Robin Walker and the people at Valve Software are experimenting with a new way to rank multiplayer servers for Team Fortress 2. Valve realized that servers could report false information back to its master servers, but it's ready to take a different approach to rating servers. Additionally, Valve needed a method that wouldn't penalize servers with custom rulesets as many players enjoy that.
Instead of going by information that the servers report, Valve will look at the amount of time a player spends on a server directly from its Steam profile data:
- 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)
This is a very interesting idea, but it seems like malicious players could bomb a server by repeatedly connecting and disconnecting. Hopefully, there are some spam guards in place.
Additionally, if this goes over well, it's something I'd like to see carried over to Left 4 Dead. I end up on far too many laggy servers in that game.
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