subject:"\[hlds\] 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 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

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

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

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

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

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 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

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

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.

- 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 
<https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=2825-AFGJ-3513=german#truth>
 =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?

Ju

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

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/

 

 

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

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/

 

 


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

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
>
>
>
> ___
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> please visit:
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>
>
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Re: [hlds] Community Servers and the Gun Mettle Update

2015-09-05 Thread Ash .

I'm with Rowe. We should be speaking to the community. That is the only way
anything is going to change.

Arguing amongst ourselves as to why this has happened is a waste of our
time. Valve have made it abundantly clear they aren't going to change.

The only people who can make them change are the players playing on Valve
servers.

So how about we try to encourage TF2 players to join our servers and after,
gently introduce them to the problems?

There's only one way to do this and that is to go to where the people are.
Go to Valve servers consistently, play with people, make friends and invite
them to be an active part of your community. This is how most normal
communities are built when they can't rely on a stream of people to be sent
to them.

When poster advertising doesn't work (server browser) and your agent is
failing to find you work (Quickplay), then word of mouth is the only
solution.

On 5 September 2015 at 11:05, Robert Paulson <thepauls...@gmail.com> wrote:

> 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 th

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

2015-09-05 Thread Matthias "InstantMuffin" Kollek

Eugh, the saigns guy. Please leave for either one of the following
reasons. You've put yourself into a position where no one will listen to
whatever crap you say and therefore every conversation will go nowhere,
and I'm really really bad at using Thunderbird (this includes setting up
custom spam filters, at least I've gotten rid of you, spam girl).

But I'm going to drop this here just as a proof of how good-hearted and
community-spirited you are.

https://www.saigns.de/premium

On 05.09.2015 11:32, Andreas Grimm 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
<mailto: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>
[mailto: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
<mailto:h...@saigns.de>> wrote:

I guess it's clear enough that there are bots:

http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/436076195939633025/33DF487164DA824E57D7C6CF5B58A55A9EEBFD51/

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

2015-09-05 Thread Tim Anderson

Wasn't that what you have been doing for these past couple of months? Many
people from my community have all sent petitions to Valve and they have
been ignored. From what it seems like, there just isn't enough of us to
create a mass reaction on reddit where Gabe Newell frequently checks up on
to make sure there is no negative PR.

Community servers have already been dying from this change almost 2 years
now, and the majority of players doesn't even know what a community server
is. And they aren't going to bother playing on one because most of them are
lazy like I am.

Sorry to say but this can only be fixed by Valve instead of having he
community force them to act. If you ask the "community" (aren't we part of
the community too?) to complain, most of them won't know what a community
server is, and won't care. So the only thing we can do really is keep
complaining about it ourselves here and make sure to drive other people
away from thinking about hosting servers for any other Valve games.

On Sat, Sep 5, 2015 at 4:22 AM, Ash . <astrida...@googlemail.com> wrote:

> I'm with Rowe. We should be speaking to the community. That is the only
> way anything is going to change.
>
> Arguing amongst ourselves as to why this has happened is a waste of our
> time. Valve have made it abundantly clear they aren't going to change.
>
> The only people who can make them change are the players playing on Valve
> servers.
>
> So how about we try to encourage TF2 players to join our servers and
> after, gently introduce them to the problems?
>
> There's only one way to do this and that is to go to where the people are.
> Go to Valve servers consistently, play with people, make friends and invite
> them to be an active part of your community. This is how most normal
> communities are built when they can't rely on a stream of people to be sent
> to them.
>
> When poster advertising doesn't work (server browser) and your agent is
> failing to find you work (Quickplay), then word of mouth is the only
> solution.
>
> On 5 September 2015 at 11:05, Robert Paulson <thepauls...@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> 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.a

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

2015-09-04 Thread Pat Stay

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 profit than community support :(.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> irony, brought to you in part by the thieves of motdgd
>>>
>>> On Thu, Sep 3, 2015 at 6:37 PM, Alexander Corn 
>>> wrote:
>>>
 I'm getting them as well, just set up a filter in Gmail to route those
 messages to the trash.

 On Thu, Sep 3, 2015 at 6:33 PM, Paul  wrote:

> Apologies for going off topic, but I keep getting spam from different
> emails from someone called 'Amy Happy' via this mailing list. Other than
> unsubscribing from this mailing list or changing email address, is there
> any way I can stop this spam mail being sent to me (I assume others here
> are getting these messages to from her)?
>
> On 3 September 2015 at 21:41, Ross Bemrose  wrote:
>
>> There are a few things added even just recently that are aimed
>> squarely at community servers.
>>
>> One big example of this is the Map Workshop.  Valve servers don't use
>> the map workshop... it exists solely to make it easier to run a community
>> server without needing to host maps on your server (or Fast Download
>> server).  It may have taken 3 months, but it looks like all the bugs have
>> finally been ironed out of it.
>>
>> Even minor things like changing the passtime cvars so that they
>> aren't marked as cheats were done for community servers.
>>
>> Does this make up for separating community servers from official
>> Valve servers?  Probably not.
>>
>> As for the business model, it's pretty clear why QuickPlay was
>> introduced into the game if you look at *when* it was introduced.  Valve
>> servers and Quickplay were introduced in the Uber Update, the same update
>> that made the game free to play.
>>
>> In other words, it was

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

2015-09-04 Thread Pat Stay

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 profit than community support :(.
>>
>>
>>
>> irony, brought to you in part by the thieves of motdgd
>>
>> On Thu, Sep 3, 2015 at 6:37 PM, Alexander Corn 
>> wrote:
>>
>>> I'm getting them as well, just set up a filter in Gmail to route those
>>> messages to the trash.
>>>
>>> On Thu, Sep 3, 2015 at 6:33 PM, Paul  wrote:
>>>
 Apologies for going off topic, but I keep getting spam from different
 emails from someone called 'Amy Happy' via this mailing list. Other than
 unsubscribing from this mailing list or changing email address, is there
 any way I can stop this spam mail being sent to me (I assume others here
 are getting these messages to from her)?

