Re: [hlds] Mediated Discussion about Quick play change
Would be interested in knowing an answer to that too.. it’s been far too long. Von: hlds-boun...@list.valvesoftware.com [mailto:hlds-boun...@list.valvesoftware.com] Im Auftrag von Alexander Corn Gesendet: Donnerstag, 02. Juli 2015 03:51 An: Half-Life dedicated Win32 server mailing list Betreff: Re: [hlds] Mediated Discussion about Quick play change So, how about these better solutions for the nuclear option? It's been over a year and a half and I'm not looking forward to Valve servers sucking away all my players tomorrow for this CS:GO operation ripoff. On Sun, Jan 26, 2014 at 5:43 AM, Doctor McKay mc...@doctormckay.com wrote: A member of my community received a response from Fletcher in reply to an email: We’re hoping the nuclear option isn’t permanent, because it isn’t ideal. I cannot promise anything in particular or any time frame, but I can say that we are looking for better solutions to this problem. We understand that we are basically using radiation to kill cancer. But the player experience was really bad and we felt it called for some immediate action. We hope it is not the long term solution. - Fletch Dr. McKay www.doctormckay.com On Sun, Jan 26, 2014 at 5:01 AM, ics i...@ics-base.net wrote: They are not going to kill TF2. It still brings them money and while people make contributions to workshop and new content, they can just pack it in and use that in the game. People buy keys and they get money that way. But i don't think we get a reply, they have become too big to answer us little folks. -ics Paul kirjoitti: They're obviously content with the idea they wish to slowly kill Team Fortress 2, or at the very least try to. They seem to be happy to ignore our complaints as always :x. I agree that the option to make official servers not default would be somewhat the answer, but getting Valve to do that or someone at Valve to answer our concerns is probably going to be a miracle. Perhaps if we keep up with the complaints on the mailing list they will eventually respond and agree. On 26 January 2014 05:57, ics i...@ics-base.net mailto:i...@ics-base.net wrote: Yes lets think about the end user that has been enjoying community servers and the care we take of our players, keeping cheaters out and other troublemaking trollers and especially offering a place to play on. For over 6 years our communities have helped TF2 grow. Only after game went Free to Play, Valve added their own servers. Do you even know where the players played before that? On our community servers only. It was decided that when game goes free to play, they will add extra servers to get new players to get on and get familiar to the game. Thats what they have been doing all along and they did thought the end user. Now grip tightens for unknown reason. The existing players will keep playing on our servers but due to severe lack of new ones ever finding our servers, it will get our servers emptied. The decision that was made is absolutely horrible and one sided. Yes, it's their game and they can do whatever they want but simply forgetting every server owner contribution to this game in the past, especially the ones that have been here since TF2 release and before, it's really sad to see it was made without atleast warning us ahead of the change and telling why it has to be like this. -ics Jon Just kirjoitti: Until valve can get rid of premium servers, ad farms, and server chains that monopolize the quick play system, I think that this change should stay. I feel bad that community servers have to be punished as well, but you need to think of the average tf2 player before the server owner. Sent from my iPod On Jan 25, 2014, at 2:32 PM, Supreet coachcrock...@gmail.com mailto:coachcrock...@gmail.com mailto:coachcrock...@gmail.com mailto:coachcrock...@gmail.com wrote: Hello, I think it is very wrong to accuse certain communities and players who may or may not be exploiting the quick play system. Saigns or NightTeam is famous because there's a considerable amount of population that loves the customized gameplay. On the other hand, Skial I believe runs the best vanilla servers along with Lotus being one of the first largest TF2 communities who is still alive. You have to be understanding and give every community member credit and a pat on the back for their hard work. If it weren't for them, a lot of the TF2 population would be undecided in terms of their server preference. The problem at hand: New players are uneducated or lazy about unchecking a box that might be irrelevant to them. We cannot do much
Re: [hlds] Mediated Discussion about Quick play change
It will include objectives that grant economy items, it will definitely be Valve-server-only. On Wed, Jul 1, 2015 at 9:56 PM, E. Olsen ceo.eol...@gmail.com wrote: I didn't see anything in the update content that says it is restricted to Valve servers only - did I miss something? On Wed, Jul 1, 2015 at 9:50 PM, Alexander Corn mc...@doctormckay.com wrote: So, how about these better solutions for the nuclear option? It's been over a year and a half and I'm not looking forward to Valve servers sucking away all my players tomorrow for this CS:GO operation ripoff. On Sun, Jan 26, 2014 at 5:43 AM, Doctor McKay mc...@doctormckay.com wrote: A member of my community received a response from Fletcher in reply to an email: We’re hoping the nuclear option isn’t permanent, because it isn’t ideal. I cannot promise anything in particular or any time frame, but I can say that we are looking for better solutions to this problem. We understand that we are basically using radiation to kill cancer. But the player experience was really bad and we felt it called for some immediate action. We hope it is not the long term solution. - Fletch Dr. McKay www.doctormckay.com On Sun, Jan 26, 2014 at 5:01 AM, ics i...@ics-base.net wrote: They are not going to kill TF2. It still brings them money and while people make contributions to workshop and new content, they can just pack it in and use that in the game. People buy keys and they get money that way. But i don't think we get a reply, they have become too big to answer us little folks. -ics Paul kirjoitti: They're obviously content with the idea they wish to slowly kill Team Fortress 2, or at the very least try to. They seem to be happy to ignore our complaints as always :x. I agree that the option to make official servers not default would be somewhat the answer, but getting Valve to do that or someone at Valve to answer our concerns is probably going to be a miracle. Perhaps if we keep up with the complaints on the mailing list they will eventually respond and agree. On 26 January 2014 05:57, ics i...@ics-base.net mailto: i...@ics-base.net wrote: Yes lets think about the end user that has been enjoying community servers and the care we take of our players, keeping cheaters out and other troublemaking trollers and especially offering a place to play on. For over 6 years our communities have helped TF2 grow. Only after game went Free to Play, Valve added their own servers. Do you even know where the players played before that? On our community servers only. It was decided that when game goes free to play, they will add extra servers to get new players to get on and get familiar to the game. Thats what they have been doing all along and they did thought the end user. Now grip tightens for unknown reason. The existing players will keep playing on our servers but due to severe lack of new ones ever finding our servers, it will get our servers emptied. The decision that was made is absolutely horrible and one sided. Yes, it's their game and they can do whatever they want but simply forgetting every server owner contribution to this game in the past, especially the ones that have been here since TF2 release and before, it's really sad to see it was made without atleast warning us ahead of the change and telling why it has to be like this. -ics Jon Just kirjoitti: Until valve can get rid of premium servers, ad farms, and server chains that monopolize the quick play system, I think that this change should stay. I feel bad that community servers have to be punished as well, but you need to think of the average tf2 player before the server owner. Sent from my iPod On Jan 25, 2014, at 2:32 PM, Supreet coachcrock...@gmail.com mailto:coachcrock...@gmail.com mailto:coachcrock...@gmail.com mailto:coachcrock...@gmail.com wrote: Hello, I think it is very wrong to accuse certain communities and players who may or may not be exploiting the quick play system. Saigns or NightTeam is famous because there's a considerable amount of population that loves the customized gameplay. On the other hand, Skial I believe runs the best vanilla servers along with Lotus being one of the first largest TF2 communities who is still alive. You have to be understanding and give every community member credit and a pat on the back for their hard work. If it weren't for them, a lot of the TF2 population would be undecided in terms of their server preference. The problem at hand: New players are uneducated or lazy about unchecking a box that might
Re: [hlds] Mediated Discussion about Quick play change
Lol. I read the thread subject as Medicated discussion. Then again, that Might be more fruitful. On Jul 2, 2015 11:58 AM, Alexander Corn mc...@doctormckay.com wrote: It will include objectives that grant economy items, it will definitely be Valve-server-only. On Wed, Jul 1, 2015 at 9:56 PM, E. Olsen ceo.eol...@gmail.com wrote: I didn't see anything in the update content that says it is restricted to Valve servers only - did I miss something? On Wed, Jul 1, 2015 at 9:50 PM, Alexander Corn mc...@doctormckay.com wrote: So, how about these better solutions for the nuclear option? It's been over a year and a half and I'm not looking forward to Valve servers sucking away all my players tomorrow for this CS:GO operation ripoff. On Sun, Jan 26, 2014 at 5:43 AM, Doctor McKay mc...@doctormckay.com wrote: A member of my community received a response from Fletcher in reply to an email: We’re hoping the nuclear option isn’t permanent, because it isn’t ideal. I cannot promise anything in particular or any time frame, but I can say that we are looking for better solutions to this problem. We understand that we are basically using radiation to kill cancer. But the player experience was really bad and we felt it called for some immediate action. We hope it is not the long term solution. - Fletch Dr. McKay www.doctormckay.com On Sun, Jan 26, 2014 at 5:01 AM, ics i...@ics-base.net wrote: They are not going to kill TF2. It still brings them money and while people make contributions to workshop and new content, they can just pack it in and use that in the game. People buy keys and they get money that way. But i don't think we get a reply, they have become too big to answer us little folks. -ics Paul kirjoitti: They're obviously content with the idea they wish to slowly kill Team Fortress 2, or at the very least try to. They seem to be happy to ignore our complaints as always :x. I agree that the option to make official servers not default would be somewhat the answer, but getting Valve to do that or someone at Valve to answer our concerns is probably going to be a miracle. Perhaps if we keep up with the complaints on the mailing list they will eventually respond and agree. On 26 January 2014 05:57, ics i...@ics-base.net mailto: i...@ics-base.net wrote: Yes lets think about the end user that has been enjoying community servers and the care we take of our players, keeping cheaters out and other troublemaking trollers and especially offering a place to play on. For over 6 years our communities have helped TF2 grow. Only after game went Free to Play, Valve added their own servers. Do you even know where the players played before that? On our community servers only. It was decided that when game goes free to play, they will add extra servers to get new players to get on and get familiar to the game. Thats what they have been doing all along and they did thought the end user. Now grip tightens for unknown reason. The existing players will keep playing on our servers but due to severe lack of new ones ever finding our servers, it will get our servers emptied. The decision that was made is absolutely horrible and one sided. Yes, it's their game and they can do whatever they want but simply forgetting every server owner contribution to this game in the past, especially the ones that have been here since TF2 release and before, it's really sad to see it was made without atleast warning us ahead of the change and telling why it has to be like this. -ics Jon Just kirjoitti: Until valve can get rid of premium servers, ad farms, and server chains that monopolize the quick play system, I think that this change should stay. I feel bad that community servers have to be punished as well, but you need to think of the average tf2 player before the server owner. Sent from my iPod On Jan 25, 2014, at 2:32 PM, Supreet coachcrock...@gmail.com mailto:coachcrock...@gmail.com mailto:coachcrock...@gmail.com mailto:coachcrock...@gmail.com wrote: Hello, I think it is very wrong to accuse certain communities and players who may or may not be exploiting the quick play system. Saigns or NightTeam is famous because there's a considerable amount of population that loves the customized gameplay. On the other hand, Skial I believe runs the best vanilla servers along with Lotus being one of the first largest TF2 communities who is still alive. You have to be understanding and give every community member credit and a pat on the back for their hard work. If it weren't for them, a lot of the TF2 population would be
