Roy

I also want to say thanks to @Bunny, @Dano, and @Shuruia for helping me make this post! The Google Doc can be found here.

 

EDIT

This will be posted on Reddit in the future! I just figured to post it here to get other opinions about it, etc!

 

Thanks.

Hello, everyone. I would like to address the current state of Valve’s support for community servers. I’ve tried this before and the thread I made did succeed (thank you, /r/GlobalOffensive!). However, we never received a response by Valve. 

 

A majority of these topics have been brought up before but sadly went unnoticed by Valve. I am hoping Valve can give some sort of response this time. In the end, it is worth a try!

Last Reddit Post: https://www.reddit.com/r/GlobalOffensive/comments/4by0o1/valves_poor_support_for_community_servers_and/

Topics

• Servers Running Content Against Valve’s Server Guidelines.
• Valve’s Communication Between Server Operators.
• Consider A Beta For Source 2.
• The Current State Of The Server Browser.
• Other Small Things.

 

Servers Running Content Against Valve’s Server Guidelines
As a some of you are aware, there are many servers running plugins against Valve’s server guidelines. These specific plugins give players knives from the CS:GO market, weapon paints from the CS:GO market, etc. Although a majority of the player base enjoys the free content, it is killing communities obeying Valve’s guidelines.

 

A few of you may just say “Well, these communities should just put the plugins on their servers to compete”. There are a few valid reasons why communities shouldn’t be running these plugins. Firstly, it is wrong. Although Valve does appear to be greedy and they also don’t care about community servers (from my view), it is still wrong. Secondly, you are just hurting other communities who want to obey the server guidelines. Thirdly, I had custom weapon models on my servers in the past and suffered from two bans and I’ll be honest, it is not fun moving the servers onto a new account. In fact, I’ve spent around one - two hours moving them after each ban I received (remember, these bans come with no details and I had no clue which server was triggering the ban).

 

Valve has taken action in the past to eliminate and ban servers going against their guidelines, but it hasn’t been enough. There are still plenty of servers out there with these plugins and they’re striving better than ever.

 

Here are some solutions Valve could use to eliminate these issues.

 

Make The Ban Waves More Frequent
This is the most viable option because it will eliminate servers intentionally going against Valve’s guidelines. Currently, ban waves aren’t consistent. A few weeks ago, I made a thread on the mailing list that addressed the inconsistency with server bans. After this thread was made, I saw three ban waves in three days (once per day). Afterwards, it stopped for a week or two. In order for this ban system to work out, Valve needs to start issuing more bans and stay consistent.

 

Prevent Servers From Giving Banned Content
This is also a great option. As far as I know, TF2 does this and it works out great. Basically just prevent servers from giving banned content (e.g. knives, etc). A server modification called SourceMod already has a feature that prevents servers from executing code that triggers a server ban. If the SourceMod developers can do this, the CS:GO developers definitely can too.

 

Remove The Ban On The Plugins
This would allow servers to compete on an even playing field again. I doubt this will go through due to Valve appearing to be greedy, as mentioned above. They’re actually making money each time they have ban waves.

 

To sum up, many great communities are suffering because they are obeying Valve’s guidelines. From what I’ve seen, many of these servers running the banned plugins also offer a poor environment for their players. For example, I’ve seen servers that are running these plugins spam MOTD Ads mid-round (every minute). Yet, the server is in the top ten on GameTracker (server ranking website). My point is, there are many bad servers striving due to nothing being done about these plugins.

 

Valve’s Communication Between Server Operators
The next thing I want to talk about is Valve’s communication between server operators. Currently, I believe it is poor. Valve rarely communicates with server operators. For example, the CS:GO developers have stopped posting on the mailing list after releasing each update. At one point, they would post on the csgo_servers mailing list after releasing each update. These posts would include all of the relevant update notes. This generally was great because server operators subscribed to the mailing list would know when updates were released via e-mail. Despite that, the TF2 developers still post on the mailing list after releasing each TF2 update.

 

There are other areas where Valve can communicate better. Another example was when they started to enforce the server guidelines. Valve never made it clear whether custom weapon models are allowed or not. This question is still unanswered to this day.

 

Communication between Valve and the community is important. Although I have seen an improvement recently, it is still very poor.

 

Consider A Beta For Source 2
A hot topic recently discussed was when/if CS:GO will move to the Source 2 engine. Personally, I believe it will. However, I haven’t seen any solid proof yet.

 

If CS:GO is moving to the Source 2 engine, I would like to see an open beta beforehand. This will give people time to point out bugs, etc. in CS:GO as a whole. As for community servers, if there’s no beta or communication beforehand, this move will most likely be a disaster for server operators.

 

I highly hope Valve considers an open beta before moving CS:GO to the Source 2 engine.

