Re: [hlds] Rethinking the community quickplay ban
@E. Olsen: Your suggestion would still potentially expose players to the types of servers which have been deemed as cancerous by Valve. It is akin to saying, “Oh hey! We see you’ve played five hours of TF2, now we’re going to throw you out into the wilderness with only this wooden mallet to defend yourself with! You might find a bad server or two, but at least you can blacklist them AFTER the event!” – This is what you’re essentially saying. Right now, Valve doesn’t have that problem. Why? Because Valve basically hid the toxic servers along with all other community servers behind a configuration option. If you want to change that, you need to work on their terms, their standards. Their standard is that it is completely unacceptable to potentially have players dropping into servers which provide false information, abusive donator benefits and the like. Thus, if you want Quickplay to change, you need to offer them a solution that offers the same level of effective protection that is currently offered to players both new and old. That is, “Providing you don’t go screwing with options you don’t understand the ramifications of, you’re guaranteed to have a Valve approved experience.” Unfortunately, the solution of dropping players into the community pool after X number of hours does nothing to address the standard of behaviour exhibited by some community servers. Rather, all it does is give new players a short reprieve prior to being shunted out of what Valve consider to be the “Garden of Eden” – that being, official servers. I don't necessarily agree with that description, but still, it is what it is. ___ To unsubscribe, edit your list preferences, or view the list archives, please visit: https://list.valvesoftware.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/hlds
Re: [hlds] Rethinking the community quickplay ban
Right now, various Valve games have protections in them that prevent addons being loaded under set conditions. I am sure Valve would be more than capable of distributing a similar mechanic within SRCDS. It is a matter of will power. On Wed, Feb 11, 2015 at 1:56 AM, Asher Baker asher...@gmail.com wrote: On Tue, Feb 10, 2015 at 2:59 PM, Cats From Above spotsfromab...@gmail.com wrote: What would you need to do to be eligible for the Vanilla pool? Simple, don't have *any* addons loaded on your server. This can be easily enforced on a technical level. The ability to late load source addons would also be removed under this scheme. This is a non-starter, there is no way to prevent server-side modifications from being made. ~ Their heads are green, and their hands are blue, And they went to sea in a Sieve. - Edward Lear ___ 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
Re: [hlds] Rethinking the community quickplay ban
I completely agree with McKay below here. As extra addition I'd like to add that I feel royally screwed by VALVe. I run VALVe based gameservers since 1999, that's 16 years in the business of trying to provide a proper platform for players to game on. We always ran by the philosophy that we wanted to provide the games as meant by VALVe. The quickplay system at first looked like a blessing to us, as we complied with all the rules already before it even launched, however, somehow, the system rates us poorly and we lost all of our public players. Just the old crew is still around and we still enjoy our games of TF2. It's just a god damn shame we cannot realize any growth or renewal of our playerbase in this game anymore. Saint K. _ From: Alexander Corn [mailto:mc...@doctormckay.com] To: 'Half-Life dedicated Win32 server mailing list' [mailto:hlds@list.valvesoftware.com] Sent: Tue, 10 Feb 2015 05:44:53 +0100 Subject: Re: [hlds] Rethinking the community quickplay ban I’ve reached the point where I no longer lose sleep over this. At this point I don’t expect any growth of TF2. All I care about anymore is trying to keep my the people in my community around as long as they still care about TF2. Trying to convince Valve of anything is a waste of time for me. I’d have better luck arguing with a brick wall. Valve is dead. TF2 is dying. All I care about anymore is logging on from time to time to play some Dustbowl or payload or something. I liked trading for a while but even that is tedious and boring now that I have to alt-tab out of the game to check my email every time I want to swap a weapon. Valve used to make intelligent decisions. I don’t know what happened, but that company is no more. And it’s a damn shame. Alexander Corn “Dr. McKay” http://www.doctormckay.com From: hlds-boun...@list.valvesoftware.com [mailto:hlds-boun...@list.valvesoftware.com] On Behalf Of Andreas Willinger Sent: Monday, February 9, 2015 1:39 PM To: 'Half-Life dedicated Win32 server mailing list' Subject: Re: [hlds] Rethinking the community quickplay ban So, we will let this thread die again? Great Valve, really great, you used to be a nice company. Von: hlds-boun...@list.valvesoftware.com [mailto:hlds-boun...@list.valvesoftware.com] Im Auftrag von Tim Anderson Gesendet: Donnerstag, 05. Februar 2015 22:12 An: hlds@list.valvesoftware.com; hlds_li...@list.valvesoftware.com Betreff: [hlds] Rethinking the community quickplay ban To the TF2 team, It has now been over a year since the decision to essentially ban community servers from quickplay by defaulting to official ones. Here are some facts of what has happened since then. - Player gain dropped 4% from the year before. - UGC highlander teams dropped 17% - Highly reduced map variety from community servers. - Even top non-quickplay servers have drastically fewer players than in 2013. You may have guaranteed new players a vanilla experience, but this is ruining the experience for the rest. Maybe nothing is being done because you do not see enough complaints about this from reddit or spuf. This is because the problem is obvious when someone connects to a pay to win server while it is not as obvious when a server is dying over the span of several months because official ones are getting all the new players. Most of the people that I talked to even knew about this change so the thought about complaining about it never crossed their minds. But just because they never knew about it doesn't mean it wasn't a problem. I hope you realize that this change is doing more harm than good. It may have stopped some complaints but this is hurting TF2 in the long run. ___ To unsubscribe, edit your list preferences, or view the list archives, please visit: https://list.valvesoftware.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/hlds
Re: [hlds] Rethinking the community quickplay ban
On Tue, Feb 10, 2015 at 2:59 PM, Cats From Above spotsfromab...@gmail.com wrote: What would you need to do to be eligible for the Vanilla pool? Simple, don't have *any* addons loaded on your server. This can be easily enforced on a technical level. The ability to late load source addons would also be removed under this scheme. This is a non-starter, there is no way to prevent server-side modifications from being made. ~ Their heads are green, and their hands are blue, And they went to sea in a Sieve. - Edward Lear ___ To unsubscribe, edit your list preferences, or view the list archives, please visit: https://list.valvesoftware.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/hlds
Re: [hlds] Rethinking the community quickplay ban