Re: [hlds] Mediated Discussion about Quick play change
So, how about these better solutions for the nuclear option? It's been over a year and a half and I'm not looking forward to Valve servers sucking away all my players tomorrow for this CS:GO operation ripoff. On Sun, Jan 26, 2014 at 5:43 AM, Doctor McKay mc...@doctormckay.com wrote: A member of my community received a response from Fletcher in reply to an email: We’re hoping the nuclear option isn’t permanent, because it isn’t ideal. I cannot promise anything in particular or any time frame, but I can say that we are looking for better solutions to this problem. We understand that we are basically using radiation to kill cancer. But the player experience was really bad and we felt it called for some immediate action. We hope it is not the long term solution. - Fletch Dr. McKay www.doctormckay.com On Sun, Jan 26, 2014 at 5:01 AM, ics i...@ics-base.net wrote: They are not going to kill TF2. It still brings them money and while people make contributions to workshop and new content, they can just pack it in and use that in the game. People buy keys and they get money that way. But i don't think we get a reply, they have become too big to answer us little folks. -ics Paul kirjoitti: They're obviously content with the idea they wish to slowly kill Team Fortress 2, or at the very least try to. They seem to be happy to ignore our complaints as always :x. I agree that the option to make official servers not default would be somewhat the answer, but getting Valve to do that or someone at Valve to answer our concerns is probably going to be a miracle. Perhaps if we keep up with the complaints on the mailing list they will eventually respond and agree. On 26 January 2014 05:57, ics i...@ics-base.net mailto:i...@ics-base.net wrote: Yes lets think about the end user that has been enjoying community servers and the care we take of our players, keeping cheaters out and other troublemaking trollers and especially offering a place to play on. For over 6 years our communities have helped TF2 grow. Only after game went Free to Play, Valve added their own servers. Do you even know where the players played before that? On our community servers only. It was decided that when game goes free to play, they will add extra servers to get new players to get on and get familiar to the game. Thats what they have been doing all along and they did thought the end user. Now grip tightens for unknown reason. The existing players will keep playing on our servers but due to severe lack of new ones ever finding our servers, it will get our servers emptied. The decision that was made is absolutely horrible and one sided. Yes, it's their game and they can do whatever they want but simply forgetting every server owner contribution to this game in the past, especially the ones that have been here since TF2 release and before, it's really sad to see it was made without atleast warning us ahead of the change and telling why it has to be like this. -ics Jon Just kirjoitti: Until valve can get rid of premium servers, ad farms, and server chains that monopolize the quick play system, I think that this change should stay. I feel bad that community servers have to be punished as well, but you need to think of the average tf2 player before the server owner. Sent from my iPod On Jan 25, 2014, at 2:32 PM, Supreet coachcrock...@gmail.com mailto:coachcrock...@gmail.com mailto:coachcrock...@gmail.com mailto:coachcrock...@gmail.com wrote: Hello, I think it is very wrong to accuse certain communities and players who may or may not be exploiting the quick play system. Saigns or NightTeam is famous because there's a considerable amount of population that loves the customized gameplay. On the other hand, Skial I believe runs the best vanilla servers along with Lotus being one of the first largest TF2 communities who is still alive. You have to be understanding and give every community member credit and a pat on the back for their hard work. If it weren't for them, a lot of the TF2 population would be undecided in terms of their server preference. The problem at hand: New players are uneducated or lazy about unchecking a box that might be irrelevant to them. We cannot do much to fix it. By bickering and repeatedly complaining, Valve will not be interested in reading our comments. Let's keep our thoughts and ideas organized in a thread and make a kind request for Valve to tweak the change they have made. Someone mentioned an
Re: [hlds] Mediated Discussion about Quick play change
I didn't see anything in the update content that says it is restricted to Valve servers only - did I miss something? On Wed, Jul 1, 2015 at 9:50 PM, Alexander Corn mc...@doctormckay.com wrote: So, how about these better solutions for the nuclear option? It's been over a year and a half and I'm not looking forward to Valve servers sucking away all my players tomorrow for this CS:GO operation ripoff. On Sun, Jan 26, 2014 at 5:43 AM, Doctor McKay mc...@doctormckay.com wrote: A member of my community received a response from Fletcher in reply to an email: We’re hoping the nuclear option isn’t permanent, because it isn’t ideal. I cannot promise anything in particular or any time frame, but I can say that we are looking for better solutions to this problem. We understand that we are basically using radiation to kill cancer. But the player experience was really bad and we felt it called for some immediate action. We hope it is not the long term solution. - Fletch Dr. McKay www.doctormckay.com On Sun, Jan 26, 2014 at 5:01 AM, ics i...@ics-base.net wrote: They are not going to kill TF2. It still brings them money and while people make contributions to workshop and new content, they can just pack it in and use that in the game. People buy keys and they get money that way. But i don't think we get a reply, they have become too big to answer us little folks. -ics Paul kirjoitti: They're obviously content with the idea they wish to slowly kill Team Fortress 2, or at the very least try to. They seem to be happy to ignore our complaints as always :x. I agree that the option to make official servers not default would be somewhat the answer, but getting Valve to do that or someone at Valve to answer our concerns is probably going to be a miracle. Perhaps if we keep up with the complaints on the mailing list they will eventually respond and agree. On 26 January 2014 05:57, ics i...@ics-base.net mailto: i...@ics-base.net wrote: Yes lets think about the end user that has been enjoying community servers and the care we take of our players, keeping cheaters out and other troublemaking trollers and especially offering a place to play on. For over 6 years our communities have helped TF2 grow. Only after game went Free to Play, Valve added their own servers. Do you even know where the players played before that? On our community servers only. It was decided that when game goes free to play, they will add extra servers to get new players to get on and get familiar to the game. Thats what they have been doing all along and they did thought the end user. Now grip tightens for unknown reason. The existing players will keep playing on our servers but due to severe lack of new ones ever finding our servers, it will get our servers emptied. The decision that was made is absolutely horrible and one sided. Yes, it's their game and they can do whatever they want but simply forgetting every server owner contribution to this game in the past, especially the ones that have been here since TF2 release and before, it's really sad to see it was made without atleast warning us ahead of the change and telling why it has to be like this. -ics Jon Just kirjoitti: Until valve can get rid of premium servers, ad farms, and server chains that monopolize the quick play system, I think that this change should stay. I feel bad that community servers have to be punished as well, but you need to think of the average tf2 player before the server owner. Sent from my iPod On Jan 25, 2014, at 2:32 PM, Supreet coachcrock...@gmail.com mailto:coachcrock...@gmail.com mailto:coachcrock...@gmail.com mailto:coachcrock...@gmail.com wrote: Hello, I think it is very wrong to accuse certain communities and players who may or may not be exploiting the quick play system. Saigns or NightTeam is famous because there's a considerable amount of population that loves the customized gameplay. On the other hand, Skial I believe runs the best vanilla servers along with Lotus being one of the first largest TF2 communities who is still alive. You have to be understanding and give every community member credit and a pat on the back for their hard work. If it weren't for them, a lot of the TF2 population would be undecided in terms of their server preference. The problem at hand: New players are uneducated or lazy about unchecking a box that might be irrelevant to them. We cannot do much to fix it. By bickering and repeatedly complaining, Valve will not be interested in reading our
Re: [hlds] Mediated Discussion about Quick play change
