Amen.
From: [email protected]
[mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Matthias
"InstantMuffin" Kollek
Sent: Sunday, July 05, 2015 8:31 PM
To: Half-Life dedicated Win32 server mailing list
Subject: Re: [hlds] Optional TF2 update released
I don't know if the last paragraph is meant sarcastically, but ads are a huge
problem on community servers. Feel free to write a script that connects to all
tf2 servers and keep the speakers on.
Yes, motds can be turned off client-side. But please don't expect the average
joe to be able to do anything else other than maybe setting his display
resolution.
In the good old days younger people would just gather a few friends, create a
clan and throw together part of their allowance to rent a gameserver. Later on
they would actually survive on donations. Hosting was driven by passion.
Nowadays every person that can barely even write and their mother wants to run
a server and pay nothing for it. And use ads and whatnot to earn money from the
servers. Sorry, it never worked that way.
Solution is fairly simple. Have a strict report system to remove servers from
the list. Yes, for gods sake, it won't remove every single shit server there
is, but it's a decent first step. Evaluate, and go from there. It's not like
Valve wouldn't spit in server-ops' faces. The issue is they don't pick the
right ones.
Luckily, I can't say much about the pinion-official-server debate, we were
quite unaffected in the EU. I must say however, the pinion people on spuf get a
lot of respect from me. A lot of people shit on them for the right reasons, and
they keep it together. I couldn't do that, god only knows.
On 05.07.2015 19:59, Alexander Corn wrote:
Are we just ignoring the fact that for a long time, Pinion hosted many of the
CS:GO official matchmaking servers, which had terrible performance issues (like
Valve servers now!) *and* ran MOTD ads? It's okay for Valve, a
multi-billion-dollar corporation to do it, but not average Joe trying to make
some money back on what already isn't a negligible expense?
But I digress. Ads really aren't a problem anymore in TF2 and if players still
have that delusion, then there's really nothing that can be done about it. Best
to just flip the switch back to all servers by default (and reset Valve's
quickplay scores, they're very artificially inflated now).
On Sun, Jul 5, 2015 at 10:29 AM, E. Olsen <[email protected]> wrote:
Agreed.
Donation-driven communities were how servers were operated for years (and how
many still do). To suggest that there has been some kind of fundamental shift
in the game's demographic that would prevent that model from working now is
simply not true.
In fact, those very same people who were willing to support a server community
in the first years of TF2 existence now have even more disposable income should
they wish to do so.
The difference between the two funding models is that as opposed to those MOTD
ads, a server community that is supported through donations has to provide
enough actual value to players that they CHOOSE to support that
community/server. MOTD ads simply monetize anyone that connects, without
providing any additional value (and in so many cases, because the system is so
open to abuse, the servers are/were barely suitable for running TF2 at all in
terms of performance).
There seems to be a misconception here, though. I'm certainly not saying that
all servers/communities that run those ads are "bad". Far from it. Nor am I
saying that those who use them are somehow doing so in a malicious or
underhanded manner.
However, I AM saying that when something that has been allowed to be used on
community servers sullies the general reputation of those very servers so much
that we actually have players that resist the slightest change that would give
community servers a little more exposure, then perhaps it is time to start the
conversation about whether it is in the best interest of community servers
operators as a whole to continue to allow those ads to function.
Frankly, if we have choose between restoring and rebuilding player confidence
in the quality of community servers, or allowing those ads to run until there
are no players left willing to set foot on a community server, the answer would
seem to be an easy one.
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