[hibikir]

A great technique we used in my servers, it that involves having repeated servers, and a server culture where some trusted players are mods, as otherwise the cheaters vote to ban enough non cheaters to turn the game into a jungle. TF2 itself turned into a cheating horror as Valve servers were added, and the typical player just clicked on quick game, basically destroying the server culture, as you would almost never get new users.

[whythre]

Ah. Now I remember why I stopped playing. Valve funneled everyone away into their own servers and our private server died. After that the play experience, as you say, slowly turned into a horrorshow. Forgot about that bit. Oof.