SO - we're a little over a week into this, and here's what we've noticed: Our 32-player and custom servers are doing relatively fine (although they certainly take longer to fill up in the morning, and empty out much earlier at night), but it is our 24-slot vanilla servers that are really suffering. They still fill up, but only stay full for about 1/3 of the time they normally did (all had/have high scores according to the system as well). At this point, if the traffic to the Vanilla servers continue to decline, I can see us turning them off all together in 6-8 weeks or so. The tragedy with that is that players who want to play Vanilla, but don't wish to deal the non-Administered Valve servers filled with low-skilled, screaming, 12 year-olds (not to mention all the rampant hackers) are going to start running out of places to play, and I can't see that being good for the game in the long run. I suppose my biggest issue with this drastic action that Valve has taken is the fact that not only could it have been prevented, but that they took no steps to do so in the first place. For example, in Fletcher's quoted response above, he states that But the player experience was really bad and we felt it called for some immediate action. That's all well and good, but here's the problem - they never clearly defined what they considered a bad experience. Now, I'm sure we can all guess what they mean (the truly terrible video/audio ads, the pay to win premium crap, etc.), but since they never clearly stated these are things we don't want in Quickplay , they've taken this heavy-handed approach to enforce a code of conduct that they were NEVER clear about in the first place. Don't get me wrong - I think Pinion Ads (and their ilk) and all the pay to win servers have absolutely NO PLACE in quickplay, and never should have been allowed to flourish in the first place - but againwhen Valve sits back for over a year while this is all happening, allows it to not only continue, but grow - all without ever coming out with a well-defined, documented policy that says none of this, this or this on qucikplay enabled servers, only to then apply a blanket punishment that lumnps all the good server operators who have NEVER run any of that crap in with all the bad, then they are not only enforcing a set of rules that DID NOT AND STILL DO NOT EXIST, but they are doing so in such a blunt, ham fisted way as to hurt the very game they are trying to save. Why not, instead, simply do the right thing? Why not come out with a revised Quickplay policy that is stricter and more clear as to what they DO want in quickplay, and simply tell server operators that they have X amount of days to comply, or be thrown out of quickplay permanently? As it stands - this drastic action is tantamount to penalizing people for law(s) that are not even on the books, and grouping all non-offenders in with the offenders simply because they do not wish to take the time and effort to do the right thing. When it comes to gaming, I've always thought of Valve as the smartest guys in the room, and this is, quite frankly, not worthy of them. It is choosing an easy wrong over a hard right, and it needs to be fixed in days, not months. Do the right thing, Valve - you're better than this. ___ To unsubscribe, edit your list preferences, or view the list archives, please visit: https://list.valvesoftware.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/hlds
Re: [hlds] Mediated Discussion about Quick play change
Why do people keep bringing Pinion up? It has nothing to do with this. Pinion hosts OFFICIAL servers for CS:GO and L4D2 (yes with ads). Pinion requested HTML5 and that happened too. They wouldn't be partners if Pinion did something wrong. The actions taken by valve were never against Pinion or servers running Pinion. But rather against those who spammed ads (Pinion doesn't allow this and there's more than one place to get ads from) and used fakeplayers/exploits to force ads on players. On Wed, Feb 5, 2014 at 9:06 AM, Jason Tango jtrun...@outlook.com wrote: SO - we're a little over a week into this, and here's what we've noticed: Our 32-player and custom servers are doing relatively fine (although they certainly take longer to fill up in the morning, and empty out much earlier at night), but it is our 24-slot vanilla servers that are really suffering. They still fill up, but only stay full for about 1/3 of the time they normally did (all had/have high scores according to the system as well). At this point, if the traffic to the Vanilla servers continue to decline, I can see us turning them off all together in 6-8 weeks or so. The tragedy with that is that players who want to play Vanilla, but don't wish to deal the non-Administered Valve servers filled with low-skilled, screaming, 12 year-olds (not to mention all the rampant hackers) are going to start running out of places to play, and I can't see that being good for the game in the long run. I suppose my biggest issue with this drastic action that Valve has taken is the fact that not only could it have been prevented, *but that they took no steps to do so in the first place.* For example, in Fletcher's quoted response above, he states that *But the player experience was really bad and we felt it called for some immediate action.* That's all well and good, but here's the problem - they never clearly defined what they considered a bad experience. Now, I'm sure we can all *guess* what they mean (the truly terrible video/audio ads, the pay to win premium crap, etc.), but since they never clearly stated these are things we don't want in Quickplay , they've taken this heavy-handed approach to enforce a code of conduct that they were *NEVER clear about in the first place*. Don't get me wrong - I think Pinion Ads (and their ilk) and all the pay to win servers have absolutely NO PLACE in quickplay, and never should have been allowed to flourish in the first place - but againwhen Valve sits back for over a year while this is all happening, allows it to not only continue, but grow - all without ever coming out with a well-defined, documented policy that says *none of this, this or this on qucikplay enabled servers*, only to then apply a blanket punishment that lumnps all the good server operators who have NEVER run any of that crap in with all the bad, then they are not only enforcing a set of rules that *DID NOT AND STILL DO NOT EXIST*, but they are doing so in such a blunt, ham fisted way as to hurt the very game they are trying to save. Why not, instead, simply do the right thing? Why not come out with a revised Quickplay policy that is stricter and more clear as to what they DO want in quickplay, and simply tell server operators that they have X amount of days to comply, or be thrown out of quickplay permanently? As it stands - this drastic action is tantamount to penalizing people for law(s) that are not even on the books, and grouping all non-offenders in with the offenders simply because they do not wish to take the time and effort to do the right thing. When it comes to gaming, I've always thought of Valve as the smartest guys in the room, and this is, quite frankly, not worthy of them. It is choosing an easy wrong over a hard right, and it needs to be fixed in days, not months. Do the right thing, Valve - you're better than this. ___ 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] Mediated Discussion about Quick play change
They keep bringing Pinion up because they personally don't like Pinion and as long as Valve doesn't say anything about it there will continue to be random speculation. Why does someone get a personal email response about this but total silence here? On Wed, Feb 5, 2014 at 11:47 AM, 1nsane 1nsane...@gmail.com wrote: Why do people keep bringing Pinion up? It has nothing to do with this. Pinion hosts OFFICIAL servers for CS:GO and L4D2 (yes with ads). Pinion requested HTML5 and that happened too. They wouldn't be partners if Pinion did something wrong. The actions taken by valve were never against Pinion or servers running Pinion. But rather against those who spammed ads (Pinion doesn't allow this and there's more than one place to get ads from) and used fakeplayers/exploits to force ads on players. On Wed, Feb 5, 2014 at 9:06 AM, Jason Tango jtrun...@outlook.com wrote: SO - we're a little over a week into this, and here's what we've noticed: Our 32-player and custom servers are doing relatively fine (although they certainly take longer to fill up in the morning, and empty out much earlier at night), but it is our 24-slot vanilla servers that are really suffering. They still fill up, but only stay full for about 1/3 of the time they normally did (all had/have high scores according to the system as well). At this point, if the traffic to the Vanilla servers continue to decline, I can see us turning them off all together in 6-8 weeks or so. The tragedy with that is that players who want to play Vanilla, but don't wish to deal the non-Administered Valve servers filled with low-skilled, screaming, 12 year-olds (not to mention all the rampant hackers) are going to start running out of places to play, and I can't see that being good for the game in the long run. I suppose my biggest issue with this drastic action that Valve has taken is the fact that not only could it have been prevented, *but that they took no steps to do so in the first place.* For example, in Fletcher's quoted response above, he states that *But the player experience was really bad and we felt it called for some immediate action.* That's all well and good, but here's the problem - they never clearly defined what they considered a bad experience. Now, I'm sure we can all *guess* what they mean (the truly terrible video/audio ads, the pay to win premium crap, etc.), but since they never clearly stated these are things we don't want in Quickplay , they've taken this heavy-handed approach to enforce a code of conduct that they were *NEVER clear about in the first place*. Don't get me wrong - I think Pinion Ads (and their ilk) and all the pay to win servers have absolutely NO PLACE in quickplay, and never should have been allowed to flourish in the first place - but againwhen Valve sits back for over a year while this is all happening, allows it to not only continue, but grow - all without ever coming out with a well-defined, documented policy that says *none of this, this or this on qucikplay enabled servers*, only to then apply a blanket punishment that lumnps all the good server operators who have NEVER run any of that crap in with all the bad, then they are not only enforcing a set of rules that *DID NOT AND STILL DO NOT EXIST*, but they are doing so in such a blunt, ham fisted way as to hurt the very game they are trying to save. Why not, instead, simply do the right thing? Why not come out with a revised Quickplay policy that is stricter and more clear as to what they DO want in quickplay, and simply tell server operators that they have X amount of days to comply, or be thrown out of quickplay permanently? As it stands - this drastic action is tantamount to penalizing people for law(s) that are not even on the books, and grouping all non-offenders in with the offenders simply because they do not wish to take the time and effort to do the right thing. When it comes to gaming, I've always thought of Valve as the smartest guys in the room, and this is, quite frankly, not worthy of them. It is choosing an easy wrong over a hard right, and it needs to be fixed in days, not months. Do the right thing, Valve - you're better than this. ___ 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] Mediated Discussion about Quick play change
I'm seeing more scrubs on my servers now that qucikplay has been banned. Explain that! -Dill On Jan 26, 2014, at 1:05 PM, ics i...@ics-base.net wrote: Scoring system and quickplay forced rules go hand in hand but players experience seems to be low due to what the community servers run on them. Namely, gameplay modifying mods. They are not forbidden in quickplay rules because Valve cannot effectively maintain and guard all the community servers. So they implemented a change that we see now (which really SUCKS against people like me who run servers and no mods that affect gameplay in any way. Not even advertisements or other crap.) -ics Supreet kirjoitti: I think the scoring system is actually pretty great - it's more so about the ping rather than the server score. I mean its pretty obvious they won't send players from China to North American servers. So having a high score really shouldn't relate to the server but the connection as the connection is the basis for all multiplayer gameplay. I have a suggestion/recommendation for everyone that I can personally vouch for. I've had multiple providers for my community's servers and I have had two providers (second one is the current one) that have a link up with Level3. You would be surprised at how much international traffic I get on a server hosted out in Philly. They have great ping. One of the secret ingredients to better quick play traffic is ISPs your provider has. Do some research, most providers do not provide Level3. NFO servers being the largest one doesn't have hook ups with Level3. This is why if you buy a cheap VPS, it can actually have a big impact on your quick play traffic. It doesn't matter if your server is in Chicago - the providers ISPs matter. I host my server in Philly with a provider that has Level3, Comcast, Zayo/AboveNet. I have quick play traffic from Europe, and east Asia who no-doubt have higher than normal ping, but never complain of lag. So I hope that helps people, be very very picky about who you host from. It actually affects quick play traffic. ___ 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] Mediated Discussion about Quick play change