...@gmail.com To: hlds@list.valvesoftware.com Subject: Re: [hlds] Rethinking the community quickplay ban Message-ID: calvbbdvdsgu4ceqrcu7p2cu+057f-8iugovjbsh5g-gk-tx...@mail.gmail.com Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Speak for yourself Supreet. I think most would agree that your adversarial stance on this matter is profoundly unhelpful for both yourself and other members of this mailiing list. I also wonder what level of intellect would be required to come to the conclusion that being relegated to the server browser entirely is somehow an improvement to the present situation. Far beyond my comprehension for sure. -- next part -- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://list.valvesoftware.com/cgi-bin/mailman/private/hlds/attachments/20150210/2de2eef2/attachment-0001.html -- Message: 3 Date: Tue, 10 Feb 2015 20:26:32 +1100 From: kletch1333 . keyboard1...@gmail.com To: Half-Life dedicated Win32 server mailing list hlds@list.valvesoftware.com Subject: Re: [hlds] Rethinking the community quickplay ban Message-ID: cacuk6c_qybqpt94zguc2iadkcodngtxvs2afgsuzsxrlte8...@mail.gmail.com Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Hmmm? keyboard1...@gmail.com On Tue, Feb 10, 2015 at 6:39 AM, Ahmed Kandeel astrida...@googlemail.com wrote: In fact I have an idea that is even better than a petition if anyone would like to hear it. But I'd rather keep it out of the mailing list. On 9 February 2015 at 19:35, Ahmed Kandeel astrida...@googlemail.com wrote: To be honest, I doubt any of us are going to get responses. I myself as have others have tried to bring this to the community's attention via Reddit. While support has been there, it has been too weak to bring about any major action. People who post about this on the new steam based forums for TF2 usually get shot down by certain players who love the change, merely because they worship Valve. My community is in limbo at the moment since we were never big enough to weather this storm. I am waiting for KF2 to change our fortunes. I'm quite sure hosting CS:GO would suffer the same fate and L4D never seemed popular enough or team/community based enough to actually garner enough new members. While I don't myself want to let this die, I feel we need a change of direction. It would be better to start some form of petition and deliver it to Valve rather than get upset over the mailing list. On 9 February 2015 at 18:38, Andreas Willinger aw...@gmx.at wrote: So, we will let this thread die again? Great Valve, really great, you used to be a nice company. *Von:* hlds-boun...@list.valvesoftware.com [mailto: hlds-boun...@list.valvesoftware.com] *Im Auftrag von *Tim Anderson *Gesendet:* Donnerstag, 05. Februar 2015 22:12 *An:* hlds@list.valvesoftware.com; hlds_li...@list.valvesoftware.com *Betreff:* [hlds] Rethinking the community quickplay ban To the TF2 team, It has now been over a year since the decision to essentially ban community servers from quickplay by defaulting to official ones. Here are some facts of what has happened since then. - Player gain dropped 4% from the year before. - UGC highlander teams dropped 17% - Highly reduced map variety from community servers. - Even top non-quickplay servers have drastically fewer players than in 2013. You may have guaranteed new players a vanilla experience, but this is ruining the experience for the rest. Maybe nothing is being done because you do not see enough complaints about this from reddit or spuf. This is because the problem is obvious when someone connects to a pay to win server while it is not as obvious when a server is dying over the span of several months because official ones are getting all the new players. Most of the people that I talked to even knew about this change so the thought about complaining about it never crossed their minds. But just because they never knew about it doesn't mean it wasn't a problem. I hope you realize that this change is doing more harm than good. It may have stopped some complaints but this is hurting TF2 in the long run. ___ 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 -- next part -- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://list.valvesoftware.com/cgi-bin/mailman/private/hlds/attachments/20150210/086f60eb/attachment.html -- ___ To unsubscribe
Re: [hlds] Rethinking the community quickplay ban
In terms of the addons, The way the client addons check works is it'll only load signed engine addons. If a plugin has been signed by Valve, it can be loaded with secure. Otherwise, you can only load addons with -insecure. This is for addons. One option would be to disable addons by default, and add a launch parameter -addons. There's potential this could be exploited though. Another method would be to make a separate server branch. CSGO has this. The branches are Community_DS, Valve_DS, Pinion_DS. The Valve and the Pinion DS both have changes that can be forwarded to the client. For example, there's a hidden cvar sv_require_motd_seconds. This cvar is on the client, the Pinion DS, and the Valve DS. If it is set on the Valve DS, it replicates it to the client. The community DS doesn't have this cvar and from my testing, you can't forward it to the client (as it's a hidden cvar on the client) They could make a branch for vanilla vs modded which report themselves differently to the matchmaking servers. This is similar to how Valve does the Mann Up servers. They run on server_valve.dll, set tf_mm_trusted to 1, and then each server gets validated on the backend. If this works out then it's marked as an official server in MM. They could just make another branch that completely disables the addon system (don't just set a value to 0, make sure it doesn't even attempt to load any form of addon) and either whitelists cvars or blacklists cvars, and makes sure to enforce all cvars that aren't on that list so if someone attempted changing them via injection, it'd just change them back. This is just one option. There will never be a way to 100% block server mods, but this would be a good step. Bypassing something like this is possible with enough work, but it would require a technical expertise many server owners don't have. If someone did attempt this, then they could be blacklisted fairly easily (it'd be pretty obvious). You could even have the client check if a server's cvars are consistent with vanilla mode. If they aren't it then sends some form of log to the backend and if a server gets enough of these, an employee could take a quick look and see what's wrong. There will always be a way past these things. Nothing is impenetrable but there are things that can be done to help. The biggest issue is the workload that would come with this. On Tue, Feb 10, 2015 at 10:34 AM, Cats From Above spotsfromab...@gmail.com wrote: Right now, various Valve games have protections in them that prevent addons being loaded under set conditions. I am sure Valve would be more than capable of distributing a similar mechanic within SRCDS. It is a matter of will power. On Wed, Feb 11, 2015 at 1:56 AM, Asher Baker asher...@gmail.com wrote: On Tue, Feb 10, 2015 at 2:59 PM, Cats From Above spotsfromab...@gmail.com wrote: What would you need to do to be eligible for the Vanilla pool? Simple, don't have *any* addons loaded on your server. This can be easily enforced on a technical level. The ability to late load source addons would also be removed under this scheme. This is a non-starter, there is no way to prevent server-side modifications from being made. ~ Their heads are green, and their hands are blue, And they went to sea in a Sieve. - Edward Lear ___ 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 ___ To unsubscribe, edit your list preferences, or view the list archives, please visit: https://list.valvesoftware.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/hlds
Re: [hlds] Rethinking the community quickplay ban
You guys complained that servers broke quickplay rules. Valve put measures in place to prevent this from affecting a client's experience and then you complain that you don't get any traffic because Valve takes it all. You guys didn't care about the fact that servers were breaking the rules. You cared that the servers breaking the rules were taking your traffic. I'm not saying that the fact that Valve servers take so much traffic is a good thing. There are much better places those servers could go to use. The TF2 Vanilla experience is great, but the community experience can be as well. I agree there should be a better balance, but until you can propose a solution that makes every party involved happy, it probably wont happen. I hate to say it, but the player is more important than the host. If you can't provide an experience that is different enough to a Valve server that people wont seek you out, then you're not providing a different enough experience. The fact of the matter is, most community servers don't offer enough to the gameplay of TF2 to seek out. Those that do are probably breaking the quickplay rules anyways. Want to build a community? Build one. Don't complain that you aren't getting quickplay traffic. If your servers are worth playing on over other servers, advertise them a bit and build a community. On Tue, Feb 10, 2015 at 10:34 AM, Cats From Above spotsfromab...@gmail.com wrote: Right now, various Valve games have protections in them that prevent addons being loaded under set conditions. I am sure Valve would be more than capable of distributing a similar mechanic within SRCDS. It is a matter of will power. On Wed, Feb 11, 2015 at 1:56 AM, Asher Baker asher...@gmail.com wrote: On Tue, Feb 10, 2015 at 2:59 PM, Cats From Above spotsfromab...@gmail.com wrote: What would you need to do to be eligible for the Vanilla pool? Simple, don't have *any* addons loaded on your server. This can be easily enforced on a technical level. The ability to late load source addons would also be removed under this scheme. This is a non-starter, there is no way to prevent server-side modifications from being made. ~ Their heads are green, and their hands are blue, And they went to sea in a Sieve. - Edward Lear ___ 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 ___ To unsubscribe, edit your list preferences, or view the list archives, please visit: https://list.valvesoftware.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/hlds
