Before Valve started funneling all the new players to their servers, there were many community servers with vanilla settings with different maps. What you see now is the direct consequence of Valve's changes, this was not how it was.
There is a reason why the only communities left are running mods and the same few maps. It is because those are the only servers you can fill without quickplay now. No one can compete with the numerous official servers clogging up the browser list and being fed all the players from quickplay. And while "most" community servers may not be that great, there were at least 200 of them that were according to gametracker, so this isn't just a dozen servers that will get killed. This was also a complete betrayal of the players/customers who bought TF2, expecting to be able to join or run their own servers. You may not understand since you don't seem to care very much about the quality of the servers you play on, but to me, this is almost as offensive as turning a game pay-to-win after getting everyone hooked on it for a few years. I refuse to play on official servers, and knowing how much better community servers can be, I'd rather quit than downgrade. I for one will never host another Valve game after putting thousands of dollars and hours into TF2, and I will refrain from buying any games or microtransactions from them due to this. On Wed, Mar 4, 2015 at 12:48 PM, Lucas Wagner <[email protected]> wrote: > I think this thread drastically underestimates the new user. I would argue > that most new users are new to this game but not new to FPS gaming. I would > argue most understand that there are thousands of servers out there but > just don't care to sift through a list when all they want to do is connect > and play. It's a crapshoot anyway, I'm sure many of them have to connect > through quickplay several times to find a decent game. I use the server > browser to try and find good games and it's a hassle. > > Further, I think the community servers are far from great. Most run the > same 3-4 maps (2fort, dustbowl, turbine, badwater) and jack with the > settings (instant respawn, 32 player dustbowl anyone?) and then come on > here and complain that Valve is killing their communities. Sure there are > some good communities, and some good mods, but most community servers > aren't all that great and I highly doubt there is any real tragedy here. > Further I think many people underestimate the impact of the age of the game > in the declining numbers. Has anyone looked at traffic on Valve's servers? > Either way I'm not convinced the experience would be any better if all the > traffic on Valve's servers were redirected to community servers. > > That's my 2 cents, feel free to tell me I'm wrong. > > On Wed, Mar 4, 2015 at 2:12 PM, Chad Hedstrom <[email protected]> > wrote: > >> I do like that idea. >> >> Artificially "soft locking" the server browser button, and having users >> unlock it via an achievement (dominate one player, for example) gives new >> users an easy incentive and helps advertise the existence of community >> servers rather even-handidly. Since it's something you unlock, there's an >> incentive to go check out what you've unlocked, and at least try out >> connecting to a community Server. Right now there are likely many new users >> who never realize there's an option b outside of quick play. >> >> I say soft locking, as users could still connect through the console or >> steam server browser. >> >> _______________________________________________ >> 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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