They're obviously content with the idea they wish to slowly kill Team Fortress 2, or at the very least try to. They seem to be happy to ignore our complaints as always :x. I agree that the option to make official servers not default would be somewhat the answer, but getting Valve to do that or someone at Valve to answer our concerns is probably going to be a miracle. Perhaps if we keep up with the complaints on the mailing list they will eventually respond and agree. On 26 January 2014 05:57, ics i...@ics-base.net wrote: Yes lets think about the end user that has been enjoying community servers and the care we take of our players, keeping cheaters out and other troublemaking trollers and especially offering a place to play on. For over 6 years our communities have helped TF2 grow. Only after game went Free to Play, Valve added their own servers. Do you even know where the players played before that? On our community servers only. It was decided that when game goes free to play, they will add extra servers to get new players to get on and get familiar to the game. Thats what they have been doing all along and they did thought the end user. Now grip tightens for unknown reason. The existing players will keep playing on our servers but due to severe lack of new ones ever finding our servers, it will get our servers emptied. The decision that was made is absolutely horrible and one sided. Yes, it's their game and they can do whatever they want but simply forgetting every server owner contribution to this game in the past, especially the ones that have been here since TF2 release and before, it's really sad to see it was made without atleast warning us ahead of the change and telling why it has to be like this. -ics Jon Just kirjoitti: Until valve can get rid of premium servers, ad farms, and server chains that monopolize the quick play system, I think that this change should stay. I feel bad that community servers have to be punished as well, but you need to think of the average tf2 player before the server owner. Sent from my iPod On Jan 25, 2014, at 2:32 PM, Supreet coachcrock...@gmail.com mailto: coachcrock...@gmail.com wrote: Hello, I think it is very wrong to accuse certain communities and players who may or may not be exploiting the quick play system. Saigns or NightTeam is famous because there's a considerable amount of population that loves the customized gameplay. On the other hand, Skial I believe runs the best vanilla servers along with Lotus being one of the first largest TF2 communities who is still alive. You have to be understanding and give every community member credit and a pat on the back for their hard work. If it weren't for them, a lot of the TF2 population would be undecided in terms of their server preference. The problem at hand: New players are uneducated or lazy about unchecking a box that might be irrelevant to them. We cannot do much to fix it. By bickering and repeatedly complaining, Valve will not be interested in reading our comments. Let's keep our thoughts and ideas organized in a thread and make a kind request for Valve to tweak the change they have made. Someone mentioned an excellent point here about being able to create a new quick play account to quickly regain traffic. That is correct. That is also however part of the problem. A server should be able to build a score and reputation upon how long its been up. New servers should not get the same advantage as the servers that have been up for months or years. It is not the community's fault that Valve is making this change. The problem is the fact that Valve doesn't care much or supports about user made communities. If they do not want to aid us, we will have to help ourselves. There are a lot of communities who relied on quick play and quick play ALONE to fill their servers. That whole idea is wrong and biased towards communities that work really hard to organize giveaways, contests, make their own plugins to enhance the user experience. Valve - we understand you would like to keep a controlled population of TF2 going to your vanilla no plugins, no ad mins servers. Either you should remove all non valve servers from quick play and give all server ops the fair advantage or not pool us in the same system as your official servers and get rid of them or completely remove them from quick play. The idea of Valve servers are nice, but they seem to be the culprit of all problems. I kindly request a Valve employee to please provide some feedback and let us know if you are thinking about making any changes or keeping it then way it is. If you don't plan on making any changes, then please: we kindly request you to add another check box saying Community Servers and keep it unchecked by default - that shall make you happy and give users some insight and choice as well. Thanks for reading. ___ To
Re: [hlds] Mediated Discussion about Quick play change
They are not going to kill TF2. It still brings them money and while people make contributions to workshop and new content, they can just pack it in and use that in the game. People buy keys and they get money that way. But i don't think we get a reply, they have become too big to answer us little folks. -ics Paul kirjoitti: They're obviously content with the idea they wish to slowly kill Team Fortress 2, or at the very least try to. They seem to be happy to ignore our complaints as always :x. I agree that the option to make official servers not default would be somewhat the answer, but getting Valve to do that or someone at Valve to answer our concerns is probably going to be a miracle. Perhaps if we keep up with the complaints on the mailing list they will eventually respond and agree. On 26 January 2014 05:57, ics i...@ics-base.net mailto:i...@ics-base.net wrote: Yes lets think about the end user that has been enjoying community servers and the care we take of our players, keeping cheaters out and other troublemaking trollers and especially offering a place to play on. For over 6 years our communities have helped TF2 grow. Only after game went Free to Play, Valve added their own servers. Do you even know where the players played before that? On our community servers only. It was decided that when game goes free to play, they will add extra servers to get new players to get on and get familiar to the game. Thats what they have been doing all along and they did thought the end user. Now grip tightens for unknown reason. The existing players will keep playing on our servers but due to severe lack of new ones ever finding our servers, it will get our servers emptied. The decision that was made is absolutely horrible and one sided. Yes, it's their game and they can do whatever they want but simply forgetting every server owner contribution to this game in the past, especially the ones that have been here since TF2 release and before, it's really sad to see it was made without atleast warning us ahead of the change and telling why it has to be like this. -ics Jon Just kirjoitti: Until valve can get rid of premium servers, ad farms, and server chains that monopolize the quick play system, I think that this change should stay. I feel bad that community servers have to be punished as well, but you need to think of the average tf2 player before the server owner. Sent from my iPod On Jan 25, 2014, at 2:32 PM, Supreet coachcrock...@gmail.com mailto:coachcrock...@gmail.com mailto:coachcrock...@gmail.com mailto:coachcrock...@gmail.com wrote: Hello, I think it is very wrong to accuse certain communities and players who may or may not be exploiting the quick play system. Saigns or NightTeam is famous because there's a considerable amount of population that loves the customized gameplay. On the other hand, Skial I believe runs the best vanilla servers along with Lotus being one of the first largest TF2 communities who is still alive. You have to be understanding and give every community member credit and a pat on the back for their hard work. If it weren't for them, a lot of the TF2 population would be undecided in terms of their server preference. The problem at hand: New players are uneducated or lazy about unchecking a box that might be irrelevant to them. We cannot do much to fix it. By bickering and repeatedly complaining, Valve will not be interested in reading our comments. Let's keep our thoughts and ideas organized in a thread and make a kind request for Valve to tweak the change they have made. Someone mentioned an excellent point here about being able to create a new quick play account to quickly regain traffic. That is correct. That is also however part of the problem. A server should be able to build a score and reputation upon how long its been up. New servers should not get the same advantage as the servers that have been up for months or years. It is not the community's fault that Valve is making this change. The problem is the fact that Valve doesn't care much or supports about user made communities. If they do not want to aid us, we will have to help ourselves. There are a lot of communities who relied on quick play and quick play ALONE to fill their servers. That whole idea is wrong and biased towards communities that work really hard to organize giveaways, contests, make their
Re: [hlds] Mediated Discussion about Quick play change
Hands up everyone having a generally better TF2 experience since this update! (raises hand) On 26 January 2014 10:01, ics i...@ics-base.net wrote: They are not going to kill TF2. It still brings them money and while people make contributions to workshop and new content, they can just pack it in and use that in the game. People buy keys and they get money that way. But i don't think we get a reply, they have become too big to answer us little folks. -ics Paul kirjoitti: They're obviously content with the idea they wish to slowly kill Team Fortress 2, or at the very least try to. They seem to be happy to ignore our complaints as always :x. I agree that the option to make official servers not default would be somewhat the answer, but getting Valve to do that or someone at Valve to answer our concerns is probably going to be a miracle. Perhaps if we keep up with the complaints on the mailing list they will eventually respond and agree. On 26 January 2014 05:57, ics i...@ics-base.net mailto:i...@ics-base.net wrote: Yes lets think about the end user that has been enjoying community servers and the care we take of our players, keeping cheaters out and other troublemaking trollers and especially offering a place to play on. For over 6 years our communities have helped TF2 grow. Only after game went Free to Play, Valve added their own servers. Do you even know where the players played before that? On our community servers only. It was decided that when game goes free to play, they will add extra servers to get new players to get on and get familiar to the game. Thats what they have been doing all along and they did thought the end user. Now grip tightens for unknown reason. The existing players will keep playing on our servers but due to severe lack of new ones ever finding our servers, it will get our servers emptied. The decision that was made is absolutely horrible and one sided. Yes, it's their game and they can do whatever they want but simply forgetting every server owner contribution to this game in the past, especially the ones that have been here since TF2 release and before, it's really sad to see it was made without atleast warning us ahead of the change and telling why it has to be like this. -ics Jon Just kirjoitti: Until valve can get rid of premium servers, ad farms, and server chains that monopolize the quick play system, I think that this change should stay. I feel bad that community servers have to be punished as well, but you need to think of the average tf2 player before the server owner. Sent from my iPod On Jan 25, 2014, at 2:32 PM, Supreet coachcrock...