Compared to other companies, Valve let the community use alternative community servers. Even if Valve does not care about the game anymore (sigh, one of may all time favorites), it’s possible to maintain community servers. This is something any other game wish to had, without hacking the system; it’s just part of the game. And people can even use modded communities and there exist some really cool stuff (admittedly I never tried them, I would play the game if it didn’t have the bot problem).
The last major update was in 2017, bots started plaguing casual mode around 2018/19, and ever since the game has seen anastonishingly tiny amount of updates outside ofhthe usual summer, Halloween and Christmas updates (which just shove community made content from the Workshop into special gamemodes and crates); apart from the recent 64-bit version and the VScript addition a while back, nothing of interest has happened in the last handful of years. F2P lost their ability to call medic and the bot crisis is completely unsolved.
It’s sad. But as another user pointed out, at least we have e community servers (and good ones).
TF2 is no longer making a lot money for valve. Veteran players have all theirs special hats/cosmetics and no new player wants to invest time and money in a game so riddled with cheating bots. They could easily handle the situation. Detecting obvious cheating bots isn’t hard but valve doesn’t even try. Yes, there are community servers, like Uncle Danes, that are good at handling bots, but it’s also a big burden for them to constantly ban/remove cheating bots.
Valve is testing server side AI cheat detection in CS2. Let’s hope that they will bring that to TF2 valve servers. Maybe don’t VAC ban players being detected (AI is buggy), just remove them when detected and maybe disallow them from joining valve servers for a week.
A couple of years ago, the TF2 community came together with the #SaveTF2 movement, which managed to get a reaction from Valve but little more than that. The game has gotten some bug fixes, VScript support and 64-bit builds, but there’s been no action taken against the true problem – the bot crisis....
Genuine curiosity…what are some proposed solutions we think Valve can implement to solve this crisis?
I ask because the line about VAC being a joke gave me a thought…VAC is such a joke because it is so simple and un-invasive. Do we really want VAC “upgraded” to the level of more effective Anti-cheats, where it cuts down the bots but is now a monitoring kernel service? Just a few weeks ago people were in an uproar about the new Vanguard anti-cheat…do we want that for Valve? Or do we think they can do it a better way?
As an aside, honestly in my mind community servers with a cooperative ban list plugin might be the most effective solution of all…it would still be a game of whack a mole since they can always churn out new accounts, but that’s what gives me pause about other solutions because the only real solutions to slow cheaters start to sound like charging for the game(to make account creation costly) or implementing a bulletproof system of hardware bans, which means invasive solutions that can be certain they aren’t virtual machines or such.
what are some proposed solutions we think Valve can implement to solve this crisis?
One of the most critical things they have to revert is the voice command mute of F2P. This kills a very important game mechanic for newcomers, while not really stopping botters, since they will just spend money and unlock the features for their accounts, as it’s evident when you join a casual match.
Another obvious thing is: improve VAC. And to reply to your next point, yes, it is a joke. No, it’s not a joke because it’s not a client-side anti-cheat. Lots of community servers operate essentially with no cheaters, because they employ better protection SourceMod plugins and empower users further. For example, Uncletopia and Skial are very much bot-free, and creators.tf was too, before it shut down some months ago (due to unrelated issues). If the community can develop these effective server-side plugins, so can Valve, and most likely do a better job at it. They have incredibly talented people working there, I’m sure they could make a way better VAC if they wanted to.
And yes, community servers are currently the salvation for people who want to play TF2 unencumbered by swaths of bots. I play mostly on Uncletopia nowadays because I agree with most tweaks they apply (it’s not 100% vanilla casual) and the skill ceiling is a bit higher as well, which pushes me further.
Some sort of federation of community servers, where bans and whatnot are shared between instances sounds like a pretty good idea.
Edit: Ultimately, however, Valve should fix the vanilla casual mode, that’s where the vast majority of players are, and where newcomers will first go to.
For the past five years, Team Fortress 2 has become nearly unplayable. The game’s official servers have been overrun by hordes of cheating aimbots while Valve has remained steadfast in their refusal to adequately tackle the problem. This lack of developer interference has thrown the game into a state of turmoil with seemingly...
That would be great, but normal tf2 gameplay isn’t commonplace in community servers, the closest equivalent to casual is probably uncletopia, and that has plenty of changes to be a bit more competitive like class limits. most servers are just 24h ctf or gimmicky maps with rtd, if you want to play the other modes like payload in a vanilla enviroment, casual is the only major provider of that.
Would be kind of funny to see the different stats that would change if a family was able to pass on the full account. Like maybe one child didn’t give a fuck about games (outside of just signing in here and there to keep it alive and update stuff like email and security) and no other activity. But then their kid goes hard into games and see the gaps of time. There would be lots of accounts that may have super awkward stuff like hentai visual novels. lol. But seeing some stupid high amounts of achievements and total hours of play time would be neat.
But not exactly shocking that these digital accounts would not have the ability to go much past your death. Unless we see the very deep change of all companies allowing people to remove a game and basically “gift” it. Which I can’t see happening. Even physically having discs/carts hits a limit after so long. Normal wear of use and the material rotting does mean it is likely those would also not survive past a couple of generations. And that ignores the same issues afflicting the consoles needed to play the media.
So basically the real solution to both the digital and physical passing games (or music/movies) is to rip DRM-less copies and keep the needed tools to either use the game without having the disc or needing to register to a server that is likely gone. Might be a good idea to leave ReadMe instructions along with the iso/rom and copies of the official and community patches that help with new OSes. After that it is basically just down to needing virtual machines or some other PC emulators to run old emulators.
This is one of those things where Valve actually actively sucks and is actively ignoring a growing problem because the old game just isn’t profitable anymore.
Expect this to get zero interest or time spent on it from Valve because they’re knee-deep in trying to release a Hero Shooter (rolls eyes).
I have a lot of respect for Valve, but situations like this really need to make people step back and question how much Valve care about the community that uses the Steam service, or do they really care more about how much money they make?
The fact that they keep creating micro-transactions for a game that’s been completely taken over by bots says “They don’t give a shit, they just want the money.”
Thanks for coming to my TED Talk. Let’s not let Valve get away with shit just because they’re “good guys” compared to other businesses.
Anti-consumer is anti-consumer is anti-consumer. Valve doesn’t get a pass for being Valve.
EDIT: To be clear, I understand that they aren’t required to keep supporting a nearly-two-decade-old game, but letting it become a place where outright abuse happens is a different story. If you can’t control the abuse and you don’t want to do anything about it: do the thing nobody will like but will solve the problem: kill the damn game already if you don’t want to support it. That’s what I expect to happen before they face this issue, they’ll shut down official servers and make the game unavailable before they try to solve the bot problem for a game so old. Valve has made it clear for years that they don’t listen to or give a flying fuck about the TF2 community.
I haven’t played TF2 in a while (before f2p?), my understanding is that community servers were mostly fine and how we’re mostly on random casual games?
At least this game has a dedicated server option, contrary to the other TF2.
As I've gotten older as a player, I have found myself dropping some eras of gaming that I used to be nostalgic for. One of them is the 8-bit era, the NES days. I have played some of the best that system had to offer and I will never say that system didn't have any good games....
Since publishers are allergic to dedicated community servers nowadays, I’d argue there‘s just no feeling of community anymore and hence it‘s worse or at least different than it used to be. You just get matched with random people you‘ll never see again and that makes it easier for people to be unhinged pricks.
I think I‘ve spent hundreds of hours on an militia only server (uk2 or sth?) in cs1.6 in the past and hundreds on a back to karkand (or so?) rush only server in bf3 back in the day. I recognized a lot of names on these servers every time I played.
With how multiplayer games work now, I also try to avoid them.
Half-Life and its mods defined my high school years. I have core memories of TFC 2fort with Eminem’s “Stan” playing in the background. Of finding a server, adding it to my Favorites, and eventually becoming part of the community.
Valve’s eventual inclusion of voice chat elevated the social aspect to another level.
Huge W. Maybe the Stop Killing Games campaign, combined with some very real market realities, will save more games like this from companies with the liberty to do so. Unfortunately, it sounds like multiplayer will likely still depend on Steam servers rather than supporting LAN (I’d be happy to be proven wrong), but this is way...
You can play with friends, but not just matmchmake with randos when your friends are not online or not playing the game at all (or not having friends). You miss the organic moments when you are having a fight in open world, you are loosing and suddenly some dude charges in and saves the day. You can’t join guilds (promissed feature) and engage in a community, potentially make new friends to do the aforementioned activities with so you don’t have to play with randos. You miss the feeling of being a part of greater world, when you just see someone else in the game. Or the ability to ask for help in map chat. Also ongoing support and updates.
Funny you should mention V Rising too because while I’d probably play solo, I’m more likely to find a server to play on along side others than just playing on my own server alone or offline (not sure how this works therr tbh).
Simply put, I’d miss those things you experience in MMOs. Wayfinder was fun when populated. Much less so when there was nobody to play with.
I was promissed an MMO lite that would become an MMO through thr development, but getting a single player game instead. I wish the game and the devs all the luck but I can’t help but feel betrayed - much like majority of gamers who expect single player game but get live service one.
A lot of the larger abandoned magazines are just spam pools now. I don't see their posts in my feed, but I don't like that the two sidesbars of random posts and threads are now just spam advertising sidebars. I triedblocking the magazines, but doesn't that prevent the posts from showing in those sidebars....
Kbin got the same rexodus boost as lemmy but since then has many more atrophied communities and far fewer moderaters to do anything about it, hence spamalot.
I've only seen 1 or 2 pieces of spam in my feed and that was months back - interesting that you seem to be seeing more of it on a federated server. I only started blocking those magazines when I noticed the spam on desktop sidebars.
Its just an arbitrary mechanic added to justify an always online requirement. Helldivers had an offline option. There's still a game there without the need for "community involvement", the missions etc could be completely random or seeded for people who dont want to connect to a server.
Its always sad to see potential great games ruined by greed.
Funny. I’m in thew ag sector and I would not recommend anyone buy a NEW John Deere tractor. Not unless you have the skill to flash the tractor firmware.
My peak multiplayer era was from then Arena shooters were kill. I don’t touch Live Service games because of what we’re seeing now. This game was going to be my first real try at one once I got a system that could play it as a lot of people were commending how it avoided the pitfalls of other Live Service games.
Just give me a game with a map editor and the ability to self host servers. The community itself will take care of the rest.
simultaneous cross-platform networked multiplayer and want to be able to launch on any console.
Quake 3 Arena came out in 1999 and has versions for AmigaOS 4, Microsoft Windows, Linux, Mac OS, Mac OS X, Dreamcast, PlayStation 2, Xbox 360, iOS. There’s even fewer differences between PC and console hardware now a days.
Community hosted servers worked pretty damn well for a very long time, and aren’t reliant upon large amounts of infrastructure to continue being playable. In fact, I can still go play almost every game from that era that was good enough to maintain a player base without issue. Deep Rock Galactic seems to do alright without matchmaking, for a more modern game.
The developers can host a few servers, sure, that’s an option. If that’s the method they take, they also release what’s known as a dedicated server utility, that allows anyone to launch a dedicated server on their machine, or to rent out a server in a hosting center. You can find this model in games such as Counter-Strike, Quake, Unreal, and some of the Battlefields.
This allows for the community to self police, and people will naturally end up in a community that fits their preferences, and rude or toxic players will quickly find themselves banned from the majority of servers and be forced to change their behavior or play a different game. Players can modify server settings, or make entirely new game types that the developers may not have thought about or wouldn’t have the resources to create, and people can create tools that allow servers to easily moderate their servers, and elect moderators and admins from within the community for when they’re not online. This also allows for developers to negate the need to be able to host millions of players, and when the game dies, if it does, all they have to host is a Master Server list.
——
Another option, especially for games with small groups of people is to allow the game to be hosted live by one of the players in the squad or group. This is called peer-to-peer servers. In this case, and can either be done by “hosting” the game server and waiting for or inviting players, or by having the game monitor latency and automatically migrate to the best host based on connection and distance. Deep Rock uses the first of these two options, whoever starts the game becomes the host, and stays that until they close the server or quit the game. In this instance, devs host no servers except the master server list, allowing even the smallest of devs to be able to handle millions of people playing their game simultaneously without any real increase in their server costs.
Typically, for smaller squad based games, like Deep Rock, this is the better option, while for larger player per match games like battlefield, the former is the better option. In both instances, players choose from a list of available servers in a menu and load in from there. You can check out Deep Rock Galactic or the Diablo 2 Remaster to see what a server list looks like.
? Open server browser and whatever matchmaking system. Matchmaking doesn’t require the game be Live Service. Despite recent actions by Epic, running a Master Server for listing available games doesn’t actually cost that much. If you’re asking about Stat Tracking, I couldn’t care about that if you paid me. I’m sure you could track that reliably on a server by server basis. Maybe have different communities that trust each other have a Stat Network.