Re: [hlds] Rethinking the community quickplay ban
Hmmm? keyboard1...@gmail.com On Tue, Feb 10, 2015 at 6:39 AM, Ahmed Kandeel astrida...@googlemail.com wrote: In fact I have an idea that is even better than a petition if anyone would like to hear it. But I'd rather keep it out of the mailing list. On 9 February 2015 at 19:35, Ahmed Kandeel astrida...@googlemail.com wrote: To be honest, I doubt any of us are going to get responses. I myself as have others have tried to bring this to the community's attention via Reddit. While support has been there, it has been too weak to bring about any major action. People who post about this on the new steam based forums for TF2 usually get shot down by certain players who love the change, merely because they worship Valve. My community is in limbo at the moment since we were never big enough to weather this storm. I am waiting for KF2 to change our fortunes. I'm quite sure hosting CS:GO would suffer the same fate and L4D never seemed popular enough or team/community based enough to actually garner enough new members. While I don't myself want to let this die, I feel we need a change of direction. It would be better to start some form of petition and deliver it to Valve rather than get upset over the mailing list. On 9 February 2015 at 18:38, Andreas Willinger aw...@gmx.at wrote: So, we will let this thread die again? Great Valve, really great, you used to be a nice company. *Von:* hlds-boun...@list.valvesoftware.com [mailto: hlds-boun...@list.valvesoftware.com] *Im Auftrag von *Tim Anderson *Gesendet:* Donnerstag, 05. Februar 2015 22:12 *An:* hlds@list.valvesoftware.com; hlds_li...@list.valvesoftware.com *Betreff:* [hlds] Rethinking the community quickplay ban To the TF2 team, It has now been over a year since the decision to essentially ban community servers from quickplay by defaulting to official ones. Here are some facts of what has happened since then. - Player gain dropped 4% from the year before. - UGC highlander teams dropped 17% - Highly reduced map variety from community servers. - Even top non-quickplay servers have drastically fewer players than in 2013. You may have guaranteed new players a vanilla experience, but this is ruining the experience for the rest. Maybe nothing is being done because you do not see enough complaints about this from reddit or spuf. This is because the problem is obvious when someone connects to a pay to win server while it is not as obvious when a server is dying over the span of several months because official ones are getting all the new players. Most of the people that I talked to even knew about this change so the thought about complaining about it never crossed their minds. But just because they never knew about it doesn't mean it wasn't a problem. I hope you realize that this change is doing more harm than good. It may have stopped some complaints but this is hurting TF2 in the long run. ___ 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 ___ To unsubscribe, edit your list preferences, or view the list archives, please visit: https://list.valvesoftware.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/hlds
Re: [hlds] Rethinking the community quickplay ban
@list.valvesoftware.com Subject: Re: [hlds] Rethinking the community quickplay ban Message-ID: calvbbdvdsgu4ceqrcu7p2cu+057f-8iugovjbsh5g-gk-tx...@mail.gmail.com Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Speak for yourself Supreet. I think most would agree that your adversarial stance on this matter is profoundly unhelpful for both yourself and other members of this mailiing list. I also wonder what level of intellect would be required to come to the conclusion that being relegated to the server browser entirely is somehow an improvement to the present situation. Far beyond my comprehension for sure. -- next part -- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://list.valvesoftware.com/cgi-bin/mailman/private/hlds/attachments/20150210/2de2eef2/attachment-0001.html -- Message: 3 Date: Tue, 10 Feb 2015 20:26:32 +1100 From: kletch1333 . keyboard1...@gmail.com To: Half-Life dedicated Win32 server mailing list hlds@list.valvesoftware.com Subject: Re: [hlds] Rethinking the community quickplay ban Message-ID: cacuk6c_qybqpt94zguc2iadkcodngtxvs2afgsuzsxrlte8...@mail.gmail.com Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Hmmm? keyboard1...@gmail.com On Tue, Feb 10, 2015 at 6:39 AM, Ahmed Kandeel astrida...@googlemail.com wrote: In fact I have an idea that is even better than a petition if anyone would like to hear it. But I'd rather keep it out of the mailing list. On 9 February 2015 at 19:35, Ahmed Kandeel astrida...@googlemail.com wrote: To be honest, I doubt any of us are going to get responses. I myself as have others have tried to bring this to the community's attention via Reddit. While support has been there, it has been too weak to bring about any major action. People who post about this on the new steam based forums for TF2 usually get shot down by certain players who love the change, merely because they worship Valve. My community is in limbo at the moment since we were never big enough to weather this storm. I am waiting for KF2 to change our fortunes. I'm quite sure hosting CS:GO would suffer the same fate and L4D never seemed popular enough or team/community based enough to actually garner enough new members. While I don't myself want to let this die, I feel we need a change of direction. It would be better to start some form of petition and deliver it to Valve rather than get upset over the mailing list. On 9 February 2015 at 18:38, Andreas Willinger aw...@gmx.at wrote: So, we will let this thread die again? Great Valve, really great, you used to be a nice company. *Von:* hlds-boun...@list.valvesoftware.com [mailto: hlds-boun...@list.valvesoftware.com] *Im Auftrag von *Tim Anderson *Gesendet:* Donnerstag, 05. Februar 2015 22:12 *An:* hlds@list.valvesoftware.com; hlds_li...@list.valvesoftware.com *Betreff:* [hlds] Rethinking the community quickplay ban To the TF2 team, It has now been over a year since the decision to essentially ban community servers from quickplay by defaulting to official ones. Here are some facts of what has happened since then. - Player gain dropped 4% from the year before. - UGC highlander teams dropped 17% - Highly reduced map variety from community servers. - Even top non-quickplay servers have drastically fewer players than in 2013. You may have guaranteed new players a vanilla experience, but this is ruining the experience for the rest. Maybe nothing is being done because you do not see enough complaints about this from reddit or spuf. This is because the problem is obvious when someone connects to a pay to win server while it is not as obvious when a server is dying over the span of several months because official ones are getting all the new players. Most of the people that I talked to even knew about this change so the thought about complaining about it never crossed their minds. But just because they never knew about it doesn't mean it wasn't a problem. I hope you realize that this change is doing more harm than good. It may have stopped some complaints but this is hurting TF2 in the long run. ___ 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 -- next part -- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://list.valvesoftware.com/cgi-bin/mailman/private/hlds/attachments/20150210/086f60eb/attachment.html -- ___ To unsubscribe, edit your list preferences, or view the list archives, please visit: https://list.valvesoftware.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/hlds End of hlds
Re: [hlds] Rethinking the community quickplay ban