@gmail.com mailto:coachcrock...@gmail.com mailto:coachcrock...@gmail.com mailto:coachcrock...@gmail.com wrote: Hello, I think it is very wrong to accuse certain communities and players who may or may not be exploiting the quick play system. Saigns or NightTeam is famous because there's a considerable amount of population that loves the customized gameplay. On the other hand, Skial I believe runs the best vanilla servers along with Lotus being one of the first largest TF2 communities who is still alive. You have to be understanding and give every community member credit and a pat on the back for their hard work. If it weren't for them, a lot of the TF2 population would be undecided in terms of their server preference. The problem at hand: New players are uneducated or lazy about unchecking a box that might be irrelevant to them. We cannot do much to fix it. By bickering and repeatedly complaining, Valve will not be interested in reading our comments. Let's keep our thoughts and ideas organized in a thread and make a kind request for Valve to tweak the change they have made. Someone mentioned an excellent point here about being able to create a new quick play account to quickly regain traffic. That is correct. That is also however part of the problem. A server should be able to build a score and reputation upon how long its been up. New servers should not get the same advantage as the servers that have been up for months or years. It is not the community's fault that Valve is making this change. The problem is the fact that Valve doesn't care much or supports about user made communities. If they do not want to aid us, we will have to help ourselves. There are a lot of communities who
Re: [hlds] Mediated Discussion about Quick play change
A member of my community received a response from Fletcher in reply to an email: We’re hoping the nuclear option isn’t permanent, because it isn’t ideal. I cannot promise anything in particular or any time frame, but I can say that we are looking for better solutions to this problem. We understand that we are basically using radiation to kill cancer. But the player experience was really bad and we felt it called for some immediate action. We hope it is not the long term solution. - Fletch Dr. McKay www.doctormckay.com On Sun, Jan 26, 2014 at 5:01 AM, ics i...@ics-base.net wrote: They are not going to kill TF2. It still brings them money and while people make contributions to workshop and new content, they can just pack it in and use that in the game. People buy keys and they get money that way. But i don't think we get a reply, they have become too big to answer us little folks. -ics Paul kirjoitti: They're obviously content with the idea they wish to slowly kill Team Fortress 2, or at the very least try to. They seem to be happy to ignore our complaints as always :x. I agree that the option to make official servers not default would be somewhat the answer, but getting Valve to do that or someone at Valve to answer our concerns is probably going to be a miracle. Perhaps if we keep up with the complaints on the mailing list they will eventually respond and agree. On 26 January 2014 05:57, ics i...@ics-base.net mailto:i...@ics-base.net wrote: Yes lets think about the end user that has been enjoying community servers and the care we take of our players, keeping cheaters out and other troublemaking trollers and especially offering a place to play on. For over 6 years our communities have helped TF2 grow. Only after game went Free to Play, Valve added their own servers. Do you even know where the players played before that? On our community servers only. It was decided that when game goes free to play, they will add extra servers to get new players to get on and get familiar to the game. Thats what they have been doing all along and they did thought the end user. Now grip tightens for unknown reason. The existing players will keep playing on our servers but due to severe lack of new ones ever finding our servers, it will get our servers emptied. The decision that was made is absolutely horrible and one sided. Yes, it's their game and they can do whatever they want but simply forgetting every server owner contribution to this game in the past, especially the ones that have been here since TF2 release and before, it's really sad to see it was made without atleast warning us ahead of the change and telling why it has to be like this. -ics Jon Just kirjoitti: Until valve can get rid of premium servers, ad farms, and server chains that monopolize the quick play system, I think that this change should stay. I feel bad that community servers have to be punished as well, but you need to think of the average tf2 player before the server owner. Sent from my iPod On Jan 25, 2014, at 2:32 PM, Supreet coachcrock...@gmail.com mailto:coachcrock...@gmail.com mailto:coachcrock...@gmail.com mailto:coachcrock...@gmail.com wrote: Hello, I think it is very wrong to accuse certain communities and players who may or may not be exploiting the quick play system. Saigns or NightTeam is famous because there's a considerable amount of population that loves the customized gameplay. On the other hand, Skial I believe runs the best vanilla servers along with Lotus being one of the first largest TF2 communities who is still alive. You have to be understanding and give every community member credit and a pat on the back for their hard work. If it weren't for them, a lot of the TF2 population would be undecided in terms of their server preference. The problem at hand: New players are uneducated or lazy about unchecking a box that might be irrelevant to them. We cannot do much to fix it. By bickering and repeatedly complaining, Valve will not be interested in reading our comments. Let's keep our thoughts and ideas organized in a thread and make a kind request for Valve to tweak the change they have made. Someone mentioned an excellent point here about being able to create a new quick play account to quickly regain traffic. That is correct. That is also however part of the problem. A server should be able to build a score and reputation upon how long its been up. New
Re: [hlds] Mediated Discussion about Quick play change
They should have a look at the people of RO2. We have to whitelist our servers there in order to be ranked. If we screw up the servers, they'll easily unrank us. Works like a charm. Saint K. From: hlds-boun...@list.valvesoftware.com [mailto:hlds-boun...@list.valvesoftware.com] On Behalf Of Doctor McKay Sent: Sunday, January 26, 2014 11:43 AM To: Half-Life dedicated Win32 server mailing list Subject: Re: [hlds] Mediated Discussion about Quick play change A member of my community received a response from Fletcher in reply to an email: We're hoping the nuclear option isn't permanent, because it isn't ideal. I cannot promise anything in particular or any time frame, but I can say that we are looking for better solutions to this problem. We understand that we are basically using radiation to kill cancer. But the player experience was really bad and we felt it called for some immediate action. We hope it is not the long term solution. - Fletch Dr. McKay www.doctormckay.com On Sun, Jan 26, 2014 at 5:01 AM, ics i...@ics-base.net wrote: They are not going to kill TF2. It still brings them money and while people make contributions to workshop and new content, they can just pack it in and use that in the game. People buy keys and they get money that way. But i don't think we get a reply, they have become too big to answer us little folks. -ics Paul kirjoitti: They're obviously content with the idea they wish to slowly kill Team Fortress 2, or at the very least try to. They seem to be happy to ignore our complaints as always :x. I agree that the option to make official servers not default would be somewhat the answer, but getting Valve to do that or someone at Valve to answer our concerns is probably going to be a miracle. Perhaps if we keep up with the complaints on the mailing list they will eventually respond and agree. On 26 January 2014 05:57, ics i...@ics-base.net mailto:i...@ics-base.net wrote: Yes lets think about the end user that has been enjoying community servers and the care we take of our players, keeping cheaters out and other troublemaking trollers and especially offering a place to play on. For over 6 years our communities have helped TF2 grow. Only after game went Free to Play, Valve added their own servers. Do you even know where the players played before that? On our community servers only. It was decided that when game goes free to play, they will add extra servers to get new players to get on and get familiar to the game. Thats what they have been doing all along and they did thought the end user. Now grip tightens for unknown reason. The existing players will keep playing on our servers but due to severe lack of new ones ever finding our servers, it will get our servers emptied. The decision that was made is absolutely horrible and one sided. Yes, it's their game and they can do whatever they want but simply forgetting every server owner contribution to this game in the past, especially the ones that have been here since TF2 release and before, it's really sad to see it was made without atleast warning us ahead of the change and telling why it has to be like this. -ics Jon Just kirjoitti: Until valve can get rid of premium servers, ad farms, and server chains that monopolize the quick play system, I think that this change should stay. I feel bad that community servers have to be punished as well, but you need to think of the average tf2 player before the server owner. Sent from my iPod On Jan 25, 2014, at 2:32 PM, Supreet coachcrock...@gmail.com mailto:coachcrock...@gmail.com mailto:coachcrock...@gmail.com mailto:coachcrock...@gmail.com wrote: Hello, I think it is very wrong to accuse certain communities and players who may or may not be exploiting the quick play system. Saigns or NightTeam is famous because there's a considerable amount of population that loves the customized gameplay. On the other hand, Skial I believe runs the best vanilla servers along with Lotus being one of the first largest TF2 communities who is still alive. You have to be understanding and give every community member credit and a pat on the back for their hard work. If it weren't for them, a lot of the TF2 population would be undecided in terms of their server preference. The problem at hand: New players are uneducated or lazy about unchecking a box that might be irrelevant to them. We cannot do much to fix it. By bickering and repeatedly complaining, Valve will not be interested in reading our comments. Let's keep our thoughts and ideas organized in a thread
Re: [hlds] Mediated Discussion about Quick play change
