I honestly don't see the need or the wisdom of having two separate
pools of servers. Those of us that have been around the longest saw
the disaster that adding a "custom" tab to the server browser was
several years ago (of course, back then, then team was much more
responsive to feedback and took that tab out again).
The whole thing can be as simplified as possible. Valve need do only
two things:
1. After a new player had a minimum of time in the game, change the
quickplay default setting from "official only" to "everything".
2. Alter the player's client blacklisting system to work across the
board with both quickplay and the server browser.
Those two things would fix everything that's broke, plain and simple.
Those players that only want to play Vanilla TF2 can change those
settings in quickplay. Players that encounter servers they don't like
can blacklist them forever.
I firmly believe it's really that simple. Adding anything overly
complex like "server ratings" or any other changes would be overly
complex and open to abuse.
As far as re-invigorating the game, I also think Valve needs to do the
following:
- Completely overhaul the Hammer Map editor (with the power of today's
PC's, the map editor should literally be a full-screen drag and drop
interface that ANYONE should be able to use to create a map without
knowing a single thing about entities, area portals, compiling, etc. -
the editor should handle all the heavy lifting in the background).
- Hold quarterly mapping & modding contests with REAL rewards for the
content creators who win. (that would jump-start the mapping scene again).
- Build new and innovative tools to encourage community integration
with the game (to assist us in building new kinds of community
leaderboards,etc.)
On Tue, Feb 10, 2015 at 9:59 AM, Cats From Above
<[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
@Supreet: I'm no help? Well that's quite interesting, because the
last time I checked I wasn't the one being shat on and told to
shut his mouth every time he opened it on this mailing list. Your
earlier suggestion that saturating the Quickplay pool with
heavily-modded servers was the answer to what ails some
communities was nothing but the height of intellectual bankruptcy.
Contrary to your apparent belief, I am not some two-bit kid
involved in a Quickplay dependent community. My interest in this
topic is purely out of benevolence for the other operators out
there who have been affected, on one level or another, by the
actions of a minority of misbehaving communities. Interacting with
charming folk like yourself is merely a bonus on top of that
original purpose. By the way, your community's website is offline.
Might want to deal with that instead of pissing around on this
mailing list, eh?
To the other people on this mailing list. Has anyone considered
the possibility of getting the lines of distinction between
servers redrawn? That being, rather then dichotomising servers
into "Official" and "Community" classifications for Quickplay
purposes, why not investigate the plausibility of having Valve
change that to "Vanilla" and "Modded" classifications instead.
What would you need to do to be eligible for the Vanilla pool?
Simple, don't have *any* addons loaded on your server. This can be
easily enforced on a technical level. The ability to late load
source addons would also be removed under this scheme. I feel that
this is the only proposition which Valve might give serious
consideration to. The previous idea of "Why don't Valve have
people start out in official servers and then have them prompted
to try community servers" does nothing to address the cancerous
minority within the secondary Quickplay pool, hence I can't see
Valve ever trying to steer players into it. Getting completely
vanilla servers out of the secondary pool is possible however.
I realise that my proposal means losing Sourcemod and Metamod *if*
you wanted to be classified as a "Vanilla" server for Quickplay
purposes...but this is the art of viable compromise. Certain
functionality (Such as Global banning, map changing for Moderators
etc) could be preserved for "Vanilla" servers via a log-feed
driven system parsed by a daemon that feeds back the appropriate
RCON commands to server(s). There are things that could not be
replaced in this manner, such as reserved slots and the like, but
I strongly suspect that most communities would be willing to forgo
those luxuries if it meant securing a more stable flow of new life
for their community's servers.
I would also like to see Valve make cl_disablehtmlmotd a protected
client variable. Too many communities have abused the ability to
query this variable as a means of treating players with HTML MOTDs
disabled (And thus services like Pinion etc) as second class
citizens. I believe Valve would agree that it needs to stop and
that such was arguably one of the things that made the rise of
Pinion an annoyance for some players.
Thoughts?
