Re: [hlds] Mandatory Team Fortress 2 update released

[Robert Paulson]

I fail to see how running community servers in the past means that your
opinions are valid. Are people supposed to run community servers only once
in a blue moon? No one has ever kept players around that way. Stop
pretending.

Before we had another troll like you named Dan "needaxeo". Basically his
story was that he was a failed community server owner who was running on a
dirt cheap $5 vps and claimed that every other community server put in the
same amount of effort he did... and therefore everyone else cheated and
that's why he failed, and that's why Valve should just kill community
servers. I am quite sure you have a similar background.

Valve has never responded to discussions here, but they see them for sure.
Even if they will never respond, we can make sure to warn others here not
to get into hosting another Valve/Steam game because they have no qualms
about destroying your server in the future.

For those of you who are hosting another game or new to TF2 hosting, be
warned that they have been killing off community servers for the past 2-3
years. If you have just started hosting or thinking about hosting a
Valve/Steam game, get out now.
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Re: [hlds] Mandatory Team Fortress 2 update released

[Robert Paulson]

> I’m not sure if that was directed toward me or the other person but I’ve
not said anything about disliking community servers if they were policed
properly they’d be a great addition to Team Fortress 2.

It was addressed to the person who said that, so unless Phillip Vector is
your alter ego no it is not directed to you.

>  The issue is Valve has no way to guarantee the experience of players as
they’ve said in blog posts it’s what they are looking for it’s what they
want.

This issue has been addressed repeatedly already. Simply only allow people
on official servers for the first 10 or so hours of gameplay.

Then after that, switch the default to community servers. People will know
what a "vanilla" experience is like and can choose to switch the default
back if they so choose.

If you are still paranoid about the experience, then you can start charging
people a license or something in order to get listed in "casual" so if they
abuse the system, so they can't just make a new account in 1 minute.

All of these issues are easily solved and just saying that Valve has no
choice is encouraging them to be lazy.
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Re: [hlds] Mandatory Team Fortress 2 update released

[Robert Paulson]

> So people new to steam would be not allowed to run a community server?
> and why if I want to run a TF2 community do I have to buy anything other
then that game?

And why does this even matter when it is impossible to start a new
community now, let alone for the few ones left to survive?

It just sounds like you are trolling, giving useless reasons why being able
to host your own server should be easy when you hate community servers.
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Re: [hlds] Mandatory Team Fortress 2 update released

[Robert Paulson]

Ok then why not remove f2p because people keep making new accounts after
being banned by lmaobox?

People are going to abuse anything. Valve is smart enough to fix the
problem without taking the lazy way out.
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Re: [hlds] Mandatory Team Fortress 2 update released

[Robert Paulson]

More people got into community servers through quickplay even with that
shitty arrangement than compared to now. (before you tell me, yes I know
saxton/trade/idle servers are doing better than before, but only because
they are cannablizing the community vanilla playerbase).

The official gamemodes still dominate the screen, I would say, even as much
if not more than before.
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Re: [hlds] Mandatory Team Fortress 2 update released

[Robert Paulson]

I found it really funny that people were celebrating on the meet your match
update when they segregated community servers into their own ghetto again.

It was the custom server tab version 2, except they were successful this
time because you were all being irrational Valve fanboys and claiming that
community servers were saved again.

Now community servers are 100% blocked from "quickplay" (casual mode), and
they chucked to the bottom of the GUI. Community servers have never been
deader.

Why would you expect Valve to give community servers anything given what
they've been doing for the past 3-4 years?

>
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Re: [hlds] Roughly 2 weeks out from the MyM update...

[Robert Paulson]

I don't see the point in casual mode recording stats at all. If it doesn't
matter if you win or lose then those stats are meaningless. And people that
want to play casually usually don't even want to have their badness
recorded.

What the TF2 team should've done was just leave quickplay in and open it to
community servers. They could even still give people a rank based on play
time which could be checked client-side, bypassing the servers.

As everyone said already, making another server browser isn't going to
persuade the 1 click play button players. As long as Valve is offering a
feature like that, the only way to compete is to also have a 1 click play
button for community servers.
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Re: [hlds] Roughly 2 weeks out from the MyM update...

[Robert Paulson]

This update may not kill your servers right away because it is still summer
vacation. Right now there is a shakeup in community players with some
communities closing, and a few players favoriting your server when casual
mode wasn't working properly for a week. But as you have noticed yourself
servers now seem to be prone to suddenly emptying out. When summer vacation
ends, people will not so easily refill your server and those new players
won't last forever. It is now impossible to compete with Valve on vanilla
servers now that people can only get ranked on them.

Now we all have to run 32 slot instant respawn spam-fests like No-Heroes
and every other weird plugin... which are the very reasons that people on
Reddit and Steam complain about.

MOTD ad companies aren't at the mercy of the TF team anymore unlike the
rest of us here, they've already diversified into other games such as
CS:GO, Gmod, Minecraft. They will keep offering TF2 advertisements until
the very end.

Trying to hype up community servers won't do anything. Half of the
community server owners here hate the other half, as you can see by Mr.
Olsen here who never fails to falsely suggest that servers with ads are the
cause of every community killing update.

Community servers used to have most of the players now, but now we are a
small minority due to years of being locked out of traffic, so trying to
get the TF team to panic by sheer number of complaints is impossible.

It is up to the TF team to realize that they cannot copy Overwatch and
CS:GO to success. They had strong community servers and now they are
throwing the last of them away and doing a bait and switch on people that
bought the game to play/host their own servers.
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Re: [hlds] Roughly 2 weeks out from the MyM update...

[Robert Paulson]

Is it just me or was there literally zero benefit for community servers in
this update?

The only thing Valve did was rename quickplay into "casual" and completely
blocked all community servers from participating in it. There was no real
change.

The reason why everyone saw a bunch of players in the first week was
because casual mode was temporarily broken.

Anyone remember this little gem?

On Tue, May 10, 2016 at 2:50 PM, epi  wrote:

> Perhaps you will get the attention you so desperately seek from Valve in
> the next update:
>
> https://twitter.com/4G_b4nny/status/729839464684490752
>
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Re: [hlds] Roughly 2 weeks out from the MyM update...

[Robert Paulson]

Players were higher than before up until the last patch last Thursday.

Maybe official servers were fixed?
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Re: [hlds] TF2: Meet Your Match update and QuickPlay?

[Robert Paulson]

People said the same thing about quickpick at the time and we all know how
that turned out. Everyone was claiming higher player counts at first and
now they are dead.

On Fri, Jul 8, 2016 at 11:52 AM, E. Olsen <ceo.eol...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Frankly, it's a win just by shining light on the fact that there ARE
> community servers at all. For years now, they've been effectively hidden to
> the point that a large portion of the F2P playerbase didn't even know they
> existed. At least with this UI change we've got the chance for players to
> find us.
>
> On Fri, Jul 8, 2016 at 2:47 PM, Lucas Wagner <lgwag...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> I would imagine a big reason why things were so great last night was
>> people just wanted to play TF2 and the only servers they could connect to
>> were community servers. Not trying to rain on the parade, bu I think Robert
>> is right. It'll be a few weeks before we have any clue how this will all
>> play out.
>>
>> Lucas
>>
>> On Fri, Jul 8, 2016 at 1:28 PM, Robert Paulson <thepauls...@gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> I am not sure why everyone is celebrating so early.
>>>
>>> Population is only high likely because of a new patch, summer time, and
>>> reportedly many Valve servers being temporarily down.
>>>
>>> Maybe casual mode is bringing in more players, but it is just as likely
>>> that matchmaking is yet another drain players that community servers will
>>> never be allowed to participate in, while some of you are excited about
>>> fighting for scraps from other community servers.
>>>
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>>>
>>
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Re: [hlds] TF2: Meet Your Match update and QuickPlay?

[Robert Paulson]

I am not sure why everyone is celebrating so early.

Population is only high likely because of a new patch, summer time, and
reportedly many Valve servers being temporarily down.

Maybe casual mode is bringing in more players, but it is just as likely
that matchmaking is yet another drain players that community servers will
never be allowed to participate in, while some of you are excited about
fighting for scraps from other community servers.
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Re: [hlds] TF2: Meet Your Match update and QuickPlay?

[Robert Paulson]

"I doubt Valve would go through all the trouble of creating GSLT's (and all
the requirements to qualify to use them) if they intended to throw
community servers out of the mix completely."

They already existed for years in the form of tf_server_identity convars
and community servers were in fact thrown out of the mix completely. If
Valve really wanted to involve community servers they could have done so
years ago without  sv_setsteamaccount. If the update had something that
would be , they would have said something about it instead of keeping it a
secret like the new matchmaking system.

I don't see why anyone should be optimistic about what looks like the final
death blow to community servers. Every single time there has been a
community killing update in the past 5 or so years, some people have been
foolishly optimistic, and cheering Valve on, when update after update have
only resulted in deader community servers.


On Thu, Jul 7, 2016 at 10:49 AM, E. Olsen <ceo.eol...@gmail.com> wrote:

> I'm 100% sure community servers will be limited to casual play (which,
> frankly, is fine by me).
>
> The way I interpret this, folks, is that basically everything with
> Quickplay will remain as it is (i.e. the current quickplay policies
> regarding allowed server settings/maps, etc.). The only change I see here
> is that they've made quickplay "smarter" in that it will now try to take
> overall skill level of both the player and the server into account when
> distributing players (which SHOULD mean noobs will be more often directed
> to Valve's servers, and more experienced players to community servers -
> provided they allow those in their options).
>
> That, and the fact that auto-balance is going away (which probably means
> that while you'll be able to direct-connect to a server, you won't be able
> to choose/switch teams).
>
> I doubt Valve would go through all the trouble of creating GSLT's (and all
> the requirements to qualify to use them) if they intended to throw
> community servers out of the mix completely.
>
> Frankly, I'm encouraged that they've included a mechanic that encourages
> player to "play more" to level up.
>
> On Thu, Jul 7, 2016 at 1:36 PM, Rowedahelicon <
> theoneando...@rowedahelicon.com> wrote:
>
>> I'm pretty sure (and scared) it'll just be that we can host casual
>> servers. Meaning it probably will be the standard (keep your settings the
>> way we want them, no mods!). I feel perferrably the best thing they can do
>> is close down quickplay for conventional games and re-promote the server
>> browser. Save quickplay for casual games, and then have the competitive
>> games.
>>
>> I mean, it seems like a fair distribution of players over all facets of
>> TF2.
>>
>> On Thu, Jul 7, 2016 at 11:11 AM, Tohru Adachi <tohruada...@8chan.co>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> Yeah, I think we need some word here from Eric or John on what's
>>> happening to community servers.
>>>
>>> We're only speculating at this point, and I don't have the best feeling
>>> about this
>>>
>>> On 07/07/2016 16:07, Thomas Deisinger wrote:
>>>
>>> Good question. This is why I was wondering if people would still be able
>>> to join community servers at any time if they are in the quickplay.
>>>
>>> On Thu, Jul 7, 2016 at 10:00 AM, Nathaniel Theis <ntth...@gmail.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>> If community servers are filled with randoms from casual, and have the
>>>> same gameplay as Valve servers, isn't the community just paying to host
>>>> Valve's servers for them?
>>>> On Jul 6, 2016 8:11 PM, "Robert Paulson" <thepauls...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> That's not going to happen in this day and age of ranked matchmaking.
>>>>> Right now pro players only join random pubs because it takes forever to
>>>>> setup a highly skilled scrim. When official matchmaking comes out, many
>>>>> will want to rank up rather than join an unranked pub where people don't
>>>>> try as hard.
>>>>>
>>>>> There's no way that Valve will let people rank up in community servers
>>>>> given that they have been excluded in everything for years from quickplay,
>>>>> mvm, contracts, duck journals etc. If you are hoping something good will
>>>>> happen before it actually happens, you are just setting yourself up for
>>>>> disappointment.
>>>>>
>>>>> On Wed, Jul 6, 2016 at 5:59 PM, E. Olsen < <ceo.eol...@gmail.com>
>>>>> ceo.eol...@gmail.com> 

Re: [hlds] TF2: Meet Your Match update and QuickPlay?

[Robert Paulson]

That's not going to happen in this day and age of ranked matchmaking. Right
now pro players only join random pubs because it takes forever to setup a
highly skilled scrim. When official matchmaking comes out, many will want
to rank up rather than join an unranked pub where people don't try as hard.

There's no way that Valve will let people rank up in community servers
given that they have been excluded in everything for years from quickplay,
mvm, contracts, duck journals etc. If you are hoping something good will
happen before it actually happens, you are just setting yourself up for
disappointment.

On Wed, Jul 6, 2016 at 5:59 PM, E. Olsen  wrote:

> Honestly, the more I think about this, the more I like it.
>
> Think about it - where (historically) have most of the game's most
> talented/skilled players been found? On community servers. That means (if
> quickplay IS really going to match players to servers with their skill
> level) that as payers get better at the game, they should automatically get
> funneled towards community servers (provided, of course, that community
> servers are finally added back to the mix by default).
>
> Even better - instead of community servers that are quickplay-enabled
> getting sent players who barely know what each class does, we'll start
> getting players that are actually ready to be taught some team-play.
>
> Maybe it's pie-in-the-sky thinking on my part, but if we absolutely HAVE
> TO keep quickplay forever, at least that kind of implementation makes more
> sense.
>
> On Wed, Jul 6, 2016 at 7:44 PM, HD  wrote:
>
>> If we don’t get some positive outcome towards community servers I’m
>> shutting mine down in the near future and looking at shifting resources to
>> other games and providers.
>>
>> I’m rather tired of holding out hope that Valve pushes some new traffic
>> my way vs Valve servers only each and every time a new update comes
>> out…THAT THE COMMUNITY MAKES!
>>
>>
>>
>> *From:* hlds-boun...@list.valvesoftware.com [mailto:
>> hlds-boun...@list.valvesoftware.com] *On Behalf Of *Thomas Deisinger
>> *Sent:* Wednesday, July 06, 2016 4:30 PM
>> *To:* Half-Life dedicated Win32 server mailing list
>> *Subject:* Re: [hlds] TF2: Meet Your Match update and QuickPlay?
>>
>>
>>
>> That's a good point. They repurpose all their current pubs to the new
>> casual, plus all the actual comp servers needed...it would be fool-hardy to
>> not allow community servers.
>>
>>
>>
>> Hopefully we can get some official word soon...
>>
>>
>>
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Re: [hlds] Mandatory TF2 update coming

[Robert Paulson]

If we are talking about transparency I think we need to talk about a few
people's bizarre fixation on ads even though after being repeatedly told
they were 100% blocked for quickplay players long before the official
server change.

If you were a normal player, you would have known that. But you are not
one. You are a custom server owner which is why you don't even know this
and you are pretending to be a concerned player. I doubt you even have this
problem because you can figure out how to host a server, so you shouldn't
be too dumb to figure out how to valve in the tag box.

No one was asking for the MOTD to be re-enabled for quickplay users, we
were all asking for quickplay defaulting to official servers to be removed.

So I think I know what you are trying to do. You are expecting something
like this.

1. Your competitors using ads gets killed for you.
2. That Valve only has quickplay to kill ads (proven wrong multiple times)
and you think they will actually remove quickplay so your servers will get
the same coverage as quickplay compatible servers.

This doesn't have a sliver of a chance of happening in your favor.

> Look at the CSGO server operators, they have it much worse then their tf2
counter parts but they are not on here spamming a mailing list about it
every week. Instead they are coming up with incentives for players to use
their servers.

No they don't really. They have 10 times the players and official CS:GO
servers don't clog up the browser. They have matchmaking, but soon TF2 will
too so it will become strictly worse than CS:GO in every regard.

And not to mention everyone knew you couldn't host matchmaking servers
before the game was even released. People bought the game knowing full well
that they would not be able to compete with official servers fairly and
that is why the game was deader than CSS until illegal betting became a
thing. The CS:GO devs did not pull a bait and switch.

I also prefer not to take any advice from someone who probably contributed
this mess by extensively using fake players and then selling the plugin to
ProTF2 after getting blacklisted.

If Valve doesn't care anymore then so be it. As long as someone brings this
up, I will use the opportunity to warn people away from hosting or having
anything to do with Valve games other than just playing them.
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Re: [hlds] Mandatory TF2 update coming

[Robert Paulson]

Custom game-mode servers are all suffering. They do well compared to every
other community server but they used to be 10x more populated. Since
official server quickplay happened, a lot of players don't even know that
community servers exist. All you have to do is look at how dead Slag
servers are. Where are the fortwars servers? Why has there not been any new
popular mods like Saxton Hale anymore?

I also find it strange that it is ok for Valve to lock mods behind a
paywall that used to be free on gamebanana while it is as offensive as
Hitler to let Skyrim do the same.or as someone here whined, making as
little as a cup of coffee through ads.

This Microsoft vs Apple analogy is also way off base. We are not Valve's
competitors. We do not host TF2 servers because we want to be billionaires
and want to take 100% of Valve's profit. They allow people to host servers
because we bring in additional value, which was proven by the fact that the
majority of players were on community servers prior to the quickplay
change. A more apt analogy would be if Apple decided to clone the most
popular apps and stop new users from seeing any others in the app store
unless they click a tiny button hidden at the bottom of the page.

We pay for the servers, moderate them, and even improve them by fixing bugs
they haven't fixed for years or add features such as intelligent
autobalance. We have a reasonable expectation that Valve will not to take
advantage of us by throwing all our servers in a ghetto and keeping all the
new players to themselves... as was the case for every game they've
released between tf2 and half-life.

We should not have to resort to paying for ads on Facebook just to get any
players at all. The game was released with the capability to host "vanilla"
servers and now you are suggesting that only total mods should be able to
exist? Only the next CS or Dota are allowed to host TF2 servers? If this
was the case then Valve should've said so from the beginning. Most of us
wouldn't be here if we knew this would happen. When you tell people you can
host a server for the game, it doesn't include being shoved into a ghetto
where the new players have a hard time finding.

Maybe this is not true for you, but we are a "community" not a "private"
organization. We are funded by players. Players become admins, and these
admin make major decisions. And I believe most of the major communities
still around are also run in this manner. Not that this lessens Valve's
obligations not to screw us over. Which "private" server owner is stupid
enough to not want quickplay back? Probably someone who doesn't actually
have a server.

On Thu, Dec 17, 2015 at 10:43 PM, Cats From Above 
wrote:

> Matthias seems to be confusing two separate issues, deliberately so I
> suspect. It is, in my view, the height of intellectual dishonesty to
> confuse the creation of custom content with the existence of privately-run
> servers; it is possible to have a strong custom-content community without
> the need for privately-run servers and I suspect Valve has been posturing
> Team Fortress 2 toward such a reality for some time. For example: Workshop
> map integration inside the server. If I was a betting person I would
> preempt that the true reason for Valve implementing this feature is to
> allow their soon-to-be-implemented lobby system to assign a lobby to an
> official server, with a stock map or a custom map selected from the
> workshop. Such would completely negate the need for custom map servers run
> by private operators.
>
>
> As for custom game-modes, which presently do require privately-run
> servers, last time I checked private operators with servers featuring
> custom game-modes, who put effort into social networking and publicity etc.
> are doing quite well irrespective of the existence of Quickplay.
>
>
> The servers struggling the most as a result of Quickplay are privately run
> servers which are directly competing with official servers whilst only
> holding half the cards. Ergo: Stock-map servers, which miss out on things
> that official servers get. Even if the default option was addressed, those
> servers would still be holding half the cards. Hence a lesson of history
> relevant to privately run stock servers: Steve Jobs was smart enough to
> realise that if Apple was in a zero sum game with Microsoft, Apple would
> lose. He was also smart enough to realise that he didn’t need to play that
> game – That Apple could do something that Microsoft wasn’t doing. Perhaps
> stock server operators could come to that same enlightenment in terms of
> private servers and Valve.
>
>
> Finally, I would note that the misunderstanding of Matthias’es use of the
> term “community” was deliberate as a means of pointing out the
> inappropriateness of the term. I personally dislike the term “community
> servers” and much prefer the more accurate term “private servers” and
> “private server operators”… and I would again express 

Re: [hlds] Mandatory TF2 update coming

[Robert Paulson]

Your understanding is flawed then. Everything you've been saying is
logically flawed and it just seems like you are just trying to be as troll
as possible.

If hosting servers was a zero sum game, then why would the would Valve let
people do it? Use your brain and think. They do it because it is NOT a zero
sum game. We get something out of it and they get something out of it.

It doesn't matter if they were on quickplay.I don't know how many times I
have to repeat myself. My point is that even servers that aren't eligible
for quickplay were negatively affected because most players are now never
even aware that community servers exist given the tiny button that browse
servers have. If you ever ran a saxton/ff server you would know what I am
talking about, but you obvious don't have any experience in this matter.
There used to be dozens of custom servers populated 24/7 and now there are
maybe 3-4.

Why is minecraft not a valid argument? You know that there is an official
minecraft host called minecraft realms? And they don't plaster them all
over the top of the main menu. Why does the game mode even matter? Again,
wrong on all points.

And why do the lack of complaints flooding reddit mean that Valve should
ignore the issue? As Henry Ford famously said, "If I had asked people what
they wanted, they would have said faster horses". If people don't know
there's something better, they won't ask for it. The community players
didn't complain about it right away because it was a slow change and it was
hard to figure out that Valve was at fault for killing off their server
because they never use quickplay.

And yes Valve does owe something to communities *who also happen to be
their players and customers* not to break crucial features that were sold
on release such as being able to host the game and have a fair chance to
get players. It doesn't matter if people shuda wuda cuda shifted to custom
game modes which are actually deader than regular tf2.

If you ever release a game or marketplace, please tell everyone you are
going to screw them over as soon as it is more profitable for them. Let's
see how well that works out for you.

@rd, I think someone was complaining here about your stop the tank being on
quickplay several months ago.
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Re: [hlds] Mandatory TF2 update coming

[Robert Paulson]

You run ff? Well that is not surprising, you are probably the only group
who can claim things have gotten better. Your 20 servers are not all doing
that well. I think only 3 or 4 of them are. And they are not really doing
that well compared to what was the norm before quickplay. I would suspect
that other Freak Fortress owners losing interest in the dwindling
population caused by anti-community changes has more to do with your
population increase than the quickplay change itself.

> There is a difference between official servers and officially HOSTED
servers. Minecraft Realms is still community run and operated. Realms is to
Minecraft what Multiplay is to TF2 - A hosting provider. It's not correct
to mix the two.

And you are missing the point. I am saying that they could host their own
servers, years after having community servers only, if they wanted to
because apparently "Cats From Above" somehow thinks it is impossible. But
they don't encroach on the community unlike Valve. And no, it is not like
Multiplay, unless Multiplay is run by Valve which as far as I can, they
don't.
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Re: [hlds] Mandatory TF2 update coming

[Robert Paulson]

Before quickplay there used to be 20+ custom game mode servers filled 24/7
and now you think it is acceptable that only 4 of them can be popular now?
And most of them succeeding only by ripping models from gmod and changing a
few numbers on a plugin? Most good custom servers are dead and the ones
left are appealing to 10 years olds who only entertained by a new skin on
the same Freak Fortress bosses.

Slag servers did not die from "administration" issues. If it was ever an
issue then they would never have been full 24/7. They are a prime example
of even non-quickplay full conversion mods that were overwhelmingly
successful before the quickplay change and are now practically dead.

> Firstly, Robert, you seem to be confusing the application of zero sum
game and the way it was intended. I refer to it in the context of, “Someone
who prefers and frequents Valve servers, probably won’t play on privately
run servers that often.” And the opposite is also true, “Someone who
prefers and frequents privately run servers, won’t usually go near Valve
servers, though obviously there are incentives for them to do so from time
to time.” And also “If someone has found a community they like, they rarely
venture outside of that community providing the community hosts the types
of things they’re interested in.” The zero-sum-game argument is about where
people play, that is all, and it is reflective of the fact that we are all
creatures of habit.

I didn't confuse anything. Your arguments are all logically flawed and
rather nonsensical. I don't know why you are even bringing up that playtime
is "zero-sum" (which it isn't, players can be stimulated to play 1 hour on
community servers and 1 hour on official ones). If Valve thought it was a
zero-sum game and didn't get anything out of it, then why would they have
let people host servers? Therefore whatever you have to say about this is
irrelevant.

> Thirdly, it would behove of Robert not to guestimate the experience of
other contributors to this mailing list when he does not know to whom he
speaks. My experience is that custom game modes are doing just fine and I’m
not alone in this regard. Perhaps some introspection might reveal why
Robert has a different experience?

It is very easy to tell that you have no experience hosting servers. The
only person who can support your argument is Fearts, who is the only person
who could make such a claim. And even his servers have fewer players than
the historical norm.

> Fifthly, I don’t recall Valve ever marketing Team Fortress 2 as a game
where private server operators were guaranteed a “level” environment or
that private servers were guaranteed. Dedicated servers, maybe.
Privately-managed servers, no. The fact that it had the latter feature at
release is, in my view, incidental. Furthermore, I would note that Valve’s
EULA reserves it the right to make changes to the product however they
wish. So perhaps it would be prudent for Robert to take out the emotive
entitlement argument.

It wasn't ever written in stone, but it is an implicit understanding. Many
of us probably wouldn't be here if Valve said they planned to eventually
kill off all community servers in the future once they started making more
money that way. Valve could make TF2 pay-to-win if they wanted to, but they
don't. And people buy their stuff because there is an implicit
understanding that Valve would never do something like that. But for some
reason they have no qualms about screwing over their communities.

There is also an clause in the EULA that allows them to terminate your
account for any reason. Yet there is an implicit understanding that Valve
would never close it for a "dumb" reason such as allowing them to make more
money at your expense. Yet this is exactly what they are doing to TF2
community servers.

I don't know anything about overkill, and I don't care about the Mannconomy
or attachments. It is irrelevant much like most of your arguments.
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Re: [hlds] Mandatory TF2 update coming

[Robert Paulson]

The average player wouldn't have a bizzare vendetta against community
servers. It takes a dedicated troll to sign up for a server mailing list
and spam insults towards anyone that is pro-community. And as we have seen
from those such as dan "needaxeo" their motivations are probably not the
well-being of the average player.

As a player I do not see what the issue with ads are. Valve blocked them
for anyone connecting through quickplay and if I am not connecting through
quickplay and I cannot tolerate it at all, then I disable the MOTD.

If you are a community owner, why do you care that other servers have ads?
There are only 2 possible reasons I can see.

1. You think that they are the reason for the quickplay change.
2. You want Valve to kill off your competition for you especially when you
see your own servers dying while people like Andrew have a top server with
ads.

#1 has been debunked over and over and over again. Ads were already 100%
blocked for quickplay players for a long time. The real cause was probably
to keep pay2win servers from skirting the quickplay rules. Years before ads
existed, people were abusing fake players to get money through premium
status. Ads did not cause this.

So that leaves #2. Which is really sad because instead of trying to fix the
problem for all communities, people here keep spamming the mailing list
with something that Valve has already considered solved.
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Re: [hlds] Mandatory TF2 update coming

[Robert Paulson]

> I don't think Ads are the only reason QP was implemented, you need to
keep in mind the QP beta came before Pinion ever did.

This.

I don't know why people keep making up their own alternate version of
history.

People were abusing fake players long before advertising was even a thing.
And even after advertising was completely erased from quickplay, people
still abused it. And they will continue abusing even if the motd became
completely disabled.

> Because MOTDs are actually useful for things other than ads.

This ship has already sailed. Quickplay players are 100% guaranteed not to
see an ad. No one is asking Valve to unblock the MOTD for quickplay players.

> And I'm wondering what happens if you join a server which forces you to
have motds activated.

I disconnect and blacklist? If I want an official server, it should be
opt-in not opt-out.

> If we put this situation into DreamWorks parlance and remember he film
Shrek

Top quality trolling.
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Re: [hlds] Mandatory TF2 update coming

[Robert Paulson]

Quickplay was hardly the first or one of the first anti-community changes.
It is the worst and that is why everyone is fixated on it. Official server
exclusives like MvM and passtime pale in comparison based on damage done.
Matchmaking could possibly be just as bad, but only time will tell. And it
might not even be an issue if community servers got all the unranked
players in return. Or even whitelisting trusted communities that was
supposedly the reason for tying servers to player accounts.

Community servers are not "relics of the past". It is simply a business
decision and Valve has decided to choose the path of greed, laziness, and
betrayal. One only needs to look at Minecraft as proof that community
servers are not outdated.

Unless you are biased against them, it is hard to argue that community
servers haven't added any value. As I have said multiple times, community
players were by far the majority until they were blocked from quickplay
over a year ago. And it took massive traffic manipulation to reverse this.
Just because we are the minority now doesn't mean that's the way it should
be.

It is sad to see Valve acting more like EA. Instead of dealing with bad
servers they have decided to chuck all community servers in a ghetto.
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Re: [hlds] Mandatory TF2 update coming

[Robert Paulson]

Like I said before, it is way too late for an angry post on reddit.

Many of you thought these changes would just kill off the "bad" servers
which "obviously" excluded your own, and applauded Valve and even asked for
more and more restrictions.

Community players are the minority now. Just last week I talked to a player
who had no idea that community servers existed even though he was in one.

All the communities that spammed /r/tf2 to get players have irreversibly
died (it would take them years to rebuild now) and have no incentive to
help. In fact I see them insulting the communities that are still around.
If they failed, then others must too.

When competitive matchmaking comes out sometimes early next year, that will
be the final nail in the coffin for community servers. There's not much we
can do other than to serve as a warning to never get involved with anything
Valve does beyond playing their game. Don't get involved with their
ecosystem as they will screw you over whenever it suits them.
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Re: [hlds] Mandatory TF2 update released

[Robert Paulson]

> Because you can catch more flies with honey then vinegar.

So you really think that anything will change if we lie and say:

Gee thanks Valve. You are doing a great job of making up for
single-handedly trashing community servers almost 2 years ago and doing
nothing to make up for it. With all these community updates made from skins
made by the community, we should be licking your boots that you didn't make
them official server only.

We were nice before, and this is where it has gotten us. Now everyone needs
to know that they should stay away from Valve. Whether it be running a
community, making a website, or hosting their games as a GSP. You will
probably be screwed in the future as soon as it is convenient for them. You
should have second thoughts about even publishing a game on Steam.

> Has it possibly crossed your mind that the opinion you felt that it was a
good idea was in the minority?

Has it possibly crossed your mind that this is how CS:GO works? And there
aren't any riots complaining about it.

Whatever Valve does, someone is going to complain, and they need to put
their foot down. They have sided too much with people that are too stupid
to even type "valve" in the tag box..

When we bought TF2, no one expected community servers to be put in a ghetto
like COD and being forced to play on thousands of hack/grief infested
official servers. The TF team has betrayed us, and we will keep complaining
and driving other server owners away until they change their ways, if ever.