At least Fletcher has provided a response to someone in the community, fingers crossed they can come up with a fairer and less 'nuclear like' solution, or to possibly consider some of the suggestions posted on the mailing list. Personally I can only see the answer so far being to either change the default for official servers; or to have a dialog offering a short side-by-side summarised comparison of the positive and negative points and giving them the choice of which type of server (either official or unofficial) the player would like to join; or last of all to improve the description of what an official server means (e.g. again to summarise on the advantages and disadvantages so the player, such as a new person to the game, fully understands). While the RO2 idea is interesting, it looks to be pretty much how Valve intend to run their servers (entirely vanilla, strict configuration) which I doubt some communities would favor, unless I'm mistaken. On 26 January 2014 11:30, Saint K. sai...@specialattack.net wrote: They should have a look at the people of RO2. We have to whitelist our servers there in order to be “ranked”. If we screw up the servers, they’ll easily unrank us. Works like a charm. Saint K. *From:* hlds-boun...@list.valvesoftware.com [mailto: hlds-boun...@list.valvesoftware.com] *On Behalf Of *Doctor McKay *Sent:* Sunday, January 26, 2014 11:43 AM *To:* Half-Life dedicated Win32 server mailing list *Subject:* Re: [hlds] Mediated Discussion about Quick play change A member of my community received a response from Fletcher in reply to an email: We’re hoping the nuclear option isn’t permanent, because it isn’t ideal. I cannot promise anything in particular or any time frame, but I can say that we are looking for better solutions to this problem. We understand that we are basically using radiation to kill cancer. But the player experience was really bad and we felt it called for some immediate action. We hope it is not the long term solution. - Fletch Dr. McKay www.doctormckay.com On Sun, Jan 26, 2014 at 5:01 AM, ics i...@ics-base.net wrote: They are not going to kill TF2. It still brings them money and while people make contributions to workshop and new content, they can just pack it in and use that in the game. People buy keys and they get money that way. But i don't think we get a reply, they have become too big to answer us little folks. -ics Paul kirjoitti: They're obviously content with the idea they wish to slowly kill Team Fortress 2, or at the very least try to. They seem to be happy to ignore our complaints as always :x. I agree that the option to make official servers not default would be somewhat the answer, but getting Valve to do that or someone at Valve to answer our concerns is probably going to be a miracle. Perhaps if we keep up with the complaints on the mailing list they will eventually respond and agree. On 26 January 2014 05:57, ics i...@ics-base.net mailto:i...@ics-base.net wrote: Yes lets think about the end user that has been enjoying community servers and the care we take of our players, keeping cheaters out and other troublemaking trollers and especially offering a place to play on. For over 6 years our communities have helped TF2 grow. Only after game went Free to Play, Valve added their own servers. Do you even know where the players played before that? On our community servers only. It was decided that when game goes free to play, they will add extra servers to get new players to get on and get familiar to the game. Thats what they have been doing all along and they did thought the end user. Now grip tightens for unknown reason. The existing players will keep playing on our servers but due to severe lack of new ones ever finding our servers, it will get our servers emptied. The decision that was made is absolutely horrible and one sided. Yes, it's their game and they can do whatever they want but simply forgetting every server owner contribution to this game in the past, especially the ones that have been here since TF2 release and before, it's really sad to see it was made without atleast warning us ahead of the change and telling why it has to be like this. -ics Jon Just kirjoitti: Until valve can get rid of premium servers, ad farms, and server chains that monopolize the quick play system, I think that this change should stay. I feel bad that community servers have to be punished as well, but you need to think of the average tf2 player before the server owner. Sent from my iPod On Jan 25, 2014, at 2:32 PM, Supreet coachcrock...@gmail.com mailto:coachcrock...@gmail.com mailto:coachcrock...@gmail.com mailto:coachcrock...@gmail.com wrote: Hello, I think
Re: [hlds] Mediated Discussion about Quick play change
I suppose (after reading Fletcher's response) the question I have to ask then is: Why is the server scoring system not working? I had always understood that server scores were used to determine quickplay eligibility as well (?). If that was the case, then those servers providing negative experiences would have (presumably) had very low server scores? Perhaps what we need to know is what the TF2 team considers to be a bad experience? If I had to guess, I would think they were talking about: 1. Fake clients/bots (of course) 2. MOTD advertisements (no matter how you spin this, it detracts from the game) 3. Server re-directing (this is an old problem dating back to CS) I'm sure there are a few other factors Valve would consider to be a negative experience as well (the pay to win premium stuff is probably not what they want either for quickplay). SO - what we need here is a solution to get rid of the negative stuff, while not killing off every non-valve vanilla server. Off the top of my head, I would suggest: - A more robust server-scoring system: Give a new server 45-60 days to prove itself via server score, then if that score drops low enough, simply remove it from the quickplay pool. - If quickplay is enabled on a server. then remove the ability for javascript, flash, and html5 ads to even function. (or remove it all together and allow server operators to fund their servers the old-fashioned way - through member donations, etc.) I think this is necessary anyway for both security, AND the fact that the bad actors already by-passed the previous changes by coding around them. - Stricter rules about quickplay eligibility: - If there are aspects that Valve doesn't want on a quickplay-eligible server (i.e. changing default weapon values, health, or any other of that premium stuff), then they should publish that, and servers that fail to comply would simply get dropped from quickplay permanently. Honestly, a more elegant solution (but much more time consuming, I'm sure) to this would have been to simply quietly start dropping the servers/server groups that were causing the negative player experiences from quickplay eligibility. It would have taken more time, but it would have been much more surgical in implementation, and it would have had the same long-term result: killing off the bad servers. Valve's got so many great minds working for them, it just seems that this kind of blunt approach to the problem isn't worthy of them, and I hope it doesn't set a precedent for the future. With this, they've killed a mosquito with a sledgehammer, and I think they can do better. Community server operators were the ones providing the infrastructure for the game years before Valve was able to afford it, and throwing the baby out with the bathwater is an approach they should never take. On Sun, Jan 26, 2014 at 12:18 PM, Paul ubyu@gmail.com wrote: At least Fletcher has provided a response to someone in the community, fingers crossed they can come up with a fairer and less 'nuclear like' solution, or to possibly consider some of the suggestions posted on the mailing list. Personally I can only see the answer so far being to either change the default for official servers; or to have a dialog offering a short side-by-side summarised comparison of the positive and negative points and giving them the choice of which type of server (either official or unofficial) the player would like to join; or last of all to improve the description of what an official server means (e.g. again to summarise on the advantages and disadvantages so the player, such as a new person to the game, fully understands). While the RO2 idea is interesting, it looks to be pretty much how Valve intend to run their servers (entirely vanilla, strict configuration) which I doubt some communities would favor, unless I'm mistaken. On 26 January 2014 11:30, Saint K. sai...@specialattack.net wrote: They should have a look at the people of RO2. We have to whitelist our servers there in order to be “ranked”. If we screw up the servers, they’ll easily unrank us. Works like a charm. Saint K. *From:* hlds-boun...@list.valvesoftware.com [mailto: hlds-boun...@list.valvesoftware.com] *On Behalf Of *Doctor McKay *Sent:* Sunday, January 26, 2014 11:43 AM *To:* Half-Life dedicated Win32 server mailing list *Subject:* Re: [hlds] Mediated Discussion about Quick play change A member of my community received a response from Fletcher in reply to an email: We’re hoping the nuclear option isn’t permanent, because it isn’t ideal. I cannot promise anything in particular or any time frame, but I can say that we are looking for better solutions to this problem. We understand that we are basically using radiation to kill cancer. But the player experience was really bad and we felt it called for some immediate action. We hope it is not the long term solution. - Fletch Dr. McKay www.doctormckay.com On Sun
Re: [hlds] Mediated Discussion about Quick play change
I think the scoring system is actually pretty great - it's more so about the ping rather than the server score. I mean its pretty obvious they won't send players from China to North American servers. So having a high score really shouldn't relate to the server but the connection as the connection is the basis for all multiplayer gameplay. I have a suggestion/recommendation for everyone that I can personally vouch for. I've had multiple providers for my community's servers and I have had two providers (second one is the current one) that have a link up with Level3. You would be surprised at how much international traffic I get on a server hosted out in Philly. They have great ping. One of the secret ingredients to better quick play traffic is ISPs your provider has. Do some research, most providers do not provide Level3. NFO servers being the largest one doesn't have hook ups with Level3. This is why if you buy a cheap VPS, it can actually have a big impact on your quick play traffic. It doesn't matter if your server is in Chicago - the providers ISPs matter. I host my server in Philly with a provider that has Level3, Comcast, Zayo/AboveNet. I have quick play traffic from Europe, and east Asia who no-doubt have higher than normal ping, but never complain of lag. So I hope that helps people, be very very picky about who you host from. It actually affects quick play traffic. ___ To unsubscribe, edit your list preferences, or view the list archives, please visit: https://list.valvesoftware.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/hlds
Re: [hlds] Mediated Discussion about Quick play change