 

Current State Of The Server Browser
The current state of the CS:GO server browser is poor. The server browser is highly outdated and doesn’t even match CS:GO’s color scheme. Moreover, I’ve seen some reports that players still only see around 100-200 servers in the server browser which should have been fixed more than a year ago.

 

In my other Reddit thread, I suggested completely remaking the server browser and perhaps making it more like the Garry’s Mod server browser. It would be nice to see the server browser organized into groups for each game mode like the Garry’s Mod server browser. Of course, an option to list “all” community servers should be available as well. I still feel this is the best direction to go.

 

That said, I want to give another suggestion for the community server browser. After doing some testing with the Steam Master Server API, I’ve discovered there are at least 20000 empty community servers and around 11,000 community servers with at least one player (average). This does not include Valve’s official servers. Sadly, the cap on the amount of servers I can retrieve from the API is 20000. This means there are more than 20000 community servers being displayed on the server browser which are empty and only ~11,000 (peak) non-empty servers. I think it would be best to give non-empty servers an advantage on the server browser. For example, have the “Has players playing” filter checked by default. Although I can understand server operators being upset over this, I still feel it would be the best option. In the end, server operators should have a player base trying to populate their servers. As of right now, I can get five to ten players on my servers but it won’t go above twelve players. I feel the server browser being cluttered with empty servers isn’t helping.

 

If and when CS:GO moves to the Source 2 engine, I highly hope they remake the server browser and that it is done well. You can read my other Reddit post (linked at the top) for more details about the community server browser.

 

Other Small Things
There are a few other small things I want to talk about. This includes suggestions, issues, etc.

 

Linux Limitation
As mentioned in my other Reddit post, there is currently a Linux limitation in CS:GO affecting servers; CS:GO Linux servers don’t appear to use the networking thread while CS:GO Windows servers do. From my understanding, the extra thread (AKA networking thread) handles the networking CPU load from the CS:GO server. This makes a huge difference on larger CS:GO servers (basically, think of the server being able to use 150% CPU with the networking thread instead of 100% CPU).

 

Valve has been aware of this issue for quite some time now. However, the issue is still not fixed. While I do understand the CS:GO developers are unsure what could be causing the limitation, I would appreciate it if communication was made about the issue. Hopefully this can be fixed sometime in the future. Many server operators want to run CS:GO servers on Linux but sadly can’t due to this limitation (unless you want terrible server performance).

 

Quick Play And XP For Community Servers
Currently, official player XP and Quick Play are disabled for community servers. I believe players should be able to earn at least some XP on community servers and community servers should be put into the Quick Play pool (only servers running official maps).

 

While I do understand why Valve doesn’t want players receiving XP in community servers, it is drawing many players away from community servers. The biggest issue I see from allowing players to gain XP on community servers would be bad server operators intentionally making servers for players to farm XP in. Personally, I’m unsure about the best way to prevent the system from being abused by bad server operators, but I do have suggestions. Here are my suggestions:

• Limit the amount of XP the players will receive (e.g. limit player XP daily, limit server XP daily, etc).
• Track the amount of XP players receive on servers. If many players are receiving XP on a specific server, check it out and make sure the server isn’t setup for farming XP. If it is, then ban it through the GSLT system (after pointing out that this is against their guidelines).

 

There are definitely ways to allow players to earn XP on community servers without the system being abused, but it will require work. I hope the CS:GO developers at least consider this feature as it will help community servers out a lot.

 

I also believe community servers should be in the Quick Play pool (only servers running official maps). For a while, community servers were put in the Quick Play pool but were taken out a couple years ago after an update. Server operators trying to run stock servers likely stand no chance against Valve’s official servers since they have a big advantage (quick play + official player XP). There are servers out there that offer an arguably better gaming experience than Valve servers (e.g. 128 tick and no lag), but are sadly empty most of the time.

 

Naturally, players should be able to easily blacklist servers they do not like. Once the server is blacklisted, they will not be put into that community server again through Quick Play. Perhaps add another option “Blacklist all servers under this account” which will blacklist all servers under the same Steam account as the original server you blacklisted. For example, if a server operator put up sixteen DeathMatch servers where the server performance is terrible and MOTD Ads spam every minute, of course somebody is going to want to blacklist the server. However, there is a chance they’ll be put into one of the other servers they have. Therefore, adding an option to blacklist all servers under the specific account will save the player time.

 

Recently Patched Exploit
On July 27th, 2016 an exploit was officially patched that prevented players from intentionally crashing community servers. While I do appreciate Valve officially patching this exploit, it took them over a month to do so. The first time I saw the exploit reported was on June 20th. It was reported to Valve multiple times since then and they still took over a month to eventually fix it. This, in my opinion, is ridiculous. Thankfully, the modding community was able to quickly write a SourceMod extension to patch the exploit. However, this extension was somewhat hidden in a thread on the SourceMod forum (AlliedModders). There were still server operators completely unaware of the extension that patched the exploit and constantly asking why their server was getting attacked.