 On 3 September 2015 at 21:41, Ross Bemrose  wrote:

> There are a few things added even just recently that are aimed
> squarely at community servers.
>
> One big example of this is the Map Workshop.  Valve servers don't use
> the map workshop... it exists solely to make it easier to run a community
> server without needing to host maps on your server (or Fast Download
> server).  It may have taken 3 months, but it looks like all the bugs have
> finally been ironed out of it.
>
> Even minor things like changing the passtime cvars so that they aren't
> marked as cheats were done for community servers.
>
> Does this make up for separating community servers from official Valve
> servers?  Probably not.
>
> As for the business model, it's pretty clear why QuickPlay was
> introduced into the game if you look at *when* it was introduced.  Valve
> servers and Quickplay were introduced in the Uber Update, the same update
> that made the game free to play.
>
> In other words, it was introduced as a hook to get people to play the
> game and spend money.
>
> It wasn't really a surprise to anyone who used QuickPlay that Valve
> eventually changed it to default to Valve servers... people already
> explained the reason why further up the thread.
>
> It's also not a surprise that Gun Mettle contracts are restricted to
> official servers.  If they weren't, some enterprising person would write a
> server script that duplicates the actions needed to award points and just
> use it to farm from a ton of accounts, which would in turn drive down the
> value of economy items.
>
> On Thu, Sep 3, 2015 at 3:05 PM, ICS Staff  wrote:
>
>> 2005, community servers were first party servers, there were no Valve
>> servers.
>>
>> 2014, community servers are 3rd party servers, Valve servers give you
>> XP, drops from missions, players get directed only to Valve servers and
>> community servers are in separate pool completely.
>>
>> What's next, you take away the drops too or are you really going to
>> do something to keep us running servers or not? Too afraid to have open
>> discussion about the matter? Yeah, thought so.
>>
>> -ics
>>
>>
>> ___
>> To unsubscribe, edit your list preferences, or view the list
>> archives, please visit:
>> https://list.valvesoftware.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/hlds
>>
>
>
>
> --
> Ross Bemrose
>
> ___
> To unsubscribe, edit your list preferences, or view the list

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

2015-09-04 Thread Paul

Need I also remind you that 'on topic' is referring to *[hlds] Community
Servers and the Gun Mettle Update*, not MOTDgd. If you have a valid
complaint about MOTDgd then please either contact them or if you think it's
appropriate then open a new thread where the conversation is relevant to
the thread's subject. Thanks.

On 4 September 2015 at 11:35, Pat Stay <patsta...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Sure, we can stay on topic
>
> >Paul ubyu@gmail.com via
> <https://support.google.com/mail/answer/1311182?hl=en>
> 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 <ubyu@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> How about we stay on topic here?
>>
>> On 4 September 2015 at 10:42, Pat Stay <patsta...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> >Paul ubyu@gmail.com via
>>> <https://support.google.com/mail/answer/1311182?hl=en>
>>> 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 profit than community support :(.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> irony, brought to you in part by the thieves of motdgd
>>>
>>> On Thu, Sep 3, 2015 at 6:37 PM, Alexander Corn <mc...@doctormckay.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>> I'm getting them as well, just set up a filter in Gmail to route those
>>>> messages to the trash.
>>>>
>>>> On Thu, Sep 3, 2015 at 6:33 PM, Paul <ubyu@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Apologies for going off topic, but I keep getting spam from different
>>>>> emails from someone called 'Amy Happy' via this mailing list. Other than
>>>>> unsubscribing from this mailing list or changing email address, is there
>>>>> any way I can stop this spam mail being sent to me (I assume others here
>>>>> are getting these messages to from her)?
>>>>>
>>>>> On 3 September 2015 at 21:41, Ross Bemrose <rbemr...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> There are a few things added even just recently that are aimed
>>>>>> squarely at community servers.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> One big example of this is the Map Workshop.  Valve servers don't use
>>>>>> the map workshop... it exists solely to make it easier to run a community
>>>>>> server without needing to host maps on your server (or Fast Download
>>>>>> server).  It may have taken 3 months, but it looks like all the bugs have
>>>>>> finally been ironed out of it.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Even minor things like changing the passtime cvars so that they
>>>>>> aren't marked as cheats were done for community servers.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Does this make up for separating community servers from official
>>>>>> Valve servers?  Probably not.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> As for the business model, it's pretty clear why QuickPlay was
>>>>>> introduced into the game if you look at *when* it was introduced.  Valve
>>>>>> servers and Quickplay were introduced in the Uber Update, the same update
>>>>>> that made the game free to play.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> In other words, it was introduced as a hook to get people to play the
>>>>>> game and spend money.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> It wasn't really a surprise to anyone who used QuickPlay that Valve
>>>>>> eventually changed it to default to Valve servers... people already
>>>>>> expla

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

2015-09-04 Thread Pat Stay

>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 profit than community support :(.



irony, brought to you in part by the thieves of motdgd

On Thu, Sep 3, 2015 at 6:37 PM, Alexander Corn 
wrote:

> I'm getting them as well, just set up a filter in Gmail to route those
> messages to the trash.
>
> On Thu, Sep 3, 2015 at 6:33 PM, Paul  wrote:
>
>> Apologies for going off topic, but I keep getting spam from different
>> emails from someone called 'Amy Happy' via this mailing list. Other than
>> unsubscribing from this mailing list or changing email address, is there
>> any way I can stop this spam mail being sent to me (I assume others here
>> are getting these messages to from her)?
>>
>> On 3 September 2015 at 21:41, Ross Bemrose  wrote:
>>
>>> There are a few things added even just recently that are aimed squarely
>>> at community servers.
>>>
>>> One big example of this is the Map Workshop.  Valve servers don't use
>>> the map workshop... it exists solely to make it easier to run a community
>>> server without needing to host maps on your server (or Fast Download
>>> server).  It may have taken 3 months, but it looks like all the bugs have
>>> finally been ironed out of it.
>>>
>>> Even minor things like changing the passtime cvars so that they aren't
>>> marked as cheats were done for community servers.
>>>
>>> Does this make up for separating community servers from official Valve
>>> servers?  Probably not.
>>>
>>> As for the business model, it's pretty clear why QuickPlay was
>>> introduced into the game if you look at *when* it was introduced.  Valve
>>> servers and Quickplay were introduced in the Uber Update, the same update
>>> that made the game free to play.
>>>
>>> In other words, it was introduced as a hook to get people to play the
>>> game and spend money.
>>>
>>> It wasn't really a surprise to anyone who used QuickPlay that Valve
>>> eventually changed it to default to Valve servers... people already
>>> explained the reason why further up the thread.
>>>
>>> It's also not a surprise that Gun Mettle contracts are restricted to
>>> official servers.  If they weren't, some enterprising person would write a
>>> server script that duplicates the actions needed to award points and just
>>> use it to farm from a ton of accounts, which would in turn drive down the
>>> value of economy items.
>>>
>>> On Thu, Sep 3, 2015 at 3:05 PM, ICS Staff  wrote:
>>>
 2005, community servers were first party servers, there were no Valve
 servers.

 2014, community servers are 3rd party servers, Valve servers give you
 XP, drops from missions, players get directed only to Valve servers and
 community servers are in separate pool completely.

 What's next, you take away the drops too or are you really going to do
 something to keep us running servers or not? Too afraid to have open
 discussion about the matter? Yeah, thought so.

 -ics


 ___
 To unsubscribe, edit your list preferences, or view the list archives,
 please visit:
 https://list.valvesoftware.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/hlds

>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> Ross Bemrose
>>>
>>> ___
>>> To unsubscribe, edit your list preferences, or view the list archives,
>>> please visit:
>>> https://list.valvesoftware.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/hlds
>>>
>>>
>>
>> ___
>> To unsubscribe, edit your list preferences, or view the list archives,
>> please visit:
>> https://list.valvesoftware.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/hlds
>>
>>
>
> ___
> To unsubscribe, edit your list preferences, or view the list archives,
> please visit:
> https://list.valvesoftware.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/hlds
>
>
___
To unsubscribe, edit your list preferences, or view the list archives, please 
visit:
https://list.valvesoftware.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/hlds

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

2015-09-04 Thread Paul

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 profit than community support :(.
>
>
>
> irony, brought to you in part by the thieves of motdgd
>
> On Thu, Sep 3, 2015 at 6:37 PM, Alexander Corn 
> wrote:
>
>> I'm getting them as well, just set up a filter in Gmail to route those
>> messages to the trash.
>>
>> On Thu, Sep 3, 2015 at 6:33 PM, Paul  wrote:
>>
>>> Apologies for going off topic, but I keep getting spam from different
>>> emails from someone called 'Amy Happy' via this mailing list. Other than
>>> unsubscribing from this mailing list or changing email address, is there
>>> any way I can stop this spam mail being sent to me (I assume others here
>>> are getting these messages to from her)?
>>>
>>> On 3 September 2015 at 21:41, Ross Bemrose  wrote:
>>>
 There are a few things added even just recently that are aimed squarely
 at community servers.

 One big example of this is the Map Workshop.  Valve servers don't use
 the map workshop... it exists solely to make it easier to run a community
 server without needing to host maps on your server (or Fast Download
 server).  It may have taken 3 months, but it looks like all the bugs have
 finally been ironed out of it.

 Even minor things like changing the passtime cvars so that they aren't
 marked as cheats were done for community servers.

 Does this make up for separating community servers from official Valve
 servers?  Probably not.

 As for the business model, it's pretty clear why QuickPlay was
 introduced into the game if you look at *when* it was introduced.  Valve
 servers and Quickplay were introduced in the Uber Update, the same update
 that made the game free to play.

 In other words, it was introduced as a hook to get people to play the
 game and spend money.

 It wasn't really a surprise to anyone who used QuickPlay that Valve
 eventually changed it to default to Valve servers... people already
 explained the reason why further up the thread.

 It's also not a surprise that Gun Mettle contracts are restricted to
 official servers.  If they weren't, some enterprising person would write a
 server script that duplicates the actions needed to award points and just
 use it to farm from a ton of accounts, which would in turn drive down the
 value of economy items.