On Tue, Feb 10, 2015 at 10:39 PM, Supreet Sahni
<[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
I am speaking for myself that's why I feel no need to bicker
in threads like these every few weeks. Just providing
suggestions to help out the kids who need help.
Quickplay or no quickplay, my servers were not affected by
this because its the way you run your servers and things you
do for your community and people will stay. If you were nice,
I would've given you some pointers ;)
Apparently, a very low level of intellect I guess. There's too
many emotional teenager kids on the mailing list these days.
You are no help my dear friend.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: [email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>
Sent: 2/10/2015 2:27 AM
To: [email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>
Subject: hlds Digest, Vol 46, Issue 25
Send hlds mailing list submissions to
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Today's Topics:
1. Re: Rethinking the community quickplay ban (Alexander Corn)
2. Re: Rethinking the community quickplay ban (Cats FromAbove)
3. Re: Rethinking the community quickplay ban (kletch1333 .)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Message: 1
Date: Mon, 9 Feb 2015 23:44:53 -0500
From: "Alexander Corn" <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>>
To: "'Half-Life dedicated Win32 server mailing list'"
<[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>>
Subject: Re: [hlds] Rethinking the community quickplay ban
Message-ID: <[email protected]
<http://doctormckay.com>>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
I?ve reached the point where I no longer lose sleep over this.
At this point I don?t expect any growth of TF2. All I care
about anymore is trying to keep my the people in my community
around as long as they still care about TF2. Trying to
convince Valve of anything is a waste of time for me. I?d have
better luck arguing with a brick wall.
Valve is dead. TF2 is dying. All I care about anymore is
logging on from time to time to play some Dustbowl or payload
or something. I liked trading for a while but even that is
tedious and boring now that I have to alt-tab out of the game
to check my email every time I want to swap a weapon.
Valve used to make intelligent decisions. I don?t know what
happened, but that company is no more. And it?s a damn shame.
Alexander Corn
?Dr. McKay?
<http://www.doctormckay.com> http://www.doctormckay.com
From: [email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>
[mailto:[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>] On Behalf Of
Andreas Willinger
Sent: Monday, February 9, 2015 1:39 PM
To: 'Half-Life dedicated Win32 server mailing list'
Subject: Re: [hlds] Rethinking the community quickplay ban
So, we will let this thread die again?
Great Valve, really great, you used to be a nice company.
Von: [email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>
[mailto:[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>] Im Auftrag von
Tim Anderson
Gesendet: Donnerstag, 05. Februar 2015 22:12
An: [email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>;
[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>
Betreff: [hlds] Rethinking the community quickplay ban
To the TF2 team,
It has now been over a year since the decision to essentially
ban community servers from quickplay by defaulting to official
ones. Here are some facts of what has happened since then.
- Player gain dropped 4% from the year before.
- UGC highlander teams dropped 17%
- Highly reduced map variety from community servers.
- Even top non-quickplay servers have drastically fewer
players than in 2013.
You may have guaranteed new players a vanilla experience, but
this is ruining the experience for the rest.
Maybe nothing is being done because you do not see enough
complaints about this from reddit or spuf. This is because the
problem is obvious when someone connects to a pay to win
server while it is not as obvious when a server is dying over
the span of several months because official ones are getting
all the new players.
Most of the people that I talked to even knew about this
change so the thought about complaining about it never crossed
their minds. But just because they never knew about it doesn't
mean it wasn't a problem.
I hope you realize that this change is doing more harm than
good. It may have stopped some complaints but this is hurting
TF2 in the long run.
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Message: 2
Date: Tue, 10 Feb 2015 15:19:32 +1030
From: Cats FromAbove <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>>
To: [email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>
Subject: Re: [hlds] Rethinking the community quickplay ban
Message-ID:
<calvbbdvdsgu4ceqrcu7p2cu+057f-8iugovjbsh5g-gk-tx...@mail.gmail.com
<mailto:calvbbdvdsgu4ceqrcu7p2cu%[email protected]>>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
Speak for yourself Supreet. I think most would agree that your
adversarial
stance on this matter is profoundly unhelpful for both
yourself and other
members of this mailiing list. I also wonder what level of
intellect would
be required to come to the conclusion that being relegated to
the server
browser entirely is somehow an improvement to the present
situation. Far
beyond my comprehension for sure.
