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Pinion Discussion Thread


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Dr. McKay
Sir Dr. SourceMod Plugin Approver Esq. Ltd. M.D. PhD
Join Date: Aug 2011
Location: Atlantis
Old 06-30-2013 , 03:08   Re: Pinion Discussion Thread
#1081

Quote:
Originally Posted by napalm00 View Post
I'd reply that players are not customers and even if they were forcing a customer to watch whatever seconds of ads is unfair at best. Don't run servers in the first place if you can't pay for them, or just man up and work hard to make some kind of awesome donations system that your players will love.
Also, server owners can be female too.
It's unfair to expose players to advertisements in exchange for the free service that they're providing?

Tell me something, are you a "customer" of Google? Yet you use it for free and are shown ads? Should Google just run a search engine "out of the kindness of their hearts"? No? Why are server operators any different?

Now, my servers don't use Pinion, and haven't since they started with their forced-wait-times policy. I personally don't like Pinion and I can't imagine why I'd voluntarily wait 45 seconds before entering the game.

But I'm a server administrator, and regardless of the policy the server is implementing, I stand by it absolutely (short of slowhacking). The clients chose to connect to the server, and they will follow the server's rules, as long as those rules are legal and honest. No matter how annoying something the server does may be, I just can't stand behind someone bypassing the server's systems. Today, Pinion is annoying. Tomorrow, SMAC is annoying.
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Last edited by Dr. McKay; 06-30-2013 at 03:09.
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Zephyrus
Cool Pig B)
Join Date: Jun 2010
Location: Hungary
Old 06-30-2013 , 03:31   Re: Pinion Discussion Thread
#1082

Quote:
Originally Posted by Dr. McKay View Post
It's unfair to expose players to advertisements in exchange for the free service that they're providing?

Tell me something, are you a "customer" of Google? Yet you use it for free and are shown ads? Should Google just run a search engine "out of the kindness of their hearts"? No? Why are server operators any different?

Now, my servers don't use Pinion, and haven't since they started with their forced-wait-times policy. I personally don't like Pinion and I can't imagine why I'd voluntarily wait 45 seconds before entering the game.

But I'm a server administrator, and regardless of the policy the server is implementing, I stand by it absolutely (short of slowhacking). The clients chose to connect to the server, and they will follow the server's rules, as long as those rules are legal and honest. No matter how annoying something the server does may be, I just can't stand behind someone bypassing the server's systems. Today, Pinion is annoying. Tomorrow, SMAC is annoying.
google bans websites that force the ads on the viewer or make it standing out from the website or ask the visitor to click it or something... here the players get banned for not watching the ads that they are forced to
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Dr. McKay
Sir Dr. SourceMod Plugin Approver Esq. Ltd. M.D. PhD
Join Date: Aug 2011
Location: Atlantis
Old 06-30-2013 , 04:08   Pinion Discussion Thread
#1083

Quote:
Originally Posted by Zephyrus View Post
google bans websites that force the ads on the viewer or make it standing out from the website or ask the visitor to click it or something... here the players get banned for not watching the ads that they are forced to
The only thing in that list that Google bans for is asking users to click on the ads. Standing out from the content is kinda the whole point of ads.
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ThatMatt
Member
Join Date: Dec 2010
Old 06-30-2013 , 05:27   Re: Pinion Discussion Thread
#1084

Quote:
Originally Posted by napalm00 View Post
or just man up and work hard to make some kind of awesome donations system that your players will love..
Id rather sit through ads than put up with some crappy premium donation system. Hats, trails and even worse paid admin just puts me right off servers that do this. Also most servers that do this advertise it constantly anyway.
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napalm00
Veteran Member
Join Date: Jun 2011
Location: Italy, sadly
Old 06-30-2013 , 08:26   Re: Pinion Discussion Thread
#1085

Quote:
Originally Posted by Dr. McKay View Post
The only thing in that list that Google bans for is asking users to click on the ads. Standing out from the content is kinda the whole point of ads.
Does Google ban you from their search engine/youtube/email if you use AdBlocker?

As previously stated in this topic though, I encourage everybody (but the few people against Pinion) in this thread to enforce more and more ads and way more restrictions on players; ever since Pinion servers came out I've had a great benefit from advertising my servers as "Ad Free", in fact my top server moved from the 20th position to the 5th on GameTracker.
So yes, thank you for throwing people at my servers
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Last edited by asherkin; 06-30-2013 at 09:18. Reason: Language.
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11530
Veteran Member
Join Date: Sep 2011
Location: Underworld
Old 06-30-2013 , 14:13   Re: Pinion Discussion Thread
#1086

Servers are like television, and television uses adverts. We watch adverts so the television networks can pay for the programming they provide. You don't have to watch these adverts if you don't want to - switch channel. We could even install a TiVo/Sky+ box and bypass the television adverts but at the end of the day it's a few seconds worth that greatly helps the provider in return for much enjoyment. I'll stand by this even though I don't use Pinion myself.

