I'm not sure how your got that from what I posted - but that's neither here nor there.
At any rate, it's naive to think simply "playing on your server regularly" will help grow a community and/or a server in the current environment. I've been hosting TF2 since 2008, and I've never seen an environment more hostile towards launching and growing new TF2 servers as it is today. In fact, I doubt I would even try it in the current environment. I still have half a dozen servers that fill up everyday, but about 10 hours later in the day than they used to just a couple of years ago. Even worse - the servers that used to hold a mix of stock and custom maps (CTF, CP, etc.) have all fallen by the wayside. From 5 custom map servers that spent 5+ years full to the rafters down to 1....with the drop in player traffic directly attributable to the mis-guided changes in quickplay, and the re-design of the UI that emphasizes its use. I'd like to think that after hosting over 2 million TF2 players, I know a bit about hosting servers now, and I can tell you with utmost confidence that it's an absolute fallacy to suggest things like "if your servers are good, and you and your friends play on them everyday, they'll fill up and grow". That's just NOT the case at the current time. When the very user interface has been designed to drive the overwhelming vast majority of new players (probably somewhere around 80% now) away from community servers. Regardless, the point I was trying to make (apparently poorly) was that server operators need *something *from Valve to help them fill their servers. It's not an unreasonable or "entitled" thing to ask for (keeping in mind that it is free infrastructure and support for a game) for a group of people who are (for the most part) adding value to the game by increasing both diversity and long-term player retention. Heck - if you look back through the archives of this very mailing list (which is pretty interesting reading) you'll see that when quickplay was first launched, it was "sold" to concerned server operators as a good thing that would help us fill our servers everyday. When server operators shared their concerns about it, Valve was very upbeat about how great it was going to be for all of us. The sad thing is, the very issues that server operators expressed the biggest concerns about (quickplay driving players away from custom maps/game modes/servers, increasing the lack of diversity, marginalizing and killing off all but the top handful of popular maps)....the same concerns Valve said were overblown and weren't going to happen....did. On Tue, Oct 13, 2015 at 3:28 PM, Cats From Above <[email protected]> wrote: > I never thought I'd see the day where E. Olsen, someone who I've long > considered to be a well informed contributor to discussions like these, the > day where he would stand up and essentially say, "Using a text-client to > fake a player on a server? No problem! Good server operators *need *some > kind of help!" - What irrational, ill-informed tripe...and if he wasn't > referring to the use of the text-client in a seeding context, then I fail > to see how the comment regarding server seeding was relevant to the current > topic matter. > > If you want to start a community, get your friends together and start > playing on your own server regularly. That's how good communities are > created, none of this "use a text-client to attract unsuspecting flies" > nonsense. > > On Wed, Oct 14, 2015 at 5:38 AM, E. Olsen <[email protected]> wrote: > >> Server-seeding has been around as long as community-hosted servers has >> (all the way back to the original Counter Strike and even Battlefield 2). >> Like it or not, players rarely if ever join empty servers, and with the >> deck stacked so staggeringly high in Valve's favor in terms of player >> traffic, server operators who obey the rules need some kind of help to get >> those servers going. >> >> Let's face it - if ALL servers were treated fairly and equally again, >> this wouldn't even be an issue. When the road to your organization is >> bypassed by an expressway, and the builders of that expressway have >> literally hidden the off ramp for people to get to you, then I don't care >> how good you are or how popular you were, your organization is going to >> suffer immensely. >> >> I think the real issue here is how difficult is has become to start >> and/or grow a community "organically". >> >> Regardless of how you feel about ad-based servers (full disclosure, I'm >> opposed to them), there is no doubt that the harder Valve makes it for >> communities trying to grow organically, the more they end up strangling off >> the very diversity they claim to want to encourage. >> >> Think about it - communities used to grow one or two servers at a time as >> their membership grew. Now, the vast majority of "communities" (and I use >> that word extremely loosely) only offer a handful of stock maps. However, >> as opposed to building a server fleet that grows one server at a time with >> the community, they take the top 5-6 maps, plaster ads all over them, and >> throw up as many servers as they possibly can. That's not building a >> community to serve the players, that's building an ad-farm to maximize >> ad-impressions. >> >> ...and therein lies the problem. The current approach has marginalized >> the communities that want to offer diversity beyond a handful of stock >> maps, and encouraged massive fleets of "me too" stock servers with little >> to no interest in adding value to the experience, but with an eye towards >> maximizing player connections. >> >> The lack of a text-mode doesn't really trouble me. It's the absolute and >> seemingly insurmountable sense of apathy from the TF2 team towards >> community servers that does. >> >> If these guys would just talk to us again and tell us what community >> servers need to do as a whole to get some equitable treatment again, it >> would be better for everyone and anyone that cares about TF2. >> >> All I really want is for players to be better informed about all the >> diversity community servers bring to the game. >> > > _______________________________________________ > 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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