No, please do tell. On Feb 10, 2015 9:57 AM, N-Gon ngongamedes...@gmail.com wrote: Do you guys really have to reopen the same conversation every single week? Have I ever told you the definition of insanity? Insanity is doing the same thing over-and-over again expecting the outcome to be any different. Maybe if I email Valve this time they'll change quickplay; Nono, maybe if I email them THIS time they'll change it When my friend Keeg first told me about the constant bickering on the mailing list I dismissed him. No, Valve will change it eventually But I learned, I took notice that it won't change, and then my perspective started to turn similar to his. Every email I read, it's the same thing, Every-single-email begging Valve for a fix over-and-over-and-over. The thing is, you've already emailed them once before. Have I ever told you the definition of insanity? On Tue, Feb 10, 2015 at 10:43 AM, Cats From Above spotsfromab...@gmail.com wrote: @E. Olsen: Your suggestion would still potentially expose players to the types of servers which have been deemed as cancerous by Valve. It is akin to saying, “Oh hey! We see you’ve played five hours of TF2, now we’re going to throw you out into the wilderness with only this wooden mallet to defend yourself with! You might find a bad server or two, but at least you can blacklist them AFTER the event!” – This is what you’re essentially saying. Right now, Valve doesn’t have that problem. Why? Because Valve basically hid the toxic servers along with all other community servers behind a configuration option. If you want to change that, you need to work on their terms, their standards. Their standard is that it is completely unacceptable to potentially have players dropping into servers which provide false information, abusive donator benefits and the like. Thus, if you want Quickplay to change, you need to offer them a solution that offers the same level of effective protection that is currently offered to players both new and old. That is, “Providing you don’t go screwing with options you don’t understand the ramifications of, you’re guaranteed to have a Valve approved experience.” Unfortunately, the solution of dropping players into the community pool after X number of hours does nothing to address the standard of behaviour exhibited by some community servers. Rather, all it does is give new players a short reprieve prior to being shunted out of what Valve consider to be the “Garden of Eden” – that being, official servers. I don't necessarily agree with that description, but still, it is what it is. ___ 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 ___ To unsubscribe, edit your list preferences, or view the list archives, please visit: https://list.valvesoftware.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/hlds
Re: [hlds] Rethinking the community quickplay ban
=utf-8 I?ve reached the point where I no longer lose sleep over this. At this point I don?t expect any growth of TF2. All I care about anymore is trying to keep my the people in my community around as long as they still care about TF2. Trying to convince Valve of anything is a waste of time for me. I?d have better luck arguing with a brick wall. Valve is dead. TF2 is dying. All I care about anymore is logging on from time to time to play some Dustbowl or payload or something. I liked trading for a while but even that is tedious and boring now that I have to alt-tab out of the game to check my email every time I want to swap a weapon. Valve used to make intelligent decisions. I don?t know what happened, but that company is no more. And it?s a damn shame. Alexander Corn ?Dr. McKay? http://www.doctormckay.com http://www.doctormckay.com From: hlds-boun...@list.valvesoftware.com [mailto: hlds-boun...@list.valvesoftware.com] On Behalf Of Andreas Willinger Sent: Monday, February 9, 2015 1:39 PM To: 'Half-Life dedicated Win32 server mailing list' Subject: Re: [hlds] Rethinking the community quickplay ban So, we will let this thread die again? Great Valve, really great, you used to be a nice company. Von: hlds-boun...@list.valvesoftware.com [mailto: hlds-boun...@list.valvesoftware.com] Im Auftrag von Tim Anderson Gesendet: Donnerstag, 05. Februar 2015 22:12 An: hlds@list.valvesoftware.com; hlds_li...@list.valvesoftware.com Betreff: [hlds] Rethinking the community quickplay ban To the TF2 team, It has now been over a year since the decision to essentially ban community servers from quickplay by defaulting to official ones. Here are some facts of what has happened since then. - Player gain dropped 4% from the year before. - UGC highlander teams dropped 17% - Highly reduced map variety from community servers. - Even top non-quickplay servers have drastically fewer players than in 2013. You may have guaranteed new players a vanilla experience, but this is ruining the experience for the rest. Maybe nothing is being done because you do not see enough complaints about this from reddit or spuf. This is because the problem is obvious when someone connects to a pay to win server while it is not as obvious when a server is dying over the span of several months because official ones are getting all the new players. Most of the people that I talked to even knew about this change so the thought about complaining about it never crossed their minds. But just because they never knew about it doesn't mean it wasn't a problem. I hope you realize that this change is doing more harm than good. It may have stopped some complaints but this is hurting TF2 in the long run. -- next part -- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://list.valvesoftware.com/cgi-bin/mailman/private/hlds/attachments/20150209/4dfd208f/attachment-0001.html -- Message: 2 Date: Tue, 10 Feb 2015 15:19:32 +1030 From: Cats FromAbove spotsfromab...@gmail.com To: hlds@list.valvesoftware.com Subject: Re: [hlds] Rethinking the community quickplay ban Message-ID: calvbbdvdsgu4ceqrcu7p2cu+057f-8iugovjbsh5g-gk-tx...@mail.gmail.com Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Speak for yourself Supreet. I think most would agree that your adversarial stance on this matter is profoundly unhelpful for both yourself and other members of this mailiing list. I also wonder what level of intellect would be required to come to the conclusion that being relegated to the server browser entirely is somehow an improvement to the present situation. Far beyond my comprehension for sure. -- next part -- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://list.valvesoftware.com/cgi-bin/mailman/private/hlds/attachments/20150210/2de2eef2/attachment-0001.html -- Message: 3 Date: Tue, 10 Feb 2015 20:26:32 +1100 From: kletch1333 . keyboard1...@gmail.com To: Half-Life dedicated Win32 server mailing list hlds@list.valvesoftware.com Subject: Re: [hlds] Rethinking the community quickplay ban Message-ID: cacuk6c_qybqpt94zguc2iadkcodngtxvs2afgsuzsxrlte8...@mail.gmail.com Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Hmmm? keyboard1...@gmail.com On Tue, Feb 10, 2015 at 6:39 AM, Ahmed Kandeel astrida...@googlemail.com wrote: In fact I have an idea that is even better than a petition if anyone would like to hear it. But I'd rather keep it out of the mailing list. On 9 February 2015 at 19:35, Ahmed Kandeel astrida...@googlemail.com wrote: To be honest, I doubt any of us are going to get responses. I myself as have others have tried to bring this to the community's attention via Reddit. While support has been there, it has been too weak to bring about any major action. People who post about this on the new steam based forums for TF2 usually get
Re: [hlds] Rethinking the community quickplay ban
Sent: Monday, February 9, 2015 1:39 PM To: 'Half-Life dedicated Win32 server mailing list' Subject: Re: [hlds] Rethinking the community quickplay ban So, we will let this thread die again? Great Valve, really great, you used to be a nice company. Von: hlds-boun...@list.valvesoftware.com mailto:hlds-boun...@list.valvesoftware.com [mailto:hlds-boun...@list.valvesoftware.com mailto:hlds-boun...@list.valvesoftware.com] Im Auftrag von Tim Anderson Gesendet: Donnerstag, 05. Februar 2015 22:12 An: hlds@list.valvesoftware.com mailto:hlds@list.valvesoftware.com; hlds_li...@list.valvesoftware.com mailto:hlds_li...@list.valvesoftware.com Betreff: [hlds] Rethinking the community quickplay ban To the TF2 team, It has now been over a year since the decision to essentially ban community servers from quickplay by defaulting to official ones. Here are some facts of what has happened since then. - Player gain dropped 4% from the year before. - UGC highlander teams dropped 17% - Highly reduced map variety from community servers. - Even top non-quickplay servers have drastically fewer players than in 2013. You may have guaranteed new players a vanilla experience, but this is ruining the experience for the rest. Maybe nothing is being done because you do not see enough complaints about this from reddit or spuf. This is because the problem is obvious when someone connects to a pay to win server while it is not as obvious when a server is dying over the span of several months because official ones are getting all the new players. Most of the people that I talked to even knew about this change so the thought about complaining about it never crossed their minds. But just because they never knew about it doesn't mean it wasn't a problem. I hope you realize that this change is doing more harm than good. It may have stopped some complaints but this is hurting TF2 in the long run. -- next part -- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://list.valvesoftware.com/cgi-bin/mailman/private/hlds/attachments/20150209/4dfd208f/attachment-0001.html -- Message: 2 Date: Tue, 10 Feb 2015 15:19:32 +1030 From: Cats FromAbove spotsfromab...