The Long-Overdue Saga of VF4 - A Tale of Three Cities

[Hexalan]

ad hominem

I'm glad I was able to teach you some new words today.

 

[Communist Bakery]

Now you've regressed to nitpicking at my joke names on Steam? The reference to Bane from Batman? Really? Back a few years ago I used to play FFN frequently. I was the lady known as Stupid Sexy BLUSpy and later on Felix. I never had any problems and was never banned.

Ladies & gentlemen, these are your moderators. This is how they treat players.

Ladies & Gentlemen, these are your moderators. This is how they treat grieffers.

 

[Reechard]

The VaultF4 brand has had no success in TF2. Whose fault is that?

Our community popped up right at the time when Valve started making active changes to TF2 to make it more difficult to host a community server of any kind. Freefrag's success was due largely to using fake client counts to get people into servers, and Freefrag's downfall was the inability to keep servers full once Valve started blacklisting servers with fake client counts. Makatiel himself has said more than once that if he could do it again, he would never have allowed the fake clients. After spending a couple of years on the TF2 server mailing list, it's become fully apparent that *all* communities that run TF2 servers are struggling to keep servers full, unless they have a heavily modded niche group that they cater to (ie; the Taunt servers and their like). We decided about a year ago that we are not even going to attempt to be a TF2-based community. This is why we throw up a server for just about any game someone suggests. We're throwing things against the wall to see what sticks.

We have the server booking system, which has been awesome for the supporters who use it, and has been great for comp teams. We have Vault404, which is full once a week thanks to cheese and the people who are becoming regulars on it. We're getting back to the point where we have over a dozen people in mumble every single night just derping around and playing games.

But most importantly, we are not in financial dire straits. We own not one, but TWO massive servers. They're a generation or two old, but they were absolute beasts when they were brand new. We have *free* colocation on a massive fiber connection. Yes, this causes routing issues at times, but if we didn't have this stuff, we'd have fallen off the map a long time ago. We do not *NEED* success in TF2. TF2 is a 7 year old game that used to be community based, but has been taken by the developer and put on their own servers. QuickPlay now fully defaults to Valve servers, and getting new, fresh players into community servers is not a good investment to make. We tried it, it didn't work, it doesn't work for anyone anymore, and it's not worth our effort.

tl;dr we're gonna be here for a long time. We have the technology. We don't need no stinkin' tf2.

 

[Cheese4Everyone]

I seem to have missed such a potent business opportunity with this thread....there is so much whine but NO CHEESE!
Who serves whine without cheese I ask you!?! It's just being a bad host if you ask me....
I'll be setting up my stall on the corner of Nope St. and Goa Way if anyone needs me....

 

[LavaRed]

All joking aside, I do want to bring this thread back to the original content. What I've learned over the years is that perception is by far more important than the intent of the content creator. As such, believe me that in creating a thread combining old content stories, plus adding the new information, it was done so deliberately to avoid offending people. That being said, I have to continue my honesty in stating that the fact and the truth is not always pleasant and nicey-nice. Here, the truth was told without divulging slanderous or scandalous opinions about certain individuals. If you perceive it as otherwise, you may have a miniscule amount of apology from me.

Over the past 2 years that the vault has been in operation, us operators have been asked countless times for a recap of our history dating all the way back to FUG times. Since the majority of our current staff was NOT around during those times, that's why we researched back to previous saga threads for accuracy. We also spoke with the creators of said threads to confirm they were okay with this development.

Lastly, while we value the community opinion and suggestions, we draw a firm line between constructive criticism and flat out bitchery. You do not have to post here. Hell, if you want me to delete your account, I would acquiesce your request. I do not tolerate hatred, bigotry, and unsubstantiated bitch-fests. As my colleague, Vintage, has stated you are free to leave. Else, you may be ponied

 

[Razer]

This... is accurate, as far as it goes.

A key fact is missing from Chapter 7, though.

The damage done in the name of that relationship led to many of the servers being Banned by the Minions of Gaben. The damage from that banning was never full repaired.

 

[Reechard]

This... is accurate, as far as it goes.

A key fact is missing from Chapter 7, though.

The damage done in the name of that relationship led to many of the servers being Banned by the Minions of Gaben. The damage from that banning was never full repaired.

Yeah, with the 40/20 vision that comes from retrospect, we clung and clung to a bunch of IPs because "that's what people have favorited", but moving away from the banned IPs to some fresh golden delicious IPs may have made a difference.

 

[Razer]

sometimes, the only satisfaction we get is hearing someone go "Yeah, you were right. That was a bad idea" long after it is to late to fix things.

Pyrrhic victories suck. :-(

 

[Barbarossa_5]

This was super informative about some of the behind the scenes stuff that some of us missed out on back then. Only things I would maybe add would be the mess at the end of FFN in which Payload and Montage left for greener pastures due to some oddball server issues.

10/10 write up though, would make disinterested third party read.

 

[VintagePC]

This was super informative about some of the behind the scenes stuff that some of us missed out on back then. Only things I would maybe add would be the mess at the end of FFN in which Payload and Montage left for greener pastures due to some oddball server issues.

10/10 write up though, would make disinterested third party read.

Yeah, there was definitely a lot going on. Sadly it wasn't stuff we could tell at the time without there being a huge mess as a result, even though it probably would have shed light on a LOT of the confusion and WTFery. Coupled with changes from valve to the entire TF2 system (things that made 32man impossible with the hardware we had)... and it was more or less the final nail in the coffin for payload and montage. If I remember correctly a lot of folks had already moved on when the servers initially went to crap in the era of SPG, and we just never recovered from that, even with the hard work from everyone that was still here.