Valve should make these type of things their main priority. In my opinion, exploits shouldn’t exist any longer than a week, let alone over a month. I hope Valve realizes how bad this makes them look and starts to improve in the future.

 

128 Tick For Valve Official Servers
The next thing I want to talk about isn’t a suggestion or issue; I simply want to let everybody know why I think Valve isn’t pushing for 128 tick servers.

 

Running 128 tick is very heavy on the server machine’s CPU. In fact, I believe 128 tick takes around 2 - 3X more CPU than 64 tick (for servers, not players). I would imagine this would cost a lot of money for Valve due to machine costs and such, although Valve should have the money for it.

 

Personally, I think that is the main reason they aren’t pushing for 128 tick. It may sound obvious but it seems like a lot of players are expecting them to move to 128 tick. As of right now, Valve only seems to care about the money they’re making from their game and they don’t want to spend money on something they don’t “need”. Hopefully that changes in the future though!

 

TL;DR
Basically, servers are running plugins against Valve’s server guidelines. These plugins are giving the servers a big advantage over servers which are obeying the guidelines. Valve isn’t doing enough to eliminate the servers disobeying the guidelines either.

 

Next, Valve’s communication between the server operators is also poor. Server operators would appreciate it if the CS:GO developers at least started posting on the mailing list again after each update (with patch notes) like the TF2 team does at the moment. That said, there are many other areas Valve can improve communication in.

 

Furthermore, the community server browser is also highly outdated and broken; I believe a Garry’s Mod-like server browser would fit very well with CS:GO. I also believe we need to give non-empty servers an advantage over empty servers.

 

Other small things include finding a fix to the current Linux limitation in CS:GO servers, allowing players to gain XP in community servers, allowing community servers to participate in the Quick Play pool, start to patch exploits more quickly, and my opinion on why Valve isn’t pushing for 128 tick servers.

 

Conclusion
To sum up, CS:GO’s current state regarding community servers is poor. From my view as of right now, the CS:GO developers do not seem to care about community servers and only care about the money they are making from CS:GO. I am aware that they are simply following basic business acumen as a corporation should, but I think it would be in the best interest of everyone if Valve offered more community support. Of course, a majority of these issues may be fixed once the Source 2 engine is released. However, Valve hasn’t communicated about any of them. I am therefore assuming the worse outcome. I truly hope Valve does start to improve in the future. Not only are community servers suffering, but the game as a whole appears to be as well (many issues going unnoticed, etc.).

 

If you have other suggestions for CS:GO, feel free to post them on this thread!

Thank you for reading.

Hello everybody, just wanted to let you know @Bunny and I decided to start working on a second Reddit post addressing the current state of CS:GO. The Google document can be found here.

 

@Dano will also be helping us!

 

The old Reddit post can be found here. It succeeded on Reddit, but Valve didn't shed any light on the situation. Here's another attempt at getting their attention!

 

Thanks.

Hello everybody, I just wanted to let everybody know our Zombie Escape server was null-routed through Internap/NFO. There is no ETA on when the server will be back online but I will contact NFO. It has been a while since we've been null-routed, but meh, we're used to it.

 

As usual, NFO will continue to upgrade their Chicago location that should help against future attacks.

 

Thanks.

Hello everybody, just wanted to let you know that HLStatsX is now working on our CS:GO Surf RPG DeathMatch servers (US/EU). The servers are now pointing towards the new daemon.

 

If you experience any issues regarding HLstatsX on the server, please let me know!

 

Thanks.

Hello, I was going to introduce this with the next GFL update. However, I felt it would be better to implement this quickly. I've re-enabled Ban Protests and Player Reports in SourceBans. At the moment, we have no accurate ETA on when the GFL core application will be made that will introduce official admin applications, ban appeals, and player reports.

 

This is a temporary solution but should definitely help.

 

Server Admins can sign into SourceBans via Steam to see reports, etc.

 

If you have any questions/issues, feel free to post here!

 

Thanks.

Update

The maintenance event was successful. Unfortunately, our TeamSpeak 3 server did not automatically start up when our TS3 machine came back online. I have made some configuration changes that hopefully allows TS3 to automatically start up the next time the machine restarts.

 

Thanks.

 

 

Hello, after adding our CS:GO FFA DM server to HLstatsX, I decided to do some maintenance. Here's a changelog:

• Fixed the specific game type icons on the index (now all CS:GO servers will have a CS:GO icon, etc).
• Updated HLStatsX's back-end to support awards, etc.
• Optimized database.
• Awards are generated daily again.