 On Thu, Sep 3, 2015 at 3:05 PM, ICS Staff  wrote:

> 2005, community servers were first party servers, there were no Valve
> servers.
>
> 2014, community servers are 3rd party servers, Valve servers give you
> XP, drops from missions, players get directed only to Valve servers and
> community servers are in separate pool completely.
>
> What's next, you take away the drops too or are you really going to do
> something to keep us running servers or not? Too afraid to have open
> discussion about the matter? Yeah, thought so.
>
> -ics
>
>
> ___
> To unsubscribe, edit your list preferences, or view the list archives,
> please visit:
> https://list.valvesoftware.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/hlds
>

 --
 Ross Bemrose

 ___
 To unsubscribe, edit your list preferences, or view the list archives,
 please visit:
 https://list.valvesoftware.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/hlds

>>>
>>> ___
>>> To unsubscribe, edit your list preferences, or view the list archives,
>>> please visit:
>>> https://list.valvesoftware.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/hlds
>>>
>>>
>>
>> ___
>> To unsubscribe, edit your list preferences, or view the list archives,
>> please visit:
>> https://list.valvesoftware.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/hlds
>>
>>
>
> ___
> To unsubscribe, edit your list preferences, or view the list archives,
> please visit:
> https://list.valvesoftware.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/hlds
>
>
___
To unsubscribe, edit your list preferences, or view the list archives, please 
visit:
https://list.valvesoftware.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/hlds

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

2015-09-04 Thread Lucas Wagner

Some observations that I've made that I haven't heard addressed by anyone
yet:

   - The game is 8 years old now. That's an extraordinarily long life for a
   game. What is the end-game for TF2? Has Valve considered this? For example,
   when they decide it's time to reallocate their hosted servers, will they
   have given the community enough time to build a network of servers to
   support the small but loyal followers of this game? Does Valve care? Should
   they care? I don't know the answer.
   - Valve servers, while deficient in many ways, do provide some much
   needed variety. Community servers largely run a set of 4-5 stock maps that
   people play on. You want to play something different, like plr_nightfall,
   guess where you can play that? Valve servers only. It's nice, and it's been
   one thing I've enjoyed about the switch. I can play something that's not
   2fort, dustbowl, turbine, hightower, etc. If we had more community servers
   we'd just have more 2fort/dustbowl/turbine 24/7 servers. Isn't there enough
   of these already?

Full disclosure: I ran community servers with a few friends. They died at
the height of the problem. Our popular servers were 24/7 2fort, 24/7
dustbowl, and 24/7 turbine. Eventually qp referrals required 18 people to
be on the server. We noticed that referrals stopped after 20 people, and
were too inconsistent to keep the server full. Our friends in another
community have succeeded since the big change, but they've had to resort to
rather elaborate measures to make it work. They have a full-time seeding
staff that is assigned shifts to keep servers populated 24/7. That sounds
like a job to me...

Not sure all of that is related, but I'd be interested in hearing opinions
on those observations.

On Fri, Sep 4, 2015 at 6:58 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

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

@ Lucas Wagner:

Some very good points, I disagree with this statement, however:

If we had more community servers we'd just have more 2fort/dustbowl/turbine
> 24/7 servers. Isn't there enough of these already?

Prior to quickplay, there was a plethora of "rotation" servers out there
hosted by the community (there are still some, but their numbers continue
to dwindle). Our community, for example, ran a CP rotation server (both
stock and custom maps), a CTF rotation server (all maps EXCEPT 2Fort, to
include over a dozen custom maps) along with half a dozen other "rotation"
servers. All of those servers were very popular, and stayed full 18+ hours
per day.

Once Valve made their drastic quickplay changes, all but our payload
rotation servers started a long, slow slide in population (almost all
players eventually move on to new games, and if new players can't find you,
then your server will slowly die out).

There are a number of factors that contribute to that, but I can tell you
as a server operator running TF2 servers since 2008:

- Obviously, any servers that host anything but Valve maps are immediately
at a major disadvantage, since any custom maps immediately removes a server
from quickplay.

- EVERY server loses players during/after a map change (even Valve
servers). The huge difference here that allows Valve to host so many
rotation servers is that they have an enormous and insurmountable (under
the current policies/UI design) advantage in terms of player traffic, and
they feed their servers a constant steam of new players.  Community server
operators were forced into so many "24/7" one-map server because those are
virtually the only ones that stay full. That's also the reason only the
most popular maps get the majority of community representation.

- This has also resulted in all "non-payload" game modes (CP, CTF, PLR)
experiencing an unnatural and artificial decrease in popularity. For it's
first 5 years, our CP rotation server was one of the most popular servers
online, frequenting appearing in the top 25 TF2 servers played. As of last
year, we were forced to shut it down due to dwindling player traffic.

Consider this:

If quickplay didn't exist, and all the BS exploits were disabled (fake
players/clients, etc. that the bad apples used to trick players) so
everyone was on a level playing field, do you honestly think that Valve's
un-moderated, racist-filled, non-team oriented servers would really be able
to compete with community servers? I'm sure there would be some players
that still wanted that kind of environment, but I guarantee that once most
players experienced a well-run, competitive, asshat-free moderated
community server, they would never visit a Valve server again, and would
probably be more inclined to become a long-term player.

