I think the spirit of the "Kicking players to make room for reserved
slots" item is really about treating Quickplay players with respect.
i.e. don't treat Quickplay players simply as seat warmers until your
regulars/donors/admins feel like joining into a full server populated
because of Quickplay.
From an enforcement POV there are obviously ways around many of the
Quickplay disqualification modifications. For this one it would be
pretty easy to tell by simply looking at the relevant groups' donor perks.
Of course some groups may attempt to subvert the system by secretly have
such a feature but not advertise it but that's a reasonable outcome - if
it makes it harder for server owners to do undesirable things (such as
selling reserved slots) that's still a win.
On 6/02/2014 5:20 PM, Andreas Grimm wrote:
..." Kicking players to make room for reserved slots"
How does this check work?
What happens, when an admin kicks a player for flaming and that player
reports the server with "they kicked me to make room for reserved slots"?
Same with plugins like anti cheat - Our anti cheat system stores
dectected cheaters in a database and it kicks the players when they
connect to a server of our network or when they use cheats while
playing. Usually we also send a kick message like "you are banned for
using cheats bla bla", but a kicked player could easily say "they make
room for reserved slots"
- Andreas
*From:*[email protected]
[mailto:[email protected]] *On Behalf Of *Fletcher Dunn
*Sent:* Thursday, February 06, 2014 12:52 AM
*To:* Half-Life dedicated Win32 server mailing list
([email protected]); Half-Life dedicated Linux server mailing
list ([email protected]);
[email protected]
*Subject:* [hlds] Important changes to TF2 coming soon
There are some changes coming that TF2 server operators should know about.
CHANGES TO QUICKPLAY
-------------------------------
The next TF2 update will make two changes to quickplay:
* "Show servers" button. This runs the ordinary quickplay search, but
instead of joining the server with the highest score, it presents the
user with an ordered list of about 20 servers and lets them pick. This
gives players much of the convenience of quickplay by finding servers
with a good ping and players on them, but also an easy way to express a
preference over the map, server community, etc.
* We’ve added an advanced options page that allows players to opt into
the most commonly-requested non-vanilla rules changes: nocrits,
maxplayers, and instant respawn.
There are no more scoring penalties for maxplayers or rule changes; your
server either matches their search criteria or it doesn’t.
At this time, we are keeping the default quickplay option to Valve
servers. However, note that if a player wants to find a server with any
of the supported modifications, then they must land on a community
server, since Valve servers do not run with these settings.
We’ve updated the quickplay policy to more clearly specify what sorts of
server modifications are allowed in quickplay:
https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=2825-AFGJ-3513
STEAM GAMESERVER ACCOUNTS
-----------------------------------------
Gameserver accounts are now a Steam feature. The feature is currently
in beta.
Using a steam gameserver account provides one important advantage right
now: client favorite lists are keyed by the Steam account if present.
This means that you can move your server to another IP address, and
clients who have your server in their favorites or history will follow
you to your new location.
CREATING AN ACCOUNT:
Creating an account is currently only possible via WebAPI. (Remember,
this feature is currently in beta. We’ll add a nicer interface for this
soon.) Make a HTTPS POST request to the following URL:
https://api.steampowered.com/IGameServersService/CreateAccount/v0001/
The POST arguments should be:
appid=440 (for Team Fortress)
key=<your WebAPIKey>
<your WebAPIKey> is the WebAPI key associated with the user account that
will own the server accounts. See http://steamcommunity.com/dev for how
to get one of these. (WARNING: Make sure and keep this key secret.
This key is an authentication token in some respects and makes it
possible to do certain actions on your behalf. Don’t feed the key into
anybody’s nice convenient web page that automates this. With your
WebAPI key they could impersonate you for some actions. If you don’t
want to go through the pain of making a WebAPI call, just wait until we
have a nicer interface implemented.)
The output of the WebAPI will be the (permanent) SteamID of your
gameserver, and a login token. The login token is a random string of
text that allows you to actually login to your account.
You can view a list of the servers owned by a user account by making a
HTTPS GET call to:
https://api.steampowered.com/IGameServersService/GetAccountList/v0001/?key=<yourkey
<https://api.steampowered.com/IGameServersService/GetAccountList/v0001/?key=%3cyourkey>>
LOGGING IN TO YOUR ACCOUNT (TF only for now):
Once you have a gameserver login token, you can specify your login
credentials on a Source engine server by executing this console command
sometime before it loads the first map:
sv_setsteamaccount <login token>
The server output should make it clear when you are using a Steam
gameserver account and when you are logging in anonymously. (The
ordinary gameserver login that has always been used.)
Remember, for now you will need to login to both your Steam gameserver
account and also your TF account. The two accounts are not related.
The TF account is the one that determines quickplay eligibility, and the
Steam one does favorites migration. Eventually we will remove the TF
accounts and only use Steam gameserver accounts.
HOW FAVORITES MIGRATION WORKS:
In the next few days we will release an updated Steam Client beta that
knows how to migrate favorites. On the client, each favorite has an
IP:port and a gameserver account. The account might be empty --- that
will of course be the case for all previously existing favorites.
Periodically, a client will try to sync up the favorites list IP:port
addresses and accounts. If there is an IP:port without an associated
account, it will ask the master server for information about that
address. If a server is running on that address and logged into an
account, the client will record the account. Once the client has an
account associated with the favorite, the account becomes the primary
key and will not change. Instead, we will periodically try to refresh
the address from the account. (Again, this is done by querying the
master server, and it depends on your server bring logged into the
account and running on the address.) The client always caches the last
known IP:port of a favorite, even though the account ID is the main
“key". That way, if Steam is down, or the gameserver is down, it will
used the cached IP:port. All of the above applies to history as well as
favorites.
In the future, when a client adds a favorite or history item, the
account will be recorded immediately.
If you know you have many clients that have your server in their
favorites or history, then you should not move your server yet. You
need to give clients time to logon with new Steam client binaries and
get their favorite entry linked up with your account. We'll let you
know when you can try out migrating favorites, as well as when the
feature is active in the public client and all users have it.
QUESTIONS?
Since Steam gameservers are a Steam feature, all of the above will apply
to all Steam games. (Provided that the game exposes a method for the
gameserver to log in to an account.) Eventually, the TF2 gameserver
accounts will be going away and replaced with these accounts. For now,
they are separate.
Any further questions about the quickplay changes or gameserver
accounts? Please direct them to this list so that all answers will be
public.
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