made them think
this was
necessary - but make no mistake, these were
problems that were
CREATED by quickplay in the first place, so in
one fell swoop,
Valve has not only created the problem, but
they have used the
same system that created it to essentially
throw out all the
"good" servers with the bad. Any non-valve
server that does
not already have a significant amount of
"regulars" will now
die on the vine....and there won't be any new
non-valve
servers going up to replace them.
It's a shame, folks. This change effectively
takes the
"community" out of TF2, and turns it into just
another random,
casual, anonymous FPS.
It's was a rarity already to have a game that
was 7+ years old
that still had new clans and communities
forming around it -
but a change like this will make it all but
impossible for any
new TF2 communities to even get started.
On Fri, Jan 24, 2014 at 4:55 AM, Emil Larsson
<[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>
<mailto:[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>>> wrote:
I wouldn't had mind the valve only server
option, but it
shouldn't be the default certainly. We're
also certainly
noticing a decrease of players now, and I
just feel
punished for playing by the rules.
On Fri, Jan 24, 2014 at 3:38 AM, Stephen A.
Yates
<[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]> <mailto:[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>>> wrote:
I am not trying to start shit… I am
just stating my
opinion. Quickplay has been killing our
servers for a
long time.
*From:*hlds-bounces@list.__valvesoftware.com
<mailto:[email protected]>
<mailto:hlds-bounces@list.__valvesoftware.com
<mailto:[email protected]>>
[mailto:hlds-bounces@list.__valvesoftware.com
<mailto:[email protected]>
<mailto:hlds-bounces@list.__valvesoftware.com
<mailto:[email protected]>>] *On
Behalf Of *Lyrai
*Sent:* Thursday, January 23, 2014 9:25 PM
*To:* Half-Life dedicated Win32 server
mailing list
*Subject:* Re: [hlds] Mandatory TF2
update released
It looks like that community's servers
were already
shutting down due to admin burnout.
Nothing related to
this in any way. Maybe just an attempt
to start shit.
On Thu, Jan 23, 2014 at 6:20 PM, Ragorism
<[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]> <mailto:[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>>> wrote:
That's why it's called an 'option',
you fucking
mongoloid.
On Thu, Jan 23, 2014 at 8:08 PM,
Stephen A. Yates
<[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]> <mailto:[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>>>
wrote:
Really?
- Add quickplay option to only
connect to
official Valve servers
We have been running Vanilla 24
player servers
since the month after the
launch of Orangebox. Valve did
not seem to
have an issue with us when we
were helping to build the TF2
community. This
should pretty much put an end
to new players finding their
way to our
servers and community.
Thanks Valve. Enjoy your cash.
We will be closing our
community down at the
end of this month.
Peace out.
-SpikerNoob
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