The thing is, there's a middle-ground here that would (I believe) satisfy
everyone. A simple UI (and tweak to the underlying system) that has been
suggested multiple times is this one:

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

That would satisfy both those that like things the way they are, and
communities that would like more equitable treatment. For the life of me, I
can't understand why Valve is so apathetic towards the idea - but that
doesn't mean I'm going to stop asking ;-)

On Fri, Sep 4, 2015 at 12:31 PM, Lucas Wagner  wrote:

> Some observations that I've made that I haven't heard addressed by anyone
> yet:
>
>- The game is 8 years old now. That's an extraordinarily long life for
>a game. What is the end-game for TF2? Has Valve considered this? For
>example, when they decide it's time to reallocate their hosted servers,
>will they have given the community enough time to build a network of
>servers to support the small but loyal followers of this game? Does Valve
>care? Should they care? I don't know the answer.
>- Valve servers, while deficient in many ways, do provide some much
>needed variety. Community servers largely run a set of 4-5 stock maps that
>people play on. You want to play something different, like plr_nightfall,
>guess where you can play that? Valve servers only. It's nice, and it's been
>one thing I've enjoyed about the switch. I can play something that's not
>2fort, dustbowl, turbine, hightower, etc. If we had more community servers
>we'd just have more 2fort/dustbowl/turbine 24/7 servers. Isn't there enough
>of these already?
>
> Full disclosure: I ran community servers with a few friends. They died at
> the height of the problem. Our popular servers were 24/7 2fort, 24/7
> dustbowl, and 24/7 turbine. Eventually qp referrals required 18 people to
> be on the server. We noticed that referrals stopped after 20 people, and
> were too inconsistent to keep the server full. Our friends in another
> community have succeeded since the big change, but they've had to resort to
> rather elaborate measures to make it work. They have a full-time seeding
> staff that is assigned

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

2015-09-04 Thread John Irwin

@E. Olsen +1 to you and to @Weasels' response.

Very well written. In many ways quite refreshing to hear such a well
constructed argument about a topic we're all very familiar.

The linked UI, as an example, serves its purpose. No point getting into the
grit of what it should look like since ultimately this is Valve's purvey.

A new UI may actually be something they could be encouraged to work towards
given the plethora of game modes they currently have. That said I'm
struggling to come up with a single game or website Valve operates where
the default UI (or UX) is enjoyably effective rather than usably
functional.

Actually, given how comfortable Valve is using community created content
for their games, a fun/sponsored UI competition - created in collaboration
with the collected force of community server owners - may be a way to draw
attention to the issue as we see it.

I'd be happy to throw some effort into making this a thing. If anyone else
is interested please feel free to message me off-list.

Agro

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

2015-09-04 Thread Weasels Lair

Great post. I agree with 90% of what you said and (re-)proposed!

I think the "Any" button is potentially problematic. Some might click "Any"
and get something really NPC (like my servers). Better if they can only get
that by asking for community severs or browsing.
On Sep 4, 2015 10:50 AM, "E. Olsen"  wrote:

> @ Lucas Wagner:
>
> Some very good points, I disagree with this statement, however:
>
> If we had more community servers we'd just have more
>> 2fort/dustbowl/turbine 24/7 servers. Isn't there enough of these already?
>
>
> Prior to quickplay, there was a plethora of "rotation" servers out there
> hosted by the community (there are still some, but their numbers continue
> to dwindle). Our community, for example, ran a CP rotation server (both
> stock and custom maps), a CTF rotation server (all maps EXCEPT 2Fort, to
> include over a dozen custom maps) along with half a dozen other "rotation"
> servers. All of those servers were very popular, and stayed full 18+ hours
> per day.
>
> Once Valve made their drastic quickplay changes, all but our payload
> rotation servers started a long, slow slide in population (almost all
> players eventually move on to new games, and if new players can't find you,
> then your server will slowly die out).
>
> There are a number of factors that contribute to that, but I can tell you
> as a server operator running TF2 servers since 2008:
>
> - Obviously, any servers that host anything but Valve maps are immediately
> at a major disadvantage, since any custom maps immediately removes a server
> from quickplay.
>
> - EVERY server loses players during/after a map change (even Valve
> servers). The huge difference here that allows Valve to host so many
> rotation servers is that they have an enormous and insurmountable (under
> the current policies/UI design) advantage in terms of player traffic, and
> they feed their servers a constant steam of new players.  Community server
> operators were forced into so many "24/7" one-map server because those are
> virtually the only ones that stay full. That's also the reason only the
> most popular maps get the majority of community representation.
>
> - This has also resulted in all "non-payload" game modes (CP, CTF, PLR)
> experiencing an unnatural and artificial decrease in popularity. For it's
> first 5 years, our CP rotation server was one of the most popular servers
> online, frequenting appearing in the top 25 TF2 servers played. As of last
> year, we were forced to shut it down due to dwindling player traffic.
>
> Consider this:
>
> If quickplay didn't exist, and all the BS exploits were disabled (fake
> players/clients, etc. that the bad apples used to trick players) so
> everyone was on a level playing field, do you honestly think that Valve's
> un-moderated, racist-filled, non-team oriented servers would really be able
> to compete with community servers? I'm sure there would be some players
> that still wanted that kind of environment, but I guarantee that once most
> players experienced a well-run, competitive, asshat-free moderated
> community server, they would never visit a Valve server again, and would
> probably be more inclined to become a long-term player.
>
> The thing is, there's a middle-ground here that would (I believe) satisfy
> everyone. A simple UI (and tweak to the underlying system) that has been
> suggested multiple times is this one:
>
> http://i.imgur.com/tAmWXj6.png
>
> That would satisfy both those that like things the way they are, and
> communities that would like more equitable treatment. For the life of me, I
> can't understand why Valve is so apathetic towards the idea - but that
> doesn't mean I'm going to stop asking ;-)
>
>
> On Fri, Sep 4, 2015 at 12:31 PM, Lucas Wagner  wrote:
>
>> Some observations that I've made that I haven't heard addressed by anyone
>> yet:
>>
>>- The game is 8 years old now. That's an extraordinarily long life
>>for a game. What is the end-game for TF2? Has Valve considered this? For
>>example, when they decide it's time to reallocate their hosted servers,
>>will they have given the community enough time to build a network of
>>servers to support the small but loyal followers of this game? Does Valve
>>care? Should they care? I don't know the answer.
>>- Valve servers, while deficient in many ways, do provide some much
>>needed variety. Community servers largely run a set of 4-5 stock maps that
>>people play on. You want to play something different, like plr_nightfall,
>>guess where you can play that? Valve servers only. It's nice, and it's 
>> been
>>one thing I've enjoyed about the switch. I can play something that's not
>>2fort, dustbowl, turbine, hightower, etc. If we had more community servers
>>we'd just have more 2fort/dustbowl/turbine 24/7 servers. Isn't there 
>> enough
>>of these already?
>>
>> Full disclosure: I ran community servers with a few friends. They

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

@ Weasels Lair:

Agreed, however I look at that button as kind of a "I feel lucky" button,
in that it would allow players to find unique servers/game modes they might
not find otherwise (kind of a "stumble upon" for servers).

I think an important ingredient in a UI like that would be a re-design of
the client blacklisting system that would simply work with both the server
browser AND quickplay. That way, in the event the player gets connected to
a server they don't like, they could simply select "Never show me that
server again" in their blacklist and the problem would solve itself, etc.

The key, really, is player choice, and letting it decide the direction of
the game, instead of the false direction setting certain "defaults" as
Valve has done to artificially push the game in one direction or another.
Consider thisif Valve changed the first choice in quickplay from
Payload to Control Point, would control point maps/servers suddenly become
more popular?

Or course they would, because the "default effect
" gives the
default option an unnatural advantage for both traffic and player counts.

That, of course, is simply another example of how  a system like quickplay
(or at least how it is implemented) has been stunningly harmful to the
game's diversity and development. When you only show a limited menu, and
essentially hide all the diversity that is available by default, almost all
of them will order the same thing each and every timethe consequences
of which are a slow, gradual decline in anything that doesn't fit those
"default" parameters, to include maps, game modes, and settings.

It's a false premise to say that community servers offer limited choices
these days. The truth is, quickplay caused community server to eliminate
choice, one map at a time.

Sure, it easy to say "but Valve introduced the Maps Workshop, and that's
for community servers, right?"but the truth is, that's more for Valve
themselves than anything else - since it gives them an easier path to find
what few maps are still being developed and make it their own. Look no
further than their own forums and all the people asking why they can't find
any servers hosting workshop mapsit's because those servers are nearly
impossible to fill (again, because of the imbalance created by quickoplay).

On Fri, Sep 4, 2015 at 3:04 PM, John Irwin  wrote:

> @E. Olsen +1 to you and to @Weasels' response.
>
> Very well written. In many ways quite refreshing to hear such a well
> constructed argument about a topic we're all very familiar.
>
> The linked UI, as an example, serves its purpose. No point getting into
> the grit of what it should look like since ultimately this is Valve's
> purvey.
>
> A new UI may actually be something they could be encouraged to work
> towards given the plethora of game modes they currently have. That said I'm
> struggling to come up with a single game or website Valve operates where
> the default UI (or UX) is enjoyably effective rather than usably
> functional.
>
> Actually, given how comfortable Valve is using community created content
> for their games, a fun/sponsored UI competition - created in collaboration
> with the collected force of community server owners - may be a way to draw
> attention to the issue as we see it.
>
> I'd be happy to throw some effort into making this a thing. If anyone else
> is interested please feel free to message me off-list.
>
> Agro
>
> --
> KritzKast.com  | thepodkast.com
>
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Re: [hlds] Community Servers and the Gun Mettle Update

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 
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 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

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

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

>
> 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

>
> 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?

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.

Why wouldn't they already flock to your servers if being ad-free was such a
> boon?

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.

How do you see this change bringing all the players at Saigns back to your
> servers when they don't even have ads?

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." I really don't think one correlates to the
other, as there are so many other factors involved (geographic location,
network quality, etc.). Frankly, if/when our servers go away, a large
portion of my players (who've been with us for 7+ years) will most likely
simply stop playing the game.

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.

I doubt eliminating motd ads would benefit our community directly in any
way, quite frankly. I DO, however, think it would greatly benefit the game
by removing what is perceived as a negative aspect of community servers by
a very large swath of players. It certainly wouldn't fix all of the other
perfectly valid issues you mentioned, but perception is important, and
while it might not be a boon for the funding model of some communities
(most of which, I would think, will survive just fine through donations if
they simply received equal treatment as they had in the past), it would
certainly be a good step towards restoring the perception a good many
player have of community servers.

But I get it - some people want the ability to run ads on their servers
without restriction, and some see them as harmful overall to the future of
the game itself. Time will tell which group Valve thinks is right.

That's if, of course, they do anything at all. If the last two years is any
indication, we're probably all talking to ourselves right now ;-)

On Fri, Sep 4, 2015 at 10:17 PM, Robert Paulson 
wrote:

> 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  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 
>> 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

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

2015-09-04 Thread Matthias "InstantMuffin" Kollek

For correctness I would like to say that there are few servers that will 
force you to activate motds in order to be able to join a team.