@gmail.com mailto:spotsfromab...@gmail.com To: hlds@list.valvesoftware.com mailto:hlds@list.valvesoftware.com Subject: Re: [hlds] Rethinking the community quickplay ban Message-ID: calvbbdvdsgu4ceqrcu7p2cu+057f-8iugovjbsh5g-gk-tx...@mail.gmail.com mailto:calvbbdvdsgu4ceqrcu7p2cu%2b057f-8iugovjbsh5g-gk-tx...@mail.gmail.com Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Speak for yourself Supreet. I think most would agree that your adversarial stance on this matter is profoundly unhelpful for both yourself and other members of this mailiing list. I also wonder what level of intellect would be required to come to the conclusion that being relegated to the server browser entirely is somehow an improvement to the present situation. Far beyond my comprehension for sure. -- next part -- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://list.valvesoftware.com/cgi-bin/mailman/private/hlds/attachments/20150210/2de2eef2/attachment-0001.html -- Message: 3 Date: Tue, 10 Feb 2015 20:26:32 +1100 From: kletch1333 . keyboard1...@gmail.com mailto:keyboard1...@gmail.com To: Half-Life dedicated Win32 server mailing list hlds@list.valvesoftware.com mailto:hlds@list.valvesoftware.com Subject: Re: [hlds] Rethinking the community quickplay ban Message-ID: cacuk6c_qybqpt94zguc2iadkcodngtxvs2afgsuzsxrlte8...@mail.gmail.com mailto:cacuk6c_qybqpt94zguc2iadkcodngtxvs2afgsuzsxrlte8...@mail.gmail.com Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Hmmm? keyboard1...@gmail.com mailto:keyboard1...@gmail.com On Tue, Feb 10, 2015 at 6:39 AM, Ahmed Kandeel astrida...@googlemail.com mailto:astrida...@googlemail.com wrote: In fact I have an idea that is even better than a petition if anyone would like to hear it. But I'd rather keep it out of the mailing list. On 9 February 2015 at 19:35, Ahmed Kandeel astrida...@googlemail.com mailto:astrida...@googlemail.com wrote: To be honest, I doubt any of us are going to get responses. I myself
Re: [hlds] Rethinking the community quickplay ban
Quickplay is not as much to ask for as attachments because attachments are in direct conflict with their business model. TF2 did just fine for 8 years without this change. Steam groups are not a good way to grab the TF team's attention though because they are being hidden to rot away just like TF2 community servers. They removed the link to groups on steamcommunity.com when they started to phase in game hubs and blocked the large groups from inviting people about 2 years ago. Please don't give up. At the very least we can warning everyone else that they should not put too much effort into hosting servers for Valve until we start seeing some concessions. On Mon, Feb 9, 2015 at 7:20 PM, Asher Baker asher...@gmail.com wrote: On Tue, Feb 10, 2015 at 2:21 AM, Ahmed Kandeel astrida...@googlemail.com wrote: *Okay guys, I enacted on my idea and would like some support. I've created a steam group http://steamcommunity.com/groups/fixquickplay (Fix Quickplay Now!) as a form of petition against the changes to the Quickplay system.* Because the last time this was done http://steamcommunity.com/groups/SaveTF2AttachmentsPetition/ it worked out great... ~ Their heads are green, and their hands are blue, And they went to sea in a Sieve. - Edward Lear ___ 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
Re: [hlds] Rethinking the community quickplay ban
It should not be rocket science to read a popup saying you can switch back to official servers by clicking on the settings button. I don't see how that can be compared to a wooden mallet. If they did not think players were up to the task, then why bother having a community option at all? Valve probably just wants to make sure that new players don't end up on saigns and think that all TF2 is the same. This is understandable. However, it was poorly implemented in a way that kills off all community servers when it doesn't need to. As for thinking official servers are the Garden of Eden, It has been repeatedly mentioned that prior to this change there wasn't a single official server in the top 200 of gametracker. Unfortunately I did not realize how damaging this change would be so I did not save screenshots but I am sure others here can attest to this. Switching quickplay to community servers after a few hours still seems like the best solution. If the TF team is not satisfied with it, I am sure they are smart enough to come up with a better solution after an entire year. The real question is whether they care about the game as much as we do to do anything about it. So far they can't even be bothered to take 1 hour per month cleaning up the server list because they are too busy making important content that players really want like duckstreaks or Mannpower that would take less than 3 days for a programmer to make with Sourcemod. On Tue, Feb 10, 2015 at 7:43 AM, Cats From Above spotsfromab...@gmail.com wrote: @E. Olsen: Your suggestion would still potentially expose players to the types of servers which have been deemed as cancerous by Valve. It is akin to saying, “Oh hey! We see you’ve played five hours of TF2, now we’re going to throw you out into the wilderness with only this wooden mallet to defend yourself with! You might find a bad server or two, but at least you can blacklist them AFTER the event!” – This is what you’re essentially saying. Right now, Valve doesn’t have that problem. Why? Because Valve basically hid the toxic servers along with all other community servers behind a configuration option. If you want to change that, you need to work on their terms, their standards. Their standard is that it is completely unacceptable to potentially have players dropping into servers which provide false information, abusive donator benefits and the like. Thus, if you want Quickplay to change, you need to offer them a solution that offers the same level of effective protection that is currently offered to players both new and old. That is, “Providing you don’t go screwing with options you don’t understand the ramifications of, you’re guaranteed to have a Valve approved experience.” Unfortunately, the solution of dropping players into the community pool after X number of hours does nothing to address the standard of behaviour exhibited by some community servers. Rather, all it does is give new players a short reprieve prior to being shunted out of what Valve consider to be the “Garden of Eden” – that being, official servers. I don't necessarily agree with that description, but still, it is what it is. ___ 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
Re: [hlds] Rethinking the community quickplay ban
http://i.imgur.com/ZPiMPA2.png I wouldn't consider this phased out especially since they use community groups whenever a new beta feature launches http://steamcommunity.com/groups/steamuniverse http://steamcommunity.com/groups/steammusic http://steamcommunity.com/groups/SteamClientBeta http://steamcommunity.com/groups/familysharing http://steamcommunity.com/groups/steambroadcasting You get the picture. Let's look at the Steam beta features that used the game hubs http://steamcommunity.com/app/221410 Don't forget the group integration of one of a very massive feature of the storefront. http://store.steampowered.com/curators/ Also in terms of inviting, I don't want to revive this argument but they didn't block any groups from sending invites. They limited how many invites you could send in a period of time to people who aren't your friend. You can invite as many people as you want if they're on your friends list. On the topic of servers, being negative about it and saying Valve left us to rot is not a good way to make anything change. I'm not saying I condone the way they handled this, but it is what it is. Have you ever considered the fact that they may not know what to do? When quickplay was a mess, a ton of clients complained so Valve put temporary restrictions in. The complaints from the players stopped and now a new player wont get turned away by a bad server. If you think about it from a business standpoint, what's worse. Forty pissed