Let us start a game with 1 player, with or without bots. People don't have time to sit in a server waiting for it to get enough people for the match to start. The legitimate servers can't get any traction while the xp farms and modified servers have taken over Portal.
As an experiment I tried joining a bunch of those supposedly normal, modified, non-xp farm servers this morning and every single one gave an error and crashed back to the UI. Why are they allowed to take up space if they don't work?
I thought the whole reason for removing bots in the first place was to get rid of the xp farms. All we can do is report the servers to remove them from our server list but then they pop back up again.
Here is the solution. Legitimate, verified unmodified servers with or without bots give full xp and progression and will start the match with 1 player. Modified servers give no xp or progression but can be submitted for review to be designated as a verified experience. That will eliminate the xp farms because they won't pass review and therefore will give no xp so there would be no reason for people to clog up Portal with them.
Devs, feel free to implement my solution. My compensation will be to be able to play on legitimate Portal servers.