If you've found server violating the policy, by all means report them to Valve, but I don't think conducting a public "witch hunt" on the mailing list is a good idea. All I've seen in the past is quite a few false accusations, etc. Hell, I remember a couple of years back someone getting our servers added to a reddit-based blacklist of servers that used Pinion advertising - even though we've NEVER used any advertising on our servers. It took a dozen people actually standing up and saying "uh, these guys don't use pinion" before they removed us.
Honestly - I doubt even those people violating the policy are getting much in the way of quickplay traffic anyway. I only have less than half of our servers quickplay-enabled anymore, and those have sat empty since about a month after the change last year. When you think about it, what really needs to be addressed is the reasons people feel they need to violate that policy. Considering that you never heard of server owners "hiding" their server settings until Valve bifurcated the TF2's traffic by saying "you'll only get access to the main source of traffic if you make your server identical to every other vanilla server". Should those folks be thrown out of quickplay for breaking the rules? Sure thing....but perhaps it's the rules themselves (and the way they are implemented to remove/stifle any and all diversity) that need to be changed, as does the implementation of quickplay itself. Take, for instance, the rules against class limits. Why is that still listed in the policy when valve now allows class limit votes? If a class limit vote passes on a quickplay-enabled server, are we now in violation - even though it's part of the engine itself? How about another scenario: Let's say an operator wants to run his servers plain-jane, 24-slot vanilla during the slow hours of the day to help during daytime traffic, but at night during prime time manually changes their settings to 32-slot, fast respawn servers. He's not hiding anything - all the appropriate sv_tags get set - but during prime time the extra slots are needed for our supporters. Is he now in violation of the policy because he's changed his settings? Of course not - but I'm sure some folks would perceive it that way. ....and therein lies the problem. When valve decided that an automated system for throwing players into a random server was superior to a player choosing a server on their own from the server browser, they caused more problems than they solved. If there are folks out there breaking those rules - I'm sure Valve will catch them, but frankly, If every single one of them were thrown out of quickplay, it wouldn't help any other community operators one bit....and will probably just hasten the demise of community servers all together. On Wed, Feb 11, 2015 at 3:28 PM, Lucas Wagner <[email protected]> wrote: > I think the policy either needs to be enforced, or abandoned completely. > In the current state the policy only affects those server operators that > have the honor to follow it. This is not news to anyone, but it is a bit > disconcerting to read a policy, understand its meaning, follow it, and then > watch as others violate it without consequence. Sure I can sleep at night > knowing I did right by Valve but that doesn't keep my servers filled. > > > On Wed, Feb 11, 2015 at 10:52 AM, N-Gon <[email protected]> wrote: > >> Sounds like a great title for a SFM short :) >> >> Last year Valve shook up the TF2 community by changing many of their >> policies on Quickplay (Plenty of which is still being debated and I don't >> want that talk in this thread, there's already numerous others for that; >> Thanks), they also took the extra step and punished servers who broke their >> Policy of Truth. Plenty of communities, both big and small, crumbled and >> vanished that day to the rejoice of many of you. But now I fear the time >> has come again to snitch. >> Since Valve has made their Quickplay changes many communities have >> started to cheat the system to get more traffic. >> I've been Quickplay'd into servers that have donor effects, that kick me >> out for reserve slots, that have silly class limitations, that don't have >> their Respawn modifiers tagged. This is really annoying especially when I'm >> just trying to find a Vanilla server. >> If you know of servers, report them. If need be, spread their names on >> here so other folks on HLDS can go see for themselves, verify they are >> abusing Quickplay, and report them as well. >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> 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: > https://list.valvesoftware.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/hlds > >
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