On Thu, Oct 29, 2015 at 7:57 PM, Phillip Vector <t...@mostdeadlygame.com>
wrote:

> >Point there is we have been complaining about this for over a year, they
> do something to fix it, you guys complain and it gets reversed in just a
> few days.
>
> Has it possibly crossed your mind that the opinion you felt that it was a
> good idea was in the minority?
>
> On Thu, Oct 29, 2015 at 7:47 PM, Rowedahelicon <
> theoneando...@rowedahelicon.com> wrote:
>
>> Point there is we have been complaining about this for over a year, they
>> do something to fix it, you guys complain and it gets reversed in just a
>> few days.
>>
>> On Thu, Oct 29, 2015 at 10:43 PM, Phillip Vector <t...@mostdeadlygame.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> >Why would anyone be appreciative when the only choices that have been
>>> made were between bad for communities or bad for communities?
>>>
>>> Because you can catch more flies with honey then vinegar.
>>>
>>> >The last thing that might of qualified, removing official servers from
>>> the browser, was reversed in a matter of days.
>>>
>>> Speaking as someone who emailed them to complain about them being
>>> removed, I'm glad they are back. I like using the browser to find ALL
>>> servers.
>>>
>>> On Thu, Oct 29, 2015 at 7:35 PM, Robert Paulson <thepauls...@gmail.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>> That's because Valve hasn't made a choice that benefited server owners
>>>> over official ones.
>>>>
>>>> Why would anyone be appreciative when the only choices that have been
>>>> made were between bad for communities or bad for communities?
>>>>
>>>> The last thing that might of qualified, removing official servers from
>>>> the browser, was reversed in a matter of days.
>>>>
>>>> On Thu, Oct 29, 2015 at 7:17 PM, Daniel Barreiro <
>>>> smelly.feet.you.h...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Why would they help people who always seem to be unappreciative cunts
>>>>> no matter what choice is made?
>>>>>
>>>>> On Thu, Oct 29, 2015 at 10:16 PM, HD <ad...@gamerscrib.net> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> Well I was hoping to see something along the lines of "Changed lots of
>>>>>> things to help out the community" but apparently that was all wishful
>>>>>> thinking.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> -Original Message-
>>>>>> From: hlds-boun...@list.valvesoftware.com
>>>>>> [mailto:hlds-boun...@list.valvesoftware.com] On Behalf Of Eric Smith
>>>>>> Sent: Thursday, October 29, 2015 10:09 PM
>>>>>> To: hlds@list.valvesoftware.com; hlds_li...@list.valvesoftware.com;
>>>>>> hlds_annou...@list.valvesoftware.com
>>>>>> Subject: [hlds] Mandatory TF2 update released
>>>>>>
>>>>>> We've released a mandatory update for TF2. The update notes are
>>>>>> below. The
>>>>>> new version is 3065162.
>>&g

Re: [hlds] Mandatory TF2 update released

[Robert Paulson]

>
> 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.
>

The top servers on gametracker were nearly all legitimate and all community
servers. Official servers were not even in the top 100. Even with the
presence of cheating, it would have been expected that some official ones
would be in the top 100. The cheating drains players from all servers
equally so it does not render the test invalid.

You keep saying that everyone isn't being nice to the TF2 team. This wasn't
always the case. It came about after we got repeatedly screwed update after
update with almost 0 effort spent to try to reverse the massive player loss
that resulted from these anti-community changes. And the stonewalling.
Don't blame us for having a perfectly reasonable reaction to the reason
they behave.

I love how you consider me having an agenda against community servers and
> I'm unsure how you can know that I don't run a server. I run a small server
> that is running stock vanilla. The maps are different, but I don't have any
> of the crazy stuff.
>

You are obviously not invested at all in your server. If you just had a
plain server, the quickplay change likely had 0 effect on you. 50% of 0 is
still 0.

Point is, we've found many anti-community people on this mailing list to
have bad reasons for being here. No one who actually has a TF2 community
thinks these changes are any good. The average TF2 player would not bother
to find an obscure mailing list to keep encouraging Valve to screw over
community servers.

One prime example is Dan "NeedAxeo". Prior to being outed, this guy loved
to complain about how shitty community servers really were, and people
found out that he had hosted his server on a dirt cheap $5 vps and then
blamed his failure on every community cheating because they couldn't
possibly be better than his. And this presumably led to his 3 year crusade
against community servers on the here even though he had stopped playing
TF2 years ago. Other such cases involved people who were punished by Valve
such as elitepowered. I could go on and on but I really don't want to spend
hours digging up examples and I doubt you would change your mind if I
listed more of them.

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.
>

I am sure Valve can figure out a proper solution without betraying a large
portion of their players that prefer community servers. As mentioned
multiple times for a long time now, have official servers be the default
for a few hours then automatically switch it to community. It is that
simple.
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Re: [hlds] Mandatory TF2 update released

[Robert Paulson]

That's because Valve hasn't made a choice that benefited server owners over
official ones.

Why would anyone be appreciative when the only choices that have been made
were between bad for communities or bad for communities?

The last thing that might of qualified, removing official servers from the
browser, was reversed in a matter of days.

On Thu, Oct 29, 2015 at 7:17 PM, Daniel Barreiro <
smelly.feet.you.h...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Why would they help people who always seem to be unappreciative cunts no
> matter what choice is made?
>
> On Thu, Oct 29, 2015 at 10:16 PM, HD  wrote:
>
>> Well I was hoping to see something along the lines of "Changed lots of
>> things to help out the community" but apparently that was all wishful
>> thinking.
>>
>>
>> -Original Message-
>> From: hlds-boun...@list.valvesoftware.com
>> [mailto:hlds-boun...@list.valvesoftware.com] On Behalf Of Eric Smith
>> Sent: Thursday, October 29, 2015 10:09 PM
>> To: hlds@list.valvesoftware.com; hlds_li...@list.valvesoftware.com;
>> hlds_annou...@list.valvesoftware.com
>> Subject: [hlds] Mandatory TF2 update released
>>
>> We've released a mandatory update for TF2. The update notes are below. The
>> new version is 3065162.
>>
>> -Eric
>>
>> 
>>
>> - Fixed corrupt textures that were appearing for some players
>> - Fixed crashes that were occurring for some players with 3GB or less of
>> RAM
>> - Temporarily removed texture memory optimizations for players on Intel
>> Integrated GPUs
>> - Fixed a client crash related to the backpack
>> - Fixed a bug where mini-crits were overriding full crits
>> - Fixed "Sort by Date" sorting in the wrong order in the backpack (design
>> is
>> to sort with newest items in the front)
>> - Fixed the Invasion Unusual effect "Subatomic" being off-center
>> - Fixed not being able to put cosmetic items from the Gargoyle Collection
>> onto the Steam Community Market
>> - Fixed missing kill icons for the Invasion weapons
>> - Fixed the "Win a Bumper Kart minigame" Merasmission objective not
>> triggering in the event of a team wipe
>> - Added a "Batman" tag for Workshop submissions for the Arkham Knight
>> Contest
>> - Fixed missing Quickplay images for Mannpower maps Gorge and Thunder
>> Mountain
>> - Updated PASS Time to fix not seeing the Halloween version of the Jack
>> while it's being carried by a player
>> - Updated The Infernal Impaler, Courtier's Collar, Iron Lung, and The
>> Bearded Bombardier
>>
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Re: [hlds] Can We Get a TF2 Halloween 2015 Update Please So we are Ready!!!

[Robert Paulson]

I am wondering if there will be any concessions made for community servers
after matchmaking comes out.

It will be like CS:GO except worse because all the official servers are
still listed in the server browser and everything like mannpower only gives
traffic to official servers.

On Wed, Oct 28, 2015 at 12:37 PM, Mike Vail  wrote:

> Thank you
>
> On Wed, Oct 28, 2015 at 12:33 PM, Adam Walker 
> wrote:
>
>> @Peter: Cosmetic items, maps, taunts and unusuals. It's literally in the
>> second section of the topic you linked just after "This year's Halloween
>> Update."
>>
>> @Mike Vail: Be patient, Valve will have collated all of the Halloween
>> content they want to release by now and should be shipping it soon(TM). If
>> your mailing list subscription settings are set up correctly, you'll get
>> an
>> email when Eric announces the update.
>>
>> - Adam
>>
>> -Original Message-
>> From: hlds-boun...@list.valvesoftware.com
>> [mailto:hlds-boun...@list.valvesoftware.com] On Behalf Of Peter Jerde
>> Sent: 28 October 2015 19:28
>> To: Half-Life dedicated Win32 server mailing list
>> 
>> Subject: Re: [hlds] Can We Get a TF2 Halloween 2015 Update Please So we
>> are
>> Ready!!!
>>
>>
>> > On Oct 28, 2015, at 14:26 PM, Mike Vail  wrote:
>> > We want to play TF2 Halloween! HURRY!
>>
>> Um. There is no halloween update this year, except for the release of new
>> cosmetic items.
>>
>> http://www.teamfortress.com/post.php?id=18409
>>
>>  - Peter
>>
>>
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Re: [hlds] [TF2] Players disconnecting before votekicked?

[Robert Paulson]

And this is yet another reason why community servers are superior. This
problem was fixed 5 years ago with 3rd party plugins.

On Mon, Sep 21, 2015 at 7:20 PM, Nomaan Ahmad  wrote:

> Sometimes, group of players want to play with each other only and they
> would greedily start a votekick/ban against the newcomer, the only way is
> to leave the server to avoid punishments. So I think banning isn't really
> the solution here.
>
> I think the real issue was outlined by Nate. The votekick function
> probably uses player userids and so by rejoining the server they wouldn't
> get kicked even if the vote passed. Maybe it's possible to fix using
> sourcemod plugin.
>
> On 22 September 2015 at 01:08, Spencer 'Voogru' MacDonald <
> voo...@voogru.com> wrote:
>
>> I’m not sure why the vote kick doesn’t just save the steam id when the
>> vote is started.
>>
>> Then it doesn’t matter if they leave beforehand, in fact, if they leave
>> prior to the vote finishing, cancel the vote and default ban them for 12
>> hours.
>>
>>
>>
>> *From:* hlds-boun...@list.valvesoftware.com [mailto:
>> hlds-boun...@list.valvesoftware.com] *On Behalf Of *Nathaniel Theis
>> *Sent:* Monday, September 21, 2015 6:55 PM
>> *To:* Half-Life dedicated Win32 server mailing list
>> *Subject:* Re: [hlds] [TF2] Players disconnecting before votekicked?
>>
>>
>>
>> The actual bug is a race condition. A votekick is a kick (a forced
>> disconnect, basically, by player ID), and a ban (prevents joining, by
>> SteamID).
>>
>>
>>
>> If a player should disconnect while a vote is in progress, the kick won't
>> go through (their player ID will change as they reconnect), but the ban
>> will (since their SteamID never changes.) However, bans are checked early
>> in the connection process. So, if the player reconnects before the vote
>> passes, the ban won't prevent them from joining (because it's not applied
>> yet when they join!), and they bypassed the kick because their player ID is
>> different.
>>
>>
>>
>> The solution to this is to check all connected players' SteamIDs when a
>> ban is added, and kick matching players. Probably not overly difficult to
>> do with SM. There are also loads of third-party votekick and ban management
>> systems, that aren't vulnerable to this.
>>
>>
>>
>> One trick: If somebody should bypass a votekick, when they come back,
>> they're sort of in a state of limbo. If they should be kicked or
>> disconnect, they can't rejoin (because the ban is now in effect); thus,
>> kicking them a second time will get them off for good.
>>
>>
>>
>> - Nate
>>
>>
>>
>> On Sun, Sep 20, 2015 at 8:40 AM, Miika  wrote:
>>
>> We recently started using Valve’s own votekick feature on few of our TF2
>> servers. It seems you can prevent yourself from getting votekick banned by
>> disconnecting just before the vote goes through. Seen a lot of players do
>> this recently and it’s really an annoying problem.
>>
>>
>>
>> Is there any way to prevent this or is there a SourceMod alternative that
>> prevents this?
>>
>>
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Re: [hlds] Community Servers and the Gun Mettle Update

[Robert Paulson]

The custom tab was short lived and everyone agreed that the custom tab was
wrong, even the people working on TF2 at that time.

However everyone can agree that pay2win does not belong in quickplay. I
mean even no-crit was banned, and you thought that pay2win was ok? Most
people did not cheat to get no-crit on quickplay. I'm not going to comment
on that rocket doing only 1 damage... I mean are you seriously suggesting
you had no extreme pay2win?

And I am not saying your servers are the best. They just happen to be
filling better than everyone else and probably because you are tricking
people into thinking there's more active players on them than there really
are, and that there are no bots on the server. And the only way to know
otherwise is if you've been on the servers and know how your system works.
That is a clear violation of the policy of truth in my opinion.

On Sat, Sep 5, 2015 at 12:37 AM, Andreas Grimm <h...@saigns.de> wrote:

> Who didn't broke the spirit?
>
>
>
> Do you remember the custom tab of the server browser? Nearly all
> communities cheated themselves into the internet tab.
>
> Our servers were nearly empty due to that, so we were forced to start that
> too as one of the latest.
>
>
>
> Every community has its own stack of plugins. Some has custom attributes,
> some others have things like !resizeme or what ever.
>
> We had dispensers shooting homing rockets (1 dmg only btw) and other mods.
>
>
>
> Valve just said "as vanilla as possible" without any details.
>
> So every community could break the spirit of the law just by having an
> addons folder.
>
>
>
> Sure, saigns servers were a major reason, why people started to complain,
> but we were not the only one and it has been fixed 1,5 years ago.
>
> But now with strict rules ... Is there really a reason left why players
> should get a bad gaming experience in Quickplay in general?
>
>
>
> I also never said, that our servers are better than others. We are just
> one community in the pool.
>
> Communties like Skial are also great for example.
>
>
>
> Most of our players know, that we have real bots and an autopilot plugin
> and they don't care about it. Both is clearly marked in the server's
> scoreboard and players could leave or blacklist our servers. We don't fake
> or hide anything and Valve knows about our setup and how to contact us if
> there are changes needed.
>
>
>
> *From:* hlds-boun...@list.valvesoftware.com [mailto:
> hlds-boun...@list.valvesoftware.com] *On Behalf Of *Robert Paulson
> *Sent:* Saturday, September 05, 2015 8:32 AM
>
> *To:* Half-Life dedicated Win32 server mailing list
> *Subject:* Re: [hlds] Community Servers and the Gun Mettle Update
>
>
>
> I know it wasn't specifically against the rules But you broke the spirit
> of the law rather than the exact wording of the law.
>
>
>
> You had to know Valve did not want new players to face donors with rockets
> on their dispensers. Yet you did not voluntarily remove yourself from
> quickplay until they forced you to by specifically declaring it
> unacceptable in quickplay.
>
>
>
> And I am not saying you should be blacklisted for that. But your saigns
> servers are a major part of the blame for these recent strict policies.
>
>
>
> They gave me their ok,  I just had to add a special tag to the scoreboard,
> that people see active autopilots. Even if I would shutdown this
> functionality, it wouldn't make any difference to our playerbase. People
> would just idle in spawn instead of being a running frag for others.
>
>
>
> I doubt it. At least I doubt they would give you the same answer now.
>
>
>
> Your servers are not much different from anyone else's except they empty
> out much later and fill up much sooner than everyone else while there are
> 4-5 AFK human bots in the server. Your servers were doing poorly when Valve
> decided to remove pay2win from quickplay and has years of bad reputation
> for being pay2win. Now you expect everyone to believe that people join your
> servers because they are naturally better now?
>
>
>
> Most people sort servers by the number of players and they cannot tell how
> many AFK bots are actually on them without looking at the list of names.
> This is a violation of the policy of truth in my opinion. Unless someone
> from Valve says so otherwise here I will continue to believe so.
>
>
>
>
>
> On Fri, Sep 4, 2015 at 10:38 PM, Andreas Grimm <h...@saigns.de> wrote:
>
> Just my 2 cents from Saigns ...
>
>
>
> Before Valve patched their Quickplay to "Valve servers as default":
>
> - It was not officially and strictly forbidden by Valve to run pay2win
> plugins.
>
>

Re: [hlds] Community Servers and the Gun Mettle Update

[Robert Paulson]

You know that's not what I'm talking about... I'm talking about real
players you are controlling with bots.

On Sat, Sep 5, 2015 at 1:42 AM, Andreas Grimm <h...@saigns.de> wrote:

> I guess it's clear enough that there are bots:
>
>
> http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/436076195939633025/33DF487164DA824E57D7C6CF5B58A55A9EEBFD51/
>
>
>
> *From:* hlds-boun...@list.valvesoftware.com [mailto:
> hlds-boun...@list.valvesoftware.com] *On Behalf Of *Robert Paulson
> *Sent:* Saturday, September 05, 2015 10:25 AM
>
> *To:* Half-Life dedicated Win32 server mailing list
> *Subject:* Re: [hlds] Community Servers and the Gun Mettle Update
>
>
>
> The custom tab was short lived and everyone agreed that the custom tab was
> wrong, even the people working on TF2 at that time.
>
>
>
> However everyone can agree that pay2win does not belong in quickplay. I
> mean even no-crit was banned, and you thought that pay2win was ok? Most
> people did not cheat to get no-crit on quickplay. I'm not going to comment
> on that rocket doing only 1 damage... I mean are you seriously suggesting
> you had no extreme pay2win?
>
>
>
> And I am not saying your servers are the best. They just happen to be
> filling better than everyone else and probably because you are tricking
> people into thinking there's more active players on them than there really
> are, and that there are no bots on the server. And the only way to know
> otherwise is if you've been on the servers and know how your system works.
> That is a clear violation of the policy of truth in my opinion.
>
>
>
> On Sat, Sep 5, 2015 at 12:37 AM, Andreas Grimm <h...@saigns.de> wrote:
>
> Who didn't broke the spirit?
>
>
>
> Do you remember the custom tab of the server browser? Nearly all
> communities cheated themselves into the internet tab.
>
> Our servers were nearly empty due to that, so we were forced to start that
> too as one of the latest.
>
>
>
> Every community has its own stack of plugins. Some has custom attributes,
> some others have things like !resizeme or what ever.
>
> We had dispensers shooting homing rockets (1 dmg only btw) and other mods.
>
>
>
> Valve just said "as vanilla as possible" without any details.
>
> So every community could break the spirit of the law just by having an
> addons folder.
>
>
>
> Sure, saigns servers were a major reason, why people started to complain,
> but we were not the only one and it has been fixed 1,5 years ago.
>
> But now with strict rules ... Is there really a reason left why players
> should get a bad gaming experience in Quickplay in general?
>
>
>
> I also never said, that our servers are better than others. We are just
> one community in the pool.
>
> Communties like Skial are also great for example.
>
>
>
> Most of our players know, that we have real bots and an autopilot plugin
> and they don't care about it. Both is clearly marked in the server's
> scoreboard and players could leave or blacklist our servers. We don't fake
> or hide anything and Valve knows about our setup and how to contact us if
> there are changes needed.
>
>
>
> *From:* hlds-boun...@list.valvesoftware.com [mailto:
> hlds-boun...@list.valvesoftware.com] *On Behalf Of *Robert Paulson
> *Sent:* Saturday, September 05, 2015 8:32 AM
>
>
> *To:* Half-Life dedicated Win32 server mailing list
> *Subject:* Re: [hlds] Community Servers and the Gun Mettle Update
>
>
>
> I know it wasn't specifically against the rules But you broke the spirit
> of the law rather than the exact wording of the law.
>
>
>
> You had to know Valve did not want new players to face donors with rockets
> on their dispensers. Yet you did not voluntarily remove yourself from
> quickplay until they forced you to by specifically declaring it
> unacceptable in quickplay.
>
>
>
> And I am not saying you should be blacklisted for that. But your saigns
> servers are a major part of the blame for these recent strict policies.
>
>
>
> They gave me their ok,  I just had to add a special tag to the scoreboard,
> that people see active autopilots. Even if I would shutdown this
> functionality, it wouldn't make any difference to our playerbase. People
> would just idle in spawn instead of being a running frag for others.
>
>
>
> I doubt it. At least I doubt they would give you the same answer now.
>
>
>
> Your servers are not much different from anyone else's except they empty
> out much later and fill up much sooner than everyone else while there are
> 4-5 AFK human bots in the server. Your servers were doing poorly when Valve
> decided to remove pay2win from quickplay and has years 

Re: [hlds] Community Servers and the Gun Mettle Update

[Robert Paulson]

I don't mean to spam the mailing list but I see what you mean that people
would just idle in spawn if you removed it. No you are wrong, it won't be
the same.

When you stop kicking people for being idle, the active players will notice
there is no one around and then they disconnect. That's why there are
settings in most afk managers to move them to spectator.

If you control them with bots I bet you most of the players don't even know
they are playing against bots even if you add "afk" at the end.

On Fri, Sep 4, 2015 at 10:38 PM, Andreas Grimm <h...@saigns.de> wrote:

> Just my 2 cents from Saigns ...
>
>
>
> Before Valve patched their Quickplay to "Valve servers as default":
>
> - It was not officially and strictly forbidden by Valve to run pay2win
> plugins.
>
> - It was still possible to exploit the motd to bring ads to quickplay
> players (@Robert: You are completely uninformed) any many hosters still
> used it.
>
>
>
> I have to admit, Saigns servers were pay2win to this moment. We never used
> ads, but we gave gameplay advantages to donators. Quite simple.
>
> With the patch Valve has fixed the last exploits and they also updated
> their Quickplay rules.
>
>
>
> New for us was:
>
> - Giving or selling gameplay advantages (Our usual pay2win bullshit)
>
> - Modifying stock maps (We modified round timers, added additional health
> and ammo packs)
>
> - Granting or modifying economy items (We modified a lot)
>
> (See
> https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=2825-AFGJ-3513=german#truth
> under "Modifications not allowed in quickplay" )
>
>
>
> Since that patch we have removed all gameplay changing and pay2win plugins
> from our Quickplay gameservers.
>
>
>
> By the way:
>
> I have ASKED Valve if it's allowed to activate my bot engine on AFK
> players BEFORE I have installed that plugin.
>
> They gave me their ok,  I just had to add a special tag to the scoreboard,
> that people see active autopilots. Even if I would shutdown this
> functionality, it wouldn't make any difference to our playerbase. People
> would just idle in spawn instead of being a running frag for others.
>
>
>
> We don't fake anything - Why should we?
>
> Just to risk another server ban for at least 2 months? No thanks ... It's
> already hard enough to fill gameservers which run unpopulated maps.
>
>
>
> In my opion it was absolutely correct and needed to add an "official
> servers only" button.
>
> But with the exploit fixes and the new strict rules for Quickplay I don't
> think, that it needs to be turned on by default anymore.
>
>
>
> - Andreas
>
>
>
> *From:* hlds-boun...@list.valvesoftware.com [mailto:
> hlds-boun...@list.valvesoftware.com] *On Behalf Of *Robert Paulson
> *Sent:* Saturday, September 05, 2015 6:22 AM
> *To:* Half-Life dedicated Win32 server mailing list
> *Subject:* Re: [hlds] Community Servers and the Gun Mettle Update
>
>
>
> Nothing to do with competition. I've actually never paid much attention to
> what other server operators are doing as I'm more concerned what the
> players are saying...and if you think that ads haven't given community
> servers a bad reputation among the general player population (deserved or
> not), then you haven't been paying attention.
>
>
>
>  They were abused by some groups that spammed them on every death and
> forced them open for 30 seconds. Now they aren't an issue anymore and it
> was already literally impossible for them to be an issue months before
> Valve blocked quickplay. Ads on TF2 existed quietly for at least 2 years
> before the new people started abusing them.
>
>
>
> Why do you keep harping on something that isn't an issue anymore? Should
> Valve blacklist pay2win servers just for all the players they drove away
> from TF2 prior to quickplay? No.
>
>
>
> Yeah, this pretty much goes back to the OT of this conversion - the fact
> that the default quickplay setting negatively affects ALL community
> servers, regardless of how "great" they may be.
>
>
>
> No it really doesn't. You said this would be a positive change even if
> Valve doesn't bring community servers back to quickplay. Which means you
> want the ad supported servers not on quickplay to die so you can get their
> players. If your servers being ad-free was such a benefit, then you would
> have all the players you wanted from the non-quickplay pool. And then your
> suggestion would be useless.
>
>
>
> I think you might have a bit of tunnel vision when it comes to these
> Saigns folks. I've never really thought along the lines of "if this
> community goes away, then mine wil

Re: [hlds] Community Servers and the Gun Mettle Update

[Robert Paulson]

I know it wasn't specifically against the rules But you broke the spirit of
the law rather than the exact wording of the law.

You had to know Valve did not want new players to face donors with rockets
on their dispensers. Yet you did not voluntarily remove yourself from
quickplay until they forced you to by specifically declaring it
unacceptable in quickplay.

And I am not saying you should be blacklisted for that. But your saigns
servers are a major part of the blame for these recent strict policies.

They gave me their ok,  I just had to add a special tag to the scoreboard,
> that people see active autopilots. Even if I would shutdown this
> functionality, it wouldn't make any difference to our playerbase. People
> would just idle in spawn instead of being a running frag for others.
>

I doubt it. At least I doubt they would give you the same answer now.

Your servers are not much different from anyone else's except they empty
out much later and fill up much sooner than everyone else while there are
4-5 AFK human bots in the server. Your servers were doing poorly when Valve
decided to remove pay2win from quickplay and has years of bad reputation
for being pay2win. Now you expect everyone to believe that people join your
servers because they are naturally better now?

Most people sort servers by the number of players and they cannot tell how
many AFK bots are actually on them without looking at the list of names.
This is a violation of the policy of truth in my opinion. Unless someone
from Valve says so otherwise here I will continue to believe so.


On Fri, Sep 4, 2015 at 10:38 PM, Andreas Grimm <h...@saigns.de> wrote:

> Just my 2 cents from Saigns ...
>
>
>
> Before Valve patched their Quickplay to "Valve servers as default":
>
> - It was not officially and strictly forbidden by Valve to run pay2win
> plugins.
>
> - It was still possible to exploit the motd to bring ads to quickplay
> players (@Robert: You are completely uninformed) any many hosters still
> used it.
>
>
>
> I have to admit, Saigns servers were pay2win to this moment. We never used
> ads, but we gave gameplay advantages to donators. Quite simple.
>
> With the patch Valve has fixed the last exploits and they also updated
> their Quickplay rules.
>
>
>
> New for us was:
>
> - Giving or selling gameplay advantages (Our usual pay2win bullshit)
>
> - Modifying stock maps (We modified round timers, added additional health
> and ammo packs)
>
> - Granting or modifying economy items (We modified a lot)
>
> (See
> https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=2825-AFGJ-3513=german#truth
> under "Modifications not allowed in quickplay" )
>
>
>
> Since that patch we have removed all gameplay changing and pay2win plugins
> from our Quickplay gameservers.
>
>
>
> By the way:
>
> I have ASKED Valve if it's allowed to activate my bot engine on AFK
> players BEFORE I have installed that plugin.
>
> They gave me their ok,  I just had to add a special tag to the scoreboard,
> that people see active autopilots. Even if I would shutdown this
> functionality, it wouldn't make any difference to our playerbase. People
> would just idle in spawn instead of being a running frag for others.
>
>
>
> We don't fake anything - Why should we?
>
> Just to risk another server ban for at least 2 months? No thanks ... It's
> already hard enough to fill gameservers which run unpopulated maps.
>
>
>
> In my opion it was absolutely correct and needed to add an "official
> servers only" button.
>
> But with the exploit fixes and the new strict rules for Quickplay I don't
> think, that it needs to be turned on by default anymore.
>
>
>
> - Andreas
>
>
>
> *From:* hlds-boun...@list.valvesoftware.com [mailto:
> hlds-boun...@list.valvesoftware.com] *On Behalf Of *Robert Paulson
> *Sent:* Saturday, September 05, 2015 6:22 AM
> *To:* Half-Life dedicated Win32 server mailing list
> *Subject:* Re: [hlds] Community Servers and the Gun Mettle Update
>
>
>
> Nothing to do with competition. I've actually never paid much attention to
> what other server operators are doing as I'm more concerned what the
> players are saying...and if you think that ads haven't given community
> servers a bad reputation among the general player population (deserved or
> not), then you haven't been paying attention.
>
>
>
>  They were abused by some groups that spammed them on every death and
> forced them open for 30 seconds. Now they aren't an issue anymore and it
> was already literally impossible for them to be an issue months before
> Valve blocked quickplay. Ads on TF2 existed quietly for at least 2 years
> before the new people started abusing them.
>
>

Re: [hlds] Community Servers and the Gun Mettle Update

[Robert Paulson]

As I already said it is not a problem in full servers.

The problem is when the server is about to fill or empty out. People sort
servers by the number of players, and they will join a server with 4-5
"humans" that are actually bots on your server. And this is at a critical
time when every other server only has 1-2 players on it, so they will end
up joining yours first.

It makes all the difference if they stand in spawn or be controlled by a
bot. If they stand in spawn, then the active players will see no one is
available to kill and they will leave the empty server. If they see people
running around they will be more likely to stay. And they probably think
they are real humans when they are not.


On Sat, Sep 5, 2015 at 2:08 AM, Andreas Grimm <h...@saigns.de> wrote:

> Even on full servers the amount of AFK players is quite low:
>
>
> http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/436076195939696580/52E19E313DED1B42A08857FF1F64198F3BA86B9B/
>
>
>
> It doesn't really matter if they stand in spawn or move around. This
> happens on every server.
>
> I also could start kicking people for using Conga taunts for 60 minutes
> ... Could be the same argument: "Faking activity".
>
>
>
> Players decide, what they do ...
>
>
>
> *From:* hlds-boun...@list.valvesoftware.com [mailto:
> hlds-boun...@list.valvesoftware.com] *On Behalf Of *Robert Paulson
> *Sent:* Saturday, September 05, 2015 10:51 AM
> *To:* Half-Life dedicated Win32 server mailing list
> *Subject:* Re: [hlds] Community Servers and the Gun Mettle Update
>
>
>
> You know that's not what I'm talking about... I'm talking about real
> players you are controlling with bots.
>
>
>
> On Sat, Sep 5, 2015 at 1:42 AM, Andreas Grimm <h...@saigns.de> wrote:
>
> I guess it's clear enough that there are bots:
>
>
> http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/436076195939633025/33DF487164DA824E57D7C6CF5B58A55A9EEBFD51/
>
>
>
>
>
> ___
> 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:
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Re: [hlds] Community Servers and the Gun Mettle Update

[Robert Paulson]

I guess it is expected that you pretend not to understand. But I will
explain it for anyone else that might be reading.

Bots disguised as real players are simply better for keeping people on your
server. It doesn't matter if you use real bots too.

It will artificially reduce the bot count on the server browser. People
tend to leave when they either see all the humans in spectate or a bunch of
0 score players sitting in spawn. I know this as a fact because that's what
most people do to seed their servers. And most people leave when they see
that now.

