Five Ideas for Our Community

[Dr Sadako]

• CS Ladder - probably applicable to LFS and BF2 (or other game) as well but my main thought was CSS. I think that having and internal ladder could be fun but also good practice. My thought was to have 5 players per team and I also have some basic idea on how the ladder should be organised and what rules to have. However, before going into detail on that I wanted to see if there was any interest in a ladder like this.
  
• Old Rotation Review - I started thinking what maps did we actually have in the old rotation back in the days of PCS? Deadlock, shogun, ... yes what was the other names and why did we play them? So I thought a shorter review artice on that could be interesting for us old farts who played them and also as a history document for the new guys to read. "Ahhh that's why it is like this" kind of thing. Good to document our past.
  
• TCS Map Review - I regularly reoccuring map review that is posted on our forum but from a TCS perspective. Why a map is good/bad etc i.e. like a normal map review but adding the TCS element. This way we can sieve through the vast amount of maps but at the same time educate our CS community in what makes a map TCS and what to look for.
  
• Bravo/Charlie Exclusive Server(s) -at the moment there is really no benefit of being Charlie other than signing up early to the LAN and quite frankly there haven't been a rush so everyone who wanted a spot recieved one irrespective of membership status. So I thought that why strive to be Bravo or Charlie for that matter other than the shiny wings? Why not have a server that is password protected and only accessible for bravo and higher members and/or charlie members? This way these two groups will have something regular Alphas don't. I read in the Swedish PC Gamer magazine about Team Fortress 2 and Left 4 Dead, both games highly teamplay oriented games that we could (from what I read we should) support exclusivly for Bravo/Charlie. Then these two groups will feel selected and special which is good for the community I think.
  
• TCS Map Contest - this one also applicable to other games but let us just look at it from the CS perspective. This is a more effort requiring idea as sponsors needed to be found and I don't mean sponsorship of small stuff. The idea is that we have an open map contest to create the best TCS map. Of course the map should be nice looking and such but it would be evaluated strongly by its TCS playability i.e. objective. This requires as you understand that the prices are really good to attract mappers like Nipper or 3DMike. The benefits for us would be that

• we might end up with a few really interesting TCS maps
• advertisment of our community that could attract players
• advertisment of our community that could attract sponsors
• make our community feel that "wow there is happening cool stuff here"
• you think of something!

So please debate and add comments to this. As you can see I had a 6 hour drive to Stockholm today and had lots of time to think.

[Squonk]

All the ideas look good
 
CS Ladder < I really like the sound of that one and would be up for it
 
Old Rotation Review < that too could be fun to look back at the old maps and see if we can find them for CSS

[Blunt]

interesting thoughts:g:

No.4 is a winner, in principle, as it does give people something to aim for.

as for the others, they are good ideas that I would like to hear discussed.

[DuVeL]

Bugger, I drank to much tonight. Some interesting points as far as I could read though (will rad more tomorrow).
One thing though, as I'm not playing CSS much lately, I have been on BF2142 a bit and through these forums got to know some perfect teamplayers! As in they deserve atleast Bravo!
But Mats, what about an inhouse tournament? 3 vs 3 or higher?
Make more interesting appeals towards matchplays?

[Whitey]

CS Ladder

I like  the sound of that. Might be better with less players per team as we wouldn't be able to get many 5 player teams.

Old Rotation Review

Why not. Should be interesting.

TCS Map Review

yup.

Bravo/Charlie Exclusive Server(s)

Not so sure about this one.  It's taken a long time to get back to having Meathook busy most nights and I wouldn't want to put members of Alpha company off by not allowing them access to the server most of us are playing on (not sure if that would happen).   To test the water we could have a Bravo/Charlie night on Meathook and see what feedback we get?
Charlies do get priority for matches (once we start playing them again), in fact if we have enough Charlies playing now we will be back to only Charlies playing matches.

