I am completely aware of that and I clearly stated in previous posts some mods are good. But you aren't reading my posts if you cant see my point is that there is a ton of trash out there. For every 1 good map, every 1 good mod, every 1 item that becomes an official feature of a game you got 10 servers just doing whatever because admin A wants to, you have 20 servers banning people for no reason, you have 50 maps that blow. There is just not a single hint of quality or fairness 90% of it. All I am saying is if people want to play AWP_MAP4564 they can dig through the menu find the custom community servers and play it or go download a client side mod. If a mod or map truly is good enough for it to rise to the top it will do so without all the bullshit tricks. 15 years ago, CS was the biggest game on earth in its default state and people had to go download a client side mod and an independent website. It wasn't a problem. The people you see making a big ass deal out of getting their shit servers up to the top and wanting valve to "solve" some problem are probably just gaming the system, after all wtf do they care so much anyway? Why are they so hell bent on it being so easy for people to find their server? The answer is usually because they are hell bent on control and couldn't really give a rats ass about the overall health and quality of the game. I find it hilarious how you guys try to argue it both ways. Oh well its not a problem for us to have these shit maps and servers because a new player can EASILY tell and learn to avoid, oh well then I counter with its not a problem for valve to make official servers the default join because players can easily go find the custom servers. If the custom servers offer anything of value the information will spread by word of mouth.
Yes server admins aren't a team, that is definitely a problem in fact most view each other as competitors and actively work to fuck each other over and don't care if it fucks the game over in the process.
I guess you aren't interested in keeping this about TF2 or the quickplay system used in TF2.
In general though, people want their servers to be easy to find because empty servers are giant waste of time and money. If players like what you're doing, the players on your servers, or the atmosphere you've created then they will likely favorite; if they get a negative experience they have the option to blacklist and never see that server again.
"Word of mouth" makes no damn sense when the UI is designed to get you into a game with the click of one button and the large majority of players never visit the forums. The best possible way to get players on your server is to already have players on your server, so the best "word of mouth" was always having good numbers (players/ping) in the server browser... But now Valve's system bypasses the server browser.
Funny you mention all your negative experiences with admins though, because official servers never have admins and one problem player or hacker will force everyone to leave the game. A well-policed environment can make all the difference, just like a dude on a power trip can ruin the game, and the game has a long history of both.
Frankly, the game is past its heyday, but many community servers that supported the game long before Valve chose to go F2P have met an early demise strictly because Valve sucked up all the traffic.
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