On Sat, Sep 5, 2015 at 2:32 AM, Andreas Grimm <h...@saigns.de> wrote:

> We use real bots to fill empty slots. There's always something to kill.
>
>
>
> The most servers have a bunch of players which use the favorites tab to
> join.
>
> It doesn't matter if it's empty for full. Some people will be the first
> and they will wait for their friends.
>
>
>
> *From:* hlds-boun...@list.valvesoftware.com [mailto:
> hlds-boun...@list.valvesoftware.com] *On Behalf Of *Robert Paulson
> *Sent:* Saturday, September 05, 2015 11:19 AM
> *To:* Half-Life dedicated Win32 server mailing list
> *Subject:* Re: [hlds] Community Servers and the Gun Mettle Update
>
>
>
> As I already said it is not a problem in full servers.
>
>
>
> The problem is when the server is about to fill or empty out. People sort
> servers by the number of players, and they will join a server with 4-5
> "humans" that are actually bots on your server. And this is at a critical
> time when every other server only has 1-2 players on it, so they will end
> up joining yours first.
>
>
>
> It makes all the difference if they stand in spawn or be controlled by a
> bot. If they stand in spawn, then the active players will see no one is
> available to kill and they will leave the empty server. If they see people
> running around they will be more likely to stay. And they probably think
> they are real humans when they are not.
>
>
>
>
>
> On Sat, Sep 5, 2015 at 2:08 AM, Andreas Grimm <h...@saigns.de> wrote:
>
> Even on full servers the amount of AFK players is quite low:
>
>
> http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/436076195939696580/52E19E313DED1B42A08857FF1F64198F3BA86B9B/
>
>
>
> It doesn't really matter if they stand in spawn or move around. This
> happens on every server.
>
> I also could start kicking people for using Conga taunts for 60 minutes
> ... Could be the same argument: "Faking activity".
>
>
>
> Players decide, what they do ...
>
>
>
> *From:* hlds-boun...@list.valvesoftware.com [mailto:
> hlds-boun...@list.valvesoftware.com] *On Behalf Of *Robert Paulson
> *Sent:* Saturday, September 05, 2015 10:51 AM
> *To:* Half-Life dedicated Win32 server mailing list
> *Subject:* Re: [hlds] Community Servers and the Gun Mettle Update
>
>
>
> You know that's not what I'm talking about... I'm talking about real
> players you are controlling with bots.
>
>
>
> On Sat, Sep 5, 2015 at 1:42 AM, Andreas Grimm <h...@saigns.de> wrote:
>
> I guess it's clear enough that there are bots:
>
>
> http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/436076195939633025/33DF487164DA824E57D7C6CF5B58A55A9EEBFD51/
>
>
>
>
>
>
> ___
> 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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visit:
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Re: [hlds] Community Servers and the Gun Mettle Update

[Robert Paulson]

I don't know how many times this has to be said... Why the hell would
ads be the issue if the motd was already blocked for quickplay, months
before Valve blocked community servers from quickplay?

Every time someone whines about ads it lowers the chances of valve ever
removing the community server ghetto.

The community with the most servers and players is now Saigns, a community
that is famous for pay2win and fake players that NEVER HAD ADS now has all
the players because they turn AFK players into bots to trick people into
thinking the server is filled. While this is happening, you really want to
keep beating the dead horse of ads? The issue was and always have been bad
owners doing bad things. You still have people running instant respawn
without tags and stop the tank on community quickplay, and doing so without
ads.

A simple and good solution that doesn't require major UI change has been
proposed many times. Simply switch the quickplay default to community
servers after a few hours of gameplay. If community servers were really as
bad as Valve considers them to be, then people will switch back. If they
want to improve the community server pool, then all they have to do is
actually spend 30 minutes out of their week actually banning servers that
break the rules. That is, if they don't trust players to vote with their
feet.



PS: To anyone else who thinks workshop maps feature is worth a shit: No one
gives a shit about being able to load maps from the workshop when people
have been downloading maps from fpsbanana for the past decade. Valve wants
people to start using the workshop so they can eventually charge people for
mods like they did with Skyrim once fpsbanana dies out.

On Fri, Sep 4, 2015 at 4:58 AM, Pat Stay  wrote:

> lol look at you. typical response paul, you are so predictable
>
> -hides from addressing issues involving him and his actions on behalf of
> his company that are in direct relation to the problem
> -brings up advertising in this thread telling people not to blame it for
> the problems, pointing to other things
> -i state exactly how advertising combined with those other things
> perpetuates the problem and how a large part of the community knows about
> your shady actions
> -you lecture me to stay on topic lol
> -you use motdgd in the third person as if you are not Paul Lewis, co owner
> and lead developer of MOTDgd
>
> you and your actions are a significant part of the problem and those
> before you, pinion, are to blame as well for allowing such negligence to go
> on. Instead of actually doing your job and monitoring your clients
> implementations, you sat back enjoying your fat stacks of cash while people
> exploited known bugs. You specifically are partially to blame because your
> company's only known direct affiliate happens to be one of the single
> biggest culprits of the initial issue that brought us here. ive watched you
> make subtle little comments every time advertising is talked about here in
> a negative light, so please dont act as if you aren't here trying to steer
> the topic away from ads every time it's brought up. Sure you have a couple
> of servers no one cares about so you are entitled to be here, just like I
> am. Take responsibility for your actions instead of hiding like a coward
> you degenerate thief.
>
> On Fri, Sep 4, 2015 at 6:35 AM, Pat Stay  wrote:
>
>> Sure, we can stay on topic
>>
>> >Paul ubyu@gmail.com via
>> 
>> list.valvesoftware.com
>> 2:49 PM (15 hours ago)
>> >
>> >to Half-Life
>> >Need I remind you, or anyone else, that ads weren't the sole problem.
>> The big problem was some large server farms sending false player
>> information to the master server, and servers not following quickplay rules.
>>
>> by this you must mean your affiliate partner who used to run 150 tf2 idle
>> servers that exploited false player information to no end and farmed ads
>> for your company motdgd. dont sit here acting like your shit ad system
>> wasnt part of the ongoing problem. people could farm 30,000 ads from you
>> per day using fake identities and text mode. but you knew that being a tf2
>> community owner. so essentially you're right, its not the ads themselves
>> that are the problem its the people like you serving them fraudulently then
>> hiding behind some dead link email address trying to veer the topic away
>> from advertisements so no one knows you are one of the scumbags behind the
>> problem
>>
>> On Fri, Sep 4, 2015 at 6:11 AM, Paul  wrote:
>>
>>> How about we stay on topic here?
>>>
>>> On 4 September 2015 at 10:42, Pat Stay  wrote:
>>>
 >Paul ubyu@gmail.com via
 
 list.valvesoftware.com
 6:47 AM (22 hours ago)
 >to Half-Life
 >Fact is I don't believe they care anymore, mostly motivated on ways to
 make more 

Re: [hlds] Community Servers and the Gun Mettle Update

[Robert Paulson]

>
> Nothing to do with competition. I've actually never paid much attention to
> what other server operators are doing as I'm more concerned what the
> players are saying...and if you think that ads haven't given community
> servers a bad reputation among the general player population (deserved or
> not), then you haven't been paying attention.
>

 They were abused by some groups that spammed them on every death and
forced them open for 30 seconds. Now they aren't an issue anymore and it
was already literally impossible for them to be an issue months before
Valve blocked quickplay. Ads on TF2 existed quietly for at least 2 years
before the new people started abusing them.

Why do you keep harping on something that isn't an issue anymore? Should
Valve blacklist pay2win servers just for all the players they drove away
from TF2 prior to quickplay? No.

Yeah, this pretty much goes back to the OT of this conversion - the fact
> that the default quickplay setting negatively affects ALL community
> servers, regardless of how "great" they may be.
>

No it really doesn't. You said this would be a positive change even if
Valve doesn't bring community servers back to quickplay. Which means you
want the ad supported servers not on quickplay to die so you can get their
players. If your servers being ad-free was such a benefit, then you would
have all the players you wanted from the non-quickplay pool. And then your
suggestion would be useless.

I think you might have a bit of tunnel vision when it comes to these Saigns
> folks. I've never really thought along the lines of "if this community goes
> away, then mine will do better."


Maybe because they are filling over a 100 TF2 servers a day while everyone
else is shutting down servers? And they are doing so by tricking people
into thinking they have more people playing than they actually do? And the
fact that they do so without ANY ADS which single-handedly ruins your
theory that people abuse the server list only because of ads.

Valve has already blocked quickplay players from seeing the MOTD, and no
one here is asking to have that reversed. Your wild goose chase into
completely destroying the MOTD is unhelpful to put it mildly.
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Re: [hlds] Community Servers and the Gun Mettle Update

[Robert Paulson]

You may disagree but you are simply plain wrong. People cheating the server
browser is still rampant and it goes on without any ads. There is a way to
monetize players connecting to a server that is never going away. And that
is premium status.

The more you keep beating this dead horse, the more you fill the mailing
list with gibberish that Valve simply doesn't care about.

"If the problem had simply been the handful of those "paytowin" or
"premium" operators, Valve could have simply blacklisted them and solved
the problem (there were never very many server operators selling "premium"
pay2win stuff anyway).."

That is more likely to be the problem than the ads. As mentioned over and
over again, the ads issue was completely solved by completely blocking them
when people connected through quickplay. To borrow your own words, if the
problem had simply been ads, then why didn't they do exactly what you said?
It is really easy for them to simply remove HTML motd for everyone instead
of a subset of players.

It seems like you've never reported a server before. Valve took over 3
months to ban 100+ server communities using fake players such as
elitepowered. That is how much they don't want to bother cleaning the
server list. They don't even want to spend 30 minutes a week, let alone a
month, doing what needs to be done.

And there was a time when Saigns was on quickplay and they never got banned
because their modifications were never explicitly mentioned in the
quickplay document. And they probably don't want to track down every server
that has instant respawn without the tags. Because they only way you can
verify this is by playing on each individual server.

Having quickplay default back to community servers after a few hours isn't
asking them to change it back to how things were. New players
are guaranteed to know what a "vanilla" experience is.


On Fri, Sep 4, 2015 at 2:24 PM, E. Olsen <ceo.eol...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Sorry, I disagree.
>
> As long as there is the possibility of monetizing the simple act of a
> player connecting to a server, it will (and was) be abused incessantly.
> When all you need to do to generate revenue is get a player to connect,
> then there is no incentive for you to build value for that player - all
> they are to you is an ad impression.
>
> If the problem had simply been the handful of those "paytowin" or
> "premium" operators, Valve could have simply blacklisted them and solved
> the problem (there were never very many server operators selling "premium"
> pay2win stuff anyway)..
>
> Of course - maybe I'm completely wrong and Valve thinks MOTD ads are a
> wonderful idea. In truth, no one can say definitively WHY Valve took the
> action they did a couple of years ago, because THEY never said why they did
> it - only that it was getting "bad" for players.
>
> I have my theories, and they may or may not be correctbut I think
> simply asking for Valve to "change it back" to what the settings had
> previously been is a proven non-starter. If they thought it was bad before,
> simply changing it back does not address whatever they perceived the
> negative issues to be.
>
> However, if we continue to present them with viable alternatives that can
> bring more equitable treatment to community servers, then perhaps we'll
> eventually hit them with an idea they'll like.
>
> On Fri, Sep 4, 2015 at 5:07 PM, Robert Paulson <thepauls...@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> I don't know how many times this has to be said... Why the hell would
>> ads be the issue if the motd was already blocked for quickplay, months
>> before Valve blocked community servers from quickplay?
>>
>> Every time someone whines about ads it lowers the chances of valve ever
>> removing the community server ghetto.
>>
>> The community with the most servers and players is now Saigns, a
>> community that is famous for pay2win and fake players that NEVER HAD ADS
>> now has all the players because they turn AFK players into bots to trick
>> people into thinking the server is filled. While this is happening, you
>> really want to keep beating the dead horse of ads? The issue was and always
>> have been bad owners doing bad things. You still have people running
>> instant respawn without tags and stop the tank on community quickplay, and
>> doing so without ads.
>>
>> A simple and good solution that doesn't require major UI change has been
>> proposed many times. Simply switch the quickplay default to community
>> servers after a few hours of gameplay. If community servers were really as
>> bad as Valve considers them to be, then people will switch back. If they
>> want to improve the community server poo

Re: [hlds] Community Servers and the Gun Mettle Update

[Robert Paulson]

another Valve server (and especially if you're
>> trying to be as original as possible), which in return makes it difficult
>> in getting eventually necessary donations. Plus, who would want to donate
>> to a server that isn't any different from a Valve server anyway?
>> Valve doesn't support being different. Being original. And this is what
>> the real community is all about. So Valve does not want a community, or
>> rather does not want to put the necessary effort into it. However small (or
>> not?) it is.
>>
>> On 05.09.2015 00:22, Rowedahelicon wrote:
>> Ads didn't always used to be a problem, and why do community servers get
>> the rage for ads when Valve has used them too? Pinion was used for official
>> valve servers before. They gave Arthur a special forum rank and I've seen
>> posts from Valve higher ups defend the use of Pinion.
>>
>> If a community has to use ads to survive, maybe it's not doing too well.
>> But Valve used them as early as everyone else. Can't get mad at the kids
>> for following the dad's example right? Plus if a player comes on and just
>> hates that community, they can venture to a different one.
>>
>> We're going to wind up breeding new players who don't want to explore the
>> world that the players made inside of the game.
>>
>> On Fri, Sep 4, 2015 at 5:54 PM, Robert Paulson < <thepauls...@gmail.com>
>> thepauls...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> You may disagree but you are simply plain wrong. People cheating the
>> server browser is still rampant and it goes on without any ads. There is a
>> way to monetize players connecting to a server that is never going away.
>> And that is premium status.
>>
>> The more you keep beating this dead horse, the more you fill the mailing
>> list with gibberish that Valve simply doesn't care about.
>>
>> "If the problem had simply been the handful of those "paytowin" or
>> "premium" operators, Valve could have simply blacklisted them and solved
>> the problem (there were never very many server operators selling "premium"
>> pay2win stuff anyway).."
>>
>> That is more likely to be the problem than the ads. As mentioned over and
>> over again, the ads issue was completely solved by completely blocking them
>> when people connected through quickplay. To borrow your own words, if
>> the problem had simply been ads, then why didn't they do exactly what you
>> said? It is really easy for them to simply remove HTML motd for everyone
>> instead of a subset of players.
>>
>> It seems like you've never reported a server before. Valve took over 3
>> months to ban 100+ server communities using fake players such as
>> elitepowered. That is how much they don't want to bother cleaning the
>> server list. They don't even want to spend 30 minutes a week, let alone a
>> month, doing what needs to be done.
>>
>> And there was a time when Saigns was on quickplay and they never got
>> banned because their modifications were never explicitly mentioned in the
>> quickplay document. And they probably don't want to track down every
>> server that has instant respawn without the tags. Because they only way you
>> can verify this is by playing on each individual server.
>>
>> Having quickplay default back to community servers after a few hours
>> isn't asking them to change it back to how things were. New players
>> are guaranteed to know what a "vanilla" experience is.
>>
>>
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>>
>>
>
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Re: [hlds] Community Servers and the Gun Mettle Update

[Robert Paulson]

Ok and where did I make a personal attack? Unless you mean you have nothing
to say but a personal attack.

"Getting rid of motd ads might not bring community servers back, but it
might bring players back to community servers, and that would be a step in
the right direction."

And how do you suppose it will? Because you don't use ads and your
community is dying so you want to see if Valve can kill off whatever little
competition there is left for community players? Why wouldn't they already
flock to your servers if being ad-free was such a boon? How do you see this
change bringing all the players at Saigns back to your servers when they
don't even have ads?

This kind of behavior is why we are here in the first place. People
thinking that whatever restrictions Valve puts in place isn't going to
affect them, and begging for more restrictions that affects everyone but
themselves..It makes me laugh.



On Fri, Sep 4, 2015 at 5:47 PM, E. Olsen <ceo.eol...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Yeah, I'm not going take a debate into personal attacks, bud.
>
> Getting rid of motd ads might not bring community servers back, but it
> might bring players back to community servers, and that would be a step in
> the right direction.
>
> Feel free to have the last word advocating for them, though - we'll just
> have to see if Valve makes a decision either way who was in the right in
> the end.
>
> On Fri, Sep 4, 2015 at 8:20 PM, Robert Paulson <thepauls...@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> I don't need to know more about Valve than you do. All I need is logic.
>>
>> Patch: MOTD blocked for all quickplay users
>> What Happened: Quickplay users see no ads. Non-quickplay users can see
>> ads.
>>
>> Patch: Quickplay defaults to official servers
>> What Happened: Quickplay users see no ads. Non-quickplay users can see
>> ads.
>>
>> In terms of ads, there is absolutely no difference. It is obvious Valve
>> was concerned about having to police pay2win and similar mods.
>>
>> Even before ads existed on TF2, fake players was rampant. Saigns and
>> Nighteam both never worried about players leaving in droves when they saw
>> donators shooting 10x faster. And they still ended up with the most
>> players. They did not need to worry about convincing everyone to pay. You
>> only need 1 out of 1000 players to pay to make a profit. That's how
>> free2play works.  How late did you join TF2 that you don't even know this?
>>
>> With or without ads there is an incentive to cheat the system. Even now
>> you have servers breaking the rules. This is an observable fact. This is
>> not an opinion.
>>
>> So actually no. You are still wrong. And beating of the dead horse of ads
>> isn't going to bring community servers back. Next thing you know Valve will
>> just remove the motd and do nothing else.
>>
>>
>> On Fri, Sep 4, 2015 at 4:10 PM, E. Olsen <ceo.eol...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> The more you keep beating this dead horse, the more you fill the mailing
>>>> list with gibberish that Valve simply doesn't care about.
>>>
>>>
>>> Let's not pretend that you know any more about what Valve cares about
>>> than I do. Maybe you're right - I don't think that's the case, but then
>>> again we'll not know unless Valve actually says once and for all "THIS is
>>> why we made the change two years ago, and this is what we want to prevent."
>>>
>>> However, there is absolutely no doubt that MOTD ads have been a negative
>>> towards player perception of community servers. Hell, I've never used them,
>>> nor frequented a server that does, but I have reason to hate them if for no
>>> other reasons than I had to give up the long-standing functionality of the
>>> MOTD window for quickplay players simply because those ads were being
>>> abused - yet another thing we lost because of the abuse of others.
>>>
>>> Another flaw in your argument is this:
>>>
>>> There is a way to monetize players connecting to a server that is never
>>>> going away. And that is premium status.
>>>
>>>
>>> Actually, no.
>>>
>>> Those kinds of operators, while they certainly had/have no place in
>>> quickplay, DID have to convince players to donate for the premium "perks"
>>> (or whatever they call them), so players aren't monetized simply by
>>> connecting to those server, they had to see some kind of value in giving
>>> those servers some $$$.
>>>
>>> ...and frankly, I have no beef with that, as long as they are playing by
>>> the rules, and abiding by 

Re: [hlds] Optional TF2 update released

[Robert Paulson]

If no one at Valve really cared, then official servers wouldn't have been
removed from the browser, even if it was only for a few days. From what I
heard, there are only a few people left on the TF team, and at least one of
them is anti-community. The removal of official servers from the list was
probably done by a junior employee which is why it got reversed.

I agree there's not much chance something will change, which is why I only
bothered to reply to this thread a month later. But we know there's at
least one person that might care.

And at the very least, we can keep reminding people not to devote too much
time and effort into anything related to Valve because they will wipe out
community servers built up over years without hesitation just like they did
in TF2.

If you are involved or thinking about being involved (workshop, websites,
servers)  in the Valve ecosystem (Dota2, CS:GO) you might want to think
twice about spending too much effort into what you are doing.

On Tue, Aug 4, 2015 at 6:34 AM, Andreas Willinger aw...@gmx.at wrote:

 Yea, also got one.



 *Von:* hlds-boun...@list.valvesoftware.com [mailto:
 hlds-boun...@list.valvesoftware.com] *Im Auftrag von *Paul
 *Gesendet:* Dienstag, 04. August 2015 15:06

 *An:* Half-Life dedicated Win32 server mailing list
 *Betreff:* Re: [hlds] Optional TF2 update released



 Although off topic, is anyone here getting any spam or similar email from
 someone named 'Amy Happy'? I've had two emails via this mailing list from
 this person in the last few hours.



 On 4 August 2015 at 12:41, Andreas Willinger aw...@gmx.at wrote:

 Oh look, another ignorant person. Guess you never ran any TF2 servers then.



 *Von:* hlds-boun...@list.valvesoftware.com [mailto:
 hlds-boun...@list.valvesoftware.com] *Im Auftrag von *Brian Riedel
 *Gesendet:* Dienstag, 04. August 2015 13:03
 *An:* Half-Life dedicated Win32 server mailing list
 *Betreff:* Re: [hlds] Optional TF2 update released



 Seriously, this. If your servers can't retain people, then that's a
 problem with the strength of your community, not with the updates to
 quickplay.



 On Tue, Aug 4, 2015 at 6:58 AM, Rovanion Luckey rovanion.luc...@gmail.com
 wrote:

 Is there an email list on which I can get the update announcements and
 without the constant whining?



 2015-08-04 12:54 GMT+02:00 Rowedahelicon theoneando...@rowedahelicon.com
 :

 Can I get a confirmation my emails go in?

 Anyway, wait until Dota II stops being popular, that's where the money is
 and that's where the focus is! Thing is is that the TF2 community as a
 whole doesn't seem to understand why TF2 is as bad as it is, far too many
 people think that everyone Valve does is for the best and that they're
 never wrong ever. The response may be more effective if a much larger
 portion of the community raise their voice about it.



 On Tue, Aug 4, 2015 at 5:32 AM, Paul ubyu@gmail.com wrote:

 Since Valve appears to have more or less confirmed their lack of support
 towards communities these days I haven't bothered spending a single
 penny/cent on games such as Team Fortress 2, especially not on these
 contracts. I also asked a good number of my friends to see what their
 opinion was and quite a number of them aren't either apparently. It's so
 disappointing to see that a company who originally developed great games
 has gone from being open and fair to being closed and apparently mostly
 interested in ways to pull more cash from their games. There are so many
 good ideas here which are being ignored, as workarounds. If things ever
 changed for the better then I, along with quite a number of other people
 I'm sure, would be motivated in buying items on games such as Team Fortress
 2 again. Come on Valve, open your mind to us - the community which made
 Team Fortress 2 towards what it is today (prior to it beginning to lose
 support for the community servers)! Somewhere you must surely care about
 them still?



 On 4 August 2015 at 04:40, Rowedahelicon theoneando...@rowedahelicon.com
 wrote:

 Oh they know the setup is unfair, they said so from the very start a few
 years ago, and last year they promised they'd give us a middle ground. They
 don't care you see, Valve employees have said how money drives direction at
 Valve now, and Valve servers mean less modding means more money.



 On Mon, Aug 3, 2015 at 7:08 PM, Robert Paulson thepauls...@gmail.com
 wrote:

 The TF2 team, in a misguided effort to silence all complaints, ended up
 making poor decisions that are killing community servers.



 The truth is, whatever you do, someone is going to complain about
 something. You blocked ads from being displayed for people connecting
 through quickplay? One down. But now there are people complaining about
 contracts and saying they don't want CS:GO garbage in their game. Are you
 going to remove that too? Of course not.



 So far you have been unfairly accommodating to the type of players that
 can't even be bothered to type valve

Re: [hlds] Optional TF2 update released

[Robert Paulson]

The TF2 team, in a misguided effort to silence all complaints, ended up
making poor decisions that are killing community servers.

The truth is, whatever you do, someone is going to complain about
something. You blocked ads from being displayed for people connecting
through quickplay? One down. But now there are people complaining about
contracts and saying they don't want CS:GO garbage in their game. Are you
going to remove that too? Of course not.

So far you have been unfairly accommodating to the type of players that
can't even be bothered to type valve in the server browser at the expense
of everyone else. What happened to letting people decide for themselves? If
people do not like a server for having reserved slots or ads, then they
will not return, and the server will have fewer players.

The fact that you hid official servers from the browser, at least for a
couple days, proves that you know the current setup to be unfair and not
the best experience for the players who don't like official servers. Please
don't wait another year to fix this.

If people are actually use the browser to find official servers, then I
would suggest having a toggle for that on the browser, defaulted to off.
However to see any real change, the official server toggle on the quickplay
GUI should automatically be turned off after a few hours. That would still
guarantee that new players know what a vanilla experience is.
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Re: [hlds] Optional TF2 update released

[Robert Paulson]

Are you all really surprised by this? Valve doesn't care about community
servers anymore. The moment 1 person complains that they couldn't wait 15
seconds for quickplay, it gets removed.

Anyway you are all acting like half life 3 was announced.

The majority of players still click play now instead of using the server
browser so removing valve servers from the browser list probably does very
little for your own servers.

On Sat, Jul 4, 2015 at 2:36 PM, Matthias InstantMuffin Kollek 
proph...@sticed.org wrote:

 Endless waves of communities explaining how quickplay (and other changes
 ofc) destroys communities, nothing happens.
 Two people on the mailing list moan about valve servers being excluded
 from the list, instantfix. GJ


 On 04.07.2015 23:32, Kevin C wrote:

 You have got to be kidding me.

 http://i.imgur.com/tAmWXj6.png wink wink nudge nudge

 On 7/4/2015 5:28 PM, Eric Smith wrote:

 - Temporarily reverted Valve official quickplay and matchmaking servers
 not being listed in the server browser while we look into this further

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Re: [hlds] Optional TF2 update released

[Robert Paulson]

Logging cl_connectmethod.

Why do you presume that I am pulling it from my ass?

I'm curious as to why you have a vendetta against community servers. Did
you get put on saigns and couldn't figure out how to type valve in server
browser, so you are resorting to flaming the server owners here?

On Sat, Jul 4, 2015 at 3:52 PM, Phillip Vector t...@mostdeadlygame.com
wrote:

 The majority of players still click play now instead of using the server
 browser so removing valve servers from the browser list probably does very
 little for your own servers.

 Please tell me how you managed to get access to this data. Presuming you
 aren't pulling it from your ass of course.

 On Sat, Jul 4, 2015 at 2:44 PM, Robert Paulson thepauls...@gmail.com
 wrote:

 Are you all really surprised by this? Valve doesn't care about community
 servers anymore. The moment 1 person complains that they couldn't wait 15
 seconds for quickplay, it gets removed.

 Anyway you are all acting like half life 3 was announced.

 The majority of players still click play now instead of using the server
 browser so removing valve servers from the browser list probably does very
 little for your own servers.

 On Sat, Jul 4, 2015 at 2:36 PM, Matthias InstantMuffin Kollek 
 proph...@sticed.org wrote:

 Endless waves of communities explaining how quickplay (and other changes
 ofc) destroys communities, nothing happens.
 Two people on the mailing list moan about valve servers being excluded
 from the list, instantfix. GJ


 On 04.07.2015 23:32, Kevin C wrote:

 You have got to be kidding me.

 http://i.imgur.com/tAmWXj6.png wink wink nudge nudge

 On 7/4/2015 5:28 PM, Eric Smith wrote:

 - Temporarily reverted Valve official quickplay and matchmaking
 servers not being listed in the server browser while we look into this
 further

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Re: [hlds] Community Servers and the Gun Mettle Update

[Robert Paulson]

You should create your own thread instead of hijacking this one though as
your comment is rather off topic.

It also says at the end of each email:

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On Thu, Jul 2, 2015 at 3:48 PM, Crazed Gunman bsr.crazedgun...@gmail.com
wrote:

 Oh, the maturity of this mailing list sometimes. I mention being unable to
 unsubscribe from the mailing list, so someone kindly signs me up for many,
 many more. Thanks.
 On Jul 2, 2015 5:41 PM, Robert Paulson thepauls...@gmail.com wrote:

 I've given up on this a while ago.

 When the 1 year mark passed with no concessions for communities except
 for quickpick that no one uses, it was safe to say that Valve doesn't care
 about communities anymore. There is no sense of urgency as they let
 player-bases carefully built up over several years be irreversibly
 destroyed in a few months.

 We were just there to foot their hosting bill before they found out they
 could make way more money by selling items. They have no sense of shame for
 betraying the people that helped drive their profit margin up before
 switching to microtransactions.

 The owner of TN now works at Valve, and I believe John here was the owner
 of Nemu's stomping grounds (which has gone unpunished for years for not
 labeling the bot Brutus as a bot in the browser). And we are still
 getting even more anti-community features. Maybe now they see the official
 servers as their own and the community ones as a threat to them now.

 The lesson here is clear and everyone should know: DO NOT invest your
 time and enthusiasm into anything related to Steam or Valve will screw you
 like they did with TF2.

 On Thu, Jul 2, 2015 at 2:42 PM, ics i...@ics-base.net wrote:

 I have to agree also, getting scraps instead of the goodies. Why am i
 paying for servers anymore when they get alienated by Valve policies?

 That image there is really the best solution i've seen so far.

 -ics


 E. Olsen kirjoitti:

 At this point, I have to agree with Alexander.

 I mean, cmon guys - in almost two years of looking at alternatives
 you've got nothing to announce when it comes to helping community servers?
 There have been quite a few viable alternative presented, to include this
 one:

 http://i.imgur.com/tAmWXj6.png

 I've really been a staunch defender of the TF2 team to this point, but
 this is just kicking all the good communities that are left while they're
 down.

 Honestly, by the time you guys make community support a priority again,
 it might be too late.

 On Thu, Jul 2, 2015 at 5:28 PM, Alexander Corn mc...@doctormckay.com
 mailto:mc...@doctormckay.com wrote:

 The blow would be lessened if you would go ahead and set any
 server as the default for Quickplay instead of official servers
 only. That was supposed to be a temporary, nuclear solution
 after all.

 On Thu, Jul 2, 2015 at 5:22 PM, John Schoenick
 jo...@valvesoftware.com mailto:jo...@valvesoftware.com wrote:

 Hey guys, with today's update we're introducing a few new
 features that will impact servers, and I just wanted to give
 you guys a heads up.

 There is a new quickplay category, featured, that represents
 the featured maps for a given campaign. In order to have your
 server in this category, you need to be running the mapcycle
 mapcycle_featured_maps.txt, and have the special string
 'featured' in your quickplay tags.

 Today's update also introduces contracts, which currently
 require players be on official servers to complete.
 Unfortunately, our current setup makes it very difficult to
 restrict features like this other than in an all-or-nothing
 manner, and we determined this was necessary to protect the
 system from immediate abuse.

 We agree this is not ideal. We are continuing the look at the
 situation with community servers and how we can better support
 passionate communities, but currently have nothing to announce.

 - JohnS

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Re: [hlds] Community Servers and the Gun Mettle Update

[Robert Paulson]

I've given up on this a while ago.