off server owners or four thousand lost customers due to a bad server? Valve is a business, they don't technically owe you anything. You weren't held at gunpoint being told host our servers or else. I need to note that I'm not saying that you didn't have an impact on TF, as honestly you did in some way. The RIGHT thing to do would be to at least have some form of civilized discussion and statement on the current situation from Valve. They are no way obliged to do this, but you have provided them a service and it would be reasonable for them to give a response. Think about it from their standpoint. Let's think about the different responses: We are leaving it as is the end. This would result in a lot of bitching and people would potentially stop hosting their servers. We are reverting it to how it was You know how this would end We implemented X feature to make it so community servers can get better representation in quickplay WAH VALVE THIS ISN'T FAIR! I WANT TO USE X SETTING BUT THE QUICKPLAY RULES SAY I CAN'T. THIS IS UNFAIR IT'S NOT GAME CHANGING. OTHER SERVERS ARE GETTING AWAY WITH IT. THERE ARE TOO MANY VALVE SERVERS TAKING MY TRAFFIC If you want it to change stop *talking *about shutting down your servers so Valve loses money and *actually do it*. *Until you actually do it it's just a baseless threat said time over time.* *If community servers are so important, shut down your servers until there's a change.* *Want a fun experiment? Organize a big shutdown for a week or two with other huge clans. See what it does. Take a look at the stats and see how many people stop playing TF2 due to the community servers being gone for a week or two. Then if it actually makes an impact, show it to Valve and say you'll do it forever unless changes are made. Otherwise stop bitching about how you're getting no traffic.* *Want another experiment? Try to kindly ask them to make the community servers a bit more obvious in the quickplay menu. Keep it civil and don't say fuck valve they don't care about us, because that shows how much you guys really care about the game. When it turns into a shitfest think about it and wonder why Valve wouldn't put the people in the shitfest back in power over parts of the TF2 community * On Tue, Feb 10, 2015 at 3:55 PM, Tim Anderson twjander...@gmail.com wrote: Quickplay is not as much to ask for as attachments because attachments are in direct conflict with their business model. TF2 did just fine for 8 years without this change. Steam groups are not a good way to grab the TF team's attention though because they are being hidden to rot away just like TF2 community servers. They removed the link to groups on steamcommunity.com when they started to phase in game hubs and blocked the large groups from inviting people about 2 years ago. Please don't give up. At the very least we can warning everyone else that they should not put too much effort into hosting servers for Valve until we start seeing some concessions. On Mon, Feb 9, 2015 at 7:20 PM, Asher Baker asher...@gmail.com wrote: On Tue, Feb 10, 2015 at 2:21 AM, Ahmed Kandeel astrida...@googlemail.com wrote: *Okay guys, I enacted on my idea and would like some support. I've created a steam group http://steamcommunity.com/groups/fixquickplay (Fix Quickplay Now!) as a form of petition against the changes to the Quickplay system.* Because the last time this was done http://steamcommunity.com/groups/SaveTF2AttachmentsPetition/ it worked out great... ~
Re: [hlds] Rethinking the community quickplay ban
Do you guys really have to reopen the same conversation every single week? Have I ever told you the definition of insanity? Insanity is doing the same thing over-and-over again expecting the outcome to be any different. Maybe if I email Valve this time they'll change quickplay; Nono, maybe if I email them THIS time they'll change it When my friend Keeg first told me about the constant bickering on the mailing list I dismissed him. No, Valve will change it eventually But I learned, I took notice that it won't change, and then my perspective started to turn similar to his. Every email I read, it's the same thing, Every-single-email begging Valve for a fix over-and-over-and-over. The thing is, you've already emailed them once before. Have I ever told you the definition of insanity? On Tue, Feb 10, 2015 at 10:43 AM, Cats From Above spotsfromab...@gmail.com wrote: @E. Olsen: Your suggestion would still potentially expose players to the types of servers which have been deemed as cancerous by Valve. It is akin to saying, “Oh hey! We see you’ve played five hours of TF2, now we’re going to throw you out into the wilderness with only this wooden mallet to defend yourself with! You might find a bad server or two, but at least you can blacklist them AFTER the event!” – This is what you’re essentially saying. Right now, Valve doesn’t have that problem. Why? Because Valve basically hid the toxic servers along with all other community servers behind a configuration option. If you want to change that, you need to work on their terms, their standards. Their standard is that it is completely unacceptable to potentially have players dropping into servers which provide false information, abusive donator benefits and the like. Thus, if you want Quickplay to change, you need to offer them a solution that offers the same level of effective protection that is currently offered to players both new and old. That is, “Providing you don’t go screwing with options you don’t understand the ramifications of, you’re guaranteed to have a Valve approved experience.” Unfortunately, the solution of dropping players into the community pool after X number of hours does nothing to address the standard of behaviour exhibited by some community servers. Rather, all it does is give new players a short reprieve prior to being shunted out of what Valve consider to be the “Garden of Eden” – that being, official servers. I don't necessarily agree with that description, but still, it is what it is. ___ 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
Re: [hlds] Rethinking the community quickplay ban
There are a bunch of factors right now killing off TF2. Quickplay management is the main one followed up by the current trade verification system they’ve pushed onto players and their own funding path – trading. They have yet to really respond to any complaints about either one of these over the last week. My only wish is they look at both situations between now and the next update release which should be soon considering the X-Mas/Holiday things are set to expire. Why that update was prolonged deep into February is beyond me. As someone that runs many servers that depend on trading traffic for many of them AND regular players for regular games I’m getting hit on both ends. I’m afraid I may not continue with my servers much longer if the current trends keep on the path they are following. ___ To unsubscribe, edit your list preferences, or view the list archives, please visit: https://list.valvesoftware.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/hlds
Re: [hlds] Rethinking the community quickplay ban
Your screenshot proves yourself wrong. Here is an example of what steamcommunity looked like before. http://web.archive.org/web/20110202224111/https://steamcommunity.com/ There is a direct link to the list of groups here and now it is replaced by other junk. I don't see how curators are related to groups. They don't even look the same. And the reason why those beta features are not using hubs is because they are part of the steam client and not actually an individual download unlike Steam for linux. Those steam groups are large because they were accompanied by announcements and huge incentives to join from Steam store activities, not because everyone is using groups. Larger groups have completely been blocked from inviting people outside their friend list. You can see from their history (there used to be a link to that too) that no one has been invited for days, and when you try to invite someone it silently fails. If you have not run into this issue yet, your group is probably not large enough. Shutting down all community servers is not likely to work. Community players became a minority due to an entire year of being cut off from new players. I don't believe we are being rude about this either. Are we really supposed to pretend that Valve hasn't made a terrible decision and sugarcoat our words as if this wasn't a serious problem? Are we not already being patient enough after waiting an entire year? If Valve needs proof that this was a bad decision, all they have to do is open their eyes. The stats are already out there. These solutions are much more likely to work: - Boycott the Mann Co store. - Raise the issue outside of Valve controlled properties like Steam groups so they can't just kill it by silently blocking your ability to gain members like they have been doing. - Keep talking about here where we know the devs do not easily ignore like the forums. Even if they are just filtering it out at their personal inbox, at least we can warn others about getting too involved hosting Valve games. If you want to keep the discussion civil, I suggest you start with yourself as you seem to be far more inflammatory than anyone else here. On Tue, Feb 10, 2015 at 2:58 PM, Daniel Barreiro smelly.feet.you.h...