"TF2 player count dropping is proof that this decision was a mistake.
The player experience was not improved by any significant amount from
this change."
Player counts havent dropped any the player experience is sinificantly
improved by not getting into servers full of ads and pay 2 win
modifications.
"It was already proved the community experience is superior to Valve
servers."
No its not.
------ Original Message ------
From: "Robert Paulson" <thepauls...@gmail.com>
To: "Half-Life dedicated Win32 server mailing list"
<hlds@list.valvesoftware.com>
Sent: 26-2-2014 22:27:57
Subject: Re: [hlds] Petitioning Valve TF2 Development
How are we responsible for communities like bets.tf using redirect
exploits? We do not have any influence over these people. Valve is
punishing the majority of us who did nothing wrong.
TF2 player count dropping is proof that this decision was a mistake.
The player experience was not improved by any significant amount from
this change.
It was already proved the community experience is superior to Valve
servers. There wasn't an official server in the top 200 before this
change and now look at gametracker. It is now dominated by official
servers because they get all the new players. If there were 32 slot
official servers they would also be in the top 20.
http://www.gametracker.com/search/tf2/?query=srcds&searchipp=50.
There was another situation like this long before quickplay where
community servers were put in a custom tab. Thankfully someone at Valve
came to their senses and removed it. I hope there is someone still
working on TF2 with the good sense to remove official servers by
default as well.
On Wed, Feb 26, 2014 at 9:52 AM, Silencio Delgato
<silenciodelg...@gmail.com> wrote:
I think there is more to the Quickplay issue than just whether or not
QP should default to Valve servers or not. QP itself has caused a lot
of issues and became the center of controversy ever since it came out
in 2011. Though some of the changes that have been added recently are
a step in the right direction, there are still many issues with this
functionality that need to be addressed and improved upon.
I'm all for wanting change to this functionality for the better to
benefit everyone involved, but this petition (and please take no
offense) seems a bit too short and vague to actually get the kind of
change needed to make Quickplay a beneficial, reasonable, and
extensible system for server ops and the community at large. It does
not address many of the issues that have ended up creating this
current situation we are all in and does not have a list of concerns
or changes or anything that could be specifically addressed, it only
has a demand and presents a solution that is based on an idea that we
as server owners deserve players in our servers, which is the wrong
way to go about this. And lets not forget the players, we have to be
fair to them as well, regardless of whether or not they will be placed
in our servers. We have to show that, as a community, we are worthy of
their presence and a worthwhile experience to take the time to be a
part of, not the other way around. These days, we seem more like
enemies to players than friends/fellow players, given these
recent/past developments regarding the community servers.
We also have to accept that, while Valve relied on us in the past to
put up servers for this game, they have the ability to put up their
own now. However, if they wanted to cut us out entirely, they would
have done it back in 2011 when Quickplay became a thing. But they
allowed us (and still allow us) to use the functionality, giving us
every opportunity to prove that we could use it responsibly and in the
best interest of the player. Clearly, there were a few who could not
do that and thus we were all punished. While, in my opinion, Quickplay
was not entirely thought all the way through and I know I and many
others have their own opinions about this subject, it does not account
for the fact that we as a community were unable, and perhaps
unwilling, to police ourselves well enough to ensure we used this
functionality responsibly to avoid Valve stepping in and taking the
measures it has. Arguably, that isn't our job to police other
communities/servers, it never has been, and its not Valve's job
either. But someone had to do this in order to put an end to the
misuse, which is a sad thing indeed because it should not have come to
that.
We could go back and forth on who started what and why and all that
all day, but bottom line, we are just as much at fault as Valve is for
these recent developments that have hurt many community servers.