 

I hope everybody enjoys! If you see any problems, please let me know!

 

P.S. TBI = To Be Implemented

 

Thanks.

Hello everybody, I just wanted to let you know that we disabled images in the ChatBox. This was being introduced in the 7.23.16.1 update.

 

There are a few reasons we disabled the images. The most important reason was to potentially increase performance. For example, if a user has bad download speeds, when a image is posted that is around ~1 MB, it takes extra time to load the page. Sadly, there is no way to limit the image's maximum size.

 

Other reasons include images sometimes breaking the ChatBox (e.g. stretching the ChatBox off the page), etc.

 

While I do understand a lot of you like being able to post images in the ChatBox, users with bad download speed do suffer.

 

Thanks.

Hello everybody, we will be performing maintenance on our web machine at 00:00 on 8-8-16 (Monday). The web box itself will be down for at least 13 - 17 minutes. However, it will take extra time to reboot our machines. That's if everything goes to plan.

 

More information will be posted as we get closer to the event.

 

Thanks.

Hello everybody, this thread will list all past and future accomplishments for GFL. GFL has achieved many things in the past and I am absolutely amazed while looking back. That said, the accomplishments haven't stopped and I believe we will make more in the future!

 

Also, the order will not be by date. I am ordering these by the ones I find first.

 

April 5th, 2015

Had the top three servers in CS:GO according to GameTracker. We had Surf Timer (US), Zombie Escape (US), and Surf Timer (EU).

 

June 28th, 2015

Had three #1 servers in three different games. CS:GO (Zombie Escape), Chivalry Medieval Warfare, and CS:S (Zombie Escape).

 

January 4th, 2015

Had the top three most populated servers in CS:GO at the time (not that big).

 

August 28th, 2014

Had the #4 Garry's Mod server (Purge).

 

March 3rd, 2015

Just generally a lot of servers below the 100th rank (8).

 

March 24th, 2015

Had the #1, #2, #3, #4, and #5 servers in different games.

 

March 27th, 2015

European domination!

 

April 1st, 2015

#1 BF:HL server.

 

August 7th, 2014

First Garry's Mod server to reach > 65 players (DayZ), possibly the first GFL server ever to reach above > 65 players. I honestly don't remember.

 

November 28th, 2014

Look at all those near-full servers!

 

December 24th, 2014

Our BattleField 3 TDM server reaching 11th on GameTracker (for the first time?).

 

May 18th, 2015

Our BattleFIeld 3 TDM server reaching 6th place on GameTracker.

 

September 28th, 2014

Our Red Orchestra 2 server at the top of NFO's server list.

 

April 26th, 2015

Again, European box being filled with players including our Killing Floor 2 server at 81/80!

 

February 15th, 2014

Our TF2 Balloon Race server at the top of the list for current players.

 

July 2nd, 2013

Our TF2 Orange X3 server getting to 8th in the world (as seen in the Server Rank graph). When the screenshot was taken, it was 10th.
 

July 7th, 2013

Our Killing Floor 1 servers back on July 7th, 2013. We had a good run with our first server afterwards that lasted for a couple months. 

 

I will continue to look for more accomplishments (we had other #1 servers in games such as Red Orchestra 2 in the past). 

 

The reason I am posting this is to show everybody GFL isn't just a normal gaming community. GFL has made many accomplishments and in my opinion, is one of the better gaming communities around. Yes, GFL has issues, but GFL's core is nowhere near corrupt like other popular communities are. That said, a few of you have also been asking me about GFL's past and although this doesn't explain specifically, this shows GFL is a strong community.

 

Thanks.

Hello everybody, for a while now, our Surf Timer servers have been struggling with population. One of the main reasons our servers are likely suffering is due to servers using plugins against Valve's server guidelines. For those of you that do not know what these plugins are, they basically give players free CS:GO knives and/or paints. Valve has made it clear (badly) that they do not want servers running these plugins and any servers running these plugins will receive a server token ban. However, Valve has done a terrible job at eliminating these specific servers leaving servers that obey the guidelines (e.g. us) with a big disadvantage.

 

That said, I don't believe this is the only reason our servers are suffering. I do believe there are other things under our control that can help with server quality and population if improved on. Although, first, we need to find out what these issues are.

 

I decided to create a survey with ten questions. I wish I could go higher but sadly, you can only have up to ten questions with the "free" plan and the next plan up is $26.00/m which we aren't willing to pay for as of right now. 

 

Feel free to complete the survey and if possible, spread the survey link around to your friends and/or regulars, players, etc who have played on GFL's Surf Timer servers.

 

Survey link: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/VMP9DFJ

 

If you have any questions, etc feel free to ask here!

 

Thanks.