Well 4 hightower servers, all empty at the moment. I know where they are.. and i only have sourcemod to do admin work like ban cheaters and such.. cant get any more vanilla ... and i know 1 server has a high rating, but even that doesn't help.
2013/11/7 Rick Dunn <[email protected]> > While your argument is sound for the changes made *today*, it is taking > today's changes entirely out of context with the long history of > communities getting the shaft out of TF2 in general. For a long while, the > *largest* of communities were held together with bubblegum, duct tape, and > fake client counts that kept their servers full pretty much 24x7. Valve > said to stop it, so most of us did, and our servers died overnight. > Servers that had been full for over 12 hours a day, 7 days a week, died. > They then announced the quickplay system, and that fixed it, but it was > flawed because people kept getting dumped into heavily modded, trolly > servers. Some communities run lightly modded servers that enhance gameplay > through minimalist mod systems rather than disgusting, overbearing mods, > but Valve made the change so that only vanilla servers get quickplay > traffic, killing our servers that we had just filled again. We adapted and > unmodded a good portion of our machines specifically to have vanilla > quickplay traffic, which, through our tasteful, non-ad-filled HTML MOTD, > added members at a semi-regular interval to our community, which had shrunk > considerably. We followed every rule to the letter, dotted our i's and > crossed our t's, but quickplay traffic soon dwindled to nothing because of > the giant mass of people putting up servers with fake playercounts and > forced ads in order to play. Rather than do anything to try and fix the > problem, Valve has just fixed it the same way they always do. Let's screw > it up for everyone. Let's have 700+ of our own servers up to take a nice > chunk of traffic to begin with, and make it so that every server you join > looks exactly the same. We no longer have any way to make our community > either noticeable through small non-gameplay-changing member perks like we > had originally, we can no longer display our colors through HTML MOTDs, we > basically have *ZERO* way of attracting any attention to ourselves to > possibly get an occasional member out of quickplay. > > The point is not that they've done this just now and "why are you mad about > it it's not a big change", the point is that the cumulative changes to the > entire TF2 system over the past 2 years has done some extremely detrimental > things to communities in general, and it's getting to the point where TF2 > is going to be impossible to maintain, and when it does, there will be too > many players that can't find a server, and when they can't find a server, > they'll just leave rather than trying to play, and THEN who's gonna buy > hats and keys? > > > On Thu, Nov 7, 2013 at 3:45 AM, dan <[email protected]> wrote: > > > On 07/11/2013 01:14, Bjorn Wielens wrote: > > > >> seven HUNDRED valve servers? I'm sorry, but I'm with those kinds of > >> numbers I'm going to re-raise my earlier point about valve actively > >> "skimming" the bulk of the quickplay traffic for themselves and leaving > >> barely anything for communities. > >> > > > > Anything for communities to do what? > > > > Seems fairly evident that if Valve servers are full then people either > > clicked quickplay or joined their servers directly. > > In neither case were the people specifically interested in joining your > > server or any other community one. > > > > Bearing in mind too that Valve run servers around the world. So there > > won't be "hundreds" of them competing with your local server. > > > > That said I think it was a pity they switched most (all?) of their > servers > > to Halloween maps because (a) it (mostly) sucks and (b) it doesn't > > leave any Valve servers for people that don't want to play Halloween > maps. > > But that's the only reason. > > > > Equally though, you could say they've helped communities fill servers > that > > serve the other maps but you didn't. > > > > I've said it before you cannot make your server special or interesting > > unless you DON'T want quickplay traffic. > > (I would argue further that you cannot make it special or interesting at > > all - but that is debatable perhaps whereas > > for quickplay it's pretty much self-evident given the rules for adding a > > server to the pool) > > > > There's no point otherwise. Quickplay means "I want the game Valve wrote > > without any crap" - and, by definition, this makes all > > the servers the same. If they aren't the same, as sometimes happens, then > > quickplay sucks. > > > > And really, as I've said before, there's no point competing for this pool > > of players. You're not going to gain anything > > doing that. If there are more servers than people then you may as well > put > > your time and effort into something else. > > > > If you have an existing community then you can run whatever you like. > > Valve won't take your players. > > > > But it makes no sense to call yourself a community if you don't have a > > full server of regular players that > > actually want to play on your server. Nor if your full server is just > > because quickplay has sent you a bunch of people. > > 24 quickplay players is not a community. > > > > -- > > Dan > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > To unsubscribe, edit your list preferences, or view the list archives, > > please visit: > > https://list.valvesoftware.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/hlds_linux > > > _______________________________________________ > To unsubscribe, edit your list preferences, or view the list archives, > please visit: > https://list.valvesoftware.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/hlds_linux > _______________________________________________ To unsubscribe, edit your list preferences, or view the list archives, please visit: https://list.valvesoftware.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/hlds_linux
