Dark clouds on the horizon......(everyone read this)

Ok, Now I'm convinced this whole mess is FUBAR...
Go to your Steam Server list and count the number of TF2 servers present under the "Internet" tab. Now launch TF2 and tally up the total in Internet and Custom. They will (or at least they do here) add up to the total from the Steam server list. So Valve has a double standard.

Add that with the note in the recent update that they removed Alltalk from the convars so they don't appear in the Custom tab (which will start another holy war on the steam forums) and Valve will now be backpedaling to try and stop this madness from spiralling out of control.

I hope they see the error of their ways and remove the Custom tab quickly. This is only going to get worse as the vanilla fanatics start to argue over what should be considered pure until no servers are listed in the Internet tab.
 
*shrug* From reading the Steam thread briefly, I mainly saw a few very vocal people in favor of "vanilla" servers, so that may be distorting the actual opinion of the community as a whole. In the end, it's not the server admins that will really decide how this whole thing plays out, it's the players. I've been spending time over at the DIG clan server since this thing started (32 player Dustbowl, which somehow managed to get onto the Internet tab), and I heard people commenting that they were there because their favorite servers were apparently down.

If these people think that giving vanilla servers priority will cause more players to switch over to them, they might be mistaken.

This whole argument about admins tricking people into joining their custom servers really seems a bit farfetched. If that were true, you'd see people constantly joining our servers and then leaving. Which I actually wish would happen sometimes, because I'm often stuck waiting for a free slot to open up on our servers. Going back to the DIG server, I had to spend around two minutes refreshing the server status before a slot finally freed up.
 
Dear Lord, that is just excessive. Hopefully, we've got some articulate individuals prepared to make a case on this. I'll do my best to help out once I've finished the entire series of pages ( I've unfortunately only made it to page 11 which is plenty :\ )
 
Which is why we're refusing to give them one. :) We're going directly to the source.
 
Well, I am now suspicious that Valve is concerned that this is becoming a big deal. The moderators in the forums have started locking and deleting threads left and right that refer to this, effectively silencing any and all criticism.

This thread is of note as it provides information about a way that a user is trying help the community out. I don't think it's going to fix anything, but it's a nice effort.

http://vanillatf2.com/
 
I'm not quite sure what the site is attempting to accomplish...please dumb it down to hopped-up, sick layman's terms. :)
 
Moose - Great work, guys. If they have any business sense or artistic ethic, or even some common sense about them, they should get the point.

I actually had to argue with a guy in my 494 class on Jihad, of all things, wherein I informed him of the freedom-loving eGO jihad currently directed towards Valve development :P. I'm very happy to see that I was not bluffing :D.
 
Clamping down on complaints in the forum is always a poor approach.

Blegh. I hate when companies do that.
 
It shows they fear the repercussions of their actions from the community...a poor approach, but we're being heard.
 
I think in order to effectively "influence" Valve we should look at it from their point of view.

The biggest reason I can think for Valve to do this is to protect the Quality of Gameplay. They may feel mods to the servers are threatening their control over the game and what their customers experience while playing. To be honest I think they are afraid of custom servers becoming shoddy error prone cheater havens, which would destroy the game for newbies and others.

Also another idea for the clan if we have to live with the current state. Can we simply have some servers that are vanilla to draw ppl in and have our customs servers as well?
 
Nothing like putting a lid on the boiling pot... that won't backfire. We are also looking towards other avenues of getting the word out on this issue such as Maximum PC's podcast because they are huge TF2 fans and I am sure they will take a look at this.
 
We can certainly understand the "shoddy error prone cheater havens, which would destroy the game for newbies and others" aspect of the issue. We're not downplaying that. What we're trying to have redressed is the relegation of our servers to a Custom tab for the sole reason that we have 32 player slots instead of 24. The only mod we implement is HLstats and we have ONE non-valve custom map. These shouldn't be reasons to put us in the Custom tab. That's the issue we're addressing at this time. In the meantime, of course, we're making the best of the situation that's been given us.
 
It's great how the vanilla nazis are ignoring the fact that the Steam modding community is amongst the biggest in gaming. Steam gives you the option to find third-party mods through Steam itself, for crying out loud. The "Valve is t3h G0D" refrain is also getting real old. Like any other work of art, when you make it public, you make it public. If Valve is so hell-bent on their "vision", they should just keep TF2 out of the marketplace and play intranet games with each other to revel in their brilliance. The whole thing is souring me the same way as GLucas when he decided to never again offer the original Star Wars films without the CGI updates and all that. These people need to just keep their work to themselves if they can't stand people using it as they see fit. Woo! Little too upset. But, great job again to the crew that's fighting for common sense.
 
If you're interested to know what the real community thinks of these changes, check out the HLDS mailing list. It's very different from the troll droppings in the official forums. For example, here's a recent post:

[blockquote]I agree with this 100% this is a great idea if it will work!

-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected]
[mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Spencer 'voogru'
MacDonald
Sent: Thursday, March 06, 2008 10:57 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: RE: [hlds] Team Fortress 2/Dedicated Server updated

I think it would be better to protest the two lists and have everyone add "protest" to their sv_tags.

Use valves own system against them when they start getting spam from all of the newbies complaining that they only see a few servers.

If every server implements their own tags, all of the players will just have to start using the custom tab and it will just make the people who don't know what they are doing go complain to valve and valve will have lots of fun with that.

I think it'll work great.

- voogru.

-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected]
[mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Mike Stiehm
Sent: Thursday, March 06, 2008 10:44 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: RE: [hlds] Team Fortress 2/Dedicated Server updated

--
[ Picked text/plain from multipart/alternative ]

Holy 32 player servers batman. They have a lot of servers to banvon the internet tab. If they don't do that soon i'm join to join the others on the internet tab
[/blockquote]

You can sign up for these lists at the following URL:
http://list.valvesoftware.com/
 
what are they crazy? people should have what ever type of server they want. if they do this im protestin!
 
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