>Not possible, nor reasonable to expect. There will always be bad actors.. Would it be reasonable to expect there to never be a hacker or cheater on a Valve server? If there were, should they ban everyone on the server, or maybe just the people playing that class?
My point was that to do actual testing of the opt-out for community servers, it would need to be without cheating and as you pointed out, that is not reasonable to do. So that is why it can't be done. >The reasonable, equitable, and fair response is to create/implement systems that deal with them. Punishing the good with the bad is not only bad policy, it is self-limiting, as eventually they would end up with nothing but official servers left. This was tried. It didn't work and turned into an arms race. I don't know about you, but personally, I would rather code the game then try to fight off the cheaters. >If you take a look at that, all it really does is display more choices for the player, while keeping the same functionality (i.e. number of clicks) for those folks that want to maintain the status quo. what would be the downside to that? I think we can agree that there are bad community servers out there. Those that run Pinion for example. We can agree on that. Right? So a new player comes on and looks at the interface you sent. Let's presume that there is a community server running Pinion right down the block, so it has the best ping. If that new player hits "Any" or "Community" and connects to that server, has a horrible experience (Let's say it's running Saxon Hale. Hardly a standard game) and says, "Screw this" and doesn't play anymore. "Ah.." but I can hear you say. "It says (once unlocked)". That presents it's own issues which I will address below once we clear this first part up. Most of the games enjoyment is in the first 10 mins. of playing that game. For some, more. For others, less. But it averages around 10 mins. to decide to keep playing it or not. You lost a customer. Someone who may have bought keys or stamps or items or whatever because you exposed them to servers that were wildly off the beaten path of vanilla. So implement the "Once Unlocked". What locking mechanism do you suggest? Time played? How is that fair to the community to limit the people coming into the community servers? Times died of each class? How is that fair since they loose out on the people who never play a class but once or twice? I hear what you are saying.. But consider that this server owner community gets upset (perhaps not you, but you know there are people less rational then you are on this list) at ANY kind of perceived injustice. How do you suggest the fair way for the lock to work (I'm presuming you agree that the players first experience shouldn't be the Pinion server) that mostly everyone agrees with? and if implemented, how soon until someone makes a program that overwrites it? You are asking Valve to put quite a bit of work into the idea without thinking about how exactly it would work and be perceived. Have you ever played a F2P game where content was under lock and the only way you can unlock it was to grind for a certain time or kills or coins or whatever? I'm sure you have (we all have). How long did you play it for until you fully unlocked it? Personally, I give it the 10 mins, then I give up on it and go find something else that I don't have to grind to open up fully. I don't even want to get into the idea of it being locked until you buy an item in the store. Then the "Valve just cares about the money" comments will fly. :) >For the record, I've been a member of this mailing list since around early 2009 or so, and I can't remember a single instance of people making threats or anything else of that nature towards Valve on this list, so I'm not sure where that impression comes from. Well, for the record as well.. Depends on what you consider a threat. I've seen (since 2008 personally) people threaten to take down their servers, threaten to sue, threaten to not buy anything ever, etc. If you were talking about a physical threat, I agree. No one at Valve was threatened with physical violence on this list. But then again, I didn't say people threatened them on here. They just act like spoiled brats (Not saying they are, but the tone they give off seems like that flavor of communication). Anyway, it's almost 10pm here. Time to head to bed. On Thu, Oct 29, 2015 at 9:24 PM, E. Olsen <[email protected]> wrote: > > No one is saying the majority did cheat. But if an actual fair test > were to take place, no cheating is something that has to happen. > > Not possible, nor reasonable to expect. There will always be bad actors.. > Would it be reasonable to expect there to never be a hacker or cheater on a > Valve server? If there were, should they ban everyone on the server, or > maybe just the people playing that class? > > Of course not. > > The reasonable, equitable, and fair response is to create/implement > systems that deal with them. Punishing the good with the bad is not only > bad policy, it is self-limiting, as eventually they would end up with > nothing but official servers left. > > Consider the paradox with that - only official servers left for a game > that relies almost entirely on community-generated content. Diversity gives > a game legs - Valve knows that better than anyone in the business. > > This isn't a sense of "entitlement". I don't think that asking for > equitable treatment after providing the infrastructure and support for a > game for 7+ years is acting "entitled". Hell, if all Valve were to do was > re-design the UI to better display the choices available to the players, > I'd be perfectly happy with that. Something like this has been discussed > quite a bit: > > http://i.imgur.com/tAmWXj6.png > > If you take a look at that, all it really does is display more choices for > the player, while keeping the same functionality (i.e. number of clicks) > for those folks that want to maintain the status quo. what would be the > downside to that? > > For the record, I've been a member of this mailing list since around early > 2009 or so, and I can't remember a single instance of people making threats > or anything else of that nature towards Valve on this list, so I'm not sure > where that impression comes from. > > I've never been disrespectful towards Valve or the TF2 team, as I think > that would be counter-productive at best. I am, however, an advocate for > community servers, and I will continue to argue > for equitable treatment and better ideas until the day I walk away from the > game. I firmly believe that players that find a "home" server (or group of > servers) , and become a "regular" of those servers become long-term > players. I have 2 million players in my stats database that give me more > than just anecdotal evidence. > > With 400k players installing TF2 a month, our average daily players should > be climbing, not staying flatlined for two years straight. The game is > losing the culture that turned new players into long-term players, and we > can get that back. It's a cause, I believe, worth fighting for. > > > > > > On Fri, Oct 30, 2015 at 12:01 AM, Calvin J <[email protected]> wrote: > >> That's not actually a big percentage of the servers, gametracker posts >> ~38k servers, that's just servers opting into queries, we can guess there's >> probably another 5k not allowing queries. (eg. ESEA) >> >> So it's literally less than 1% of servers that got banned, and to >> compound that, a lot of server hosts aren't subscribed to this list. So 500 >> servers out of probably 40-45k total servers is actually pretty decent. >> >> On 10/29/2015 11:52 PM, Daniel Barreiro wrote: >> >> Did you see what happened in CSGO when Valve banned custom knife plugins >> and stuff like that? They gave advanced notice, told people to remove it or >> face consequences, and then we ended up with like 500+ banned servers a >> week later. That was a pretty big % of the serverbase. >> >> If Valve runs a test with making community servers opt-out, there'd be no >> going back. If they tried going back after making that change you know >> exactly what the backlash would be. >> >> >> -- >> Calvin Judy >> Founder & CEO >> PH#: (843) 410-8486 >> Mail: [email protected] >> >> _______________________________________________ >> 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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