When the 1 year mark passed with no concessions for communities except for
quickpick that no one uses, it was safe to say that Valve doesn't care
about communities anymore. There is no sense of urgency as they let
player-bases carefully built up over several years be irreversibly
destroyed in a few months.

We were just there to foot their hosting bill before they found out they
could make way more money by selling items. They have no sense of shame for
betraying the people that helped drive their profit margin up before
switching to microtransactions.

The owner of TN now works at Valve, and I believe John here was the owner
of Nemu's stomping grounds (which has gone unpunished for years for not
labeling the bot Brutus as a bot in the browser). And we are still
getting even more anti-community features. Maybe now they see the official
servers as their own and the community ones as a threat to them now.

The lesson here is clear and everyone should know: DO NOT invest your time
and enthusiasm into anything related to Steam or Valve will screw you like
they did with TF2.

On Thu, Jul 2, 2015 at 2:42 PM, ics i...@ics-base.net wrote:

 I have to agree also, getting scraps instead of the goodies. Why am i
 paying for servers anymore when they get alienated by Valve policies?

 That image there is really the best solution i've seen so far.

 -ics


 E. Olsen kirjoitti:

 At this point, I have to agree with Alexander.

 I mean, cmon guys - in almost two years of looking at alternatives
 you've got nothing to announce when it comes to helping community servers?
 There have been quite a few viable alternative presented, to include this
 one:

 http://i.imgur.com/tAmWXj6.png

 I've really been a staunch defender of the TF2 team to this point, but
 this is just kicking all the good communities that are left while they're
 down.

 Honestly, by the time you guys make community support a priority again,
 it might be too late.

 On Thu, Jul 2, 2015 at 5:28 PM, Alexander Corn mc...@doctormckay.com
 mailto:mc...@doctormckay.com wrote:

 The blow would be lessened if you would go ahead and set any
 server as the default for Quickplay instead of official servers
 only. That was supposed to be a temporary, nuclear solution
 after all.

 On Thu, Jul 2, 2015 at 5:22 PM, John Schoenick
 jo...@valvesoftware.com mailto:jo...@valvesoftware.com wrote:

 Hey guys, with today's update we're introducing a few new
 features that will impact servers, and I just wanted to give
 you guys a heads up.

 There is a new quickplay category, featured, that represents
 the featured maps for a given campaign. In order to have your
 server in this category, you need to be running the mapcycle
 mapcycle_featured_maps.txt, and have the special string
 'featured' in your quickplay tags.

 Today's update also introduces contracts, which currently
 require players be on official servers to complete.
 Unfortunately, our current setup makes it very difficult to
 restrict features like this other than in an all-or-nothing
 manner, and we determined this was necessary to protect the
 system from immediate abuse.

 We agree this is not ideal. We are continuing the look at the
 situation with community servers and how we can better support
 passionate communities, but currently have nothing to announce.

 - JohnS

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Re: [hlds] hlds Digest, Vol 47, Issue 4

[Robert Paulson]

Before Valve started funneling all the new players to their servers, there
were many community servers with vanilla settings with different maps. What
you see now is the direct consequence of Valve's changes, this was not how
it was.

There is a reason why the only communities left are running mods and the
same few maps. It is because those are the only servers you can fill
without quickplay now. No one can compete with the numerous official
servers clogging up the browser list and being fed all the players from
quickplay.

And while most community servers may not be that great, there were at
least 200 of them that were according to gametracker, so this isn't just a
dozen servers that will get killed. This was also a complete betrayal of
the players/customers who bought TF2, expecting to be able to join or run
their own servers. You may not understand since you don't seem to care very
much about the quality of the servers you play on, but to me, this is
almost as offensive as turning a game pay-to-win after getting everyone
hooked on it for a few years. I refuse to play on official servers, and
knowing how much better community servers can be, I'd rather quit than
downgrade.

I for one will never host another Valve game after putting thousands of
dollars and hours into TF2, and I will refrain from buying any games or
microtransactions from them due to this.

On Wed, Mar 4, 2015 at 12:48 PM, Lucas Wagner lgwag...@gmail.com wrote:

 I think this thread drastically underestimates the new user. I would argue
 that most new users are new to this game but not new to FPS gaming. I would
 argue most understand that there are thousands of servers out there but
 just don't care to sift through a list when all they want to do is connect
 and play. It's a crapshoot anyway, I'm sure many of them have to connect
 through quickplay several times to find a decent game. I use the server
 browser to try and find good games and it's a hassle.

 Further, I think the community servers are far from great. Most run the
 same 3-4 maps (2fort, dustbowl, turbine, badwater) and jack with the
 settings (instant respawn, 32 player dustbowl anyone?) and then come on
 here and complain that Valve is killing their communities. Sure there are
 some good communities, and some good mods, but most community servers
 aren't all that great and I highly doubt there is any real tragedy here.
 Further I think many people underestimate the impact of the age of the game
 in the declining numbers. Has anyone looked at traffic on Valve's servers?
 Either way I'm not convinced the experience would be any better if all the
 traffic on Valve's servers were redirected to community servers.

 That's my 2 cents, feel free to tell me I'm wrong.

 On Wed, Mar 4, 2015 at 2:12 PM, Chad Hedstrom chad.hedst...@gmail.com
 wrote:

 I do like that idea.

 Artificially soft locking the server browser button, and having users
 unlock it via an achievement (dominate one player, for example) gives new
 users an easy incentive and helps advertise the existence of community
 servers rather even-handidly. Since it's something you unlock, there's an
 incentive to go check out what you've unlocked, and at least try out
 connecting to a community Server. Right now there are likely many new users
 who never realize there's an option b outside of quick play.

 I say soft locking, as users could still connect through the console or
 steam server browser.

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Re: [hlds] [TF2] Community Issues/Suggestions

[Robert Paulson]

I thought this post by a Valve employee might be relevant to the discussion.

http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showpost.php?p=22337462postcount=10

Unfortunately I don't think we're ever going to get the sheer numbers
needed to force Valve's hand because the average player doesn't understand
the problem. Most players remaining joined after the change, and they have
no concept of how things could be better. Most of the veterans that quit
assumed that their favorites servers naturally died instead of being killed
by Valve. As you can see, that reddit post only has around 40 votes total.

I tried to warn everyone that the continued removal of server owner rights
would lead to problems for everyone, but many people here thought that it
wouldn't affect them as much as the bad servers, and all the players from
the bad server would end up on their servers. Every removal was praised
not only by trolls that didn't even play the game anymore for years, but
also quite a few community owners.

It is probably only up to Valve (or Eric, since I heard he was the only one
working on TF2 now) to realize they made a mistake by looking at how the
player counts are faring and seeing the drop in retention rates.

On Tue, Mar 3, 2015 at 6:04 AM, Rowedahelicon 
theoneando...@rowedahelicon.com wrote:


 http://www.reddit.com/r/tf2/comments/2xkyad/fix_quickplay_now_an_appeal/cp2wdir
  I've
 posted my take on the whole situation here, after seeing some comments in
 the thread I am very worried this will turn into a giant argument of what
 should be done instead, and ultimately will have the issue collapse on
 itself.

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Re: [hlds] Mandatory TF2 Update Released

[Robert Paulson]

I'm rather curious as to what prompted the creation of this feature,
because I haven't seen anyone ask for it and it seems to have very little
practical use.

Redirecting people to emptier servers would likely cause more harm than
good as you don't know if they are joining the server to be with certain
players, and the new server could have too few people on it for their
tastes.

It might be useful for changing IPs because it takes as long as 24 hours
for steam account changes to work. But if it is going to be broken on 1/3
of the players (what we see coming from the internet tab) then as Ryan has
said, you might as well use askconnect_accept.



On Wed, Feb 11, 2015 at 5:33 PM, Ryan Stecker voidedwea...@gmail.com
wrote:

 For example (voided's thoughts): This could be used to create on mass
 redirect servers which fill the master list just to send people to one
 specific server.

 ^This example is a obvious no no. But what about this: I create a plugin
 that detects when my server becomes 31/32 and then redirect all new
 connecting players to a secondardy less full server. Is this acceptable?

 One excluded bit regarding this is that it's currently disallowed to use
 the redirect command for clients who join via the internet tab of the
 server browser. That makes mass redirect servers impractical unless someone
 discovers an exploit to allow execution of the redirect command.

 Nevertheless, I personally can't think of a practical use of the redirect
 command that the existing askconnect machinery doesn't already support. It
 seems to me that most server operators' use of the redirect command is
 going to lead to poor user experiences. I don't think most players will
 enjoy being redirected to other servers without their permission,
 especially if they're playing on the original server with their friends.

 If anything, the askconnect UX should be improved so that users can more
 clearly be shown the redirection UI (rather than what's currently displayed
 as a small UI element in the top left corner). Additionally, improvements
 could be made here so that users don't have to worry about having a key
 bound to the askconnect_accept command, as some of them have rebound or
 unbound the F3 key.

 Just my $0.02.



 On Wed, Feb 11, 2015 at 7:06 PM, A Fearts joewatshis...@gmail.com wrote:

 (I hope I'm understanding what this new command does, as I have yet to
 personally test it.)

 - Added redirect client command that can be used to send clients to a
 different server. Does not function for clients that came from matchmaking
 or certain server browser tabs.

 ^It would be nice if someone from Valve would create some guidelines on
 this. This command could be used to in a ways that degrade a players
 experience.

 For example (voided's thoughts): This could be used to create on mass
 redirect servers which fill the master list just to send people to one
 specific server.

 ^This example is a obvious no no. But what about this: I create a plugin
 that detects when my server becomes 31/32 and then redirect all new
 connecting players to a secondardy less full server. Is this acceptable?

 What about using it to load balance clients who are already connected to
 the server?

 It's cool we have a new command but what are the practical accepted uses
 that ask_connect_accept doesn't already fulfill?

 Some response from Valve would be appreciated.

 On Wed, Feb 11, 2015 at 7:39 PM, Alexander Kolev sashko...@gmail.com
 wrote:

 Also what does  r_drawtracers_firstperson do? How does affect the
 view of the game? How we should work/use the new 'redirect' cvar?

 2015-02-12 2:36 GMT+02:00 Alexander Kolev sashko...@gmail.com:

 Great update but the cvar - cl_jiggle_bone_framerate_cutoff is still
 bugged. Typing 0 does not disable the jiggle bone. Please fix this, its
 been a year.. meh

 Alexander

 2015-02-12 2:24 GMT+02:00 HD ad...@gamerscrib.net:

 How do you use the redirect client command? Is this something
 applied in
 the configuration and if so what is the exact command?
 Example?

 Also its noted certain server browser tabs which ones? A little
 more
 clarification on this would be great.


 -Original Message-
 From: hlds-boun...@list.valvesoftware.com
 [mailto:hlds-boun...@list.valvesoftware.com] On Behalf Of Eric Smith
 Sent: Wednesday, February 11, 2015 7:13 PM
 To: hlds@list.valvesoftware.com; hlds_annou...@list.valvesoftware.com;
 hlds_li...@list.valvesoftware.com
 Subject: [hlds] Mandatory TF2 Update Released

 We've released a mandatory update for Team Fortress 2. The update
 notes are
 below. The new version number is 2621505.

 -Eric

 --

 - Added Crate #90 and Crate #91 to the drop list
 - Removed Naughty Winter Crate 2014 and Nice Winter Crate 2014 from
 the drop
 list
 - Added convar sv_rcon_whitelist_address. Rcon clients failing to auth
 from
 the specified IP address will never get banned.
 - Added convar r_drawtracers_firstperson to disable the drawing 

Re: [hlds] TF2 and the Policy of Truth

[Robert Paulson]

Very few players use community quickplay anymore and it was like that
before a few servers started breaking quickplay rules. I assume you are
talking about the Stop the Tank server. Yes it should be delisted, but even
if it happens right now it isn't going to make any difference to your
server population. All the other vanilla servers are empty.

The dev who did this knew it was going to kill off communities, so they
wouldn't have to spend any time cleaning up community servers. Complaining
about this only validates his position. If server owners can't tolerate a
few bad servers, how can you expect players to do the same?

It is sad that we are arguing with each other and trying to add
restrictions on our servers, including ones that don't exist on official
ones such as class limits. If we are more interested in killing off
competition than reversing the quickplay ban, we will all die together.


On Wed, Feb 11, 2015 at 1:19 PM, 1nsane 1nsane...@gmail.com wrote:

 I wanted to check out some other payload servers now. First
 quickplay server I get sent to is half-full of players that look like
 robots and the frigging payload cart has the audacity to shoot at me! Can
 you imagine the horror? Well I had to experience it in person...

 Second try at it was even worse if you can imagine. Won't even discuss it
 as such. Pretty sure the policy of truth has long since been forgotten. Or
 maybe it was never meant to be enforced. Ban a few servers here and there
 and hope that everyone else is too scared to do it. Because reporting
 servers that were blatantly abusing it got us either nowhere or took many
 months before any action came around. Then they would just spawn some new
 servers and repeat. Making everything harder for both the players who want
 to have fun and the server owners who wanted to provide a fun place to be.

 There's many ways to solve this. Trust new servers less until they prove
 themselves. After all they have the least to lose if they get banned. Can
 be fully automated and delisting will actually mean something. Imagine if
 quickplay had some sort of a working scoring system. If only valve would
 consider it.

 Or maybe implement something like CS:GO's overwatch (except for servers)
 and let certain players look at server reports from other players
 (anonymously). The less policing valve has to do manually the more likely
 it is to make everyone in the community happy. Server ops and players alike.

 On Wed, Feb 11, 2015 at 3:58 PM, E. Olsen ceo.eol...@gmail.com wrote:

 If you've found server violating the policy, by all means report them to
 Valve, but I don't think conducting a public witch hunt on the mailing
 list is a good idea. All I've seen in the past is quite a few false
 accusations, etc.  Hell, I remember a couple of years back someone getting
 our servers added to a reddit-based blacklist of servers that used Pinion
 advertising - even though we've NEVER used any advertising on our servers.
 It took a dozen people actually standing up and saying uh, these guys
 don't use pinion before they removed us.

 Honestly - I doubt even those people violating the policy are getting
 much in the way of quickplay traffic anyway. I only have less than half of
 our servers quickplay-enabled anymore, and those have sat empty since about
 a month after the change last year.

 When you think about it, what really needs to be addressed is the reasons
 people feel they need to violate that policy. Considering that you never
 heard of server owners hiding their server settings until Valve
 bifurcated the TF2's traffic by saying you'll only get access to the main
 source of traffic if you make your server identical to every other vanilla
 server.

 Should those folks be thrown out of quickplay for breaking the rules?
 Sure thingbut perhaps it's the rules themselves (and the way they are
 implemented to remove/stifle any and all diversity) that need to be
 changed, as does the implementation of quickplay itself.

 Take, for instance, the rules against class limits. Why is that still
 listed in the policy when valve now allows class limit votes? If a class
 limit vote passes on a quickplay-enabled server, are we now in violation -
 even though it's part of the engine itself?

 How about another scenario: Let's say an operator wants to run his
 servers plain-jane, 24-slot vanilla during the slow hours of the day to
 help during daytime traffic, but at night during prime time manually
 changes their settings to 32-slot, fast respawn servers. He's not hiding
 anything - all the appropriate sv_tags get set - but during prime time the
 extra slots are needed for our supporters. Is he now in violation of the
 policy because he's changed his settings?

 Of course not - but I'm sure some folks would perceive it that way.

 and therein lies the problem. When valve decided that an automated
 system for throwing players into a random server was superior to a player
 choosing a server on their own from 

Re: [hlds] TF2 and the Policy of Truth

[Robert Paulson]

That might not be your intention but that is what Valve sees. They see a
bunch of disorganized communities who can't even agree on 1 thing, so it is
easier to do nothing. Here is what the mailing list looks like:

- I don't use attachments so disable them.
- I don't run 32 slot servers so have quickplay kill them.
- I don't use the MOTD so block them.
- I don't run vanilla servers so make it Valve only.
- I don't use plugins so block them.
- All these quickplay cheaters are stealing my traffic even though no one
is using community quickplay anymore.

This is the kind of attitude that is killing TF2. Now we can't even have
reserved slots if the server is full and an admin needs to get in to handle
a ban report.

Valve is smart, if they really wanted to fix the problem, they would have
done so already without our input. The problem is that they lack motivation
and we need to work on that instead.

A rating system and blackilst covering quickplay could potentially solve
whatever issue they have a problem with, but we don't know for sure and
they have been posted on the list multiple times. Before we keep throwing
random suggestions out there, we need to know what exactly is Valve's
problem with community servers. Otherwise they will just see a bunch of
random solutions for random problems they don't have and ignore them.
Before they tell us their problems, the best course of action is to simply
keep this issue in the spotlight.


On Wed, Feb 11, 2015 at 2:20 PM, 1nsane 1nsane...@gmail.com wrote:

 Killing off competition? That's not what I was getting at. A proper
 scoring system for quickplay would show which servers are good and liked by
 players. Be it valve's own or certain community servers. It would also make
 it easy for valve to see what features are liked the most. Bad servers will
 always pop up. Having a system to combat that would make everybody happy.

 And if we are talking about competition that's abusing quickplay. They
 are the ones being rewarded when valve adds such measures. As they aren't
 afraid to lose their playbase with a ban on their server. Which itself is
 something that may or may not happen ever again. In the meantime they can
 do what they want to keep players on their servers longer. Even when it's
 against the quickplay rules. This sort of thing adds up. More players join
 such servers and the competition suffers and dies. Then you get some of
 their players as well :).

 If valve no longer feels like enforcing their own rules then it will only
 get worse. Little risk and why should we share players when we can take
 each other's? This is the sort of thinking that got us into this mess and
 these sort of people will always be around. But there's always ways to deal
 with them. Some easier than others.

 Any communication from valve would help. They can always go for a bandaid
 solution again. It wouldn't help much but it would be very easy to do and
 still help a bit in the short term. Make an announcement about a renewed
 commitment to the policy of truth (similar to the one before) and do
 nothing. Takes very little time and it will scare some people just like it
 did last time

 On Wed, Feb 11, 2015 at 4:37 PM, Robert Paulson thepauls...@gmail.com
 wrote:

 Very few players use community quickplay anymore and it was like that
 before a few servers started breaking quickplay rules. I assume you are
 talking about the Stop the Tank server. Yes it should be delisted, but even
 if it happens right now it isn't going to make any difference to your
 server population. All the other vanilla servers are empty.

 The dev who did this knew it was going to kill off communities, so they
 wouldn't have to spend any time cleaning up community servers. Complaining
 about this only validates his position. If server owners can't tolerate a
 few bad servers, how can you expect players to do the same?

 It is sad that we are arguing with each other and trying to add
 restrictions on our servers, including ones that don't exist on official
 ones such as class limits. If we are more interested in killing off
 competition than reversing the quickplay ban, we will all die together.


 On Wed, Feb 11, 2015 at 1:19 PM, 1nsane 1nsane...@gmail.com wrote:

 I wanted to check out some other payload servers now. First
 quickplay server I get sent to is half-full of players that look like
 robots and the frigging payload cart has the audacity to shoot at me! Can
 you imagine the horror? Well I had to experience it in person...

 Second try at it was even worse if you can imagine. Won't even discuss
 it as such. Pretty sure the policy of truth has long since been forgotten.
 Or maybe it was never meant to be enforced. Ban a few servers here and
 there and hope that everyone else is too scared to do it. Because reporting
 servers that were blatantly abusing it got us either nowhere or took many
 months before any action came around. Then they would just spawn some new
 servers and repeat. Making

Re: [hlds] Rethinking the community quickplay ban

[Robert Paulson]

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.

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Re: [hlds] Rethinking the community quickplay ban

[Robert Paulson]

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

[Robert Paulson]

It is rather rude of you to assume that all blocked emails were simply
blocked due to a large size. While that was the reason I deleted all the
replies this time, I have previously received messages like this even with
all the replies deleted and having the wording rearranged 10 different
times before I just gave up:

The reason it is being held:

The message headers matched a filter rule

This is a holy war that will lead to humanity's extinction? We are some
of TF2's biggest fans and the TF team even seems to think we are a threat.
Some of us have spent thousands of hours and dollars on this game and
policies that are killing our servers have been unchanged for over a year
now.

You probably haven't put in as much time and money into TF2, but don't
assume everyone else is in the same position.

On Mon, Feb 9, 2015 at 12:17 PM, Lyrai lyr...@gmail.com wrote:

 The fact that the first thought is They're working against me and not
 Technical limitations speaks volumes to the general attitude of this
 entire mailing list and gives good reason for Valve to never set foot in
 it.
 The entire mailing list acts as if they're on some holy war that will lead
 to humanity's extinction if some rules regarding how servers hosting a
 bideo jame aren't tweaked to be more receptive. While the quickplay
 solution has its issues, enacting psyops roleplay and treating Valve like
 they fucked your mother and made you watch is not how you get to any sort
 of solution, or any reaction short of dismissal.

 On Mon, Feb 9, 2015 at 11:58 AM, Korrey Moore ajac...@gmail.com wrote:

 One of my most recent replies to this thread went into moderation for
 some
 reason, and was eventually rejected. Contained nothing harmful, rude or
 not
 truthful, only honesty. But it was rejected. I wonder if this mailing
 list
 will start having posts moderated...

 The more likely explanation is that you quoted a large number of posts
 without editing it down and your post went over the maximum allowed size,
 so it was trashed.

 I forgot what the post size limit was, but it's pretty easy to reach with
 all of the extraneous headers, footers and formatting that gets added to
 every reply.

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 Tee hee hee hee

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[hlds] Rethinking the community quickplay ban

[Robert Paulson]

Abusing quickplay is the dumbest idea I ever heard. The entire point of
these complaints is that almost no one is using community quickplay because
the UI is so bad and skewed in favor of official servers.

Since everyone else is putting forth their own solutions and theories, I
will repeat mine. Default to community servers after 1 hour of gameplay.
After 1 hour new players should know how vanilla TF2 is and be able to find
a proper community server.

This is not about the complete distrust in community servers for all
players because they would not have bothered to add a community servers
option. \

This is not about ads because they were already completely blocked from
people joining through quickplay long before the official servers change.

Short of removing community servers completely or charging for a hosting
license, someone will always have something to complain about. Everything
is a trade-off and having community servers is better than idiot-proofing
the game for the whiners who can't even figure out how to use the server
browser.
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Re: [hlds] Rethinking the community quickplay ban

[Robert Paulson]

Up until (guess when?) last year, TF2 had more players than CS:GO, and it
was already 2 years old.

The usual cycle of dying in a few years like Call of Duty does not and
should not apply to a game that is both free and heavily updated. A more
apt comparison would be with a game like League of Legends which shows no
signs of decline.

The game is dying naturally is not a valid argument for screwing over
community servers either.

On Fri, Feb 6, 2015 at 8:08 PM, spacebur...@gmail.com spacebur...@gmail.com
 wrote:

 Not as much as games like CS do, I mean. What has kept it alive thus far
 was mostly the steady stream of major updates, drawing new players and
 pulling the old ones back in. Lately, it seems to be slowing down.

 On 7 February 2015 at 04:56, Albert Davis davis.alb...@gmail.com wrote:

 It doesn't have staying power? How so?

 On Fri, Feb 6, 2015 at 6:01 PM, spacebur...@gmail.com 
 spacebur...@gmail.com wrote:

 A large part of the fact community is waning comes from the natural life
 cycle of a game. TF2 has been around for almost 7 years now, and truth be
 told, it doesn't have the staying power that games like CS do. That is not
 to say Valve's mishandling of quickplay doesn't contribute to it, though.

 On 6 February 2015 at 23:10, E. Olsen ceo.eol...@gmail.com wrote:

 I agree that going out of our way to abuse quickplay  break the rules
 is pretty shortsighted and ill-conceived.

 Having said that, there are always people that say it was not about
 ads or they made the change because of THIS, but the truth is no one
 really knows, because the TF2 team never TOLD US why they thought the
 drastic change was necessarily. The most I heard from Fletcher Dunn at the
 time was that it was getting bad for the players. Of course, he said that
 in the same sentence that he told us that the change was a temporary
 solution (I'm paraphrasing here, as I don't have the direct quote saved).

 I have my theories, and I'm sure they conflict with those that love the
 idea of pinion ads plastered all over their servers, but that's neither
 here nor there.

 I like the idea of Valve charging for a server hosting license, I've
 never thought of that before, but it would probably be a great way to keep
 the more nefarious folks from throwing up those terrible anonymous TF2
 ad-farms (the ones that used fake clients/bots to trick quickplay, etc.)
 that plagued quickplay prior to the change.

 Even if they only charged $5 per year per server, it would probably do
 the trick (the same way charging for TF2 kept more hackers out, etc.)

 The thing that gets rattles me most about quickplay is that TF2 was
 flourishing before it came along, with the good community servers rising
 to the top (traffic-wise) while the premium and low-quality servers
 languished. It wasn't until the easy quickplay traffic came along that we
 had the 100+ server ad-farms and premium operators launching server
 after server in order to cash in on the easy traffic.

 I think they need to really step back and ask themselves if quickplay
 has actually improved the game. There is a culture that TF2 brought with
 it in its first few years of operation that the random games with random
 strangers that quickplay encourages is destroying. The days of server
 regulars are on the wane, and all the high-quality teamwork  camaraderie
 that it created is going with it.

 New players never get to see how great TF2 can really be, and that's
 the biggest casualty of the quickplay system. I wish there were some member
 of the TF2 team that still understood that and would advocate for it, but
 the lack of any kind of communication from the TF2 team outside of update
 announcements make me doubt it.

 On Fri, Feb 6, 2015 at 4:47 PM, Robert Paulson thepauls...@gmail.com
 wrote:

 Abusing quickplay is the dumbest idea I ever heard. The entire point
 of these complaints is that almost no one is using community quickplay
 because the UI is so bad and skewed in favor of official servers.

 Since everyone else is putting forth their own solutions and theories,
 I will repeat mine. Default to community servers after 1 hour of gameplay.
 After 1 hour new players should know how vanilla TF2 is and be able to 
 find
 a proper community server.

 This is not about the complete distrust in community servers for all
 players because they would not have bothered to add a community servers
 option. \

 This is not about ads because they were already completely blocked
 from people joining through quickplay long before the official servers
 change.

 Short of removing community servers completely or charging for a
 hosting license, someone will always have something to complain about.
 Everything is a trade-off and having community servers is better than
 idiot-proofing the game for the whiners who can't even figure out how to
 use the server browser.

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Re: [hlds] Rethinking the community quickplay ban

[Robert Paulson]

Thank you for pointing out the obvious that old games lose players. If you
are going to argue that a heavily updated F2P game is supposed to be losing
a lot of players now, I kindly ask you not to derail this thread and start
a new one.

This is something that Valve is an obligation to deal with, if they really
care about their players, regardless of how many players are being lost
naturally.

On Fri, Feb 6, 2015 at 8:32 PM, spacebur...@gmail.com spacebur...@gmail.com
 wrote:

 Nobody's saying it justifies anything. Just pointing out that, while the
 game has a lot of players for a 7 years old one, the trend only goes
 downward from here.

 Call of Duty is not a good example, since it does get an update every
 year, except you pay the full price for it.

 On 7 February 2015 at 05:22, Robert Paulson thepauls...@gmail.com wrote:

 Up until (guess when?) last year, TF2 had more players than CS:GO, and it
 was already 2 years old.

 The usual cycle of dying in a few years like Call of Duty does not and
 should not apply to a game that is both free and heavily updated. A more
 apt comparison would be with a game like League of Legends which shows no
 signs of decline.

 The game is dying naturally is not a valid argument for screwing over
 community servers either.

 On Fri, Feb 6, 2015 at 8:08 PM, spacebur...@gmail.com 
 spacebur...@gmail.com wrote:

 Not as much as games like CS do, I mean. What has kept it alive thus far
 was mostly the steady stream of major updates, drawing new players and
 pulling the old ones back in. Lately, it seems to be slowing down.

 On 7 February 2015 at 04:56, Albert Davis davis.alb...@gmail.com
 wrote:

 It doesn't have staying power? How so?

 On Fri, Feb 6, 2015 at 6:01 PM, spacebur...@gmail.com 
 spacebur...@gmail.com wrote:

 A large part of the fact community is waning comes from the natural
 life cycle of a game. TF2 has been around for almost 7 years now, and 
 truth
 be told, it doesn't have the staying power that games like CS do. That is
 not to say Valve's mishandling of quickplay doesn't contribute to it,
 though.

 On 6 February 2015 at 23:10, E. Olsen ceo.eol...@gmail.com wrote:

 I agree that going out of our way to abuse quickplay  break the
 rules is pretty shortsighted and ill-conceived.

 Having said that, there are always people that say it was not about
 ads or they made the change because of THIS, but the truth is no one
 really knows, because the TF2 team never TOLD US why they thought the
 drastic change was necessarily. The most I heard from Fletcher Dunn at 
 the
 time was that it was getting bad for the players. Of course, he said 
 that
 in the same sentence that he told us that the change was a temporary
 solution (I'm paraphrasing here, as I don't have the direct quote saved).

 I have my theories, and I'm sure they conflict with those that love
 the idea of pinion ads plastered all over their servers, but that's 
 neither
 here nor there.

 I like the idea of Valve charging for a server hosting license, I've
 never thought of that before, but it would probably be a great way to 
 keep
 the more nefarious folks from throwing up those terrible anonymous TF2
 ad-farms (the ones that used fake clients/bots to trick quickplay, etc.)
 that plagued quickplay prior to the change.

 Even if they only charged $5 per year per server, it would probably
 do the trick (the same way charging for TF2 kept more hackers out, etc.)

 The thing that gets rattles me most about quickplay is that TF2 was
 flourishing before it came along, with the good community servers 
 rising
 to the top (traffic-wise) while the premium and low-quality servers
 languished. It wasn't until the easy quickplay traffic came along that 
 we
 had the 100+ server ad-farms and premium operators launching server
 after server in order to cash in on the easy traffic.

 I think they need to really step back and ask themselves if quickplay
 has actually improved the game. There is a culture that TF2 brought 
 with
 it in its first few years of operation that the random games with random
 strangers that quickplay encourages is destroying. The days of server
 regulars are on the wane, and all the high-quality teamwork  
 camaraderie
 that it created is going with it.

 New players never get to see how great TF2 can really be, and that's
 the biggest casualty of the quickplay system. I wish there were some 
 member
 of the TF2 team that still understood that and would advocate for it, but
 the lack of any kind of communication from the TF2 team outside of update
 announcements make me doubt it.

 On Fri, Feb 6, 2015 at 4:47 PM, Robert Paulson thepauls...@gmail.com
  wrote:

 Abusing quickplay is the dumbest idea I ever heard. The entire point
 of these complaints is that almost no one is using community quickplay
 because the UI is so bad and skewed in favor of official servers.