@gmail.com wrote: http://i.imgur.com/ZPiMPA2.png I wouldn't consider this phased out especially since they use community groups whenever a new beta feature launches http://steamcommunity.com/groups/steamuniverse http://steamcommunity.com/groups/steammusic http://steamcommunity.com/groups/SteamClientBeta http://steamcommunity.com/groups/familysharing http://steamcommunity.com/groups/steambroadcasting You get the picture. Let's look at the Steam beta features that used the game hubs http://steamcommunity.com/app/221410 Don't forget the group integration of one of a very massive feature of the storefront. http://store.steampowered.com/curators/ Also in terms of inviting, I don't want to revive this argument but they didn't block any groups from sending invites. They limited how many invites you could send in a period of time to people who aren't your friend. You can invite as many people as you want if they're on your friends list. On the topic of servers, being negative about it and saying Valve left us to rot is not a good way to make anything change. I'm not saying I condone the way they handled this, but it is what it is. Have you ever considered the fact that they may not know what to do? When quickplay was a mess, a ton of clients complained so Valve put temporary restrictions in. The complaints from the players stopped and now a new player wont get turned away by a bad server. If you think about it from a business standpoint, what's worse. Forty pissed off server owners or four thousand lost customers due to a bad server? Valve is a business, they don't technically owe you anything. You weren't held at gunpoint being told host our servers or else. I need to note that I'm not saying that you didn't have an impact on TF, as honestly you did in some way. The RIGHT thing to do would be to at least have some form of civilized discussion and statement on the current situation from Valve. They are no way obliged to do this, but you have provided them a service and it would be reasonable for them to give a response. Think about it from their standpoint. Let's think about the different responses: We are leaving it as is the end. This would result in a lot of bitching and people would potentially stop hosting their servers. We are reverting it to how it was You know how this would end We implemented X feature to make it so community servers can get better representation in quickplay WAH VALVE THIS ISN'T FAIR! I WANT TO USE X SETTING BUT THE QUICKPLAY RULES SAY I CAN'T. THIS IS UNFAIR IT'S NOT GAME CHANGING. OTHER SERVERS ARE GETTING AWAY WITH IT. THERE ARE TOO MANY VALVE SERVERS TAKING MY TRAFFIC If you want it to change stop *talking *about
Re: [hlds] Rethinking the community quickplay ban
Dr.Mckay, Saint. K, as Tim says, please don't give up! Even though this may seem as futile, if we try our best to bring it to the forefront of TF2 players new and old, we may have some success. At the very least if we garner enough support we may get a response or discussion from Valve. As for Supreet mentioning a boycott. I think it could work as a last resort. However rather than specifically breaking Valve's rules, I feel an entire server blackout as Daniel mentioned would be far far better. Also thank you for clearing up some confusion with regards to groups and invites. I'm sure with a bit of effort we could try and get in touch with as many communities as possible to organise that for at least 1-2 days. I'd also agree that we have to be civil about this. Valve technically don't owe us anything. It is their product to do what they want with. But I think it is obvious TF2 isn't as successful as it once was and Valve may show some interest in increasing enthusiasm if it translates into higher profits. As for me, I refuse to run any TF2 server for the five or so that want it in my small community. Updating plugins etc for an empty service is tiresome. But that doesn't mean I can't pour that effort into campaigning for change. I notice that many have joined the group in under 24hrs. *What I would ask is if you do own a large group, please consider making the case to your members through an announcement or two and stating how these changes affected you. Ask them to join in support of you and your own group. After all if it has affected you they are likely to listen.* And please do get in touch with me, I'm happy to talk about this and where I'd like to see it go with the help of others. On 10 February 2015 at 22:58, Daniel Barreiro smelly.feet.you.h...@gmail.com wrote: http://i.imgur.com/ZPiMPA2.png I wouldn't consider this phased out especially since they use community groups whenever a new beta feature launches http://steamcommunity.com/groups/steamuniverse http://steamcommunity.com/groups/steammusic http://steamcommunity.com/groups/SteamClientBeta http://steamcommunity.com/groups/familysharing http://steamcommunity.com/groups/steambroadcasting You get the picture. Let's look at the Steam beta features that used the game hubs http://steamcommunity.com/app/221410 Don't forget the group integration of one of a very massive feature of the storefront. http://store.steampowered.com/curators/ Also in terms of inviting, I don't want to revive this argument but they didn't block any groups from sending invites. They limited how many invites you could send in a period of time to people who aren't your friend. You can invite as many people as you want if they're on your friends list. On the topic of servers, being negative about it and saying Valve left us to rot is not a good way to make anything change. I'm not saying I condone the way they handled this, but it is what it is. Have you ever considered the fact that they may not know what to do? When quickplay was a mess, a ton of clients complained so Valve put temporary restrictions in. The complaints from the players stopped and now a new player wont get turned away by a bad server. If you think about it from a business standpoint, what's worse. Forty pissed off server owners or four thousand lost customers due to a bad server? Valve is a business, they don't technically owe you anything. You weren't held at gunpoint being told host our servers or else. I need to note that I'm not saying that you didn't have an impact on TF, as honestly you did in some way. The RIGHT thing to do would be to at least have some form of civilized discussion and statement on the current situation from Valve. They are no way obliged to do this, but you have provided them a service and it would be reasonable for them to give a response. Think about it from their standpoint. Let's think about the different responses: We are leaving it as is the end. This would result in a lot of bitching and people would potentially stop hosting their servers. We are reverting it to how it was You know how this would end We implemented X feature to make it so community servers can get better representation in quickplay WAH VALVE THIS ISN'T FAIR! I WANT TO USE X SETTING BUT THE QUICKPLAY RULES SAY I CAN'T. THIS IS UNFAIR IT'S NOT GAME CHANGING. OTHER SERVERS ARE GETTING AWAY WITH IT. THERE ARE TOO MANY VALVE SERVERS TAKING MY TRAFFIC If you want it to change stop *talking *about shutting down your servers so Valve loses money and *actually do it*. *Until you actually do it it's just a baseless threat said time over time.* *If community servers are so important, shut down your servers until there's a change.* *Want a fun experiment? Organize a big shutdown for a week or two with other huge clans. See what it does. Take a look at the stats and see how many people stop playing TF2 due to the community servers being gone for a
Re: [hlds] Rethinking the community quickplay ban