Sad that they respond to mails but pretty much ignoring this mailing list of the affecting parties (and people who hate community servers with a passion). But what about following quickfix which may help both parties: I know Valve wants new players to have an good impression on the core experience of TF2. So why not restrict quickplay players who have less than 50 hours on TF2 to Valve servers (without the option). On more than 50 hours, it shows the enabled Include Community Servers and they get distributed with the old system until Valve has a fix for it. ED-E Am 26.01.2014 11:43, schrieb Doctor McKay: A member of my community received a response from Fletcher in reply to an email: We're hoping the nuclear option isn't permanent, because it isn't ideal. I cannot promise anything in particular or any time frame, but I can say that we are looking for better solutions to this problem. We understand that we are basically using radiation to kill cancer. But the player experience was really bad and we felt it called for some immediate action. We hope it is not the long term solution. - Fletch Dr. McKay www.doctormckay.com http://www.doctormckay.com On Sun, Jan 26, 2014 at 5:01 AM, ics i...@ics-base.net mailto:i...@ics-base.net wrote: They are not going to kill TF2. It still brings them money and while people make contributions to workshop and new content, they can just pack it in and use that in the game. People buy keys and they get money that way. But i don't think we get a reply, they have become too big to answer us little folks. -ics Paul kirjoitti: They're obviously content with the idea they wish to slowly kill Team Fortress 2, or at the very least try to. They seem to be happy to ignore our complaints as always :x. I agree that the option to make official servers not default would be somewhat the answer, but getting Valve to do that or someone at Valve to answer our concerns is probably going to be a miracle. Perhaps if we keep up with the complaints on the mailing list they will eventually respond and agree. On 26 January 2014 05:57, ics i...@ics-base.net mailto:i...@ics-base.net mailto:i...@ics-base.net mailto:i...@ics-base.net wrote: Yes lets think about the end user that has been enjoying community servers and the care we take of our players, keeping cheaters out and other troublemaking trollers and especially offering a place to play on. For over 6 years our communities have helped TF2 grow. Only after game went Free to Play, Valve added their own servers. Do you even know where the players played before that? On our community servers only. It was decided that when game goes free to play, they will add extra servers to get new players to get on and get familiar to the game. Thats what they have been doing all along and they did thought the end user. Now grip tightens for unknown reason. The existing players will keep playing on our servers but due to severe lack of new ones ever finding our servers, it will get our servers emptied. The decision that was made is absolutely horrible and one sided. Yes, it's their game and they can do whatever they want but simply forgetting every server owner contribution to this game in the past, especially the ones that have been here since TF2 release and before, it's really sad to see it was made without atleast warning us ahead of the change and telling why it has to be like this. -ics Jon Just kirjoitti: Until valve can get rid of premium servers, ad farms, and server chains that monopolize the quick play system, I think that this change should stay. I feel bad that community servers have to be punished as well, but you need to think of the average tf2 player before the server owner. Sent from my iPod On Jan 25, 2014, at 2:32 PM, Supreet coachcrock...@gmail.com mailto:coachcrock...@gmail.com mailto:coachcrock...@gmail.com mailto:coachcrock...@gmail.com mailto:coachcrock...@gmail.com mailto:coachcrock...@gmail.com mailto:coachcrock...@gmail.com mailto:coachcrock...@gmail.com wrote: Hello, I think it is very wrong to accuse certain communities and players who may or may not be exploiting the quick play system.
Re: [hlds] Mediated Discussion about Quick play change
Scoring system and quickplay forced rules go hand in hand but players experience seems to be low due to what the community servers run on them. Namely, gameplay modifying mods. They are not forbidden in quickplay rules because Valve cannot effectively maintain and guard all the community servers. So they implemented a change that we see now (which really SUCKS against people like me who run servers and no mods that affect gameplay in any way. Not even advertisements or other crap.) -ics Supreet kirjoitti: I think the scoring system is actually pretty great - it's more so about the ping rather than the server score. I mean its pretty obvious they won't send players from China to North American servers. So having a high score really shouldn't relate to the server but the connection as the connection is the basis for all multiplayer gameplay. I have a suggestion/recommendation for everyone that I can personally vouch for. I've had multiple providers for my community's servers and I have had two providers (second one is the current one) that have a link up with Level3. You would be surprised at how much international traffic I get on a server hosted out in Philly. They have great ping. One of the secret ingredients to better quick play traffic is ISPs your provider has. Do some research, most providers do not provide Level3. NFO servers being the largest one doesn't have hook ups with Level3. This is why if you buy a cheap VPS, it can actually have a big impact on your quick play traffic. It doesn't matter if your server is in Chicago - the providers ISPs matter. I host my server in Philly with a provider that has Level3, Comcast, Zayo/AboveNet. I have quick play traffic from Europe, and east Asia who no-doubt have higher than normal ping, but never complain of lag. So I hope that helps people, be very very picky about who you host from. It actually affects quick play traffic. ___ 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] Mediated Discussion about Quick play change
The HTML MOTD was already entirely disabled for Quickplay joins. Disabling JS/HTML5/Flash is irrelevant. Some servers were able to use configurations to bypass the restriction, but that should be fixed anyway. Dr. McKay www.doctormckay.com On Sun, Jan 26, 2014 at 2:09 PM, E. Olsen ceo.eol...@gmail.com wrote: I suppose (after reading Fletcher's response) the question I have to ask then is: Why is the server scoring system not working? I had always understood that server scores were used to determine quickplay eligibility as well (?). If that was the case, then those servers providing negative experiences would have (presumably) had very low server scores? Perhaps what we need to know is what the TF2 team considers to be a bad experience? If I had to guess, I would think they were talking about: 1. Fake clients/bots (of course) 2. MOTD advertisements (no matter how you spin this, it detracts from the game) 3. Server re-directing (this is an old problem dating back to CS) I'm sure there are a few other factors Valve would consider to be a negative experience as well (the pay to win premium stuff is probably not what they want either for quickplay). SO - what we need here is a solution to get rid of the negative stuff, while not killing off every non-valve vanilla server. Off the top of my head, I would suggest: - A more robust server-scoring system: Give a new server 45-60 days to prove itself via server score, then if that score drops low enough, simply remove it from the quickplay pool. - If quickplay is enabled on a server. then remove the ability for javascript, flash, and html5 ads to even function. (or remove it all together and allow server operators to fund their servers the old-fashioned way - through member donations, etc.) I think this is necessary anyway for both security, AND the fact that the bad actors already by-passed the previous changes by coding around them. - Stricter rules about quickplay eligibility: - If there are aspects that Valve doesn't want on a quickplay-eligible server (i.e. changing default weapon values, health, or any other of that premium stuff), then they should publish that, and servers that fail to comply would simply get dropped from quickplay permanently. Honestly, a more elegant solution (but much more time consuming, I'm sure) to this would have been to simply quietly start dropping the servers/server groups that were causing the negative player experiences from quickplay eligibility. It would have taken more time, but it would have been much more surgical in implementation, and it would have had the same long-term result: killing off the bad servers. Valve's got so many great minds working for them, it just seems that this kind of blunt approach to the problem isn't worthy of them, and I hope it doesn't set a precedent for the future. With this, they've killed a mosquito with a sledgehammer, and I think they can do better. Community server operators were the ones providing the infrastructure for the game years before Valve was able to afford it, and throwing the baby out with the bathwater is an approach they should never take. On Sun, Jan 26, 2014 at 12:18 PM, Paul ubyu@gmail.com wrote: At least Fletcher has provided a response to someone in the community, fingers crossed they can come up with a fairer and less 'nuclear like' solution, or to possibly consider some of the suggestions posted on the mailing list. Personally I can only see the answer so far being to either change the default for official servers; or to have a dialog offering a short side-by-side summarised comparison of the positive and negative points and giving them the choice of which type of server (either official or unofficial) the player would like to join; or last of all to improve the description of what an official server means (e.g. again to summarise on the advantages and disadvantages so the player, such as a new person to the game, fully understands). While the RO2 idea is interesting, it looks to be pretty much how Valve intend to run their servers (entirely vanilla, strict configuration) which I doubt some communities would favor, unless I'm mistaken. On 26 January 2014 11:30, Saint K. sai...@specialattack.net wrote: They should have a look at the people of RO2. We have to whitelist our servers there in order to be “ranked”. If we screw up the servers, they’ll easily unrank us. Works like a charm. Saint K. *From:* hlds-boun...@list.valvesoftware.com [mailto: hlds-boun...@list.valvesoftware.com] *On Behalf Of *Doctor McKay *Sent:* Sunday, January 26, 2014 11:43 AM *To:* Half-Life dedicated Win32 server mailing list *Subject:* Re: [hlds] Mediated Discussion about Quick play change A member of my community received a response from Fletcher in reply to an email: We’re hoping the nuclear option isn’t permanent, because it isn’t ideal. I cannot promise anything in particular
[hlds] Mediated Discussion about Quick play change
Hello, I think it is very wrong to accuse certain communities and players who may or may not be exploiting the quick play system. Saigns or NightTeam is famous because there's a considerable amount of population that loves the customized gameplay. On the other hand, Skial I believe runs the best vanilla servers along with Lotus being one of the first largest TF2 communities who is still alive. You have to be understanding and give every community member credit and a pat on the back for their hard work. If it weren't for them, a lot of the TF2 population would be undecided in terms of their server preference. The problem at hand: New players are uneducated or lazy about unchecking a box that might be irrelevant to them. We cannot do much to fix it. By bickering and repeatedly complaining, Valve will not be interested in reading our comments. Let's keep our thoughts and ideas organized in a thread and make a kind request for Valve to tweak the change they have made. Someone mentioned an excellent point here about being able to create a new quick play account to quickly regain traffic. That is correct. That is also however part of the problem. A server should be able to build a score and reputation upon how long its been up. New servers should not get the same advantage as the servers that have been up for months or years. It is not the community's fault that Valve is making this change. The problem is the fact that Valve doesn't care much or supports about user made communities. If they do not want to aid us, we will have to help ourselves. There are a lot of communities who relied on quick play and quick play ALONE to fill their servers. That whole idea is wrong and biased towards communities that work really hard to organize giveaways, contests, make their own plugins to enhance the user experience. Valve - we understand you would like to keep a controlled population of TF2 going to your vanilla no plugins, no ad mins servers. Either you should remove all non valve servers from quick play and give all server ops the fair advantage or not pool us in the same system as your official servers and get rid of them or completely remove them from quick play. The idea of Valve servers are nice, but they seem to be the culprit of all problems. I kindly request a Valve employee to please provide some feedback and let us know if you are thinking about making any changes or keeping it then way it is. If you don't plan on making any changes, then please: we kindly request you to add another check box saying Community Servers and keep it unchecked by default - that shall make you happy and give users some insight and choice as well. Thanks for reading. ___ To unsubscribe, edit your list preferences, or view the list archives, please visit: https://list.valvesoftware.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/hlds
