Just a thought

Armitage · November 27, 2008, 09:11:20 AM

Are we spreading ourselves to thin with our new multi/multi game approach. Now we have L4D, Insurgency, CS, LFS and COD4 servers. Are we in the situation where we have a couple of people on each server at night for 20 minutes, hoping more people will join and in the end just going and doing something less boring instead. I know we had 3 people on the COD4 server at different times last night and the same seems to be the case for Insurgency. Not sure about the other servers.

OldBloke · November 27, 2008, 10:30:51 AM

Quote from: Armitage;252697Are we spreading ourselves to thin with our new multi/multi game approach. Now we have L4D, Insurgency, CS, LFS and COD4 servers. Are we in the situation where we have a couple of people on each server at night for 20 minutes, hoping more people will join and in the end just going and doing something less boring instead. I know we had 3 people on the COD4 server at different times last night and the same seems to be the case for Insurgency. Not sure about the other servers.

We couldn't continue as we were - our community is shrinking. The decision to open up public servers was taken as an opportunity to attract new blood.

What we're trying to achieve is the adoption of a modern game release into the community at a regular interval - say one a year. To do this we need to hit the ground running with a public server up and running as soon as a likely candidate is identified. When people play on these servers we want to let them know who we are, what we stand for and how to find us. The people we want to join us are most likely the ones who bother to seek us out. If the server isn't popular we hose it. Blueball has the difficult job of maintaining this whilst also making sure that you guys have your servers configured as you want them.

The danger, as you've identified, is that our current membership also want to try the new games meaning we get stretched thinly across our existing supported games. We try to reduce the impact of this by having set days for each game.

It's up to the Section Head to promote his section as best he can. If this means loitering on your server until someone joins then that's what you have to do. AS CS has shown us - if you can attract a bunch of regular guest players then you can have a successful night's gaming even if the dMw numbers are low. We will support you all the way but, eventually, everything finds its own natural level. So, if it's not working, change something or watch it die.

Penfold · November 27, 2008, 01:16:20 PM

I've wondered about this and I think that we do almost have to have set days for set games until either the membership expands or the numbers of adopted games dies down.

The problem is that we now have 3 or 4 FPS games which are drawing from the same pool of members.

the system of COD on a Monday, CS:S on a Friday does seem to work imho Perhaps we need to more formalised L4D nights as well.

I did post in COD admin about server messages as certainly on Monday there were 3 or 4 good potential players. At the end I whispered them our forum details.

PEN

OldBloke · November 27, 2008, 01:35:16 PM

Quote from: Penfold;252736I did post in COD admin about server messages as certainly on Monday there were 3 or 4 good potential players. At the end I whispered them our forum details.

PEN

BB's been busy with L4D but I'm sure he will get round to it

Penfold · November 27, 2008, 01:48:06 PM

I think RCONMAX has the facility to do that anyway if needs be. I tried it on Monday and it worked well - posting a message evewry couple of minutes.

the only issue with that is that if more than one person set it going at any one time then it would double up.

PEN

Whitey · November 27, 2008, 01:56:35 PM

This is definately a problem and I hope the public servers will help in attracting new blood as we are spreading ourselves thinner with the number of games we now support. It wasn't that long ago we had a full server on Boomer every night but those days are gone (for now) and the only time we get a full server now is on a Friday. I do think the changes being made are a good thing in the longer term.

I have some ideas to try and get more new people involved but they involve a standard public server to attract people to the community rather than the currently enforced TCS public server with the "right people" being asked to sign up on the forum to allow them to play "proper" TCS on Meathook. I'm not keen on the idea but without the core group of people we had getting a game started in the early evening (mainly playing CoD/LFS/Insurgency/TF2 now), I don't see many other options working.
With my new job I don't have the time to sit on Boomer, night after night trying to get games going as I have in the past.

I'm going to see how the next week or two works out but a CS Public server where we play TCS but don't kick/slay people who don't might be worth a trial. :sad:

OldBloke · November 27, 2008, 02:11:25 PM

Quote from: Whitey;252746...
I'm going to see how the next week or two works out but a CS Public server where we play TCS but don't kick/slay people who don't might be worth a trial. :sad:

Sounds like an excellent idea. Go for it.

Armitage · November 28, 2008, 02:44:23 PM

I agree with the principle of jumping on new games. But we will only pickup new blood, if they get to play with enough dMw players to see what a bunch of nice guys we are. As for L4D, Is it not just a bit of fun with out the player numbers or tactics to show us at our best. I see it just as a drain.:g:

TeaLeaf · November 28, 2008, 02:51:15 PM

The bottom line is it could be a drain, so where interest is not there we pull the server, but we keep providing new servers to keep attracting new passers by. If you throw enough of them at the wall some of them will stick. The alternative is to do nothing in which case we will gradually fall into a very terminal decline imo.

TL.