 Since everyone else is putting forth their own solutions and
 theories, I will repeat mine. Default to community

Re: [hlds] Rethinking the community quickplay ban

[Robert Paulson]

Players are entitled to email devs their opinion especially given the fact
the valve website has a form for it. If they are filtering those out, they
are not doing their jobs. It isn't spam.

If TF2 is really in maintenance mode, then they should remove the official
servers so they don't have to spend money on them.

Community servers are important to TF2. Many people would not be playing
TF2 without them, as they cannot stand official servers where it takes 15
minutes to get a cheater vote banned and 1 minute for them to make a new
account. I'm willing to bet most of the cash shop whales are part of this
group.

Maybe one of these days Gabe will see this and step in or the TF team will
come to their senses.

On Thu, Feb 5, 2015 at 2:23 PM, E. Olsen ceo.eol...@gmail.com wrote:

 I think there are several reasons Valve has stopped listening about this
 issuefirst and foremost because some of the largest communities took it
 upon themselves to encourage their members spam the dev's in-boxes with
 complaints. A few hundred of those, and I'm sure they simply started
 filtering anything with the word quickplay straight to the trash bin.

 Having said that, I DO think there were so many more elegant ways that
 problem servers could/should have been handled - the best of which would
 have simply been to fix the client server blacklisting system to work with
 quickplay (i.e. once a player blacklisted a server, they would no longer be
 sent there via quickplay).

 It is certainly sad to see so many years of creating unique content and
 special events for TF2 be ignored in favor of doing the easy wrong over
 the hard rightbut I think the TF2 team is largely only in
 maintenance mode at this point, and the time and effort it would take to
 implement a truly fair and balanced system that gives equitable treatment
 to community servers while putting the power back into the palyer's hands
 is probably more work that they think it is worth.

 It's a pity, really. Valve led the way in creating community involvement
 in their games, but it seems they are going the route of nearly every other
 developer out there, and slowly but surely locking down their games to
 emphasize the vanilla experience. I have no doubt in another year or two,
 real custom content (i.e. new maps and game modes) will rarely be found at
 all.

 On Thu, Feb 5, 2015 at 5:13 PM, Andreas Willinger aw...@gmx.at wrote:

 Can’t agree more.

 Our 2Fort server barely got empty before the change (even was full for 5
 days straight), but nowadays, I am happy if there are players on it for
 more than 6 hours.

 Side note: I have also made such kind of E-Mail a while back, but it
 seems like Valve doesn’t give a f* anymore.



 *Von:* hlds-boun...@list.valvesoftware.com [mailto:
 hlds-boun...@list.valvesoftware.com] *Im Auftrag von *Gamemann
 *Gesendet:* Donnerstag, 05. Februar 2015 22:53
 *An:* Half-Life dedicated Win32 server mailing list
 *Betreff:* Re: [hlds] Rethinking the community quickplay ban



 Finally, somebody made a mailing list post about this major issue.

 Honestly, one special feature Valve had that many other gaming companies
 didn’t, is that they had good support for community servers. With this
 change to TF2, it completely destroyed that feature Valve appeared to
 always have. Before the major change, my DustBowl server always filled up
 daily (sometimes not dropping at night), after the major change, well,
 there is no DustBowl server due to the lack of activity.

 I do know Valve’s support for community servers is still strong, but I’ve
 been noticing a decline for a while now with the popular Valve games.

 I hope Valve realizes this change destroyed something they were known for
 (in TF2).

 Thanks.

 On 2/5/2015 4:11 PM, Tim Anderson wrote:

 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 

Re: [hlds] Steamcmd Outage?

[Robert Paulson]

Why is the timeout on the connection so long?

If the timeout was shorter and it didn't keep trying to connect to the
first IP in config.vdf every time there would actually be a point to having
multiple CM server entries.

Can someone at Valve comment?

On Fri, Jan 16, 2015 at 8:06 AM, N-Gon ngongamedes...@gmail.com wrote:

 Ross
 When I follow your steams and run SteamCMD again it redownloaded that
 config.vdf file
 It updated TF2 just fine though.
 I reedited that vdf file and saved a copy of the modified version.
 Thanks!

 On Fri, Jan 16, 2015 at 10:18 AM, Ross Bemrose rbemr...@gmail.com wrote:

 We were just discussing this over on hlds_linux.

 Someone posted this workaround on csgo_servers yesterday:

 Hi, I have a temporary workaround for Steamcmd failing to connect/login.
 My server is in New Jersey, and has been unable to login to Steam for many
 days now. The following worked for me:

 1. In your steamcmd directory, make a backup of config/config.vdf
 2. Open config/config.vdf and find the IP addresses listed under
 InstallConfigStore - Software - Valve - Steam - CM
 3. Remove the IP addresses starting with 208.* (note that the addresses
 are delimited by semicolons)
 4. Re-run steamcmd and login

 Again, this is only temporary, and you should restore the backed-up copy
 when things are back to normal.

 On Fri, Jan 16, 2015 at 10:12 AM, Stephen Swires st...@swires.me wrote:

 Hi,

 I'm wondering if anyone else is affected by Steamcmd refusing to login?
 Every time I try and login anonymously I get:

 Connecting anonymously to Steam Public...Login Failure: No Connection
 FAILED with result code 3

 I have tried two completely different servers in different data centres
 (one in New York and the other in North Virginia). iptables have been setup
 to allow the connections. It does appear from http://steamstat.us/ that
 a good chunk of Steam servers are unavailable in North America right now so
 could that explain this issue?

 Thanks.

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 --
 Ross Bemrose

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Re: [hlds] Optional TF2 dedicated server update released

[Robert Paulson]

I would argue that it is related to third party dedicated servers.

The people left in charge of TF2 have been out of touch with players for a
while and only now is it becoming more obvious. We face the brunt of these
bad policies because we don't have a stream of new mann co store fodder
from quickplay. A few years ago the thought of making a major patch locked
behind an uncraftable purchase would not even have crossed their minds.

Despite 3 major non-MvM patches, global player counts are again on their
way to declining back to beginning of the year levels. With the amount of
developer time spent on the game, TF2 should not be 1/5th the size of CS.
I've seen many quality servers die out this year. Custom servers are also
dying because new players aren't being exposed enough to the fact that
custom servers exist.
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Re: [hlds] [hlds_linux] Optional TF2 dedicated server update released

[Robert Paulson]

They removed all official servers last December and there were more players
than ever.

Unfortunately the existence of a few bad servers led them to practically
cutting off all access to new players.

This was the biggest copout. Instead of facing the problem they decided to
screw everyone for their convenience. If they were truly in touch with
players this would NEVER have been considered an option.

But as we can all see from this update, TF2 seems to be more about
squeezing every last bit of money with minimum effort.

On Tuesday, December 9, 2014, Jordan Olling jordanoll...@gmail.com wrote:

 They want to keep making money from the game, so they leave it up. But if
 there's any grain of truth to Paul's theory, that would be the secret way
 to suck life from the game.

 On Tue, Dec 9, 2014 at 3:13 PM, wickedplayer494 wickedplayer...@gmail.com
 javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','wickedplayer...@gmail.com'); wrote:

  If Valve wanted to do that, they'd just outright say yeah hey we're
 done with this game, see ya and/or shut off all their servers leaving only
 community ones running.

 On 12/9/2014 5:09 PM, Paul wrote:

 A wild theory, but erhaps Valve are intentionally wanting players to
 slowly lose interest in Team Fortress 2 for some reason?

 On 9 December 2014 at 23:01, Robert Paulson thepauls...@gmail.com
 javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','thepauls...@gmail.com'); wrote:

  I would argue that it is related to third party dedicated servers.

  The people left in charge of TF2 have been out of touch with players
 for a while and only now is it becoming more obvious. We face the brunt of
 these bad policies because we don't have a stream of new mann co store
 fodder from quickplay. A few years ago the thought of making a major patch
 locked behind an uncraftable purchase would not even have crossed their
 minds.

  Despite 3 major non-MvM patches, global player counts are again on
 their way to declining back to beginning of the year levels. With the
 amount of developer time spent on the game, TF2 should not be 1/5th the
 size of CS. I've seen many quality servers die out this year. Custom
 servers are also dying because new players aren't being exposed enough to
 the fact that custom servers exist.

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Re: [hlds] TF2 Quickplay Changes - How to tell if your server is Quickplay-banned?

[Robert Paulson]

It will say in sv_registration_message.

But quickplay doesn't matter for non-official servers anymore. The amount
of players you get from it is negligible now because most players pick the
path of least clicks and community servers get a fraction of the screen
space and convenience that official servers do.

Valve probably knows this. There have been more servers that don't belong
on quickplay such as randomizer that aren't getting removed. I have no
doubt that they have been reported, but since so few people use it anymore
they probably ignore them now. Community servers have been segregated into
their own ghetto so Valve doesn't have to worry about policing them anymore.
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Re: [hlds] Mandatory TF2 update coming

[Robert Paulson]

Why do people think community servers will even get to participate in the
Halloween update?

I bet you it will turn out just like the new beta maps and the q word
(lol filter)? If not this year then the next.

On Wed, Sep 17, 2014 at 6:00 PM, big john brewskii...@gmail.com wrote:

 Why do people keep saying that like the Halloween update isnt going to
 totally break everything.
 On Sep 17, 2014 8:58 PM, Weasels Lair wea...@weaselslair.com wrote:

 Better now, than like the day before Halloween.

 On Wed, Sep 17, 2014 at 5:55 PM, Albert Davis davis.alb...@gmail.com
 wrote:

 Seriously? 3 days in a row now?

 On Wed, Sep 17, 2014 at 8:15 PM, 1nsane 1nsane...@gmail.com wrote:

 An update a day keeps the bugs away (hopefully).

 Thanks for the heads up.

 On Wed, Sep 17, 2014 at 8:14 PM, Eric Smith er...@valvesoftware.com
 wrote:

 We're working on a mandatory update for TF2. We should have it ready
 soon.

 -Eric


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Re: [hlds] Quickplay Community Servers - 6 Months in.

[Robert Paulson]

Dear TF2 team,

Community servers were provably better than official ones. Before the
change, there wasn't a single official server in the gametracker top 200.

No one uses quickpick. As a fix for the nuclear option it has failed.

This move is something that would have been expected from EA. You have
silenced some complaints, but you've alienated many others. Players that
have been around for 5 years are telling me they are quitting when their
community server dies. There have been no new game modes, and I doubt
Saxton Hale would have been made in such a hostile environment such as this.

This doesn't just affect vanilla servers. Even top custom servers like Slag
gaming are dead. New players are only accustomed to clicking play now.

Please reconsider this and don't take Valve time to make a decision. Years
of building up regulars have been lost, and perhaps permanently. Your
morale obligation extends beyond the players that only click play now.
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Re: [hlds] Can we have a Quickplay Status report, please? 2

[Robert Paulson]

2011: The game not being F2P is a reason for lower counts. Player counts
increased in early June, before it was F2P.

2012: At the beginning of June, the peak was only 4% less than the average
of 60k. This is far from the drop this year.

2013: Even if you look at the time just before Robotic Boogaloo, the peak
player count was only 3% less than the average. And this is before summer
vacation. This is far from the drop this year.

2014: I don't know where you are getting 64k, as it isn't present on the
graph. You are probably looking at steampowered stats you just loaded
today. This is a mistake to compare an instantaneous snapshot with the
graph because the graph averages player counts over a larger time frame
which gives a more accurate picture.

It is also not appropriate to compare player counts with last year and
claim that everything is normal. There have been numerous updates since
last year. Player counts did not drop as much as this year or at all when
you compare them to previous time frames without any major updates.

On Thu, Jun 5, 2014 at 11:32 PM, Ross Bemrose rbemr...@gmail.com wrote:

  You know, you see some interesting trends if you look at the graphs on
 that SteamGraph site on a per-year basis.

 2011:
 http://www.steamgraph.net/index.php?action=graphjstime=1appid=440from=129385800to=132530760

 2012:
 http://www.steamgraph.net/index.php?action=graphjstime=1appid=440from=132539400to=135693000

 2013:
 http://www.steamgraph.net/index.php?action=graphjstime=1appid=440from=135701640to=138846600

 2014:
 http://www.steamgraph.net/index.php?action=graphjstime=1appid=440from=138855240to=140410080

 Lets compare right now to this time in previous years:

 2011: late-May/early-June are useless because the game wasn't F2P until
 halfway through the year and after the initial spike, the numbers kept
 dropping until they went under 40,000 in November.

 2012: June started with about 52,500 concurrent players average.  Player
 counts rose in late June and fell in early July. August numbers got a huge
 bump because MvM came out on August 15.

 2013: Robotic Boogaloo and its Robo-crates boosted the concurrent
 playerbase in late May/early June to around 66,000 concurrent players
 average.  You can see this by looking at the graph around the middle of
 May.  The average actually *dropped* for the first half of June
 (Robo-crates stopped being common drops on June 3). Numbers rose in late
 June and fell in early July, although they may have gotten a slight bump in
 mid-late July/early August from the Weapon Rebalancing/Community Maps
 update on July 10 (cp_process and cp_standin were added).

 2014: We're starting June with an average of 64,000 concurrent players.
 Yes, we're only 2,000 current players below last year despite not having an
 event going on other than the hype train.

 You can also see in 2012 and 2013 that the minimum (weekday?) number of
 players tends to rise throughout June, but the maximum (weekend?) number of
 players tends to not rise until the end of June, plus both numbers fall in
 July.

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Re: [hlds] Can we have a Quickplay Status report, please? 2

[Robert Paulson]

, and a greater sense of community.


 Dr. McKay
 www.doctormckay.com


 On Mon, Jun 2, 2014 at 5:45 PM, E. Olsen ceo.eol...@gmail.com wrote:

 Perhaps it's time to examine the possibility that Valve is very
 purposefully forcing community run servers into the minority because
 they're straight tired of having to play code-counter-code withe people
 like the fuckjobs who programmed plugins to force ads down players throats
 and other like-minded stains.


 I guess I would consider that a valid argument if it wasn't Valve who
 had enabled the ad farms in the first place. Those things were never a
 problem before quickplay came along, because those kinds of servers would
 never get favorited to see a return visitor. The Pinion-supported folks
 were only enabled by quickplay, plain and simple - which is why when Pinion
 came on the scene shortly after quickplay came along, you had these guys go
 from a dozen or so servers to 100+ just to farm ad impressions.

 ​​
 Further - if Valve wanted to get rid of those horrendous MOTD ads (and
 I wish to hell they would), they could easily do it by disabling
 flash/javascript/html5 from functioning in the in-game web browser (which
 would have probably fixed the problem almost entirely). If they did that,
 and just quietly dropped any of the premium servers from quickplay, they
 would have knocked out all but the most determined black-hat folks, and
 those can always be dealt with.




 On Mon, Jun 2, 2014 at 5:14 PM, Eli Witt eliw...@gmail.com wrote:

 Replied to the last message, I'll post this here too.

 Well, we know from experience just how good Valve is at keeping a lid
 on things (case in point HL3) so I doubt they're going to acknowledge this
 in any way unless they see fit to, not because we're disgruntled and 
 asking
 for information.

 And for what it's worth, everyone (who's opinion on this list is worth
 a damn) has thrown out the point that we're the ones providing the 
 servers
 for Valve, we're the ones who give their players a place to play etc etc 
 -
 but what I think is going unnoticed here is the fact that Valve is
 obviously taking steps (and increasingly larger ones) to nullify that
 argument in it's entirety.

 Perhaps it's time to examine the possibility that Valve is very
 purposefully forcing community run servers into the minority because
 they're straight tired of having to play code-counter-code withe people
 like the fuckjobs who programmed plugins to force ads down players throats
 and other like-minded stains.

 We've got the binaries on both ends, and Valve knows this. It's
 virtually impossible to stop people from being fuckjobs with access to 
 both
 binaries, so let [Valve] just diminish the footprint the fuckjobs get
 access by about 90% by forcing people into the servers we can afford to 
 run
 now that we've monetized TF2.

 If I was Valve and I made this decision, I wouldn't give a piss
 whether people who run servers are upset by this or threaten to pull their
 servers offline because of this decision, because that's the direction I
 wanted to force you in anyway.

 Just a thought.


 On Mon, Jun 2, 2014 at 4:47 PM, Robert Paulson thepauls...@gmail.com
 wrote:

 Making a new thread because replies are being blocked with Message
 body is too big: 41090 bytes with a limit of 40 KB.

 Complaints here have historically gone ignored but it doesn't mean it
 is a bad idea to keep the issue in the spotlight here as well.

 Just make sure you also contact Valve directly.
 http://valvesoftware.com/email.php
 Some people say Fletcher is in charge of TF2 now so email him too.

 We're really past the point in asking Valve for an answer. The
 answer is probably the same as before: a handful of servers ruined the
 experience for a few new players and some lazy players who couldn't be
 bothered to type valve in the tags.

 So they threw in some useless features like quickpick and released
 server migrations at the same time to shut you up before you realize your
 community was also going to get screwed so there would be no huge public
 outrage.

 What needs to be done now is to get someone at Valve to realize that
 this change did more harm than good and there is evidence to prove it.

 Any other argument we bring up they will consider it biased because
 we host servers and somehow that means we don't care about players.

 Ever since the change, global TF2 player counts have steadily been
 dropping. Peaks have dipped from 82k to 71k, a 15% loss. And summer
 vacation has already started as you can see from the weekday player 
 counts.


 http://www.steamgraph.net/index.php?action=graphjstime=1appid=440from=138856320to=End+Time

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Re: [hlds] Can we have a Quickplay Status report, please? 2

[Robert Paulson]

There is no other reasonable explanation for the TF2 players counts
dropping so much now especially at the start of summer vacation. There is
no new Call of Duty or Battlefield game.

Let's see what last year looked like.

http://www.steamgraph.net/index.php?action=graphjstime=1appid=440from=135702720to=137041560

Compared to this year.

http://www.steamgraph.net/index.php?action=graphjstime=1appid=440from=138856320to=End+Time

The number of excuses you all have left is shrinking.


On Thu, Jun 5, 2014 at 3:37 PM, Phillip Vector t...@mostdeadlygame.com
wrote:

 Correlation does not imply causation.

 Player counts being lower does not mean that it's because of the quickplay
 decision.

 I don't know how many times I need to keep citing this.

 Neither do I. Can you please stop because it's not necessarily a relevant
 fact.


 On Thu, Jun 5, 2014 at 3:26 PM, Robert Paulson thepauls...@gmail.com
 wrote:

 Regardless of the reason Valve has for essentially removing community
 servers from quickplay, this change has done more harm than good.

 I don't know how many times I need to keep citing this. How many more
 players does TF2 need to lose before someone at Valve wakes up? It is
 already summer time and player counts are lower than ever.


 http://www.steamgraph.net/index.php?action=graphjstime=1appid=440from=138856320to=End+Time

 The longer this policy remains the more permanent damage you are doing to
 communities people have spent years building up.


 On Wed, Jun 4, 2014 at 8:04 PM, Alexander Corn mc...@doctormckay.com
 wrote:

 Source radio is obviously not the only thing that it would break. What's
 minor to you may not be minor to others.

 Plenty of TF2 trade servers have a !bp command which opens a player's
 backpack (in an online backpack viewer) in the MOTD panel. Without
 JavaScript, hovering over an item won't show a tooltip with its details.
 Sure, this could be done in CSS exclusively, but nobody does that because
 having JavaScript enabled is basically a given in modern web development.

 I'd rather have to work harder to populate my Quickplay servers than
 have to deal with a completely useless MOTD browser. As others have said,
 the HTML MOTD disable option is there for a reason.

 Additionally, HTML MOTDs aren't even displayed for Quickplay
 connections. I really don't understand why it's even an issue anymore. It's
 already been crippled considerably.


 Dr. McKay
 www.doctormckay.com


 On Wed, Jun 4, 2014 at 1:50 PM, E. Olsen ceo.eol...@gmail.com wrote:

 I agree that disabling javascript/flash/html5 is less than an ideal
 solution, but for the very minor things it would disable (source radio,
 etc.), if it would allow Valve to return to a level playing field it would
 be a very small sacrifice. I'm sure if Valve came to all of us and said
 we'll enable all servers by default, but we need to remove those elements
 from the web browser to do so we would all jump at that chance. I honestly
 believe as long as operators have the ability to run those kinds of ads it
 will be abused by the blackhat folks to the point that they ruin it for the
 rest of us.

 I fully agree that mass punishment is/was a seriously ham-fisted
 approach to dealing with the issues, and was the wrong (and frankly,
 unethical) way to treat all server operators.

 I like your ideas for better informing the players regarding quickplay
 options, but as with any system of this kind, I think it should start with
 maximum diversity fully enabled by default, and allow the players to opt
 out, instead of opting in. Only then will it be a truly level playing field
 for all servers.

 On a side note, I would also like to know why the server scoring
 system (apparently) didn't work, and why it wasn't more effectively used to
 weed out all the bad apples in the first place.


 On Wed, Jun 4, 2014 at 11:25 AM, Alexander Corn mc...@doctormckay.com
 wrote:

 
 ​
 Further - if Valve wanted to get rid of those horrendous MOTD ads (and
 I wish to hell they would), they could easily do it by disabling
 flash/javascript/html5 from functioning in the in-game web browser (which
 would have probably fixed the problem almost entirely).

 This is still not an ideal solution. Plenty of community servers rely
 on the MOTD and features such as JavaScript and Flash (mostly for audio
 streams, but many are switching to HTML5 audio elements) for their custom
 features. Removing those features is still removing features that have
 existed for a very long time due to the abusive tendencies of a few.

 Those that are abusive should be dealt with. There is no reason why
 everyone should suffer in order to punish a few. It goes back to grade
 school gym class. Weren't you pissed when the teacher/coach made everyone
 run laps or whatever because 3-4 kids wouldn't stop talking? That's how
 we're being treated now.

 I could live with the default Valve-only option if it were more
 obvious how to switch it. When the player first starts

Re: [hlds] Can we have a Quickplay Status report, please? 2

[Robert Paulson]

Are you fking serious? The kind of players that play FPS like TF2 have very
little overlap with mmos. If you have actually watched player counts like I
do, you would know this. The release of Mists of Pandaria and Guild Wars 2
pretty much had 0 impact on the TF2 player count.

The TF2 collapse has been happening since February and Wildstar just
released 2 days ago...


On Thu, Jun 5, 2014 at 4:14 PM, Lyrai lyr...@gmail.com wrote:

 There's Wildstar, which just came out, and is an MMO. Final Fantasy 14 is
 apparently doing very well, and just had a minor content patch. Both of
 those are things I'd blame for loss of player count, before this Chicken
 Little screaming.

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Re: [hlds] Can we have a Quickplay Status report, please? 2

[Robert Paulson]

*Goes to search for Interstellar Marines*
http://store.steampowered.com/stats/
Not even in the list with the last game having 1000 players.

Most people that prefer FPS can't stand MOBAs such as myself. People
getting bored of a game means a slow decline, this decline looks fast to
me.

There is absolutely no reason for player counts to drop after summer this
year when it has increased every other year before this unless something is
really wrong. And that thing is Valve removing community servers from
quickplay.



On Thu, Jun 5, 2014 at 4:48 PM, Rudy Bleeker rblee...@gmail.com wrote:

 Team Fortress 2 is now almost 7 years old. That means it's player base
 has also aged. Those who played it often in high school/college when
 they had plenty of spare time might have graduated, gotten jobs and
 something called a life and simply gotten too busy to play TF2 on a
 regular basis. This, together with the release of new FPS games like
 Interstellar Marines, and plenty of MOBA games to virtually kill
 others in a competitive or casual manner (including Valve's very own
 Dota 2), might account for the slow but steady decline of concurrent
 TF2 players. It's still having it's occasional ups, but I think we'll
 see a downward trend on the whole.

 This is just a hypothesis of course, but I'm speaking from the
 experience of myself and my friends, who used to play TF2 a lot but
 don't anymore, as much fun as it used to be. When we have time to play
 a game in the evenings it's usually Dota 2 nowadays.

 On Fri, Jun 6, 2014 at 1:27 AM, Robert Paulson thepauls...@gmail.com
 wrote:
  Are you fking serious? The kind of players that play FPS like TF2 have
 very
  little overlap with mmos. If you have actually watched player counts
 like I
  do, you would know this. The release of Mists of Pandaria and Guild Wars
 2
  pretty much had 0 impact on the TF2 player count.
 
  The TF2 collapse has been happening since February and Wildstar just
  released 2 days ago...
 
 
  On Thu, Jun 5, 2014 at 4:14 PM, Lyrai lyr...@gmail.com wrote:
 
  There's Wildstar, which just came out, and is an MMO. Final Fantasy 14
 is
  apparently doing very well, and just had a minor content patch. Both of
  those are things I'd blame for loss of player count, before this Chicken
  Little screaming.
 
 
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Re: [hlds] Can we have a Quickplay Status report, please? 2

[Robert Paulson]

Repeating the same overused quip is not a valid excuse to ignore all the
evidence. TF2 just got old is not a valid explanation. 1 out of every 5
players just decides to stop playing when summer vacation starts? Please...
get real.

This year
http://www.steamgraph.net/index.php?action=graphjstime=1appid=440from=138856320to=End+Time

Last Year
http://www.steamgraph.net/index.php?action=graphjstime=1appid=440from=135702720to=137041560




On Thu, Jun 5, 2014 at 5:16 PM, Phillip Vector t...@mostdeadlygame.com
wrote:

 And that thing is Valve removing community servers from quickplay.

 Correlation does not imply causation.

 Player counts being lower does not mean that it's because of the quickplay
 decision.

 Yeah, I know I said it before. You stop repeating that unsupported
 assumption, I'll stop reminding you that you are committing a logical
 falicy.


 On Thu, Jun 5, 2014 at 5:11 PM, Robert Paulson thepauls...@gmail.com
 wrote:

 *Goes to search for Interstellar Marines*
 http://store.steampowered.com/stats/
 Not even in the list with the last game having 1000 players.

 Most people that prefer FPS can't stand MOBAs such as myself. People
 getting bored of a game means a slow decline, this decline looks fast to
 me.

 There is absolutely no reason for player counts to drop after summer this
 year when it has increased every other year before this unless something is
 really wrong. And that thing is Valve removing community servers from
 quickplay.



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Re: [hlds] Can we have a Quickplay Status report, please? 2

[Robert Paulson]

It is a perfectly valid explanation to anyone who has actually played on
community servers. You appear to be someone who only plays on official
servers so you have no idea how many people have just stopped playing
because they realized Valve is draining all the new players and they can't
stand official ones. Until you have a better explanation this one is the
simplest and most obvious.


On Thu, Jun 5, 2014 at 5:42 PM, Phillip Vector t...@mostdeadlygame.com
wrote:

 TF2 just got old is not a valid explanation.

 Neither is Quickplay must be causing it.

 We don't know. That's the pure truth of it. We can't know for sure. So
 stop trying to make it fit one of your pet theories.


 On Thu, Jun 5, 2014 at 5:38 PM, Robert Paulson thepauls...@gmail.com
 wrote:

 Repeating the same overused quip is not a valid excuse to ignore all the
 evidence. TF2 just got old is not a valid explanation. 1 out of every 5
 players just decides to stop playing when summer vacation starts? Please...
 get real.

 This year

 http://www.steamgraph.net/index.php?action=graphjstime=1appid=440from=138856320to=End+Time

 Last Year

 http://www.steamgraph.net/index.php?action=graphjstime=1appid=440from=135702720to=137041560




 On Thu, Jun 5, 2014 at 5:16 PM, Phillip Vector t...@mostdeadlygame.com
 wrote:

 And that thing is Valve removing community servers from quickplay.

 Correlation does not imply causation.

 Player counts being lower does not mean that it's because of the
 quickplay decision.

 Yeah, I know I said it before. You stop repeating that unsupported
 assumption, I'll stop reminding you that you are committing a logical
 falicy.


 On Thu, Jun 5, 2014 at 5:11 PM, Robert Paulson thepauls...@gmail.com
 wrote:

 *Goes to search for Interstellar Marines*
 http://store.steampowered.com/stats/
 Not even in the list with the last game having 1000 players.

 Most people that prefer FPS can't stand MOBAs such as myself. People
 getting bored of a game means a slow decline, this decline looks fast to
 me.

 There is absolutely no reason for player counts to drop after summer
 this year when it has increased every other year before this unless
 something is really wrong. And that thing is Valve removing community
 servers from quickplay.



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Re: [hlds] Can we have a Quickplay Status report, please? 2

[Robert Paulson]

This is about as inane as a creationist saying: Prove it, prove evolution
is real. You don't have any real evidence. You weren't there a million
years ago.

The evidence I have provided is as solid as anyone outside of Valve is
going to get. But of course you knew this and you are less interested in
the truth than winning an argument.

A more astute analogy than your school shooting analogy, would be if you
refused to believe in global warming despite CO2 emissions being the most
obvious and plausible explanation. You would just keep repeating the old
tired cliche about correlation doesn't imply causation.

 But even with my findings, that still isn't enough for me to stand up and
say, There is no loss of players because that's not evidence. That is
personal observation of a limited sample size.

That's because global players counts are available. If they were not
available I bet you would be arguing about that instead.


On Thu, Jun 5, 2014 at 6:07 PM, Phillip Vector t...@mostdeadlygame.com
wrote:

 It is a perfectly valid explanation to anyone who has actually played on
 community servers

 Prove it. Prove to me that this is a direct result of the quickplay change
 and nothing else. Not what you assume, but what you can prove is what I am
 after. For example, I can say that the amount of cars driven is the reason
 why there are more school shootings. Number of cars goes up.. Shootings go
 up.. So it must be the case. This is exactly what you are doing with the
 quickplay argument you are presenting. Numbers went down. Valve stopped
 sending new players to community servers around the same time.. That must
 be the reason.


 You appear to be someone who only plays on official servers so you have
 no idea how many people have just stopped playing because they realized
 Valve is draining all the new players and they can't stand official ones.

 and you don't have any idea as well. Personal comments aside, the
 community servers I hang around are going strong today as they ever were.
 I'm not seeing a loss of players (except some here or there, but we get new
 people in to replace those). But even with my findings, that still isn't
 enough for me to stand up and say, There is no loss of players because
 that's not evidence. That is personal observation of a limited sample size.


 Until you have a better explanation this one is the simplest and most
 obvious.

 Sorry. You don't get to put your guess up and say, Unless you can do
 better, this is what is the truth. Facts don't work like that. We should
 just agree that NEITHER of us know for SURE what is the cause, though we
 have our guesses (You, Quickplay. Me, Crappy Community servers).


 On Thu, Jun 5, 2014 at 5:52 PM, Robert Paulson thepauls...@gmail.com
 wrote:

 It is a perfectly valid explanation to anyone who has actually played on
 community servers. You appear to be someone who only plays on official
 servers so you have no idea how many people have just stopped playing
 because they realized Valve is draining all the new players and they can't
 stand official ones. Until you have a better explanation this one is the
 simplest and most obvious.