However, what is done is done and we have to move forward now. It is
time to stop playing the victim and start attempts in trying to get
some meaningful, and dare I say diplomatic, dialogue open between
ourselves and Valve for meaningful change, not band-aid solutions and
option switching that works in the short term. Community servers are
important for this game, they always have been for good number of
reasons and they should be treated that way. However, we cannot rely
on that reasoning alone to get anything done. We have to prove that
the community experience is worth having/supporting, now more than
ever before. The burden is on us and we need to work for it again and
prove we are ready for the responsibility of owning a server that has
players connecting to it utilizing functionality like Quickplay, but
not just to Valve, but to the players that play with us on our servers
as well. Respect and trust are earned, not given freely, and I don't
see anything we have done in recent years to earn that respect/trust
from anyone.
Sorry if this was too long/came off as offense or rude, I did not mean
it to be. I just felt I had to add my 2 cents.
On Wed, Feb 26, 2014 at 4:34 AM, Anthony <anth...@kinevonetwork.com>
wrote:
Anyone who believes that petitioning for the default to be community
servers is relying on quickplay traffic far too heavily or using it
to i.e Play Ads. Remember with a good community you won't need
quickplay for the majority of my traffic they actually find the
server themselves via the steam browser from the data I collected. A
few even favorite it afterwards which with the new remember IP (Steam
Account) they will always know where it is.
The point of community servers is to build a community, sure you can
use quickplay but it is a tool not a way of knowing members. A high
majority will go to valve servers but in recent days I've seen others
talk about 'going to prophunt or dodgeball. In their own Free will.
The change to QP was only positive sure there should be some tweaks
but that's for another topic.
On 26/02/2014 12:09, Robert Paulson wrote:
> This far from the worst suggestion I've seen. Perhaps aim for a
seemless solution where by "community servers" wasn't even a choice
during the first few hours of gameplay, becomes a choice later, then
becomes the default after it has been selected a couple of times.
I don't like this modification to my idea. The point of it was to
overcome the huge inertia to simply click play now. They need to be
automatically switched to community servers.
It is supposed to be a compromise which guarantees players the
ability to learn what plain tf2 is supposed to be without completely
screwing over communities like what's happening now.
On Wed, Feb 26, 2014 at 2:30 AM, John Irwin <j...@thepodkast.com>
wrote:
>> It would be a more realistic solution to switch quickplay
settings to community servers after 3-4 hours of playing time.
This far from the worst suggestion I've seen. Perhaps aim for a
seemless solution where by "community servers" wasn't even a choice
during the first few hours of gameplay, becomes a choice later,
then becomes the default after it has been selected a couple of
times.
I'm not sure a petition is the right way to go though. Particularly
one that invites reddit to participate. Valve reads these email
strings. A good message makes itself heard.
John
On 26 Feb 2014 08:12, "Robert Paulson" <thepauls...@gmail.com>
wrote:
It is not possible unless you did something like switching from
fast to instant respawn. In that case we went from 10 to a
whopping 30 quickplay connects per day which is hardly worth being
pleased about. Official servers are still taking the vast majority
of new players who are never exposed to community servers.
For those of you who weren't on quickplay this is also bad news
for you. Everyone relies on new players since old players quit all
the time. Fewer players become aware of community servers because
it is too easy to just click play now.
If you have a top server you will see more players for now, but
these are mostly older players fleeing killed servers who will not
be playing forever. The new equilibrium hasn't been reached yet
and we will see more servers die as long as Valve continues this.
Unfortunately this will be a slow decline with many server owners
not realizing they are a few months away from dying as well.
I am all for trying a petition but people will not associate with
someone who has such a bad reputation. The solution being offered,
"provide an option to choose either Valve only servers or
Community servers on every quickplay connect" would annoy
everyone. It would be a more realistic solution to switch
quickplay settings to community servers after 3-4 hours of playing
time.
On Tue, Feb 25, 2014 at 10:28 PM, Peter Jerde
<peter-h...@jerde.net> wrote:
I don't know about you, but our quickplay traffic has more than
TRIPLED since the changes. Seems to have been quite a positive
change.
- Peter
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