Yes, having a reporting system that removed servers from the
list definitely isn't something that would be abused more than
MOTD advertisements. That pub community with 5-10k members surely
couldn't wipe out their entire up and coming competition, ya
know, those who are trying to grow their community organically
without simple advertisements that can be muted, disabled, or
clicked through...
On Sun, Jul 5, 2015 at 2:31 PM, Matthias "InstantMuffin" Kollek
<[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
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] <mailto:[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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