On 05.09.2015 06:22, Robert Paulson wrote:


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

2015-09-04 Thread Rowedahelicon

We should start speaking to the community instead

On Fri, Sep 4, 2015 at 11:07 PM, E. Olsen  wrote:

> 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?
>
>
> 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.
>
> Why wouldn't they already flock to your servers if being ad-free was such
>> a boon?
>
>
> 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.
>
> How do you see this change bringing all the players at Saigns back to your
>> servers when they don't even have ads?
>
>
> 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." I really don't think one
> correlates to the other, as there are so many other factors involved
> (geographic location, network quality, etc.). Frankly, if/when our servers
> go away, a large portion of my players (who've been with us for 7+ years)
> will most likely simply stop playing the game.
>
> 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.
>
>
> I doubt eliminating motd ads would benefit our community directly in any
> way, quite frankly. I DO, however, think it would greatly benefit the game
> by removing what is perceived as a negative aspect of community servers by
> a very large swath of players. It certainly wouldn't fix all of the other
> perfectly valid issues you mentioned, but perception is important, and
> while it might not be a boon for the funding model of some communities
> (most of which, I would think, will survive just fine through donations if
> they simply received equal treatment as they had in the past), it would
> certainly be a good step towards restoring the perception a good many
> player have of community servers.
>
> But I get it - some people want the ability to run ads on their servers
> without restriction, and some see them as harmful overall to the future of
> the game itself. Time will tell which group Valve thinks is right.
>
> That's if, of course, they do anything at all. If the last two years is
> any indication, we're probably all talking to ourselves right now ;-)
>
>
>
> On Fri, Sep 4, 2015 at 10:17 PM, Robert Paulson 
> wrote:
>
>> 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  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 
>>> 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

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

2015-09-04 Thread Andreas Grimm

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 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

2015-09-04 Thread Alexander Corn

While I realize that plr_nightfall_final was just your example, unpopular
maps aren't played on community servers just because they're unpopular. At
this moment, there are 6 populated nightfall community servers, and 9
populated nightfall Valve servers.

McKay

On Fri, Sep 4, 2015 at 12:31 PM, Lucas Wagner  wrote:

> Some observations that I've made that I haven't heard addressed by anyone
> yet:
>
>- The game is 8 years old now. That's an extraordinarily long life for
>a game. What is the end-game for TF2? Has Valve considered this? For
>example, when they decide it's time to reallocate their hosted servers,
>will they have given the community enough time to build a network of
>servers to support the small but loyal followers of this game? Does Valve
>care? Should they care? I don't know the answer.
>- Valve servers, while deficient in many ways, do provide some much
>needed variety. Community servers largely run a set of 4-5 stock maps that
>people play on. You want to play something different, like plr_nightfall,
>guess where you can play that? Valve servers only. It's nice, and it's been
>one thing I've enjoyed about the switch. I can play something that's not
>2fort, dustbowl, turbine, hightower, etc. If we had more community servers
>we'd just have more 2fort/dustbowl/turbine 24/7 servers. Isn't there enough
>of these already?
>
> Full disclosure: I ran community servers with a few friends. They died at
> the height of the problem. Our popular servers were 24/7 2fort, 24/7
> dustbowl, and 24/7 turbine. Eventually qp referrals required 18 people to
> be on the server. We noticed that referrals stopped after 20 people, and
> were too inconsistent to keep the server full. Our friends in another
> community have succeeded since the big change, but they've had to resort to
> rather elaborate measures to make it work. They have a full-time seeding
> staff that is assigned shifts to keep servers populated 24/7. That sounds
> like a job to me...
>
> Not sure all of that is related, but I'd be interested in hearing opinions
> on those observations.
>
> On Fri, Sep 4, 2015 at 6:58 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

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

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 
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  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 the "Policy of Truth"/Quickplay Rules, etc. If
>> there are players that find that kind of silly silly stuff fun, they should
>> be able to pay for if they like.
>>
>> That's the distinction - one source of revenue encourages building value
>> in a server environment, the other focuses solely on attaining the maximum
>> possible player connections. It might be little difference to some, but I
>> think the distinction is an important one.
>>
>> As for the rest of the "stop beating the horse about motd ads, they
>> aren't a problem" argument, I'll agree to disagree - again, if for no other
>> reason than Valve has *never* said otherwise, and I think they've
>> brought far more damage to the *perception* of community servers than
>> anything else - mainly due to the ease at which they will always be abused.
>> Maybe Valve did use them (or allow them) on their servers (I've heard that
>> before, but I've never seen a Valve server displaying a motd ad), but they
>> are clearly not an advocate of them, or the thousands of Valve servers
>> would be serving up those ads everyday (probably making Valve a bundle in
>> the process).
>>
>> You may call it beating a dead horse, but no one here can speak for Valve
>> but Valve - so until they actually weigh in one way or the other, your
>> point of view is no more valid than mine.
>>
>>
>> On Fri, Sep 4, 2015 at 6:35 PM, Matthias "InstantMuffin" Kollek <
>> proph...@sticed.org> wrote:
>>
>>> "Use" != "Abuse"
>>>
>>> But honestly, yes. Communities used to run on actual donations. Not
>>> whatever people call donations these days to avoid paypal refunding.
>>> If you need to resort

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

2015-09-04 Thread Rowedahelicon

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 
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.
>
>
> On Fri, Sep 4, 2015 at 2:24 PM, E. Olsen  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 
>> 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

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

2015-09-04 Thread Matthias "InstantMuffin" Kollek


"Use" != "Abuse"

But honestly, yes. Communities used to run on actual donations. Not 
whatever people call donations these days to avoid paypal refunding.
If you need to resort to ads to keep going, you're either doing 
something wrong, or you shouldn't be hosting servers.

I hate ads, and I don't like people supporting them.
However with the situation as it is now, it is hard to attract players 
if you're not trying to be yet 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 > 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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Re: [hlds] Community Servers and the Gun Mettle Update

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  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 
> 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 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

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

>
> 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 the "Policy of Truth"/Quickplay Rules, etc. If
there are players that find that kind of silly silly stuff fun, they should
be able to pay for if they like.

That's the distinction - one source of revenue encourages building value in
a server environment, the other focuses solely on attaining the maximum
possible player connections. It might be little difference to some, but I
think the distinction is an important one.

As for the rest of the "stop beating the horse about motd ads, they aren't
a problem" argument, I'll agree to disagree - again, if for no other reason
than Valve has *never* said otherwise, and I think they've brought far more
damage to the *perception* of community servers than anything else - mainly
due to the ease at which they will always be abused. Maybe Valve did use
them (or allow them) on their servers (I've heard that before, but I've
never seen a Valve server displaying a motd ad), but they are clearly not
an advocate of them, or the thousands of Valve servers would be serving up
those ads everyday (probably making Valve a bundle in the process).

You may call it beating a dead horse, but no one here can speak for Valve
but Valve - so until they actually weigh in one way or the other, your
point of view is no more valid than mine.

On Fri, Sep 4, 2015 at 6:35 PM, Matthias "InstantMuffin" Kollek <
proph...@sticed.org> wrote:

> "Use" != "Abuse"
>
> But honestly, yes. Communities used to run on actual donations. Not
> whatever people call donations these days to avoid paypal refunding.
> If you need to resort to ads to keep going, you're either doing something
> wrong, or you shouldn't be hosting servers.
> I hate ads, and I don't like people supporting them.
> However with the situation as it is now, it is hard to attract players if
> you're not trying to be yet 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> 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

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

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  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 the "Policy of Truth"/Quickplay Rules, etc. If
> there are players that find that kind of silly silly stuff fun, they should
> be able to pay for if they like.
>
> That's the distinction - one source of revenue encourages building value
> in a server environment, the other focuses solely on attaining the maximum
> possible player connections. It might be little difference to some, but I
> think the distinction is an important one.
>
> As for the rest of the "stop beating the horse about motd ads, they aren't
> a problem" argument, I'll agree to disagree - again, if for no other reason
> than Valve has *never* said otherwise, and I think they've brought far
> more damage to the *perception* of community servers than anything else -
> mainly due to the ease at which they will always be abused. Maybe Valve did
> use them (or allow them) on their servers (I've heard that before, but I've
> never seen a Valve server displaying a motd ad), but they are clearly not
> an advocate of them, or the thousands of Valve servers would be serving up
> those ads everyday (probably making Valve a bundle in the process).
>
> You may call it beating a dead horse, but no one here can speak for Valve
> but Valve - so until they actually weigh in one way or the other, your
> point of view is no more valid than mine.
>
>
> On Fri, Sep 4, 2015 at 6:35 PM, Matthias "InstantMuffin" Kollek <
> proph...@sticed.org> wrote:
>
>> "Use" != "Abuse"
>>
>> But honestly, yes. Communities used to run on actual donations. Not
>> whatever people call donations these days to avoid paypal refunding.
>> If you need to resort to ads to keep going, you're either doing something
>> wrong, or you shouldn't be hosting servers.
>> I hate ads, and I don't like people supporting them.
>> However with the situation as it is now, it is hard to attract players if
>> you're not trying to be yet 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

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

2015-09-04 Thread Rowedahelicon

I only brought up Valve and ads because everyone else does, but the mega
communities have always been a problem. I've been around in TF2 long enough
to know that. I've always been a donation funded community, and aside from
the charm I've put in my servers and the carefully chosen mods people do
like, one thing people liked was that I wasn't *THIS*.

Oh man, you're so much better than Saigns, or Night or whomever, now a days
the little remaining populace I have always say it's better than Valve.
Even long time dedicated players though prefer Valve only because it has
people. Then they come back and complain to me about how horrible they are.

It's like a Walmart type deal, man these local businesses are great, I wish
more peopled used em, but since everyone is at Walmart I guess I gotta go
there too. I will say though that this is a sort of beating the dead horse
scenario, I've seen this topic brought up way too often here without little
action. If the general population wanted to get involved maybe there'd be a
little more of a push. I even had a writer from PC gamer sort of interested
in this before but he decided to let it go as to not upset their already
bad connections with Valve.

He mentioned to me that even the press has a hard time talking to them,
they don't want to talk about anything.

And on a side note regarding TF2, yeah TF2 is an old game okay sure. But
we're still playing Baseball and all sorts of games now a days right? To me
this is less of a TF2 issue as it is a PC culture issue. It's taking the
charm / fun away from modding and simplifying everything.

It's an observable fact that without proper modding a game will die out, I
could bring up so many examples over the years. Valve stood out because it
encouraged all sorts of activities with their games. Gaming / hacker /
modder communities all focused around Valve for the most part because no
one else would. So what happens now? Is Valve just another generic company
who wants to dumb down their audience as much as they can to only take in
profits? A lot of things will die here and it's not just TF2.

*P.S. I know Valve is losing their minds because of Competitive TF2, you
tell me from people who have actual technical know-how of this game and the
horrendous number of bugs in it that Competitive TF2 will ever take off,
keep in mind that the actual community run TF2 has been dying out since the
peak.*

On Fri, Sep 4, 2015 at 8:20 PM, Robert Paulson 
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  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

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