Contrary to this analogy, some television channels will play a 3-5 minute advert every 15 minutes whereas servers are quite far removed from that ratio. Imagine if the latter actually did play adverts this often - it could be worse.

The point of this post is that there are methods for players to avoid seeing adverts (or even visiting servers that employ it) and there are methods for servers to enforce adverts. It's a constant battle but at the end of the day there's a place for everyone.
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Last edited by 11530; 06-30-2013 at 14:14.
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Smarmy
Senior Member
Join Date: Mar 2012
Old 06-30-2013 , 17:02   Re: Pinion Discussion Thread
#1087

A lot of players will complain about advertisements yet still play on servers that display them. They don't care about the advertisements in and of themselves, they just don't want to see them. They sure don't mind bypassing them and helping populate servers that use them and helping those servers stay full and continually bring in others to see the advertisements from the Quickplay system.

If you had a real problem with advertisements then you would stop playing on the servers that display them. At that point, much of this whole argument and debate becomes moot. The reality is that there are a lot of people who deal with the advertisements and then hop in to the game and play. Some may not know any better, sure, but then there are a large portion who just don't blow it all out of proportion in to being a problem when it really isn't. Yes, I'd agree that if it's crashing clients it's an issue, but we're talking about advertisements for what they are right now.

Also, running decent servers doesn't equal instant donations. Quickplay has turned community servers into nothing more than a server farm that the majority of players can be matched into. A lot of the community atmosphere has left the game due to this.
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Powerlord
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Join Date: Jun 2008
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Old 06-30-2013 , 18:31   Re: Pinion Discussion Thread
#1088

Quote:
Originally Posted by Dr. McKay View Post
Some people are being losers and undermining server operators for their own desires, so Pinion users might be interested in this.
Server owners are undermining the game's MOTD (Message of the Day) function by abusing it to do things it's not intended to do.

The matchmaking "no reopening the MOTD window" was a warning that things like Pinion are ignoring. We'll see if this escalates farther.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Dr. McKay View Post
Actually, no, Valve gets a say in how you run your server, too. It is after all, their game. Then can force you to update servers at their whim and cut abused functions from the game completely. In case you forgot, that's how this matchmaking MOTD block came about in the first place.
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Last edited by Powerlord; 06-30-2013 at 18:33.
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Dr. McKay
Sir Dr. SourceMod Plugin Approver Esq. Ltd. M.D. PhD
Join Date: Aug 2011
Location: Atlantis
Old 06-30-2013 , 18:58   Re: Pinion Discussion Thread
#1089

Quote:
Originally Posted by Powerlord View Post
Server owners are undermining the game's MOTD (Message of the Day) function by abusing it to do things it's not intended to do.

The matchmaking "no reopening the MOTD window" was a warning that things like Pinion are ignoring. We'll see if this escalates farther.
And players are undermining the game's connect command by abusing it to do things that it's not intended to do. The MOTD window is only supposed to be non-reopen-able if the player joined through matchmaking. Players were never intended to be able to use console commands to simulate this.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Powerlord View Post
Actually, no, Valve gets a say in how you run your server, too. It is after all, their game. Then can force you to update servers at their whim and cut abused functions from the game completely. In case you forgot, that's how this matchmaking MOTD block came about in the first place.
As soon as Valve decides that they don't want ads in MOTD windows and says it publicly, I'll change my tune. Until that happens, it's up to the server operators.
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Last edited by Dr. McKay; 06-30-2013 at 19:01.
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napalm00
Veteran Member
Join Date: Jun 2011
Location: Italy, sadly
Old 06-30-2013 , 19:12   Re: Pinion Discussion Thread
#1090

Quote:
Originally Posted by Dr. McKay View Post
And players are undermining the game's connect command by abusing it to do things that it's not intended to do. The MOTD window is only supposed to be non-reopen-able if the player joined through matchmaking. Players were never intended to be able to use console commands to simulate this.
They're just adding a parameter (added by Valve in the first place) to a command, whereas you're hooking into their MOTD commands and exploiting them into having to wait to press the Skip button AND kicking them for saying the word "matchmaking" in chat. Who's the one abusing here?
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