Why is that too high of a bar to clear? I’m not saying every game should be open source from day one (and tbh I think the people who say all software should be free have their head up their ass. People worked on it, some people want to get paid for that work).
However, how does it hurt Ubisoft to wait 5 or so years after shutting down the crew, then releasing the source code? By then, anything relevant to a competitor looking to ape off them, or a bad actor looking to cheat or carry out an attack would be irrelevant, and it would at least give the community a chance at creating something from the leftovers (even a dummy server that doesn’t allow multiplayer, but just lets the game pass any “can I connect to the master server” checks, kind of like what the Single Player Tarkov mod does).
I mean, Doom is the prime example. Would people care anywhere near as much about Doom if it never went open source? It would be a great game, but it would probably no longer be relevant. I can’t see that as being a bad thing for most companies (although I’m perfectly aware that the suits of major game studios will never see it that way).
Like, this is what leads to invasive client-side anti-cheat. Which also happens to be one of the main blockers for OS portability.
But if you make it so that the server has to constantly validate the game state, you get terrible lag.
You really have to design your game well to deter cheaters. And you have to empower server moderators to ban cheaters. This sorta implies releasing the servers so that communities can run their own instances, because these studios don’t have the resources to handle moderation themselves.
Valve Let Team Fortress 2 Rot And They Should Feel Bad About It - Aftermath (aftermath.site)
Team Fortress 2 angielski
Team Fortress 2 is such a great game that I never get bored of, everything from the sound to characters to the gameplay....
If you like TF2, sign in the petition #FixTF2 #SaveTF2 (save.tf)
A couple of years ago, the TF2 community came together with the #SaveTF2 movement, which managed to get a reaction from Valve but little more than that. The game has gotten some bug fixes, VScript support and 64-bit builds, but there’s been no action taken against the true problem – the bot crisis....
`#FixTF2` (save.tf) angielski
For the past five years, Team Fortress 2 has become nearly unplayable. The game’s official servers have been overrun by hordes of cheating aimbots while Valve has remained steadfast in their refusal to adequately tackle the problem. This lack of developer interference has thrown the game into a state of turmoil with seemingly...
You can't take it with you, but you can't leave it for someone else either: Valve says you aren't allowed to bequeath a Steam account in a will (www.pcgamer.com) angielski
TF2’s Bot Crisis #SAVETF2 (drive.google.com) angielski
#SAVETF2
What are some eras of gaming that you've stopped feeling nostalgic for? (kbin.social) angielski
As I've gotten older as a player, I have found myself dropping some eras of gaming that I used to be nostalgic for. One of them is the 8-bit era, the NES days. I have played some of the best that system had to offer and I will never say that system didn't have any good games....
UK petition of "Require videogame publishers to keep games they have sold in a working state" just got thrown back to the Government angielski
I just received this email saying that the response “did not respond directly to the request of the petition”...
Let's discuss: Half-Life (beehaw.org) angielski
The format of these posts is simple: let’s discuss a specific game or series!...
Announcing Wayfinder Echoes - Forging Our Own Path (online-only game soon to be playable offline) (steamcommunity.com) angielski
Huge W. Maybe the Stop Killing Games campaign, combined with some very real market realities, will save more games like this from companies with the liberty to do so. Unfortunately, it sounds like multiplayer will likely still depend on Steam servers rather than supporting LAN (I’d be happy to be proven wrong), but this is way...
Helldivers 2 Community Manager Seemingly Gone After PlayStation Login Meltdown (kotaku.com) angielski
Could blocked magazines no longer appear in Random Post and Random Thread sidebars? (kbin.social) angielski
A lot of the larger abandoned magazines are just spam pools now. I don't see their posts in my feed, but I don't like that the two sidesbars of random posts and threads are now just spam advertising sidebars. I triedblocking the magazines, but doesn't that prevent the posts from showing in those sidebars....
Sony backs down on demand that Helldivers 2 players log into a PSN account (www.pcgamer.com) angielski
"PSN isn't supported in my country. What do I do?" Arrowhead CEO: "I don't know" (lemmy.world) angielski
UK Government Response to the Stop Killing Games Petition (petition.parliament.uk) angielski
The Government recognises recent concerns raised by video games users regarding the long-term operability of purchased products....
Tarkov studio claims it actually doesn't have the server capacity for everyone who bought the game for $150 to play its upcoming PvE mode, still wants players to pay extra (www.pcgamer.com) angielski