Stuff can always be injected. The only reason why you don’t see addons working around this signature check is because of VAC. You can’t very well run VAC on a server. Alexander Corn “Dr. McKay” http://www.doctormckay.com http://www.doctormckay.com From: hlds-boun...@list.valvesoftware.com [mailto:hlds-boun...@list.valvesoftware.com] On Behalf Of Daniel Barreiro Sent: Tuesday, February 10, 2015 11:19 AM To: Half-Life dedicated Win32 server mailing list Subject: Re: [hlds] Rethinking the community quickplay ban In terms of the addons, The way the client addons check works is it'll only load signed engine addons. If a plugin has been signed by Valve, it can be loaded with secure. Otherwise, you can only load addons with -insecure. This is for addons. One option would be to disable addons by default, and add a launch parameter -addons. There's potential this could be exploited though. Another method would be to make a separate server branch. CSGO has this. The branches are Community_DS, Valve_DS, Pinion_DS. The Valve and the Pinion DS both have changes that can be forwarded to the client. For example, there's a hidden cvar sv_require_motd_seconds. This cvar is on the client, the Pinion DS, and the Valve DS. If it is set on the Valve DS, it replicates it to the client. The community DS doesn't have this cvar and from my testing, you can't forward it to the client (as it's a hidden cvar on the client) They could make a branch for vanilla vs modded which report themselves differently to the matchmaking servers. This is similar to how Valve does the Mann Up servers. They run on server_valve.dll, set tf_mm_trusted to 1, and then each server gets validated on the backend. If this works out then it's marked as an official server in MM. They could just make another branch that completely disables the addon system (don't just set a value to 0, make sure it doesn't even attempt to load any form of addon) and either whitelists cvars or blacklists cvars, and makes sure to enforce all cvars that aren't on that list so if someone attempted changing them via injection, it'd just change them back. This is just one option. There will never be a way to 100% block server mods, but this would be a good step. Bypassing something like this is possible with enough work, but it would require a technical expertise many server owners don't have. If someone did attempt this, then they could be blacklisted fairly easily (it'd be pretty obvious). You could even have the client check if a server's cvars are consistent with vanilla mode. If they aren't it then sends some form of log to the backend and if a server gets enough of these, an employee could take a quick look and see what's wrong. There will always be a way past these things. Nothing is impenetrable but there are things that can be done to help. The biggest issue is the workload that would come with this. On Tue, Feb 10, 2015 at 10:34 AM, Cats From Above spotsfromab...@gmail.com wrote: Right now, various Valve games have protections in them that prevent addons being loaded under set conditions. I am sure Valve would be more than capable of distributing a similar mechanic within SRCDS. It is a matter of will power. On Wed, Feb 11, 2015 at 1:56 AM, Asher Baker asher...@gmail.com wrote: On Tue, Feb 10, 2015 at 2:59 PM, Cats From Above spotsfromab...@gmail.com wrote: What would you need to do to be eligible for the Vanilla pool? Simple, don't have *any* addons loaded on your server. This can be easily enforced on a technical level. The ability to late load source addons would also be removed under this scheme. This is a non-starter, there is no way to prevent server-side modifications from being made. ~ Their heads are green, and their hands are blue, And they went to sea in a Sieve. - Edward Lear ___ 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 ___ To unsubscribe, edit your list preferences, or view the list archives, please visit: https://list.valvesoftware.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/hlds
Re: [hlds] Rethinking the community quickplay ban
Robert, I find that interesting about larger groups. As for shutting down the servers, it wouldn't become obvious to players, however it would become obvious to Valve when they suddenly noticed a huge drop in the number of servers available in the server browser. They surely keep some form of automated stats on this. Even if we believe Valve have made a terrible decision, as long as we aren't abusive towards them, we can express our anger in more constructive ways. We kind of silently waited for a year. A little bubbling up on the mailing list does not compare to a consistent drive to make people aware of the issue. - Boycotting the Mann Co store. How can any of us possibly aim to achieve that? What could would it do either? - Raise the issue outside of Valve controlled properties. I'm more than happy to make a little site that would neatly convey our arguments better than the steam group description. I'll get to work on it tomorrow. I'm in discussion with someone who could possibly make a video about it too. Other possible actions I have thought of is as someone else said above, raising it with Kritzkast. Also seeing if we could get in touch with popular TF2 youtubers like Jerma and Star? I feel we need far more in the group for it to be worth their time, let alone how would we contact them? - Keep talking on the forums? I am sure it is easier for a dev to ignore the forums entirely, do they even use the forums? As for SPUF, they are trying to transition everyone away from it. I have tried numerous times to make an account and get stuck in a moderator queue. On 10 February 2015 at 23:58, Robert Paulson thepauls...@gmail.com wrote: Your screenshot proves yourself wrong. Here is an example of what steamcommunity looked like before. http://web.archive.org/web/20110202224111/https://steamcommunity.com/ There is a direct link to the list of groups here and now it is replaced by other junk. I don't see how curators are related to groups. They don't even look the same. And the reason why those beta features are not using hubs is because they are part of the steam client and not actually an individual download unlike Steam for linux. Those steam groups are large because they were accompanied by announcements and huge incentives to join from Steam store activities, not because everyone is using groups. Larger groups have completely been blocked from inviting people outside their friend list. You can see from their history (there used to be a link to that too) that no one has been invited for days, and when you try to invite someone it silently fails. If you have not run into this issue yet, your group is probably not large enough. Shutting down all community servers is not likely to work. Community players became a minority due to an entire year of being cut off from new players. I don't believe we are being rude about this either. Are we really supposed to pretend that Valve hasn't made a terrible decision and sugarcoat our words as if this wasn't a serious problem? Are we not already being patient enough after waiting an entire year? If Valve needs proof that this was a bad decision, all they have to do is open their eyes. The stats are already out there. These solutions are much more likely to work: - Boycott the Mann Co store. - Raise the issue outside of Valve controlled properties like Steam groups so they can't just kill it by silently blocking your ability to gain members like they have been doing. - Keep talking about here where we know the devs do not easily ignore like the forums. Even if they are just filtering it out at their personal inbox, at least we can warn others about getting too involved hosting Valve games. If you want to keep the discussion civil, I suggest you start with yourself as you seem to be far more inflammatory than anyone else here. On Tue, Feb 10, 2015 at 2:58 PM, Daniel Barreiro smelly.feet.you.h...@gmail.com wrote: http://i.imgur.com/ZPiMPA2.png I wouldn't consider this phased out especially since they use community groups whenever a new beta feature launches http://steamcommunity.com/groups/steamuniverse http://steamcommunity.com/groups/steammusic http://steamcommunity.com/groups/SteamClientBeta http://steamcommunity.com/groups/familysharing http://steamcommunity.com/groups/steambroadcasting You get the picture. Let's look at the Steam beta features that used the game hubs http://steamcommunity.com/app/221410 Don't forget the group integration of one of a very massive feature of the storefront. http://store.steampowered.com/curators/ Also in terms of inviting, I don't want to revive this argument but they didn't block any groups from sending invites. They limited how many invites you could send in a period of time to people who aren't your friend. You can invite as many people as you want if they're on your friends list. On the topic of servers, being