 On Thu, Jun 5, 2014 at 5:42 PM, Phillip Vector t...@mostdeadlygame.com
 wrote:

 TF2 just got old is not a valid explanation.

 Neither is Quickplay must be causing it.

 We don't know. That's the pure truth of it. We can't know for sure. So
 stop trying to make it fit one of your pet theories.


 On Thu, Jun 5, 2014 at 5:38 PM, Robert Paulson thepauls...@gmail.com
 wrote:

 Repeating the same overused quip is not a valid excuse to ignore all
 the evidence. TF2 just got old is not a valid explanation. 1 out of every
 5 players just decides to stop playing when summer vacation starts?
 Please... get real.

 This year

 http://www.steamgraph.net/index.php?action=graphjstime=1appid=440from=138856320to=End+Time

 Last Year

 http://www.steamgraph.net/index.php?action=graphjstime=1appid=440from=135702720to=137041560




 On Thu, Jun 5, 2014 at 5:16 PM, Phillip Vector t...@mostdeadlygame.com
 wrote:

 And that thing is Valve removing community servers from quickplay.

 Correlation does not imply causation.

 Player counts being lower does not mean that it's because of the
 quickplay decision.

 Yeah, I know I said it before. You stop repeating that unsupported
 assumption, I'll stop reminding you that you are committing a logical
 falicy.


 On Thu, Jun 5, 2014 at 5:11 PM, Robert Paulson thepauls...@gmail.com
 wrote:

 *Goes to search for Interstellar Marines*
 http://store.steampowered.com/stats/
 Not even in the list with the last game having 1000 players.

 Most people that prefer FPS can't stand MOBAs such as myself. People
 getting bored of a game means a slow decline, this decline looks fast to
 me.

 There is absolutely no reason for player counts to drop after summer
 this year when it has increased every other year before this unless
 something is really wrong. And that thing is Valve

Re: [hlds] Can we have a Quickplay Status report, please? 2

[Robert Paulson]

 TF got old is a lame excuse, it's a lot of these changes Valve keeps
making. I have had people in my clan quit playing because of all the
changes.

Absolutely. Why is there such a sudden drop? Why are player counts
decreasing at the start of summer vacation? Why this year, and not the year
before or next year? Why such a large drop in the absence of any major FPS
releases? Anyone unbiased would easily see Valve's quickplay change is to
blame for this.


On Thu, Jun 5, 2014 at 6:13 PM, Albert Davis davis.alb...@gmail.com wrote:

 TF got old is a lame excuse, it's a lot of these changes Valve keeps
 making. I have had people in my clan quit playing because of all the
 changes.


 On Thu, Jun 5, 2014 at 8:38 PM, Robert Paulson thepauls...@gmail.com
 wrote:

 Repeating the same overused quip is not a valid excuse to ignore all the
 evidence. TF2 just got old is not a valid explanation. 1 out of every 5
 players just decides to stop playing when summer vacation starts? Please...
 get real.

 This year

 http://www.steamgraph.net/index.php?action=graphjstime=1appid=440from=138856320to=End+Time

 Last Year

 http://www.steamgraph.net/index.php?action=graphjstime=1appid=440from=135702720to=137041560




 On Thu, Jun 5, 2014 at 5:16 PM, Phillip Vector t...@mostdeadlygame.com
 wrote:

 And that thing is Valve removing community servers from quickplay.

 Correlation does not imply causation.

 Player counts being lower does not mean that it's because of the
 quickplay decision.

 Yeah, I know I said it before. You stop repeating that unsupported
 assumption, I'll stop reminding you that you are committing a logical
 falicy.


 On Thu, Jun 5, 2014 at 5:11 PM, Robert Paulson thepauls...@gmail.com
 wrote:

 *Goes to search for Interstellar Marines*
 http://store.steampowered.com/stats/
 Not even in the list with the last game having 1000 players.

 Most people that prefer FPS can't stand MOBAs such as myself. People
 getting bored of a game means a slow decline, this decline looks fast to
 me.

 There is absolutely no reason for player counts to drop after summer
 this year when it has increased every other year before this unless
 something is really wrong. And that thing is Valve removing community
 servers from quickplay.



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Re: [hlds] Can we have a Quickplay Status report, please? 2

[Robert Paulson]

I am glad that at least someone here is smart enough to read the graphs
correctly.

You cannot just zoom all the way out. TF2 has grown overall because it went
free to play and Valve has put in a lot of updates to make up for player
loss. If you haven't noticed yet, updates have slowed to a crawl. I chose
to zoom in since January because there have been no major updates or
holidays.

TF2 is also not that similar to CS:GO. TF2 is free. CS:GO came out all the
way back in 2012 and barely affected TF2 players counts. If anyone
preferred CS:GO instead, they would've switched a long time ago.

 Whining from byteframe about community servers

Rich comments coming from a mic spammer who has been banned from just about
every major community. Enjoying how easy it is to mic spam on official ones?





On Thu, Jun 5, 2014 at 7:27 PM, Justin Kim yu...@yulli.org wrote:

 To address the general trend upwards over the last two years, I just want
 to point out that while TF2 as a game has become more popular, there’s a
 notable downward trend in a spot in the year where the player count should
 be increasing. (You can look at previous years and confirm this.)

 On Jun 5, 2014, at 10:20 PM, Derek Howard derekdavidhow...@gmail.com
 wrote:

 oh my god I'm just trying to have a nice quiet sex-filled evening with my
 boyfriend and you jackasses keep making my damn phone go off. I keep
 thinking it's something important.

 go yell about this where you're not disturbing countless others, please.
 like on spuf or whatever shit they've replaced that with now

 Also when you link to whatever the hell that graph is, you should probably
 adjust it so that it actually illustrates your point. All I can think of is
 that scene from Futurama where Hermes says As this shocking graph
 indicates... http://i.imgur.com/obuEVmj.png Except it's worse. Also,
 make the graph display the last two years and there's actually a trend
 upwards?

 Also, this is not the place to discuss religious belief. Why the hell
 would you open that can of worms here and intentionally piss off the people
 on this list who may be religious? I'm all for tearing down religious
 institutions, but the fucking HLDS mailing list is not the place to do it.




 On Thu, Jun 5, 2014 at 7:13 PM, Robert Paulson thepauls...@gmail.com
 wrote:

 This is about as inane as a creationist saying: Prove it, prove
 evolution is real. You don't have any real evidence. You weren't there a
 million years ago.

 The evidence I have provided is as solid as anyone outside of Valve is
 going to get. But of course you knew this and you are less interested in
 the truth than winning an argument.

 A more astute analogy than your school shooting analogy, would be if you
 refused to believe in global warming despite CO2 emissions being the most
 obvious and plausible explanation. You would just keep repeating the old
 tired cliche about correlation doesn't imply causation.

  But even with my findings, that still isn't enough for me to stand up
 and say, There is no loss of players because that's not evidence. That is
 personal observation of a limited sample size.

 That's because global players counts are available. If they were not
 available I bet you would be arguing about that instead.


 On Thu, Jun 5, 2014 at 6:07 PM, Phillip Vector t...@mostdeadlygame.com
 wrote:

 It is a perfectly valid explanation to anyone who has actually played
 on community servers

 Prove it. Prove to me that this is a direct result of the quickplay
 change and nothing else. Not what you assume, but what you can prove is
 what I am after. For example, I can say that the amount of cars driven is
 the reason why there are more school shootings. Number of cars goes up..
 Shootings go up.. So it must be the case. This is exactly what you are
 doing with the quickplay argument you are presenting. Numbers went down.
 Valve stopped sending new players to community servers around the same
 time.. That must be the reason.


 You appear to be someone who only plays on official servers so you have
 no idea how many people have just stopped playing because they realized
 Valve is draining all the new players and they can't stand official ones.

 and you don't have any idea as well. Personal comments aside, the
 community servers I hang around are going strong today as they ever were.
 I'm not seeing a loss of players (except some here or there, but we get new
 people in to replace those). But even with my findings, that still isn't
 enough for me to stand up and say, There is no loss of players because
 that's not evidence. That is personal observation of a limited sample size.


 Until you have a better explanation this one is the simplest and most
 obvious.

 Sorry. You don't get to put your guess up and say, Unless you can do
 better, this is what is the truth. Facts don't work like that. We should
 just agree that NEITHER of us know for SURE what is the cause, though we
 have our guesses (You, Quickplay. Me, Crappy

Re: [hlds] Can we have a Quickplay Status report, please?

[Robert Paulson]

If Valve still had a problem with ads they would have done what you said,
remove flash and javascript. It is much easier to remove things than to add
a new UI and quickpick.

Replacing Servers with Play Community Servers is not a suitable solution.
It is half the size of a normal button and tucked under 2 full sized ones.
You'll get the same problem we have now.

A better solution would be to turn off the official servers option after 10
games or so.

- That way, new players are guaranteed to see what a vanilla experience
looks like.
- People that absolutely hate community servers can leave it checked.
- And community servers wouldn't die due to inertia.



On Thu, Jun 5, 2014 at 8:08 PM, Weasels Lair wea...@weaselslair.com wrote:

 Excuse me?  I will eh ... make maybe US$20 this month in revenue from
 the non-video/banner ads I am running.  I've been doing dedicated servers
 of one form or another since the HL1+WON days (pre-Y2k/pre-Steam).
  Definitely not in it for the money.  The only reason I even started
 looking at putting-in advertising is due to current employment situation
 (or lack there-of).

 Are there some people out there trying to make a living off hosting
 servers - maybe.  But to infer ALL or even MOST? That is just utter
 stupidity.

 The way to kill off the real player-annoying stuff is to kill video dead,
 while leaving HTML/images/banners/non-audio-animation in place.  In other
 words, allow JPG's, and PNG's and GIF's, etc. but block all flash and java
 - whether it is quick-play or not.

 But, back to the ORIGINAL point of the thread (I think? was there one?),
 having the community servers off by default in quick-play is probably not
 helping the longevity of the game.  Players tend to get board with vanilla
 quickly, but if there is some setting they have to go dig to find - they
 are more likely to jump to some other game - rather than look it up.

 IMH(f)O, Play multiplayer should be replaced with Play Official
 Servers, and Servers should be replaced with Play Community Servers.

 So say we all? or should it be Hallowed are the Ori?


 On Thu, Jun 5, 2014 at 7:58 PM, Supreet Sahni coachcrock...@gmail.com
 wrote:

 I think what nobody is touching on is the fact that they are losing a lot
 of ad revenue because of this.

 Lol, maybe they want to hear us complain about how we aren't making any
 profits off of our servers now.

 Valve is not stupid. They know big servers can cover more than server
 costs and make a lot of profit with Pinion or MOTDgd.

 Money is the only catalyst for this never ending discussions. All yall
 couldn't give a damn about the community or the game.

 But hey Valve, if you can make hundreds of thousand off of store items,
 why now allow us to make a couple hundred or so?

 Please and Thanks



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Re: [hlds] Can we have a Quickplay Status report, please?

[Robert Paulson]

 Why all of a sudden are they smart enough now to recheck something that
was checked before?

Because people like you keep arguing that they are smart enough to? Valve
could also make a notice saying the box has been unchecked.

 I bet you they will still complain though that no one is staying on their
servers after the 10 games.

You would be wrong then because before these changes, community servers
took up just about all the top 200 spots on gametracker.

 You (Not YOU specifically, but YOU in general meaning the custom server
operators) can't have it both ways. Either players are smart enough to seek
you out by selecting an item in a menu or they aren't.

I don't see how this is having it both ways. We are arguing that people are
lazy. You are the ones arguing that they are not.

If you are so confident that they are not lazy and all community servers
are garbage, then all the players will re-check that box.


On Thu, Jun 5, 2014 at 9:49 PM, Phillip Vector t...@mostdeadlygame.com
wrote:

 - People that absolutely hate community servers can leave it checked.

 One of the main complaints I always see here is that players are too
 stupid to check a box saying that they want community servers.

 Why all of a sudden are they smart enough now to recheck something that
 was checked before?

 and just to point out, they wouldn't leave it checked, they would have
 to go check something that the program unchecked for them.


 - And community servers wouldn't die due to inertia.

 I bet you they will still complain though that no one is staying on their
 servers after the 10 games.

 How about the other way? How about leaving it checked and tell the player,
 Hey, if you want to check out TF2 with mods and changes to the gameplay,
 please uncheck this box.?

 I'm serious here. You (Not YOU specifically, but YOU in general meaning
 the custom server operators) can't have it both ways. Either players are
 smart enough to seek you out by selecting an item in a menu or they aren't.


 On Thu, Jun 5, 2014 at 9:05 PM, Robert Paulson thepauls...@gmail.com
 wrote:

 If Valve still had a problem with ads they would have done what you said,
 remove flash and javascript. It is much easier to remove things than to add
 a new UI and quickpick.

 Replacing Servers with Play Community Servers is not a suitable
 solution. It is half the size of a normal button and tucked under 2 full
 sized ones. You'll get the same problem we have now.

 A better solution would be to turn off the official servers option after
 10 games or so.

 - That way, new players are guaranteed to see what a vanilla experience
 looks like.
 - People that absolutely hate community servers can leave it checked.
 - And community servers wouldn't die due to inertia.



 On Thu, Jun 5, 2014 at 8:08 PM, Weasels Lair wea...@weaselslair.com
 wrote:

 Excuse me?  I will eh ... make maybe US$20 this month in revenue
 from the non-video/banner ads I am running.  I've been doing dedicated
 servers of one form or another since the HL1+WON days (pre-Y2k/pre-Steam).
  Definitely not in it for the money.  The only reason I even started
 looking at putting-in advertising is due to current employment situation
 (or lack there-of).

 Are there some people out there trying to make a living off hosting
 servers - maybe.  But to infer ALL or even MOST? That is just utter
 stupidity.

 The way to kill off the real player-annoying stuff is to kill video
 dead, while leaving HTML/images/banners/non-audio-animation in place.  In
 other words, allow JPG's, and PNG's and GIF's, etc. but block all flash and
 java - whether it is quick-play or not.

 But, back to the ORIGINAL point of the thread (I think? was there one?),
 having the community servers off by default in quick-play is probably not
 helping the longevity of the game.  Players tend to get board with vanilla
 quickly, but if there is some setting they have to go dig to find - they
 are more likely to jump to some other game - rather than look it up.

 IMH(f)O, Play multiplayer should be replaced with Play Official
 Servers, and Servers should be replaced with Play Community Servers.

 So say we all? or should it be Hallowed are the Ori?


 On Thu, Jun 5, 2014 at 7:58 PM, Supreet Sahni coachcrock...@gmail.com
 wrote:

 I think what nobody is touching on is the fact that they are losing a
 lot of ad revenue because of this.

 Lol, maybe they want to hear us complain about how we aren't making any
 profits off of our servers now.

 Valve is not stupid. They know big servers can cover more than server
 costs and make a lot of profit with Pinion or MOTDgd.

 Money is the only catalyst for this never ending discussions. All yall
 couldn't give a damn about the community or the game.

 But hey Valve, if you can make hundreds of thousand off of store items,
 why now allow us to make a couple hundred or so?

 Please and Thanks



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Re: [hlds] Can we have a Quickplay Status report, please? 2

[Robert Paulson]

 We as players have access to the server binaries to reverse all we want,
same with the client files, how is that not having access to both ends?

We do not have equal access to modify the client, so once the client is
fixed, it is fixed forever and it cannot be broken by server operators.

This is why no one can attach models in TF2 anymore.





On Tue, Jun 3, 2014 at 1:16 PM, Eli Witt eliw...@gmail.com wrote:

  No we don't have access to binaries on both ends

 We as players have access to the server binaries to reverse all we want,
 same with the client files, how is that not having access to both ends? I
 never included the statement of having the ability to modify them both at
 runtime.

 My point was validated when you said the ad exploit - this is what I was
 referring to and it was found by someone either reverse engineering the
 client or simply finding ways to exploit it without reversing it.




 On Mon, Jun 2, 2014 at 5:53 PM, Robert Paulson thepauls...@gmail.com
 wrote:

 No we don't have access to binaries on both ends.We cannot get players to
 use client modifications because even if they were willing to download it,
 they would get vacced.

 The ad exploit from what I heard was a one time client bug where the big
 motd did not check the motd cvar. Removing community servers from quickplay
 was laziness and not due to any technical impossibility.

 If Valve wants a game free of community servers then they should do that
 in their newer games. Can you imagine the outrage that would happen if EA
 pulled the same stunt on Battlefield by throwing all community servers off
 the main list?


 On Mon, Jun 2, 2014 at 2:14 PM, Eli Witt eliw...@gmail.com wrote:

 Replied to the last message, I'll post this here too.

 Well, we know from experience just how good Valve is at keeping a lid on
 things (case in point HL3) so I doubt they're going to acknowledge this in
 any way unless they see fit to, not because we're disgruntled and asking
 for information.

 And for what it's worth, everyone (who's opinion on this list is worth a
 damn) has thrown out the point that we're the ones providing the servers
 for Valve, we're the ones who give their players a place to play etc etc -
 but what I think is going unnoticed here is the fact that Valve is
 obviously taking steps (and increasingly larger ones) to nullify that
 argument in it's entirety.

 Perhaps it's time to examine the possibility that Valve is very
 purposefully forcing community run servers into the minority because
 they're straight tired of having to play code-counter-code withe people
 like the fuckjobs who programmed plugins to force ads down players throats
 and other like-minded stains.

 We've got the binaries on both ends, and Valve knows this. It's
 virtually impossible to stop people from being fuckjobs with access to both
 binaries, so let [Valve] just diminish the footprint the fuckjobs get
 access by about 90% by forcing people into the servers we can afford to run
 now that we've monetized TF2.

 If I was Valve and I made this decision, I wouldn't give a piss whether
 people who run servers are upset by this or threaten to pull their servers
 offline because of this decision, because that's the direction I wanted to
 force you in anyway.

 Just a thought.


 On Mon, Jun 2, 2014 at 4:47 PM, Robert Paulson thepauls...@gmail.com
 wrote:

 Making a new thread because replies are being blocked with Message
 body is too big: 41090 bytes with a limit of 40 KB.

 Complaints here have historically gone ignored but it doesn't mean it
 is a bad idea to keep the issue in the spotlight here as well.

 Just make sure you also contact Valve directly.
 http://valvesoftware.com/email.php
 Some people say Fletcher is in charge of TF2 now so email him too.

 We're really past the point in asking Valve for an answer. The answer
 is probably the same as before: a handful of servers ruined the experience
 for a few new players and some lazy players who couldn't be bothered to
 type valve in the tags.

 So they threw in some useless features like quickpick and released
 server migrations at the same time to shut you up before you realize your
 community was also going to get screwed so there would be no huge public
 outrage.

 What needs to be done now is to get someone at Valve to realize that
 this change did more harm than good and there is evidence to prove it.

 Any other argument we bring up they will consider it biased because we
 host servers and somehow that means we don't care about players.

 Ever since the change, global TF2 player counts have steadily been
 dropping. Peaks have dipped from 82k to 71k, a 15% loss. And summer
 vacation has already started as you can see from the weekday player counts.


 http://www.steamgraph.net/index.php?action=graphjstime=1appid=440from=138856320to=End+Time

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 please visit:
 https

[hlds] Can we have a Quickplay Status report, please? 2

[Robert Paulson]

Making a new thread because replies are being blocked with Message body is
too big: 41090 bytes with a limit of 40 KB.

Complaints here have historically gone ignored but it doesn't mean it is a
bad idea to keep the issue in the spotlight here as well.

Just make sure you also contact Valve directly.
http://valvesoftware.com/email.php
Some people say Fletcher is in charge of TF2 now so email him too.

We're really past the point in asking Valve for an answer. The answer is
probably the same as before: a handful of servers ruined the experience for
a few new players and some lazy players who couldn't be bothered to type
valve in the tags.

So they threw in some useless features like quickpick and released server
migrations at the same time to shut you up before you realize your
community was also going to get screwed so there would be no huge public
outrage.

What needs to be done now is to get someone at Valve to realize that this
change did more harm than good and there is evidence to prove it.

Any other argument we bring up they will consider it biased because we host
servers and somehow that means we don't care about players.

Ever since the change, global TF2 player counts have steadily been
dropping. Peaks have dipped from 82k to 71k, a 15% loss. And summer
vacation has already started as you can see from the weekday player counts.

http://www.steamgraph.net/index.php?action=graphjstime=1appid=440from=138856320to=End+Time
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Re: [hlds] Can we have a Quickplay Status report, please? 2

[Robert Paulson]

No we don't have access to binaries on both ends.We cannot get players to
use client modifications because even if they were willing to download it,
they would get vacced.

The ad exploit from what I heard was a one time client bug where the big
motd did not check the motd cvar. Removing community servers from quickplay
was laziness and not due to any technical impossibility.

If Valve wants a game free of community servers then they should do that in
their newer games. Can you imagine the outrage that would happen if EA
pulled the same stunt on Battlefield by throwing all community servers off
the main list?


On Mon, Jun 2, 2014 at 2:14 PM, Eli Witt eliw...@gmail.com wrote:

 Replied to the last message, I'll post this here too.

 Well, we know from experience just how good Valve is at keeping a lid on
 things (case in point HL3) so I doubt they're going to acknowledge this in
 any way unless they see fit to, not because we're disgruntled and asking
 for information.

 And for what it's worth, everyone (who's opinion on this list is worth a
 damn) has thrown out the point that we're the ones providing the servers
 for Valve, we're the ones who give their players a place to play etc etc -
 but what I think is going unnoticed here is the fact that Valve is
 obviously taking steps (and increasingly larger ones) to nullify that
 argument in it's entirety.

 Perhaps it's time to examine the possibility that Valve is very
 purposefully forcing community run servers into the minority because
 they're straight tired of having to play code-counter-code withe people
 like the fuckjobs who programmed plugins to force ads down players throats
 and other like-minded stains.

 We've got the binaries on both ends, and Valve knows this. It's virtually
 impossible to stop people from being fuckjobs with access to both binaries,
 so let [Valve] just diminish the footprint the fuckjobs get access by about
 90% by forcing people into the servers we can afford to run now that we've
 monetized TF2.

 If I was Valve and I made this decision, I wouldn't give a piss whether
 people who run servers are upset by this or threaten to pull their servers
 offline because of this decision, because that's the direction I wanted to
 force you in anyway.

 Just a thought.


 On Mon, Jun 2, 2014 at 4:47 PM, Robert Paulson thepauls...@gmail.com
 wrote:

 Making a new thread because replies are being blocked with Message body
 is too big: 41090 bytes with a limit of 40 KB.

 Complaints here have historically gone ignored but it doesn't mean it is
 a bad idea to keep the issue in the spotlight here as well.

 Just make sure you also contact Valve directly.
 http://valvesoftware.com/email.php
 Some people say Fletcher is in charge of TF2 now so email him too.

 We're really past the point in asking Valve for an answer. The answer
 is probably the same as before: a handful of servers ruined the experience
 for a few new players and some lazy players who couldn't be bothered to
 type valve in the tags.

 So they threw in some useless features like quickpick and released server
 migrations at the same time to shut you up before you realize your
 community was also going to get screwed so there would be no huge public
 outrage.

 What needs to be done now is to get someone at Valve to realize that this
 change did more harm than good and there is evidence to prove it.

 Any other argument we bring up they will consider it biased because we
 host servers and somehow that means we don't care about players.

 Ever since the change, global TF2 player counts have steadily been
 dropping. Peaks have dipped from 82k to 71k, a 15% loss. And summer
 vacation has already started as you can see from the weekday player counts.


 http://www.steamgraph.net/index.php?action=graphjstime=1appid=440from=138856320to=End+Time

 ___
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Re: [hlds] Can we have a Quickplay Status report, please?

[Robert Paulson]

Is anyone left at Valve humble enough to admit a mistake? Not only do
community servers provide more value, but this is also a massive betrayal
of what TF2 originally was. When I bought the game, I did not expect
community servers to be segregated and much more difficult to find.

Where is the original TF2 team that was smart enough not to keep custom
tabs?

Emulating CS:GO and DOTA2's lobby system is not going to magically make TF2
more popular. If you are not going to copy their update speed, screwing
community servers will make things worse. To the person behind this change,
how do you like the drop in players it is causing?

http://www.steamgraph.net/index.php?action=graphjstime=1appid=440from=138328920to=End+Time

Every day this policy remains in place more servers that took years of
seeding, prizes, and moderation get killed off, maybe even permanently
given how old TF2 is.

Anyone that is interested in seeing something done about this, you should
probably also email them directly as there has been no response here.
http://www.valvesoftware.com/email.php



On Fri, May 30, 2014 at 1:01 PM, Paul ubyu@gmail.com wrote:

 I agree. TF2 has dramatically lost my vote since the changes to Quickplay
 and the lack of response or update from Valve regarding any future changes
 to it. In my own opinion they seem quite careless of the matter and to
 those who spent years hosting genuine servers for little to nothing in
 return. It's as if Valve wants the game to end up eventually being a ghost
 town (which it will if nothing changes).

 My own experience on the Valve official servers is negative, ranging from
 lack of moderation to the connection quality in comparison with similar
 community servers.

 Please, Valve, show us a sign that you really do care about the future of
 Team Fortress 2 (and other Valve games, because one bad game will most
 likely put newcomers off from trying any other game title by the same
 company). and make a statement for crying out loud! Thanks.



 On 30 May 2014 20:54, ics i...@ics-base.net wrote:

 I can tell you about the status of community servers regarding quickplay
 - it's really sad to see it in the state as it is now. I lost my interest
 to TF2 back in january or so due to this quickplay change and i'm _this
 close_ to lose my interest completely. I feel abandoned as a person who
 rans servers for free and doesn't tease the players with any crap and
 propably i'm not alone. I can spend the 152€ a month to something quite
 else instead of doing what i do now.

 Current status has gone from normal to bad. As a company, it really would
 suck to lose people like me who have been around nearly 10 years, helping
 your games to grow by hosting servers and providing players a place to
 stay, enjoy the game and on the side have a good feeling about the thing i
 do.

 Don't prove everyone right that it's better way to throw money at servers
 and host everything yourself. Because that is the way Valve is right now
 going for, isn't it? It will help on short term but not for long term, and
 Valve games tend to have lifespan of years but i doubht that with current
 rate there will be too many communities left if you don't support them in
 any way.

 Thanks.

 -ics

 Jason Tango kirjoitti:

 Dear TF2 team,

 Would it be possible for you to communicate a status as to if/when the
 quickplay changes you made four months ago will be reverted to allow all
 community servers to be included in quickplay again by default?

 Fletcher Dunn had stated when this change was made that it would be
 temporary, yet four months later as community server after community server
 dies out, we've had zero communication on the subject from the TF2 team.

 Why are you no longer talking to server operators?

 Please, guys - communicate to the server community that has supported
 the game for so many years. If this is going to be the default quickplay
 configuration from now on, at least let us know so we can start shutting
 off servers as opposed to continuing to pay for hardware in the hopes that
 we'll be treated fairly again. We're hanging on here and financially
 supporting servers in the hopes that we'll be able to fill them again
 someday soon, but if there's no more hope left for us, at least let us know.

 Thank you.

 - JT

 P.S. If I could express to you the extreme sense of hopelessness you are
 imposing on the good communities that have built themselves around TF2, I
 would. We love this game, and we see the culture that so attracted us to
 it for all these years slipping away. Please consider the harm you're doing
 to the good communities out there but effectively diverting half of the
 player traffic away from even finding us.  Spending years building a
 community only to have the rug pulled out from under us has depressed some
 of our members so much that they've walked away from the game all together.
  These are long-term TF2 players who - if they can't play on the community
 servers 

Re: [hlds] When will quickplay return to a level playing field?

[Robert Paulson]

When will Valve realize was a bad decision? Player counts haven't been this
low since last year, and there is no new FPS game.

For those people claiming player counts get lower until summer vacation,
they didn't drop as much as last year.

After the change, the weekly high dropped by 5000. Compare to last year in
the same time frame there is barely a 1000 player difference. How much more
obvious does it need to get?

2014
http://i.imgur.com/xoUEHbr.png

2013
http://i.imgur.com/Rp9y2kD.png

data from steamcharts.com



On Mon, Mar 24, 2014 at 9:18 PM, E. Olsen ceo.eol...@gmail.com wrote:

 I think the issue here, is...there really is no longer any reason for
 valve servers to be the default servers once a player has 8-12 hours in
 the game.

 The minority of players who only want those random pub games on valve
 servers now have that option - but the players who stick around in the
 long-term will be the ones that find a home server/group of servers, not
 those looking for the x-box live experience of random games with random
 people every time. Honestly, if the TF2 team could see the chaos and lack
 of teamwork that valve servers actually seem to encourage, I think they
 would take a step back and realize that it really doesn't do the game any
 justice. There is a reason some of the newer players have taken to calling
 community servers pubstomp servers - it's because community servers are
 where they fist come up against actual, cohesive teamwork - and they're
 used to a bunch of random players just doing they're own thing.

 Frankly - I firmly believe the long-term health of the game rests with
 community servers who provide diversity, supervision (to get rid of the
 plethora of hackers/griefers, etc.), and a much better experience overall
 (not to mention higher skill levels).

 In short - I agree with Mr. Paulson - give the new players a a few hours
 of mandatory play on valve's servers to get their feet wet in the game,
 and then open quickplay up to all servers by default and allow them to
 see all the diversity that's out there. You've given the players the
 option of going back to valve-only if they should want it, now lets
 rollback the mass punishment (that was really killing a mosquito with a
 sledgehammer), and give the server operators a fair shake again.


 On Mon, Mar 24, 2014 at 11:14 PM, Chris Oryschak ch...@oryschak.comwrote:

 It would be really nice to get some input on this from Valve.  Since the
 change every day gets worse and worse for player activity on my servers
 thanks to the QP changes and lack of new players having the ability to find
 my servers.
 You can view the beautiful downward trend caused by these changes:

 http://i.imgur.com/uvlq056.png

 If anyone else is running the Player Analytics plugin just edit
 data/sessions.php and change 30 DAY to 90 DAY.
 I'd love to see the same trends from other communities to help reinforce
 this bad change for all server ops.





 On Mon, Mar 24, 2014 at 9:09 PM, Robert Paulson thepauls...@gmail.comwrote:

 As I said before, the problem is not that the official servers only
 option exists, the problem is that it is on by default. People too lazy to
 use the browser are too lazy to use options.

 Again I would like to suggest automatically un-checking the official
 servers only after 4-5 hours of play. Anything that requires manual
 intervention will not solve the problem.

 For anyone arguing community servers are inferior again, I refer you to
 this post.


 https://www.mail-archive.com/hlds_linux@list.valvesoftware.com/msg74795.html


 On Mon, Mar 24, 2014 at 5:03 PM, 1nsane 1nsane...@gmail.com wrote:

 What about something similar like before where valve servers had an
 advantage over community servers with new players being sent to them (due
 to the valve server score boost)?