TCS Map Contest

Need to go into a meeting but I'll try and comment later :flirty:

[Dr Sadako]

Left_4_Dead
Team_Fortress_2
 
For those who haven't seen it.

[DuVeL]

Left_4_Dead
Team_Fortress_2
 
For those who haven't seen it.

Both look very interesting. Left 4 Dead seems to me the most interesting.
Can these only be bought by Steam or also like on play.com?
 
For the rest I agree with all points made and I reckon these can spice up -=[dMw]=-.
 
Just thought of something. -=[dMw]=-Tournament; invite like the old school clans NESW, CoFR, CGA, TG

[KKND]

I like your ideas Doc. TF2..wow:woot2:

I have played tfc in the old days...what a game..rocketjumpen  ect ect...great game.

[Dr Sadako]

Both look very interesting. Left 4 Dead seems to me the most interesting.
Can these only be bought by Steam or also like on play.com?

TF2 will be available in the "orange box" release in October via STEAM or Play (or whatever you prefer).
 
I am not sure about Left 4 Dead more than it will definitely be sold through steam.
 
I can also give you a headsup regarding Steam. Steam will incorporate stats to your profile which will be public for all. That means it will show what games you play, how much you play them, where, when. You will be able to form Communities through this page to find people who think alike. Left 4 Dead will give you reward and punishment medals that will be showed on your stats page i.e. you will immediately be judged by all if you are or aren't a team player. Think along the terms of Microsoft Live but it is free of charge.

[Dr Sadako]

• CS Ladder - probably applicable to LFS and BF2 (or other game) as well but my main thought was CSS. I think that having and internal ladder could be fun but also good practice. My thought was to have 5 players per team and I also have some basic idea on how the ladder should be organised and what rules to have. However, before going into detail on that I wanted to see if there was any interest in a ladder like this.

Some more ideas on the CS ladder.

• A team can only challenge another team that is maximum 2 positions above you. The team at position one do not need to challenge anyone.
• Winning over a team at a higher position than you means that the teams change position on the ladder. Winning over a team with a lower position means that the teams remain at their current position. A draw means that the team with lower position will go up one position and the team with higher position will lose one position.
• A minimum of one match/challenge per fortnight need to be played by the team. If not the team will lose two positions on the ladder.
• MR12 with e.g. ED rules. 3 minute rounds, 35 C4
• 3,4,5 (this needs to be decided after we know how many are interested) players per team NO substitues allowed. You put forward your own team. You are only allowed to be part of one team.
• The team with lower position will choose map unless "map of the week" is selected. Maps available for matches are CS:S standard maps and maps from dMw's current map packs.
• Matches are played on Thursdays and/or Sundays. It is the challenging teams responsibility to contact an admin to see if he is available.
• More?

[Whitey]

"You put forward your own team" how would that work?
It's not going to be that much fun if we end up with a couple of teams with all the best players. We also need to look at who will admin the matches (unless we have an admin in each team).

I think a map of the week is a good idea, especially if we make it one of the newer maps in the cycle.  It should help us develop tactics on these maps.

[Dr Sadako]

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[Benny]

$0.01 (I'm new so you only get half my thoughts)

The ladder is a great idea, but I think you should break from an MR12 and knock it down to a best of 9 or something. Make it short and snappy, something that isn't going to take potentially 10 players away from our servers all night, you could then do it on normal nights and not affect attendance.

Not big on the private servers - IMHO what we have now is a good balance and a good recruiting ground, although I do agree that it's too easy to get bravo and charlie nowadays, and there are no real bonuses to it. I'll think of something - I have to incentivise at work, which involves me telling people that they should be greatful to work for me.....works ok there.

Old maps - absolutely, there are some that just scream TCS but we have to find them. kismayo is one example, but there are hundreds of old ones, we just need to find their equivalents or alternatives. Things like shogun, wildwest, deep6 etc. Good sizes for 8v8.

It might be worth having a few in reserve for smaller numbers and larger numbers if you see what I mean.


Now imagine what crap you woulda got for the whole $0.02