I'm likin this alot.
[TF2 Blog] And that's what ye git fer toochin that!
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One of the things we've been thinking about for a while now is how to improve the player experience around finding a server to play on. It's a tricky problem because our master servers need to ask a game server for its details, and that server can lie to us if it wants to. We decided we needed to find a way of scoring servers, with a goal of finding and delisting ones we considered "bad". The scoring system had to penalize lying without penalizing custom game rules, because some players like custom game rules. Best case, the system needed to work entirely from data that didn't come from the servers themselves, so they couldn't lie to us in any way to affect it. After kicking around some proposals, we came up with a simple system built around the theory that player time on a server is a useful metric for how happy the player is with that server. It's game rules agnostic, and we can measure it on our steam backend entirely from steam client data, so servers can't interfere with it. We already had this data for all the TF2 servers in the world, allowing us to try several different scoring formulas out before settling on this simple one that successfully identified good & bad servers: * New servers start with a score of 0 points * Each time a player connects to a server, it loses 15 points * For each minute the player stays on the server, it earns 1 point (up to a max of 45 points per player) In short, servers that have lots of players joining & leaving rapidly will score badly. Servers that consistently have players join and stay on for long periods of time will score well. Here's a graph showing server scores for all the TF2 servers in the world as of last week. For the purpose of scoring, we ignored all password-protected servers, and all servers that had fewer than 200 connections a day. The blue line in the graph represents the scores for all the TF2 servers. The red line is the matching player connection count for each server.
As you can see, the bulk of servers in the world are doing a pretty good job of providing an experience that's expected by the people joining them. More importantly, it's really easy to see what servers are bad. Overlaying the number of players connecting to the servers illustrates how nasty an effect these bad servers are having on players. The very worst servers attract a large number of connections, mostly because they're lying in ways that make them look like a very attractive server at all times. Our first step in improving this part of the player experience has been to delist all the really bad servers. The master server will simply stop giving these to you when you fire up the serverbrowser. After that, we're going to keep improving our ability to measure this kind of problem. |
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Lmao. Looks more like what a Demoman would say. I don't think the Engi slurs his words like that.
However, the idea is very innovative...people at Valve are geniuses.
Originally Posted by The Mad Mule Darn, the thread title led me to believe that this was about an Engineer update. |
However, the idea is very innovative...people at Valve are geniuses.
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You need to play more
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Originally Posted by Admiral Mudkipz Lmao. Looks more like what a Demoman would say. I don't think the Engi slurs his words like that. However, the idea is very innovative...people at Valve are geniuses. |
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Naw...I'm pretty sure the Engi doesn't talk like that. Yes he probably could be talking about a Spy sapping his sentry, but I'm still pretty sure he wouldn't talk slurred like that.
Originally Posted by chavez885 You need to play more
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and it's oh so easy to write a script that will ban players who do such things.
This isn't half as exploitable as you think.
Originally Posted by beanbagofdoom LOL all you need is 1 or two friends to kill a server, connect - disconnect - connect - disconnect..... and so on |
This isn't half as exploitable as you think.
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And it is probable that the system doesn't count multiple reconnections from same person at all. At least thats what logic says to me.
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Originally Posted by Bluescreen_Of_Death and it's oh so easy to write a script that will ban players who do such things. This isn't half as exploitable as you think. |
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After racking their brains and kicking around a few of different proposals, Valve has figured out how to rate servers automatically in the back end of Steam for Team Fortress 2. Valve's Robin Walker detailed how the system will work and help players in search of a decent game (Read: Not achievement farming): New servers begin with a score of 0, each time a player connects it loses 15 points but gains 1 point per player for each minute they remain inside (with a 45 point max per user). "In short," Walker writes, "servers that have lots of players joining & leaving rapidly will score badly." The rating will ensure players are walking into honest assessments of a server's quality -- sometimes server hosts write false descriptions to entice people to join. Well, with the new system those jerks can keep their phony servers because the first order of business on Valve's end is to completely "delist" them. The server breakdown (pictured above) shows last week's server statistics, ignoring all password-protected servers as well as servers had fewer than 200 connections per day. Walker also notes that Valve will continue to improve their ability to measure these types of server problems. |
So wait, if people are joining and leaving servers thats bad? I run 3 CS:S servers, and about 8 L4D servers - people are joining and leaving all the time. So this is bad?
What happens say, if the player crashes?
What happens if they D/C because of their internet?
What about abuse? I could just join in and out?
What happens if they joined the server and realized that this server wasn't for them (example: people join my 24/7 Assault CS:S server but then suddenly realize they don't like assault)?
What about people I need to ban/kick off my server? So if I have to ban/kick, it means I have to also degrade my server grade?
This seems like they are favoring the player more so then the server owner/provider who is actually paying because apparently all servers are bad....
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