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 again....when Valve sits back for
over a year while this is all happening, allows it to not only continue, but
grow - all without ever coming out with a well-defined, documented policy that
says "none of this, this or this on qucikplay enabled servers", only to then
apply a blanket "punishment" that lumnps all the "good" server operators who
have NEVER run any of that crap in with all the "bad", then they are not only
enforcing a set of rules that DID NOT AND STILL DO NOT EXIST, but they are
doing so in such a blunt, ham fisted way as to hurt the very game they are
trying to "save".
Why not, instead, simply do the right thing? Why not come out with a revised
Quickplay policy that is stricter and more clear as to what they DO want in
quickplay, and simply tell server operators that they have X amount of days to
comply, or be thrown out of quickplay permanently?
As it stands - this drastic action is tantamount to penalizing people for
law(s) that are not even on the books, and grouping all "non-offenders" in with
the "offenders" simply because they do not wish to take the time and effort to
do the right thing.
When it comes to gaming, I've always thought of Valve as the "smartest guys in
the room", and this is, quite frankly, not worthy of them. It is choosing an
easy wrong over a hard right, and it needs to be fixed in days, not months.
Do the right thing, Valve - you're better than this.
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