 Except this time just make it so all new players get sent to valve
 servers by default. And then after a certain amount of hours played it
 either defaults to all servers or pops up a message asking if community
 servers should be included and explaining a little bit about the other
 quickplay options and how to access them.

 I talked to plenty of players who weren't aware that quickplay search
 can be customized or that you need to click on the gear icon to bring up
 advanced search options. There's plenty of people who hate crits or default
 respawn times and yet they're not even aware of this functionality being
 part of quickplay. Or perhaps that's on purpose and maybe that's the reason
 why the icon is so tiny...


 On Thu, Mar 20, 2014 at 7:31 PM, Jason Tango jtrun...@outlook.comwrote:

 As we approach the 2-month mark since Valve's servers were made the
 default servers for all quickplay players, can the TF2 team give us a
 time frame when they will return the system to a level playing field for
 all servers?

 As it stands, the players who want to avoid all community servers now
 have the ability to do so simply by clicking the Official Server

Re: [hlds] When will quickplay return to a level playing field?

[Robert Paulson]

Those aren't my player counts, those are the global player counts.


On Fri, Apr 25, 2014 at 2:32 PM, James Haikin jfrra...@gmail.com wrote:

 Hint: they DGAF about your player count.

 -James


 On Fri, Apr 25, 2014 at 2:30 PM, Robert Paulson thepauls...@gmail.comwrote:

 When will Valve realize was a bad decision? Player counts haven't been
 this low since last year, and there is no new FPS game.

 For those people claiming player counts get lower until summer vacation,
 they didn't drop as much as last year.

 After the change, the weekly high dropped by 5000. Compare to last year
 in the same time frame there is barely a 1000 player difference. How much
 more obvious does it need to get?

 2014
 http://i.imgur.com/xoUEHbr.png

 2013
 http://i.imgur.com/Rp9y2kD.png

 data from steamcharts.com



 On Mon, Mar 24, 2014 at 9:18 PM, E. Olsen ceo.eol...@gmail.com wrote:

 I think the issue here, is...there really is no longer any reason for
 valve servers to be the default servers once a player has 8-12 hours in
 the game.

 The minority of players who only want those random pub games on valve
 servers now have that option - but the players who stick around in the
 long-term will be the ones that find a home server/group of servers, not
 those looking for the x-box live experience of random games with random
 people every time. Honestly, if the TF2 team could see the chaos and lack
 of teamwork that valve servers actually seem to encourage, I think they
 would take a step back and realize that it really doesn't do the game any
 justice. There is a reason some of the newer players have taken to calling
 community servers pubstomp servers - it's because community servers are
 where they fist come up against actual, cohesive teamwork - and they're
 used to a bunch of random players just doing they're own thing.

 Frankly - I firmly believe the long-term health of the game rests with
 community servers who provide diversity, supervision (to get rid of the
 plethora of hackers/griefers, etc.), and a much better experience overall
 (not to mention higher skill levels).

 In short - I agree with Mr. Paulson - give the new players a a few hours
 of mandatory play on valve's servers to get their feet wet in the game,
 and then open quickplay up to all servers by default and allow them to
 see all the diversity that's out there. You've given the players the
 option of going back to valve-only if they should want it, now lets
 rollback the mass punishment (that was really killing a mosquito with a
 sledgehammer), and give the server operators a fair shake again.


 On Mon, Mar 24, 2014 at 11:14 PM, Chris Oryschak ch...@oryschak.comwrote:

 It would be really nice to get some input on this from Valve.  Since
 the change every day gets worse and worse for player activity on my servers
 thanks to the QP changes and lack of new players having the ability to find
 my servers.
 You can view the beautiful downward trend caused by these changes:

 http://i.imgur.com/uvlq056.png

 If anyone else is running the Player Analytics plugin just edit
 data/sessions.php and change 30 DAY to 90 DAY.
 I'd love to see the same trends from other communities to help
 reinforce this bad change for all server ops.





 On Mon, Mar 24, 2014 at 9:09 PM, Robert Paulson 
 thepauls...@gmail.comwrote:

 As I said before, the problem is not that the official servers only
 option exists, the problem is that it is on by default. People too lazy to
 use the browser are too lazy to use options.

 Again I would like to suggest automatically un-checking the official
 servers only after 4-5 hours of play. Anything that requires manual
 intervention will not solve the problem.

 For anyone arguing community servers are inferior again, I refer you
 to this post.


 https://www.mail-archive.com/hlds_linux@list.valvesoftware.com/msg74795.html


 On Mon, Mar 24, 2014 at 5:03 PM, 1nsane 1nsane...@gmail.com wrote:

 What about something similar like before where valve servers had an
 advantage over community servers with new players being sent to them (due
 to the valve server score boost)?

 Except this time just make it so all new players get sent to valve
 servers by default. And then after a certain amount of hours played it
 either defaults to all servers or pops up a message asking if community
 servers should be included and explaining a little bit about the other
 quickplay options and how to access them.

 I talked to plenty of players who weren't aware that quickplay search
 can be customized or that you need to click on the gear icon to bring up
 advanced search options. There's plenty of people who hate crits or 
 default
 respawn times and yet they're not even aware of this functionality being
 part of quickplay. Or perhaps that's on purpose and maybe that's the 
 reason
 why the icon is so tiny...


 On Thu, Mar 20, 2014 at 7:31 PM, Jason Tango jtrun...@outlook.comwrote:

 As we approach the 2-month mark since Valve's servers were made

Re: [hlds] When will quickplay return to a level playing field?

[Robert Paulson]

It might not cause more players to magically appear, but more of them will
end up in better servers than the official ones. Community servers offer
additional value that keep people playing TF2 longer.

I know quite a few people who have stopped playing after their favorite
server emptied out because of this change. They would rather not play TF2
than play on an official server which are laggy and full of hackers and
griefers.


On Fri, Apr 25, 2014 at 3:58 PM, Alexander Z spacebur...@gmail.com wrote:

 Fixing quickplay, however you want to see it fixed, won't cause more
 players to magically appear.
 TF2 is running on borrowed time, and the playerbase will only be getting
 smaller with time.


 On 25 April 2014 23:42, Robert Paulson thepauls...@gmail.com wrote:

 Those aren't my player counts, those are the global player counts.


 On Fri, Apr 25, 2014 at 2:32 PM, James Haikin jfrra...@gmail.com wrote:

 Hint: they DGAF about your player count.

 -James


 On Fri, Apr 25, 2014 at 2:30 PM, Robert Paulson 
 thepauls...@gmail.comwrote:

 When will Valve realize was a bad decision? Player counts haven't been
 this low since last year, and there is no new FPS game.

 For those people claiming player counts get lower until summer
 vacation, they didn't drop as much as last year.

 After the change, the weekly high dropped by 5000. Compare to last year
 in the same time frame there is barely a 1000 player difference. How much
 more obvious does it need to get?

 2014
 http://i.imgur.com/xoUEHbr.png

 2013
 http://i.imgur.com/Rp9y2kD.png

 data from steamcharts.com



 On Mon, Mar 24, 2014 at 9:18 PM, E. Olsen ceo.eol...@gmail.com wrote:

 I think the issue here, is...there really is no longer any reason for
 valve servers to be the default servers once a player has 8-12 hours in
 the game.

 The minority of players who only want those random pub games on valve
 servers now have that option - but the players who stick around in the
 long-term will be the ones that find a home server/group of servers, not
 those looking for the x-box live experience of random games with random
 people every time. Honestly, if the TF2 team could see the chaos and lack
 of teamwork that valve servers actually seem to encourage, I think they
 would take a step back and realize that it really doesn't do the game any
 justice. There is a reason some of the newer players have taken to calling
 community servers pubstomp servers - it's because community servers are
 where they fist come up against actual, cohesive teamwork - and they're
 used to a bunch of random players just doing they're own thing.

 Frankly - I firmly believe the long-term health of the game rests with
 community servers who provide diversity, supervision (to get rid of the
 plethora of hackers/griefers, etc.), and a much better experience overall
 (not to mention higher skill levels).

 In short - I agree with Mr. Paulson - give the new players a a few
 hours of mandatory play on valve's servers to get their feet wet in the
 game, and then open quickplay up to all servers by default and allow 
 them
 to see all the diversity that's out there. You've given the players the
 option of going back to valve-only if they should want it, now lets
 rollback the mass punishment (that was really killing a mosquito with a
 sledgehammer), and give the server operators a fair shake again.


 On Mon, Mar 24, 2014 at 11:14 PM, Chris Oryschak 
 ch...@oryschak.comwrote:

 It would be really nice to get some input on this from Valve.  Since
 the change every day gets worse and worse for player activity on my 
 servers
 thanks to the QP changes and lack of new players having the ability to 
 find
 my servers.
 You can view the beautiful downward trend caused by these changes:

 http://i.imgur.com/uvlq056.png

 If anyone else is running the Player Analytics plugin just edit
 data/sessions.php and change 30 DAY to 90 DAY.
 I'd love to see the same trends from other communities to help
 reinforce this bad change for all server ops.





 On Mon, Mar 24, 2014 at 9:09 PM, Robert Paulson 
 thepauls...@gmail.com wrote:

 As I said before, the problem is not that the official servers only
 option exists, the problem is that it is on by default. People too lazy 
 to
 use the browser are too lazy to use options.

 Again I would like to suggest automatically un-checking the official
 servers only after 4-5 hours of play. Anything that requires manual
 intervention will not solve the problem.

 For anyone arguing community servers are inferior again, I refer you
 to this post.


 https://www.mail-archive.com/hlds_linux@list.valvesoftware.com/msg74795.html


 On Mon, Mar 24, 2014 at 5:03 PM, 1nsane 1nsane...@gmail.com wrote:

 What about something similar like before where valve servers had an
 advantage over community servers with new players being sent to them 
 (due
 to the valve server score boost)?

 Except this time just make it so all new players get sent to valve
 servers by default

Re: [hlds] When will quickplay return to a level playing field?

[Robert Paulson]

Empirical evidence was already offered which you thought were my
players, as if I had tens of thousands of players. Those numbers are pulled
straight from Steam.

What's the point of trolling this discussion? Don't you have anything
better to do?


On Fri, Apr 25, 2014 at 4:14 PM, James Haikin jfrra...@gmail.com wrote:

 Why hello there, anecdotal evidence. If you could go ahead and get us an
 actual cross-section of the playerbase, that'd be great.

 -James


 On Fri, Apr 25, 2014 at 4:10 PM, Robert Paulson thepauls...@gmail.comwrote:

 It might not cause more players to magically appear, but more of them
 will end up in better servers than the official ones. Community servers
 offer additional value that keep people playing TF2 longer.

 I know quite a few people who have stopped playing after their favorite
 server emptied out because of this change. They would rather not play TF2
 than play on an official server which are laggy and full of hackers and
 griefers.


 On Fri, Apr 25, 2014 at 3:58 PM, Alexander Z spacebur...@gmail.comwrote:

 Fixing quickplay, however you want to see it fixed, won't cause more
 players to magically appear.
 TF2 is running on borrowed time, and the playerbase will only be getting
 smaller with time.


 On 25 April 2014 23:42, Robert Paulson thepauls...@gmail.com wrote:

 Those aren't my player counts, those are the global player counts.


 On Fri, Apr 25, 2014 at 2:32 PM, James Haikin jfrra...@gmail.comwrote:

 Hint: they DGAF about your player count.

 -James


 On Fri, Apr 25, 2014 at 2:30 PM, Robert Paulson thepauls...@gmail.com
  wrote:

 When will Valve realize was a bad decision? Player counts haven't
 been this low since last year, and there is no new FPS game.

 For those people claiming player counts get lower until summer
 vacation, they didn't drop as much as last year.

 After the change, the weekly high dropped by 5000. Compare to last
 year in the same time frame there is barely a 1000 player difference. How
 much more obvious does it need to get?

 2014
 http://i.imgur.com/xoUEHbr.png

 2013
 http://i.imgur.com/Rp9y2kD.png

 data from steamcharts.com



 On Mon, Mar 24, 2014 at 9:18 PM, E. Olsen ceo.eol...@gmail.comwrote:

 I think the issue here, is...there really is no longer any reason
 for valve servers to be the default servers once a player has 8-12 
 hours
 in the game.

 The minority of players who only want those random pub games on
 valve servers now have that option - but the players who stick around in
 the long-term will be the ones that find a home server/group of 
 servers,
 not those looking for the x-box live experience of random games with
 random people every time. Honestly, if the TF2 team could see the chaos 
 and
 lack of teamwork that valve servers actually seem to encourage, I think
 they would take a step back and realize that it really doesn't do the 
 game
 any justice. There is a reason some of the newer players have taken to
 calling community servers pubstomp servers - it's because community
 servers are where they fist come up against actual, cohesive teamwork - 
 and
 they're used to a bunch of random players just doing they're own thing.

 Frankly - I firmly believe the long-term health of the game rests
 with community servers who provide diversity, supervision (to get rid of
 the plethora of hackers/griefers, etc.), and a much better experience
 overall (not to mention higher skill levels).

 In short - I agree with Mr. Paulson - give the new players a a few
 hours of mandatory play on valve's servers to get their feet wet in 
 the
 game, and then open quickplay up to all servers by default and allow 
 them
 to see all the diversity that's out there. You've given the players the
 option of going back to valve-only if they should want it, now lets
 rollback the mass punishment (that was really killing a mosquito with 
 a
 sledgehammer), and give the server operators a fair shake again.


 On Mon, Mar 24, 2014 at 11:14 PM, Chris Oryschak ch...@oryschak.com
  wrote:

 It would be really nice to get some input on this from Valve.
  Since the change every day gets worse and worse for player activity 
 on my
 servers thanks to the QP changes and lack of new players having the 
 ability
 to find my servers.
 You can view the beautiful downward trend caused by these changes:

 http://i.imgur.com/uvlq056.png

 If anyone else is running the Player Analytics plugin just edit
 data/sessions.php and change 30 DAY to 90 DAY.
 I'd love to see the same trends from other communities to help
 reinforce this bad change for all server ops.





 On Mon, Mar 24, 2014 at 9:09 PM, Robert Paulson 
 thepauls...@gmail.com wrote:

 As I said before, the problem is not that the official servers
 only option exists, the problem is that it is on by default. People 
 too
 lazy to use the browser are too lazy to use options.

 Again I would like to suggest automatically un-checking the
 official servers only after 4-5 hours of play. Anything

Re: [hlds] When will quickplay return to a level playing field?

[Robert Paulson]

I don't see how there could be a better place to discuss this. This
quickplay problem affects srcds servers and this is a mailing list for
servers that is visited by the people responsible for this change.

If Valve does not realize this is a problem, that is even more of a reason
to keep talking about it.

I don't think Valve doesn't care, they just don't know it is a problem.
Otherwise they wouldn't have wasted their time making quickpick.

They need to realize it is causing a net loss of players and quickplay
options and quickpick didn't solve the issue.


On Fri, Apr 25, 2014 at 4:33 PM, James Haikin jfrra...@gmail.com wrote:

 I'm just sick of people bitching about something that Valve has shown no
 indication of changing, in a place where it's rather patently inappropriate
 for the discussion to be taking place.

 -James


 On Fri, Apr 25, 2014 at 4:31 PM, Robert Paulson thepauls...@gmail.comwrote:

 Empirical evidence was already offered which you thought were my
 players, as if I had tens of thousands of players. Those numbers are pulled
 straight from Steam.

 What's the point of trolling this discussion? Don't you have anything
 better to do?


 On Fri, Apr 25, 2014 at 4:14 PM, James Haikin jfrra...@gmail.com wrote:

 Why hello there, anecdotal evidence. If you could go ahead and get us an
 actual cross-section of the playerbase, that'd be great.

 -James


 On Fri, Apr 25, 2014 at 4:10 PM, Robert Paulson 
 thepauls...@gmail.comwrote:

 It might not cause more players to magically appear, but more of them
 will end up in better servers than the official ones. Community servers
 offer additional value that keep people playing TF2 longer.

 I know quite a few people who have stopped playing after their favorite
 server emptied out because of this change. They would rather not play TF2
 than play on an official server which are laggy and full of hackers and
 griefers.


 On Fri, Apr 25, 2014 at 3:58 PM, Alexander Z spacebur...@gmail.comwrote:

 Fixing quickplay, however you want to see it fixed, won't cause more
 players to magically appear.
 TF2 is running on borrowed time, and the playerbase will only be
 getting smaller with time.


 On 25 April 2014 23:42, Robert Paulson thepauls...@gmail.com wrote:

 Those aren't my player counts, those are the global player counts.


 On Fri, Apr 25, 2014 at 2:32 PM, James Haikin jfrra...@gmail.comwrote:

 Hint: they DGAF about your player count.

 -James


 On Fri, Apr 25, 2014 at 2:30 PM, Robert Paulson 
 thepauls...@gmail.com wrote:

 When will Valve realize was a bad decision? Player counts haven't
 been this low since last year, and there is no new FPS game.

 For those people claiming player counts get lower until summer
 vacation, they didn't drop as much as last year.

 After the change, the weekly high dropped by 5000. Compare to last
 year in the same time frame there is barely a 1000 player difference. 
 How
 much more obvious does it need to get?

 2014
 http://i.imgur.com/xoUEHbr.png

 2013
 http://i.imgur.com/Rp9y2kD.png

 data from steamcharts.com



 On Mon, Mar 24, 2014 at 9:18 PM, E. Olsen ceo.eol...@gmail.comwrote:

 I think the issue here, is...there really is no longer any reason
 for valve servers to be the default servers once a player has 8-12 
 hours
 in the game.

 The minority of players who only want those random pub games on
 valve servers now have that option - but the players who stick around 
 in
 the long-term will be the ones that find a home server/group of 
 servers,
 not those looking for the x-box live experience of random games with
 random people every time. Honestly, if the TF2 team could see the 
 chaos and
 lack of teamwork that valve servers actually seem to encourage, I 
 think
 they would take a step back and realize that it really doesn't do the 
 game
 any justice. There is a reason some of the newer players have taken to
 calling community servers pubstomp servers - it's because community
 servers are where they fist come up against actual, cohesive teamwork 
 - and
 they're used to a bunch of random players just doing they're own 
 thing.

 Frankly - I firmly believe the long-term health of the game rests
 with community servers who provide diversity, supervision (to get rid 
 of
 the plethora of hackers/griefers, etc.), and a much better experience
 overall (not to mention higher skill levels).

 In short - I agree with Mr. Paulson - give the new players a a few
 hours of mandatory play on valve's servers to get their feet wet in 
 the
 game, and then open quickplay up to all servers by default and 
 allow them
 to see all the diversity that's out there. You've given the players 
 the
 option of going back to valve-only if they should want it, now 
 lets
 rollback the mass punishment (that was really killing a mosquito 
 with a
 sledgehammer), and give the server operators a fair shake again.


 On Mon, Mar 24, 2014 at 11:14 PM, Chris Oryschak 
 ch...@oryschak.com wrote:

 It would be really nice to get

Re: [hlds] When will quickplay return to a level playing field?

[Robert Paulson]

SPUF is a tiny portion of the TF2 population. Most people that play a game
don't go on the forums to chat about it.

The common player won't even give 2 shits if TF2 itself is dying because of
this change.

They are not die hard fans and they will just go back to COD or Titanfall
if the servers they want to play on are emptying out because of Valve. They
are not going to petition Valve, complain on SPUF, or even be aware that
Valve is causing this.



On Fri, Apr 25, 2014 at 4:58 PM, James Haikin jfrra...@gmail.com wrote:

 Most of the users on SPUF.

 You mean the majority of the game's playerbase? So 90% of the game's
 players don't care about the problem? Why, then, is it a problem?

 -James


 On Fri, Apr 25, 2014 at 4:56 PM, Bubka3 bub...@gmail.com wrote:

 I don't think discussing topics which directly affect server operators on
 SPUF is a good idea. Most of the users on SPUF are not technically inclined
 and could probably care less about this problem.

   James Haikin jfrra...@gmail.com
  Friday, April 25, 2014 7:52 PM
 You want to discuss something? Take it to SPUF.

 -James



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   Robert Paulson thepauls...@gmail.com
  Friday, April 25, 2014 7:46 PM
 I don't see how there could be a better place to discuss this. This
 quickplay problem affects srcds servers and this is a mailing list for
 servers that is visited by the people responsible for this change.

 If Valve does not realize this is a problem, that is even more of a
 reason to keep talking about it.

 I don't think Valve doesn't care, they just don't know it is a problem.
 Otherwise they wouldn't have wasted their time making quickpick.

 They need to realize it is causing a net loss of players and quickplay
 options and quickpick didn't solve the issue.



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   James Haikin jfrra...@gmail.com
  Friday, April 25, 2014 7:33 PM
 I'm just sick of people bitching about something that Valve has shown no
 indication of changing, in a place where it's rather patently inappropriate
 for the discussion to be taking place.

 -James



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   Robert Paulson thepauls...@gmail.com
  Friday, April 25, 2014 7:31 PM
 Empirical evidence was already offered which you thought were my
 players, as if I had tens of thousands of players. Those numbers are pulled
 straight from Steam.

 What's the point of trolling this discussion? Don't you have anything
 better to do?



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   James Haikin jfrra...@gmail.com
  Friday, April 25, 2014 7:14 PM
 Why hello there, anecdotal evidence. If you could go ahead and get us an
 actual cross-section of the playerbase, that'd be great.

 -James



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Re: [hlds] When will quickplay return to a level playing field?

[Robert Paulson]

Because the common player also doesn't care if Valve/TF2 fails?

Why not take a few minutes to actually understand what you are reading
before replying with these obvious questions?


On Fri, Apr 25, 2014 at 5:18 PM, James Haikin jfrra...@gmail.com wrote:

 So if the common player doesn't care, why should Valve? Serious question.

 -James


 On Fri, Apr 25, 2014 at 5:15 PM, Robert Paulson thepauls...@gmail.comwrote:

 SPUF is a tiny portion of the TF2 population. Most people that play a
 game don't go on the forums to chat about it.

 The common player won't even give 2 shits if TF2 itself is dying because
 of this change.

 They are not die hard fans and they will just go back to COD or Titanfall
 if the servers they want to play on are emptying out because of Valve. They
 are not going to petition Valve, complain on SPUF, or even be aware that
 Valve is causing this.



 On Fri, Apr 25, 2014 at 4:58 PM, James Haikin jfrra...@gmail.com wrote:

 Most of the users on SPUF.

 You mean the majority of the game's playerbase? So 90% of the game's
 players don't care about the problem? Why, then, is it a problem?

 -James


 On Fri, Apr 25, 2014 at 4:56 PM, Bubka3 bub...@gmail.com wrote:

 I don't think discussing topics which directly affect server operators
 on SPUF is a good idea. Most of the users on SPUF are not technically
 inclined and could probably care less about this problem.

   James Haikin jfrra...@gmail.com
  Friday, April 25, 2014 7:52 PM
 You want to discuss something? Take it to SPUF.

 -James



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   Robert Paulson thepauls...@gmail.com
  Friday, April 25, 2014 7:46 PM
 I don't see how there could be a better place to discuss this. This
 quickplay problem affects srcds servers and this is a mailing list for
 servers that is visited by the people responsible for this change.

 If Valve does not realize this is a problem, that is even more of a
 reason to keep talking about it.

 I don't think Valve doesn't care, they just don't know it is a problem.
 Otherwise they wouldn't have wasted their time making quickpick.

 They need to realize it is causing a net loss of players and quickplay
 options and quickpick didn't solve the issue.



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   James Haikin jfrra...@gmail.com
  Friday, April 25, 2014 7:33 PM
 I'm just sick of people bitching about something that Valve has shown
 no indication of changing, in a place where it's rather patently
 inappropriate for the discussion to be taking place.

 -James



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   Robert Paulson thepauls...@gmail.com
  Friday, April 25, 2014 7:31 PM
 Empirical evidence was already offered which you thought were my
 players, as if I had tens of thousands of players. Those numbers are pulled
 straight from Steam.

 What's the point of trolling this discussion? Don't you have anything
 better to do?



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   James Haikin jfrra...@gmail.com
  Friday, April 25, 2014 7:14 PM
 Why hello there, anecdotal evidence. If you could go ahead and get us
 an actual cross-section of the playerbase, that'd be great.

 -James



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Re: [hlds] When will quickplay return to a level playing field?

[Robert Paulson]

As I said before, the problem is not that the official servers only option
exists, the problem is that it is on by default. People too lazy to use the
browser are too lazy to use options.

Again I would like to suggest automatically un-checking the official
servers only after 4-5 hours of play. Anything that requires manual
intervention will not solve the problem.

For anyone arguing community servers are inferior again, I refer you to
this post.

https://www.mail-archive.com/hlds_linux@list.valvesoftware.com/msg74795.html


On Mon, Mar 24, 2014 at 5:03 PM, 1nsane 1nsane...@gmail.com wrote:

 What about something similar like before where valve servers had an
 advantage over community servers with new players being sent to them (due
 to the valve server score boost)?

 Except this time just make it so all new players get sent to valve servers
 by default. And then after a certain amount of hours played it either
 defaults to all servers or pops up a message asking if community servers
 should be included and explaining a little bit about the other quickplay
 options and how to access them.

 I talked to plenty of players who weren't aware that quickplay search can
 be customized or that you need to click on the gear icon to bring up
 advanced search options. There's plenty of people who hate crits or default
 respawn times and yet they're not even aware of this functionality being
 part of quickplay. Or perhaps that's on purpose and maybe that's the reason
 why the icon is so tiny...


 On Thu, Mar 20, 2014 at 7:31 PM, Jason Tango jtrun...@outlook.com wrote:

 As we approach the 2-month mark since Valve's servers were made the
 default servers for all quickplay players, can the TF2 team give us a
 time frame when they will return the system to a level playing field for
 all servers?

 As it stands, the players who want to avoid all community servers now
 have the ability to do so simply by clicking the Official Server Only
 button, so is it really necessary to keep driving nearly all quickplay
 traffic away from community servers?

 In fact, a better question would probably be - is it in TF2's best
 (long-term) interest to do so? Helping players find a home server where
 they become a regular creates long-term players, and since so much
 emphasis (in the design of the UI) has been placed on guiding players to
 use quickplay, the longer that community servers are effectively excluded
 from that traffic, the more long-term players the game will likely lose.

 The players that only want random games with random people on Valve
 servers now have the option to make sure that's all they get, but
 preventing the rest of the player base from experiencing all the diversity
 that the TF2 community can provide is both unnecessary and unfair to those
 of us who have never broken any rules, or violated any policies.

 With that in mind, please consider leveling the playing field again asap
 by including all community servers by default, and let the players decide
 for themselves if they don't want to be a part of that community.

 Thanks, guys.




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Re: [hlds] Master server broken - cannot see EU if in US and vice versa

[Robert Paulson]

- It happened with no warning, notification, patch note, etc.

Valve admitted they were using geo-location for quickplay, and they did not
tell anyone until people started complaining it was sending them to servers
across the Atlantic Ocean.

Based on how poorly it performed we can assume they are using a database
instead of ping. I'm not going to go into detail on what an awful idea this
is, but databases like these often fail when it comes to hosts in multiple
locations. They treat every IP owned by the host to be located at the whois
data.

- Some rare servers are unaffected. They can be pinged from any location
(and have huge player counts comparatively thanks to this).
- I see Korean servers and I live east coast US.

They could be between the 2 locations you tested. Let's say the limit is
500 servers and there are only 400 US  servers, this means 100 lucky
servers get to show up in US and Europe.

- You can bypass this bug by enabling ANY filter (has users playing, is not
passworded, secure, etc.). Most people don't do this and even less people
even use the server browser capable of it (gmod has its own html based
server browser).

Valve probably put a limit on the number of results you can get.

- It's baseline stupid and nobody desires this behavior. Especially in gmod
where you can miss out on entire gamemodes even existing because of it.

Unfortunately this is probably intentional and part of a disturbing trend
like removing TF2 community servers from quickplay. They thought it was
better for players to wait a few seconds less and that community servers
can't offer much more than low ping.



On Thu, Mar 20, 2014 at 9:41 AM, William Moodhe williammoo...@gmail.comwrote:

 I really doubt this is intended.

 - It happened with no warning, notification, patch note, etc.
 - Some rare servers are unaffected. They can be pinged from any location
 (and have huge player counts comparatively thanks to this).
 - I see Korean servers and I live east coast US.
 - You can bypass this bug by enabling ANY filter (has users playing, is
 not passworded, secure, etc.). Most people don't do this and even less
 people even use the server browser capable of it (gmod has its own html
 based server browser).
 - It's baseline stupid and nobody desires this behavior. Especially in
 gmod where you can miss out on entire gamemodes even existing because of it.

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Re: [hlds] Steam down (in North America anyway)

[Robert Paulson]

I find it very unreasonable that the store never goes down while steam goes
down every single week. Priority should be on allowing customers to use
what they purchased.

This also highlights the problem with Valve's removing TF2 community
servers from quickplay.

When down times like this happened before there would be plenty of players
accustomed to joining community servers. Now that all the new players are
trained to play now, I would say there are now about 1/10th of the players
I would expect to find on my favorites list even accounting for steam being
down.

I hope Valve doesn't sweep this under the rug, Solutions like quickpick
failed. No one uses it.


On Thu, Mar 13, 2014 at 12:48 PM, ics i...@ics-base.net wrote:

 Down everywhere, except the store works. So go buy more games while you
 are not able to log in and play them!

 -ics

 Anthony kirjoitti:

  Down in EU Too.
 On 13/03/2014 19:45, Ross Bemrose wrote:

 So, you guys over at Valve know that Steam has been completely down for
 at least the last hour in North America right?


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Re: [hlds] Petitioning Valve TF2 Development

[Robert Paulson]

It is not possible unless you did something like switching from fast to
instant respawn. In that case we went from 10 to a whopping 30 quickplay
connects per day which is hardly worth being pleased about. Official
servers are still taking the vast majority of new players who are never
exposed to community servers.

For those of you who weren't on quickplay this is also bad news for you.
Everyone relies on new players since old players quit all the time. Fewer
players become aware of community servers because it is too easy to just
click play now.

If you have a top server you will see more players for now, but these are
mostly older players fleeing killed servers who will not be playing
forever. The new equilibrium hasn't been reached yet and we will see more
servers die as long as Valve continues this. Unfortunately this will be a
slow decline with many server owners not realizing they are a few months
away from dying as well.

I am all for trying a petition but people will not associate with someone
who has such a bad reputation. The solution being offered, provide an
option to choose either Valve only servers or Community servers on every
quickplay connect would annoy everyone. It would be a more realistic
solution to switch quickplay settings to community servers after 3-4 hours
of playing time.




On Tue, Feb 25, 2014 at 10:28 PM, Peter Jerde peter-h...@jerde.net wrote:

 I don't know about you, but our quickplay traffic has more than TRIPLED
 since the changes. Seems to have been quite a positive change.