Re: [hlds] Mediated Discussion about Quick play change
Until valve can get rid of premium servers, ad farms, and server chains that monopolize the quick play system, I think that this change should stay. I feel bad that community servers have to be punished as well, but you need to think of the average tf2 player before the server owner. Sent from my iPod On Jan 25, 2014, at 2:32 PM, Supreet coachcrock...@gmail.com wrote: Hello, I think it is very wrong to accuse certain communities and players who may or may not be exploiting the quick play system. Saigns or NightTeam is famous because there's a considerable amount of population that loves the customized gameplay. On the other hand, Skial I believe runs the best vanilla servers along with Lotus being one of the first largest TF2 communities who is still alive. You have to be understanding and give every community member credit and a pat on the back for their hard work. If it weren't for them, a lot of the TF2 population would be undecided in terms of their server preference. The problem at hand: New players are uneducated or lazy about unchecking a box that might be irrelevant to them. We cannot do much to fix it. By bickering and repeatedly complaining, Valve will not be interested in reading our comments. Let's keep our thoughts and ideas organized in a thread and make a kind request for Valve to tweak the change they have made. Someone mentioned an excellent point here about being able to create a new quick play account to quickly regain traffic. That is correct. That is also however part of the problem. A server should be able to build a score and reputation upon how long its been up. New servers should not get the same advantage as the servers that have been up for months or years. It is not the community's fault that Valve is making this change. The problem is the fact that Valve doesn't care much or supports about user made communities. If they do not want to aid us, we will have to help ourselves. There are a lot of communities who relied on quick play and quick play ALONE to fill their servers. That whole idea is wrong and biased towards communities that work really hard to organize giveaways, contests, make their own plugins to enhance the user experience. Valve - we understand you would like to keep a controlled population of TF2 going to your vanilla no plugins, no ad mins servers. Either you should remove all non valve servers from quick play and give all server ops the fair advantage or not pool us in the same system as your official servers and get rid of them or completely remove them from quick play. The idea of Valve servers are nice, but they seem to be the culprit of all problems. I kindly request a Valve employee to please provide some feedback and let us know if you are thinking about making any changes or keeping it then way it is. If you don't plan on making any changes, then please: we kindly request you to add another check box saying Community Servers and keep it unchecked by default - that shall make you happy and give users some insight and choice as well. Thanks for reading. ___ 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] Mediated Discussion about Quick play change
I don't think people oppose that you can search for Valve servers only, but mainly that it's the default as that winds up punishing servers who did play by the rules. If it was off by default, but could be turned on by players that prefers to play on official valve servers, I wouldn't mind. On Sun, Jan 26, 2014 at 2:48 AM, Jon Just jonnyboyj...@gmail.com wrote: Until valve can get rid of premium servers, ad farms, and server chains that monopolize the quick play system, I think that this change should stay. I feel bad that community servers have to be punished as well, but you need to think of the average tf2 player before the server owner. Sent from my iPod On Jan 25, 2014, at 2:32 PM, Supreet coachcrock...@gmail.com wrote: Hello, I think it is very wrong to accuse certain communities and players who may or may not be exploiting the quick play system. Saigns or NightTeam is famous because there's a considerable amount of population that loves the customized gameplay. On the other hand, Skial I believe runs the best vanilla servers along with Lotus being one of the first largest TF2 communities who is still alive. You have to be understanding and give every community member credit and a pat on the back for their hard work. If it weren't for them, a lot of the TF2 population would be undecided in terms of their server preference. The problem at hand: New players are uneducated or lazy about unchecking a box that might be irrelevant to them. We cannot do much to fix it. By bickering and repeatedly complaining, Valve will not be interested in reading our comments. Let's keep our thoughts and ideas organized in a thread and make a kind request for Valve to tweak the change they have made. Someone mentioned an excellent point here about being able to create a new quick play account to quickly regain traffic. That is correct. That is also however part of the problem. A server should be able to build a score and reputation upon how long its been up. New servers should not get the same advantage as the servers that have been up for months or years. It is not the community's fault that Valve is making this change. The problem is the fact that Valve doesn't care much or supports about user made communities. If they do not want to aid us, we will have to help ourselves. There are a lot of communities who relied on quick play and quick play ALONE to fill their servers. That whole idea is wrong and biased towards communities that work really hard to organize giveaways, contests, make their own plugins to enhance the user experience. Valve - we understand you would like to keep a controlled population of TF2 going to your vanilla no plugins, no ad mins servers. Either you should remove all non valve servers from quick play and give all server ops the fair advantage or not pool us in the same system as your official servers and get rid of them or completely remove them from quick play. The idea of Valve servers are nice, but they seem to be the culprit of all problems. I kindly request a Valve employee to please provide some feedback and let us know if you are thinking about making any changes or keeping it then way it is. If you don't plan on making any changes, then please: we kindly request you to add another check box saying Community Servers and keep it unchecked by default - that shall make you happy and give users some insight and choice as well. Thanks for reading. ___ 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] Mediated Discussion about Quick play change
Yes lets think about the end user that has been enjoying community servers and the care we take of our players, keeping cheaters out and other troublemaking trollers and especially offering a place to play on. For over 6 years our communities have helped TF2 grow. Only after game went Free to Play, Valve added their own servers. Do you even know where the players played before that? On our community servers only. It was decided that when game goes free to play, they will add extra servers to get new players to get on and get familiar to the game. Thats what they have been doing all along and they did thought the end user. Now grip tightens for unknown reason. The existing players will keep playing on our servers but due to severe lack of new ones ever finding our servers, it will get our servers emptied. The decision that was made is absolutely horrible and one sided. Yes, it's their game and they can do whatever they want but simply forgetting every server owner contribution to this game in the past, especially the ones that have been here since TF2 release and before, it's really sad to see it was made without atleast warning us ahead of the change and telling why it has to be like this. -ics Jon Just kirjoitti: Until valve can get rid of premium servers, ad farms, and server chains that monopolize the quick play system, I think that this change should stay. I feel bad that community servers have to be punished as well, but you need to think of the average tf2 player before the server owner. Sent from my iPod On Jan 25, 2014, at 2:32 PM, Supreet coachcrock...@gmail.com mailto:coachcrock...@gmail.com wrote: Hello, I think it is very wrong to accuse certain communities and players who may or may not be exploiting the quick play system. Saigns or NightTeam is famous because there's a considerable amount of population that loves the customized gameplay. On the other hand, Skial I believe runs the best vanilla servers along with Lotus being one of the first largest TF2 communities who is still alive. You have to be understanding and give every community member credit and a pat on the back for their hard work. If it weren't for them, a lot of the TF2 population would be undecided in terms of their server preference. The problem at hand: New players are uneducated or lazy about unchecking a box that might be irrelevant to them. We cannot do much to fix it. By bickering and repeatedly complaining, Valve will not be interested in reading our comments. Let's keep our thoughts and ideas organized in a thread and make a kind request for Valve to tweak the change they have made. Someone mentioned an excellent point here about being able to create a new quick play account to quickly regain traffic. That is correct. That is also however part of the problem. A server should be able to build a score and reputation upon how long its been up. New servers should not get the same advantage as the servers that have been up for months or years. It is not the community's fault that Valve is making this change. The problem is the fact that Valve doesn't care much or supports about user made communities. If they do not want to aid us, we will have to help ourselves. There are a lot of communities who relied on quick play and quick play ALONE to fill their servers. That whole idea is wrong and biased towards communities that work really hard to organize giveaways, contests, make their own plugins to enhance the user experience. Valve - we understand you would like to keep a controlled population of TF2 going to your vanilla no plugins, no ad mins servers. Either you should remove all non valve servers from quick play and give all server ops the fair advantage or not pool us in the same system as your official servers and get rid of them or completely remove them from quick play. The idea of Valve servers are nice, but they seem to be the culprit of all problems. I kindly request a Valve employee to please provide some feedback and let us know if you are thinking about making any changes or keeping it then way it is. If you don't plan on making any changes, then please: we kindly request you to add another check box saying Community Servers and keep it unchecked by default - that shall make you happy and give users some insight and choice as well. Thanks for reading. ___ 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:
