I read "idiocy", I'm smelling the troll again.
There are points regarding adverts and quickplay though. Lack of
transparency (also due to ads and the pretty hidden advanced option to
disable motds) forces more people to use QP. Ads are also the main point
of community servers' bad rep. (Something you've also said)
Just ignoring points and calling everyone opposing your point of view
idiots isn't a smart play here (and is somewhat ironic), which is why
I'm going to ignore your walls of texts now.
Should you ever show indications of intent to properly discuss things,
and do it in a precisely-phrased manner (also meaning short here,
because you stretch your troll statements on purpose), I would love to
hear your opinion again and take you seriously.
bb
On 20.12.2015 00:27, Cats From Above wrote:
E. Olsen’s argument and implicit statement that adverts are the
problem is a complete non sequitur when it comes to the topic of
Quickplay, the likes of which far and exceed the idiocy of Matthias
and co. from earlier posts.
Firstly, I’d like a written admission from E. Olsen that if,
hypothetically, adverts were to disappear on the present date, we
would not be one step closer to getting communities back into the
default Quickplay pool – as for “community” servers were not removed
from the default pool due to adverts; He seems to forget that Valve’s
response to the limited misuse of the HTML MOTD feature and the
objection of a vocal minority was to put in limitations on that
functionality for Quickplay joins – The removal of servers from the
default Quickplay pool had naught to do with it. Further, he also
seems to forget that Valve themselves used Pinion to host official
servers when it was convenient for them to do so and yet people
weren’t jumping up and down about that, rather, it was the communities
that had an obnoxious advert configuration (Ergo: Long wait timers,
forced HTML MOTDs enabled, replays on death or new rounds) that caused
segments of the player community to take a polarised stance against
advertising – Though again, this a problem that is completely separate
from the current discussion of getting servers back into Quickplay.
Now, E. Olsen seems to imply that all players hate the adverts so much
that they can’t stand community servers. If that is true, Mr Olsen,
then why after so long since Valve implemented the nuclear solution,
are there still advert-funded servers around? It can’t be Quickplay
joins funding them, obviously, but instead it has to be players using
the server browser to explicitly join those servers, in many cases
from the favourites tab in the full knowledge that the community is
advert funded – How else would they get seeded each day?
E. Olsen also thinks we should ask players a loaded question. A
question which not only implies that community servers have lost the
support of the player base “as a whole” (when they have not) but one
that ignores the stark reality of MOTD advertising – There are
communities out there that have been born out of advertising or who
are otherwise supported by it. A removal of MOTD advertising in those
instances is tantamount to killing off those communities and let’s put
it this way, whether you join from Quickplay or the server browser,
you’d be losing a lot of variety and a lot talent from the Team
Fortress 2 community as a whole. It may not have crossed E. Olsen’s
mind that there are players out there whose favourite server is advert
funded. How does he plan to reconcile attempting to kill off that
person’s fun all in the name of ideological egotism? Of course, E.
Olsen would say, “Just need to find another favourite server!” to
which I call bullsh*t.
Don’t get me wrong, no one gets excited over advertising. I don’t know
of a single person who gets their rocks off to the night’s serving of
adverts on the internet and television. However, that does not go to
say that no one understands why advertising is used or that everyone
would be willing to lose access to advert funded services on the
Internet or within the Team Fortress 2 community more generally
speaking just to get rid of it. Any attempt to suggest otherwise is
the height of intellectual dishonesty, to which I’m surprised that E.
Olsen would have the effrontery to put such an ill-founded and
misleading statement forward, though then again, on this mailing list?
I should hardly be surprised.
And finally, should I remind E. Olsen that abusive advert
configurations were not the only ill and certainly not the biggest
ill, that alienated players from community servers? Abusive
administrators, fake players, game-breaking benefits and other pay to
win / pay to be admin nonsense, inconsistent server performance and
uptime, arbitrary rules, hidden configuration changes and misleading
or absent tags (Respawn times anyone?). And let’s not forget that
community servers boast having Moderators but how many times do you
hear of a player bitching about an admin not being around and voting
being disabled, thus rendering a server full of player’s subject to
the havoc of one hacker? He seems to be rather short sighted in
asserting that removing adverts would fix everything, let alone
anything at all or that it would otherwise be required to get servers
back into the default Quickplay pool which is where this flurry of
posts to the mailing list all started so let us return.
On Sun, Dec 20, 2015 at 12:11 AM, E. Olsen <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
Of course - the fact that the long-standing functionality of the
MOTD window had to be disabled in the first place meant that those
of us who never used those ads lost the ability to display
important info in-game to the majority of new players....so yeah,
thanks for that.
I find it incredibly puzzling that people willfully fail to
recognize the fact that MOTD ads did so much more harm to
community server hosting than any "good" that might have come from
them. We lost MOTD functionality for the largest source of new
players, the rampant use and abuse of them painted all community
servers in a negative light (and still does), and the folks that
are using them the most (or running the companies supplying them)
always want to let us all know how they're "not the problem"
anymore, despite the fact that if you ask the question in any open
forum what TF2 players hate the most about community servers, the
#1 thing that will always come up is MOTD ads.
Sure, I get that they let some server operators pay their bills,
but at what long-term cost? What does it matter if a few hundred
more servers can exist if it gives the perception to players that
community server operators are just trying to make a buck?
Frankly, anyone who claims that those ads "aren't a problem" isn't
paying attention to what the players are saying. Sure. there may
be a small subset of players that "don't care" or who are smart
enough to block the ads from running on the servers that use them,
but I think any conversation with Valve that includes "let us keep
plastering ads on our servers" while asking for equitable
treatment is going to fall on deaf ears.
I've heard all the arguments in favor of them, but in the end it
will all come down to perception. MOTD ads have painted all
community servers with the same brush in the eyes of the players,
to include those communities that have never used them. Until and
unless we're willing to come to a consensus that they've done more
harm than good, and continue to cause a negative perception of
community servers as a whole, I'm not sure how we can ever get
players to support better treatment for community servers, much
less Valve (and in case you missed it, even doing something as
small for community servers as removing Valve servers from the
server browser caused such an uproar from the players, Valve
reversed it less than 24 hours later).
In fact, honestly, I think that's a question worth asking the
player base as a whole. What if we were to ask the players the
question "Would you support community servers again if Valve
removed the ability for MOTD ads to function?" If the overwhelming
answer was "yes" than we would definitely know what we needed to
ask Valve to do to bring some equitable treatment back.
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