  - Peter



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Re: [hlds] Petitioning Valve TF2 Development

[Robert Paulson]

 This far from the worst suggestion I've seen. Perhaps aim for a seemless
solution where by community servers wasn't even a choice during the first
few hours of gameplay, becomes a choice later, then becomes the default
after it has been selected a couple of times.

I don't like this modification to my idea. The point of it was to overcome
the huge inertia to simply click play now. They need to be automatically
switched to community servers.

It is supposed to be a compromise which guarantees players the ability to
learn what plain tf2 is supposed to be without completely screwing over
communities like what's happening now.


On Wed, Feb 26, 2014 at 2:30 AM, John Irwin j...@thepodkast.com wrote:

  It would be a more realistic solution to switch quickplay settings to
 community servers after 3-4 hours of playing time.

 This far from the worst suggestion I've seen. Perhaps aim for a seemless
 solution where by community servers wasn't even a choice during the first
 few hours of gameplay, becomes a choice later, then becomes the default
 after it has been selected a couple of times.

 I'm not sure a petition is the right way to go though. Particularly one
 that invites reddit to participate. Valve reads these email strings. A good
 message makes itself heard.

 John
 On 26 Feb 2014 08:12, Robert Paulson thepauls...@gmail.com wrote:

 It is not possible unless you did something like switching from fast to
 instant respawn. In that case we went from 10 to a whopping 30 quickplay
 connects per day which is hardly worth being pleased about. Official
 servers are still taking the vast majority of new players who are never
 exposed to community servers.

 For those of you who weren't on quickplay this is also bad news for you.
 Everyone relies on new players since old players quit all the time. Fewer
 players become aware of community servers because it is too easy to just
 click play now.

 If you have a top server you will see more players for now, but these are
 mostly older players fleeing killed servers who will not be playing
 forever. The new equilibrium hasn't been reached yet and we will see more
 servers die as long as Valve continues this. Unfortunately this will be a
 slow decline with many server owners not realizing they are a few months
 away from dying as well.

 I am all for trying a petition but people will not associate with someone
 who has such a bad reputation. The solution being offered, provide an
 option to choose either Valve only servers or Community servers on every
 quickplay connect would annoy everyone. It would be a more realistic
 solution to switch quickplay settings to community servers after 3-4 hours
 of playing time.




 On Tue, Feb 25, 2014 at 10:28 PM, Peter Jerde peter-h...@jerde.netwrote:

 I don't know about you, but our quickplay traffic has more than TRIPLED
 since the changes. Seems to have been quite a positive change.

  - Peter



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Re: [hlds] Petitioning Valve TF2 Development

[Robert Paulson]

, not given freely, and I don't see anything we have
 done in recent years to earn that respect/trust from anyone.

 Sorry if this was too long/came off as offense or rude, I did not mean it
 to be. I just felt I had to add my 2 cents.



 On Wed, Feb 26, 2014 at 4:34 AM, Anthony anth...@kinevonetwork.comwrote:

  Anyone who believes that petitioning for the default to be community
 servers is relying on quickplay traffic far too heavily or using it to i.e
 Play Ads. Remember with a good community you won't need quickplay for the
 majority of my traffic they actually find the server themselves via the
 steam browser from the data I collected. A few even favorite it afterwards
 which with the new remember IP (Steam Account) they will always know where
 it is.

 The point of community servers is to build a community, sure you can use
 quickplay but it is a tool not a way of knowing members. A high majority
 will go to valve servers but in recent days I've seen others talk about
 'going to prophunt or dodgeball. In their own Free will. The change to QP
 was only positive sure there should be some tweaks but that's for another
 topic.



 On 26/02/2014 12:09, Robert Paulson wrote:

   This far from the worst suggestion I've seen. Perhaps aim for a
 seemless solution where by community servers wasn't even a choice during
 the first few hours of gameplay, becomes a choice later, then becomes the
 default after it has been selected a couple of times.

  I don't like this modification to my idea. The point of it was to
 overcome the huge inertia to simply click play now. They need to be
 automatically switched to community servers.

  It is supposed to be a compromise which guarantees players the ability
 to learn what plain tf2 is supposed to be without completely screwing over
 communities like what's happening now.


 On Wed, Feb 26, 2014 at 2:30 AM, John Irwin j...@thepodkast.com wrote:

   It would be a more realistic solution to switch quickplay settings
 to community servers after 3-4 hours of playing time.

 This far from the worst suggestion I've seen. Perhaps aim for a seemless
 solution where by community servers wasn't even a choice during the first
 few hours of gameplay, becomes a choice later, then becomes the default
 after it has been selected a couple of times.

 I'm not sure a petition is the right way to go though. Particularly one
 that invites reddit to participate. Valve reads these email strings. A good
 message makes itself heard.

 John
   On 26 Feb 2014 08:12, Robert Paulson thepauls...@gmail.com wrote:

   It is not possible unless you did something like switching from fast
 to instant respawn. In that case we went from 10 to a whopping 30 quickplay
 connects per day which is hardly worth being pleased about. Official
 servers are still taking the vast majority of new players who are never
 exposed to community servers.

  For those of you who weren't on quickplay this is also bad news for
 you. Everyone relies on new players since old players quit all the time.
 Fewer players become aware of community servers because it is too easy to
 just click play now.

 If you have a top server you will see more players for now, but these
 are mostly older players fleeing killed servers who will not be playing
 forever. The new equilibrium hasn't been reached yet and we will see more
 servers die as long as Valve continues this. Unfortunately this will be a
 slow decline with many server owners not realizing they are a few months
 away from dying as well.

  I am all for trying a petition but people will not associate with
 someone who has such a bad reputation. The solution being offered, provide
 an option to choose either Valve only servers or Community servers on every
 quickplay connect would annoy everyone. It would be a more realistic
 solution to switch quickplay settings to community servers after 3-4 hours
 of playing time.




 On Tue, Feb 25, 2014 at 10:28 PM, Peter Jerde peter-h...@jerde.netwrote:

 I don't know about you, but our quickplay traffic has more than
 TRIPLED since the changes. Seems to have been quite a positive change.

  - Peter



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Re: [hlds] Petitioning Valve TF2 Development

[Robert Paulson]

Player counts havent dropped any the player experience is sinificantly
improved by not getting into servers full of ads and pay 2 win
modifications.

http://www.steamgraph.net/index.php?action=graphjstime=1appid=440from=138856320to=End+Time

The change happened on January 23. I rest my case.

No its not.

Gametracker stats clearly proves this. I didn't take a screenshot of
Gametracker before this change but I am sure most people here who visited
Gametracker can vouch for me. Where's your proof besides your own opinion?


On Wed, Feb 26, 2014 at 1:53 PM, davidaap1...@gmail.com wrote:

  TF2 player count dropping is proof that this decision was a mistake.
 The player experience was not improved by any significant amount from this
 change.
 Player counts havent dropped any the player experience is sinificantly
 improved by not getting into servers full of ads and pay 2 win
 modifications.

 It was already proved the community experience is superior to Valve
 servers.
 No its not.

 -- Original Message --
 From: Robert Paulson thepauls...@gmail.com
 To: Half-Life dedicated Win32 server mailing list 
 hlds@list.valvesoftware.com
 Sent: 26-2-2014 22:27:57
 Subject: Re: [hlds] Petitioning Valve TF2 Development


  How are we responsible for communities like bets.tf using redirect
 exploits? We do not have any influence over these people. Valve is
 punishing the majority of us who did nothing wrong.

 TF2 player count dropping is proof that this decision was a mistake. The
 player experience was not improved by any significant amount from this
 change.

 It was already proved the community experience is superior to Valve
 servers. There wasn't an official server in the top 200 before this change
 and now look at gametracker. It is now dominated by official servers
 because they get all the new players. If there were 32 slot official
 servers they would also be in the top 20.

 http://www.gametracker.com/search/tf2/?query=srcdssearchipp=50.

 There was another situation like this long before quickplay where
 community servers were put in a custom tab. Thankfully someone at Valve
 came to their senses and removed it. I hope there is someone still working
 on TF2 with the good sense to remove official servers by default as well.




 On Wed, Feb 26, 2014 at 9:52 AM, Silencio Delgato 
 silenciodelg...@gmail.com wrote:

  I think there is more to the Quickplay issue than just whether or not
 QP should default to Valve servers or not. QP itself has caused a lot of
 issues and became the center of controversy ever since it came out in 2011.
 Though some of the changes that have been added recently are a step in the
 right direction, there are still many issues with this functionality that
 need to be addressed and improved upon.

 I'm all for wanting change to this functionality for the better to
 benefit everyone involved, but this petition (and please take no offense)
 seems a bit too short and vague to actually get the kind of change needed
 to make Quickplay a beneficial, reasonable, and extensible system for
 server ops and the community at large. It does not address many of the
 issues that have ended up creating this current situation we are all in and
 does not have a list of concerns or changes or anything that could be
 specifically addressed, it only has a demand and presents a solution that
 is based on an idea that we as server owners deserve players in our
 servers, which is the wrong way to go about this. And lets not forget the
 players, we have to be fair to them as well, regardless of whether or not
 they will be placed in our servers. We have to show that, as a community,
 we are worthy of their presence and a worthwhile experience to take the
 time to be a part of, not the other way around. These days, we seem more
 like enemies to players than friends/fellow players, given these
 recent/past developments regarding the community servers.

 We also have to accept that, while Valve relied on us in the past to put
 up servers for this game, they have the ability to put up their own now.
 However, if they wanted to cut us out entirely, they would have done it
 back in 2011 when Quickplay became a thing. But they allowed us (and still
 allow us) to use the functionality, giving us every opportunity to prove
 that we could use it responsibly and in the best interest of the player.
 Clearly, there were a few who could not do that and thus we were all
 punished. While, in my opinion, Quickplay was not entirely thought all the
 way through and I know I and many others have their own opinions about this
 subject, it does not account for the fact that we as a community were
 unable, and perhaps unwilling, to police ourselves well enough to ensure we
 used this functionality responsibly to avoid Valve stepping in and taking
 the measures it has. Arguably, that isn't our job to police other
 communities/servers, it never has been, and its not Valve's job either. But
 someone had to do this in order

Re: [hlds] Mediated Discussion about Quick play change

[Robert Paulson]

They keep bringing Pinion up because they personally don't like Pinion and
as long as Valve doesn't say anything about it there will continue to be
random speculation.

Why does someone get a personal email response about this but total silence
here?


On Wed, Feb 5, 2014 at 11:47 AM, 1nsane 1nsane...@gmail.com wrote:

 Why do people keep bringing Pinion up? It has nothing to do with this.
 Pinion hosts OFFICIAL servers for CS:GO and L4D2 (yes with ads). Pinion
 requested HTML5 and that happened too. They wouldn't be partners if Pinion
 did something wrong.

 The actions taken by valve were never against Pinion or servers running
 Pinion. But rather against those who spammed ads (Pinion doesn't allow this
 and there's more than one place to get ads from) and used
 fakeplayers/exploits to force ads on players.


 On Wed, Feb 5, 2014 at 9:06 AM, Jason Tango jtrun...@outlook.com wrote:

 SO - we're a little over a week into this, and here's what we've noticed:

 Our 32-player and custom servers are doing relatively fine (although they
 certainly take longer to fill up in the morning, and empty out much earlier
 at night), but it is our 24-slot vanilla servers that are really suffering.
 They still fill up, but only stay full for about 1/3 of the time they
 normally did (all had/have high scores according to the system as well). At
 this point, if the traffic to the Vanilla servers continue to decline, I
 can see us turning them off all together in 6-8 weeks or so.

 The tragedy with that is that players who want to play Vanilla, but don't
 wish to deal the non-Administered Valve servers filled with low-skilled,
 screaming, 12 year-olds (not to mention all the rampant hackers) are going
 to start running out of places to play, and I can't see that being good for
 the game in the long run.

 I suppose my biggest issue with this drastic action that Valve has taken
 is the fact that not only could it have been prevented, *but that they
 took no steps to do so in the first place.*

 For example, in Fletcher's quoted response above, he states that *But
 the player experience was really bad and we felt it called for some
 immediate action.* That's all well and good, but here's the problem -
 they never clearly defined what they considered a bad experience.

 Now, I'm sure we can all *guess* what they mean (the truly terrible
 video/audio ads, the pay to win premium crap, etc.), but since they never
 clearly stated these are things we don't want in Quickplay , they've
 taken this heavy-handed approach to enforce a code of conduct that they
 were *NEVER clear about in the first place*.

 Don't get me wrong - I think Pinion Ads (and their ilk) and all the pay
 to win servers have absolutely NO PLACE in quickplay, and never should
 have been allowed to flourish in the first place - but againwhen Valve
 sits back for over a year while this is all happening, allows it to not
 only continue, but grow -  all without ever coming out with a well-defined,
 documented policy that says *none of this, this or this on qucikplay
 enabled servers*, only to then apply a blanket punishment that lumnps
 all the good server operators who have NEVER run any of that crap in with
 all the bad, then they are not only enforcing a set of rules that *DID
 NOT AND STILL DO NOT EXIST*, but they are doing so in such a blunt, ham
 fisted way as to hurt the very game they are trying to save.

 Why not, instead, simply do the right thing? Why not come out with a
 revised Quickplay policy that is stricter and more clear as to what they DO
 want in quickplay, and simply tell server operators that they have X amount
 of days to comply, or be thrown out of quickplay permanently?

 As it stands - this drastic action is tantamount to penalizing people for
 law(s) that are not even on the books, and grouping all non-offenders in
 with the offenders simply because they do not wish to take the time and
 effort to do the right thing.

 When it comes to gaming, I've always thought of Valve as the smartest
 guys in the room, and this is, quite frankly, not worthy of them. It is
 choosing an easy wrong over a hard right, and it needs to be fixed in days,
 not months.

 Do the right thing, Valve - you're better than this.

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Re: [hlds] [hlds_linux] Important changes to TF2 coming soon

[Robert Paulson]

Everyone is distracted by account based favorites that they don't realize
it will be useless when their servers empty out.

The Show Servers button? It'll probably be a tiny button in the middle of
the screen.

There's no way to entice people to donate and you cannot make modifications
that sets you apart from official servers. Anyone else see the problem with
this?


On Wed, Feb 5, 2014 at 5:39 PM, E. Olsen ceo.eol...@gmail.com wrote:

 I would have to agree with that (not excluding class limits from
 quickplay). We actually just implemented a class limit vote plugin that
 allows the players to pass class limits (that lasts the duration of a map)
 when those kinds of things get out of hand.

 I think a viable alternative would be to say class limits are ok on 25+
 slot servers, since they are custom by definition anyway.


 On Wed, Feb 5, 2014 at 8:24 PM, Valentin G. nextra...@gmail.com wrote:

 This is a whole bunch of very good news. Thanks a lot for the headsup,
 I just have two questions:

 1) Can there be a pool for modded game servers, that the FAQ
 currently completely excludes? Would it be possible to give us a tool
 that designates a server gameplay modded and then just put them all
 together for the players that feel like experimenting? I think that
 these mods are and have been playing a good part in the server
 culture, although I don't like most of them myself. This new system
 seems it's all about giving back options and choice to the players, so
 I think this would be a good idea, even if it was tucked away
 somewhere at the end.

 2) I can see where you are coming from, but does a class limit really
 necessitate a complete exclusion from quickplay? I think it's pretty
 evident, especially on servers that rely heavily on newer players,
 that games can be rendered basically unplayable without enforcing sane
 class limits. TF2 is not fun when 10/12 players play as a sniper.

 On Thu, Feb 6, 2014 at 2:14 AM, thesupremecommander
 thesupremec...@gmail.com wrote:
  One of my admins brought this up, and I never thought to bring it up: is
  there a particular reason for including nocrits but still completely
  excluding nodmgspread? It seems odd to allow players to select one but
 not
  the other through QuickPlay.
 
 
  On Wed, Feb 5, 2014 at 8:01 PM, Stephen A. Yates syate...@cfl.rr.com
  wrote:
 
  golf clap
 
 
 
  From: hlds-boun...@list.valvesoftware.com
  [mailto:hlds-boun...@list.valvesoftware.com] On Behalf Of Ross Bemrose
  Sent: Wednesday, February 5, 2014 7:29 PM
  To: Half-Life dedicated Linux server mailing list; Half-Life dedicated
  Win32 server mailing list (hlds@list.valvesoftware.com);
  hlds_annou...@list.valvesoftware.com
  Subject: Re: [hlds] [hlds_linux] Important changes to TF2 coming soon
 
 
 
  Actually, I'll just post the entire list of things not allowed in
  QuickPlay according to the new FAQ:
 
  · Opening a MOTD window (hidden or visible) that is not
 requested
 
  · Forcing clients to view the MOTD until a timer has expired
 
  · Giving or selling gameplay advantage to players
 
  · Kicking players to make room for reserved slots
 
  · Modifying stock maps, models, or materials
 
  · Running non-default game modes: prop hunt, dodgeball, etc
 
  · Enforcing class limits
 
  · Browser popups
 
  · Granting or modifying economy items, or taking actions that
  devalue players' items, or interfering with the TF2 economy
 
 
 
 
  On 2/5/2014 6:52 PM, Fletcher Dunn wrote:
 
  There are some changes coming that TF2 server operators should know
 about.
 
 
 
  CHANGES TO QUICKPLAY
 
  ---
 
 
 
  The next TF2 update will make two changes to quickplay:
 
 
 
  * Show servers button.  This runs the ordinary quickplay search, but
  instead of joining the server with the highest score, it presents the
 user
  with an ordered list of about 20 servers and lets them pick.  This
 gives
  players much of the convenience of quickplay by finding servers with a
 good
  ping and players on them, but also an easy way to express a preference
 over
  the map, server community, etc.
 
  * We've added an advanced options page that allows players to opt into
 the
  most commonly-requested non-vanilla rules changes: nocrits,
 maxplayers, and
  instant respawn.
 
 
 
  There are no more scoring penalties for maxplayers or rule changes;
 your
  server either matches their search criteria or it doesn't.
 
 
 
  At this time, we are keeping the default quickplay option to Valve
  servers.  However, note that if a player wants to find a server with
 any of
  the supported modifications, then they must land on a community server,
  since Valve servers do not run with these settings.
 
 
 
  We've updated the quickplay policy to more clearly specify what sorts
 of
  server modifications are allowed in quickplay:
 
  https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=2825-AFGJ-3513
 
 
 
  STEAM 

Re: [hlds] Suggestion for those looking for TF2 players ...

[Robert Paulson]

Thanks for the suggestion but are we really reduced to scrounging for a few
players that we are hosting servers for players who we can't even talk to?
Has everyone resigned to the massive player loss from the quickplay changes?

Can someone from Valve please confirm something is being done about the
permanent crippling of community servers?

Why did one person get a personal email response instead of being announced
over this mailing list?


On Fri, Jan 31, 2014 at 5:16 PM, Weasels Lair wea...@weaselslair.comwrote:

 I recently had to shut-down my Asia / Pacific region TF2 server - that
 was formerly hosted in Hong Kong.

 I had an issue with my hosting provider - either with their
 infrastructure not being able to handle the network traffic, or there
 inability to find and clean-out DoS-related endpoints (either sources
 or targets) on their network.  In either event, the end-result is that
 I am no longer hosting a TF2 server in that region.

 There seem to be TF2 players over there that are under-serviced, and
 down-right hungry for non-Vanilla/non-stock TF2 servers.   During most
 of the time I had the server running in Hong Kong, it was getting
 TWICE as many player-visits as it's North America equivalent.

 So, there seems to be a supply-and-demand thing going-on in that
 region, where there are lots of players, but few good servers for
 them.

 I know there are lots of multi-server game-communities out there on
 the Internet(s).  So, what I am suggesting to you, is that you
 consider putting-up a TF2 server somewhere in that region.  It would
 not necessarily have to be in Hong Kong specifically - just somewhere
 in that region.  I had players from ALL over that region - but had the
 most active return/regular players from Hong Kong, Korea, China,
 Taiwan and Japan.

 Apparently (based on what I seen in my HLStatsX:CE pages), I was
 attacking players allow-over that region, including:

 1,977 Players =  Hong Kong
 1,238 Players =  Korea (South - presumably)
 1,211 Players =  Russian Federation (some of this might be to my N.A.
 server)
 347 Players =  China
 276 Players =  Thailand
 237 Players =  Taiwan
 183 Players =  Kazakhstan
 176 Players =  Viet Nam
 138 Players =  Singapore
 124 Players =  Sweden
 90 Players =  Philippines
 89 Players =  Japan
 86 Players =  Macau
 77 Players =  Indonesia
 66 Players =  Malaysia
 57 Players =  Australia
 44 Players =  India
 34 Players =  Mongolia
 12 Players =  Cambodia
 10 Players =  New Zealand

 Anyway, I thought this would be both an opportunity for some community
 to expand, and for the players over there (among whom are obviously my
 ex-players) to have some decent servers available for them.


 Take it or leave it as you will, this is all just FYI/suggestion.

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Re: [hlds] An open letter to Valve about MOTDs

[Robert Paulson]

This would never work. It is impossible to automatically tell if a webpage
isn't a rules listing or a backpack page. Anyone who ran 32 slots knows any
sort of penalty practically removes you from quickplay because there are
too many servers. Since you ran ProTF2 until being banned for fake players
3 times, you should know better than this.

There is one solution already suggested before that would've solved the
reloading ads in the background without completely crippling the MOTD.
Simply block the webpage usermessage if it exceeds a rate limit such as 2
times per 10 minutes.

Speaking to the TF2 devs this would literally only take 5 extra minutes of
coding. There is already code in place for rate limiting inside A2SINFO
handling, so you could copy and paste that. Then insert an if statement
inside the usermessage handling function and remove the VGUIMenu url if the
rate limit is exceeded.



On Sun, Nov 10, 2013 at 2:30 AM, Supreet coachcrock...@gmail.com wrote:

 Agreed with the Doctor. Quickplay does not promote community building.

 Also, another great point mentioned by another individual:

 Ever since free to play, people don't want to donate to community servers.
 They would rather spend on items.

 So, we need ads and full liberty to do whatever we want on the expensive
 server hardware we're running.

 There's a simple solution.

 Valve, tweak the engine to use less resources (we know you won't, too much
 effort, loss of quality) so it would lessen the cost of renting hardware.

 OR

 A very plausible solution (up to the developers) - Figure out a way to
 give ad enabled servers some quick play penalty.

 In the long run, this is a very viable solution that does not require
 custom change.

 Also, how about the CVAR people use to connect using console to avoid ads.

 connect IP matchmaking

 Please Valve, are you really going to try to convince us you put it out
 there for testing and debugging?

 You gave all the whiny kids about ads a free get out of ads pass!

 If you are not going to change anything, at least please remove that CVAR.

 What do you guys think about the CVAR and quickplay penalty idea?

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Re: [hlds] Petition

[Robert Paulson]

Running purely on donations used to be a good choice when Valve didn't
disable attachable items for server owners. Most of the people here
supporting more restrictions aren't even talking about TF2, they are
talking about CSS.

In CSS, there is no quickplay problem and many communities sell items that
aren't possible in TF2. The most popular CSS servers are zombiemod, and
they all make most of their money selling pay-to-win perks.

I'm not asking Valve to stop reloading ads every second in the background,
but repeatedly removing features instead of fixing it properly is a
horrible decision.

As modders/server owners it feels like Valve doesn't care about us, as
though we do not contribute to the popularity of the game, or as though we
are not players ourselves and keenly aware of what is players like and what
tradeoffs they would prefer.

How many of you here bought TF2 thinking Valve was going to remove all
these features and make it 100x harder for people to find non-stock maps
and settings like nocrit and faster respawn? When TF2 was released, there
was an implicit understanding that server owners would have a similar level
of autonomy as in CSS/GMOD/HL2. This understanding is gone now which is why
CS:GO has such a mediocre player base.



On Sat, Nov 9, 2013 at 11:51 AM, Paul ubyu@gmail.com wrote:

 Donations are pretty much a thing of the past for the majority of
 communities, unless you happen to run some premium (practically cheating)
 in-game benefits model. The donation model was more than feasable back when
 the game wasn't free to play and didn't have an in-game store to buy
 virtual items with real money. These days it's not anywhere near as easy to
 do, more so if most of your players are coming from Quickplay.

 Reality does unfortunately appear to be this:
 - Valve doesn't care as long as their actions don't result in a
 considerable drop in the popularity of the game which they modified
 - Officials won't reply to topics such as this, mainly as they aren't
 accountable to any of us and I expect they don't really care much of our
 views anyway
 - Valve will very likely ignore or will not co-operate with Pinion (or any
 other related service) in changing how the recent MOTD changes were
 implemented

 Reality sucks I know, but I'm pretty sure those three points are valid. We
 could continue protesting or debating, I for one would like HTML MOTD's in
 a limited form (e.g. to disable Flash and HTML5 audio/video for Quickplay
 clients) to be the thing for Quickplay clients, but I doubt they'll change
 their stance on this :x.




 On 9 November 2013 18:01, Andre Müller gbs.dead...@gmail.com wrote:

 I'm more on valves side. The html-motd is confusing the quickjoin
 players. I'm not interested in big communities who get money with their
 motd (adverts, clicks). It's not my problem how they do pay their servers.
 I had long time a clan, which was paying itself the servers and without
 adverts and other annoying stuff. So, if a community can't deal with it,
 shut it down. There will come 10 new communities. Always the same shit,
 crying communities without money. Learn to collect money from your members
 to pay your infrastructure.


 2013/11/9 Alteran Ancient alteran_anci...@alteranlabs.co.uk

 This argument is fruitless... really. In more ways than one.

 After watching this go on for a day or two, I've come to a conclusion.
 People that join the old-fashioned way, are joining these servers by choice
 and therefore the server operators are more than entitled to show them
 whatever they want on the MOTD. I am starting to agree with the principle
 that those who enter through quick-join shouldn't be slurped-up by
 overnight server behemoths for the purpose of gaining Ad impressions. Cut
 out that means as a way to roll in the dosh and let players support their
 servers through choice, not chance, and the groups abusing this system to
 get cheap impressions on their MOTD are going to have less of an incentive
 to do so.

 Petitions are normally pointless. Most people don't bother with them,
 and most companies don't even listen to them, because they're not legally
 obligated to do anything about them. I'll tell you what's even more
 pointless, though. Bickering. Friendly and *constructive* debates are
 helpful and get more done than petty arguing and trolling. Guys such as
 ElitePowered and Dr. McKay have the right mindset in that arguing and
 fighting on a *mailing list* is pointless. Please, if you've got
 personal quarrels, take them outside.

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Re: [hlds] An open letter to Valve about MOTDs

[Robert Paulson]

Servers don't need ads much like TF2 didn't need to become free-to-play. It
is just a different model of revenue, one that server owners should be free
to choose.

Once TF2 became F2P, a larger portion of donation money went to the Mann Co
Store instead. It also filled slots full of kids who aren't able to pay
anything because if they had any money they would have moved to new games
like COD. When a game is brand new, there are plenty of people willing to
shell out +100€ on servers and donations without a second thought. But that
time is long past for TF2 now. For those who want more than the cheapest
servers or colocation, donations aren't enough.

If you want to see what a donation only game as old as TF2 looks like, all
you have to do is look at COD4. The top servers there are dominated by the
cheapest servers. If you are donation only be honest with yourself:

- How much are you paying out of your own pocket? Why is it immoral to just
break even when modelers used to release free on Gamebanana are now making
tens of thousands a month on the Mann Co Store?

- Do you really have the best server that can be offered to players? The
answer is most undoubtedly no. Even the fastest servers choke on 32 players
at times and Valve's own servers couldn't even handle 24 players until they
restricted FPS to 66.

- How long have you been around? When you first start a community you will
get a lot of money, but this does not last as communities like Firepowered
have figured out.

Most of the people here wouldn't be so excited about killing off ad
supported servers if they didn't think they would get more players from it.
Really why would you care about ads to the point you are excited about
removing functionality from your own servers? If we're going to have a real
conversation about MOTDs let us be honest about this at least.




On Fri, Nov 8, 2013 at 11:33 AM, DontWannaName! ad...@topnotchclan.comwrote:

 If servers were able to survive for the past 10 years why do we need ads
 now? It used to be you create a good community or your servers die. Now
 it's lets out up tons of ads and let my sub par servers survive without the
 need of a community. In my opinion servers should be running to foster a
 community, it's a game not a billboard for COD.

 Sent from my iPhone 5

  On Nov 8, 2013, at 9:49 AM, hutch hu...@halsplayground.com wrote:
 
  I don't want quick-play players to see the ads either. Not on my servers
 at least. But I do know I want them to see and ignore my motd, not a txt
 file.
 
  If you do not know what I was rambling on about, I rest my case. You
 confuse the html issue with the sanction of ads.
 
  Hutch
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Re: [hlds] Problems caused by connecting server favorites to IP address

[Robert Paulson]

I hate to complain about any sort of non-ip favoriting, but using the
server identification system is a bad choice. It would be simpler and
easier to use DNS which was made for this purpose.

- The main purpose of registration was to make it possible to punish owners
by being able to ban all their servers at the same time, not really to
track anything else. Statistics were already being tracked for unregistered
servers.

- The interface for managing registrations is clearly a hack job. There is
no GUI and it is very awkward copying and pasting the information to config
file.

- As far as I know registration is only supported on TF2. Implementing DNS
would allow other games to take advantage of non-ip favoriting with a
minimal amount of modification. All they need is to add a single convar
like sv_domain, and even that could be optional.

- Given how frequently Steam goes down for planned and unplanned
maintenance, relying on Steam to resolve ips is a mistake.


On Tue, Oct 8, 2013 at 9:54 AM, Jason Tango jtrun...@outlook.com wrote:

 Correct - and here's something else to consider.

 DOS attacks have been on the rise this year, and it only seems they are
 getting worse. Having the server's favorites NOT tied to an IP address
 would also help mitigate these attacks.

 Consider this: If server favorites were tied to the 
 server_identity_account_id
 instead of IP, if/when  a server was on the receiving end of a DOS or
 DDOS attack, it would be possible to
 simply launch that server on a different machine/IP address if necessary.

 Sure, it would add an expense of keeping a machine in reserve, but
 it would cost far less to do that than some of the DDOS mitigation hosts
 charge for hosting.

 Anyway - I sure would like to hear someone from Valve weigh in on this -
 is there any reason why this change CAN'T be implemented?


  From: peter-h...@jerde.net
  Date: Sat, 28 Sep 2013 16:01:55 -0500
  To: hlds@list.valvesoftware.com

  Subject: Re: [hlds] Problems caused by connecting server favorites to IP
 address
 
  It doesn't matter whether some datacenters are helpful about IP
 addresses or not... it's still the case that changing providers *always*
 results in loss of former IP addresses.
 
  The whole point of this thread is that it would be nice if Steam Server
 Favorites weren't tied to IPs, but instead to something more permanent,
 like server_identity_account_id.
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