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Message: 3
Date: Tue, 10 Feb 2015 20:26:32 +1100
From: "kletch1333 ." <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>>
To: Half-Life dedicated Win32 server mailing list
<[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>>
Subject: Re: [hlds] Rethinking the community quickplay ban
Message-ID:
<cacuk6c_qybqpt94zguc2iadkcodngtxvs2afgsuzsxrlte8...@mail.gmail.com
<mailto:cacuk6c_qybqpt94zguc2iadkcodngtxvs2afgsuzsxrlte8...@mail.gmail.com>>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
Hmmm?
[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>
On Tue, Feb 10, 2015 at 6:39 AM, Ahmed Kandeel
<[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>>
wrote:
> In fact I have an idea that is even better than a petition
if anyone would
> like to hear it. But I'd rather keep it out of the mailing list.
>
> On 9 February 2015 at 19:35, Ahmed Kandeel
<[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>>
> wrote:
>
>> To be honest, I doubt any of us are going to get responses.
I myself as
>> have others have tried to bring this to the community's
attention via
>> Reddit. While support has been there, it has been too weak
to bring about
>> any major action.
>>
>> People who post about this on the new steam based forums
for TF2 usually
>> get shot down by certain players who love the change,
merely because they
>> worship Valve.
>>
>> My community is in limbo at the moment since we were never
big enough to
>> weather this storm. I am waiting for KF2 to change our
fortunes.
>>
>> I'm quite sure hosting CS:GO would suffer the same fate and
L4D never
>> seemed popular enough or team/community based enough to
actually garner
>> enough new members.
>>
>> While I don't myself want to let this die, I feel we need a
change of
>> direction. It would be better to start some form of
petition and deliver it
>> to Valve rather than get upset over the mailing list.
>>
>> On 9 February 2015 at 18:38, Andreas Willinger
<[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
>>
>>> So, we will let this thread die again?
>>>
>>> Great Valve, really great, you used to be a nice company.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> *Von:* [email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]> [mailto:
>>> [email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>] *Im Auftrag von
*Tim Anderson
>>> *Gesendet:* Donnerstag, 05. Februar 2015 22:12
>>> *An:* [email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>;
[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>
>>> *Betreff:* [hlds] Rethinking the community quickplay ban
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> To the TF2 team,
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> It has now been over a year since the decision to
essentially ban
>>> community servers from quickplay by defaulting to official
ones. Here are
>>> some facts of what has happened since then.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> - Player gain dropped 4% from the year before.
>>>
>>> - UGC highlander teams dropped 17%
>>>
>>> - Highly reduced map variety from community servers.
>>>
>>> - Even top non-quickplay servers have drastically fewer
players than in
>>> 2013.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> You may have guaranteed new players a vanilla experience,
but this is
>>> ruining the experience for the rest.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Maybe nothing is being done because you do not see enough
complaints
>>> about this from reddit or spuf. This is because the
problem is obvious when
>>> someone connects to a pay to win server while it is not as
obvious when a
>>> server is dying over the span of several months because
official ones are
>>> getting all the new players.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Most of the people that I talked to even knew about this
change so the
>>> thought about complaining about it never crossed their
minds. But just
>>> because they never knew about it doesn't mean it wasn't a
problem.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> I hope you realize that this change is doing more harm
than good. It may
>>> have stopped some complaints but this is hurting TF2 in
the long run.
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> To unsubscribe, edit your list preferences, or view the
list archives,
>>> please visit:
>>> https://list.valvesoftware.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/hlds
>>>
>>>
>>
>
> _______________________________________________
> To unsubscribe, edit your list preferences, or view the list
archives,
> please visit:
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>
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