TF2 server restructure

[Dr.Minky]

People shouldnt really need an incentive to play, they should play because they want to.

I agree, which is why it makes sense to give some people an insentive

The reason why people don't play is because its empty, the server EASILY fills up if there are 6 or so players in no time, because they know they have people to play with! So a small incentive to get a few people to play will bring in the people who 'want to' play and fill it up for the evening, as you said

The idea of gifting people refined seems a bit unfair, its not going to bring in any NEW players every day because the only person that will get the loot will be one of the already active players, probably wont be much competition as to who gets it

Raffle of the refined metal but only people who have played a certain amount of hours can enter,like not too many hours and have something in chat saying about it, and telling them to come ot the forums to register so they can participate.

Still sounds like something that'll ward off casual gamers to me..

[Jeffmcgee]

I'm not gonna quote due to having to quote too many people.

@Balmung:

I agree, and mentioned way back, that people should play out of a want, or love, to the server. Not due just to get something. I play 15 minutes a day on another server just to do there premium trial. I never spend longer than that there because i don't want to. The incentive there is the premium trial, which lasts 15 minutes, but that is the max time i spend there.

@Minky:

Serious contradiction on the previous page. Balmung said about not needing an incentive, you reply "i agree, that's why people need an incentive"??? Do you think before typing?

You say that the server is dead only during non-EU times. Myself, Balmung and probably many other regulars, yourself as well as you've claimed previously, have been on during EU times, and the server has been dead. The issue isn't with the lack of non-EU people, it's a lack of people.

Earning double green-coins during set times seems shit IMHO for non-L4G players. GC's only really apply for people who use these forums, which the casual gamer, the gamer the server needs to attract, does not.

@iulian / NPhect

Having a way to see most active players would be nice, although getting a suitable timeframe, e.g. weekly / monthly, would be difficult. I'm not sure giving ingame items is fair though so probably GC's would be an idea because the most active player, hopefully, would be from the community. It could also be done so that if you are most active for X times, or X times consecutively, you get an ever bigger bonus.

@Minky again

What did you imply by "probably wont be much competition as to who gets it "

[mogadonskoda]

@iulian / NPhect

Having a way to see most active players would be nice, although getting a suitable timeframe, e.g. weekly / monthly, would be difficult. I'm not sure giving ingame items is fair though so probably GC's would be an idea because the most active player, hopefully, would be from the community. It could also be done so that if you are most active for X times, or X times consecutively, you get an ever bigger bonus.

So you are saying we want 5 afk's on the server to get GC...., we could just have a raffle and you get entered if you play like a certain amount of hours(low enough for the casual game) so everyone has a chance to win so idling on the server doesnt help

[Jeffmcgee]

On other servers i've seen AFK kickers so if people are idle then they get instantly removed. Obviously it still has issues. Even if you remove the GC aspect, having a board somewhere to show the most active players over a certain period, other than GameME, would be nice.

[Dr.Minky]

@Jeffmcgee Please refer to other people with a bit more dignity when speaking: I'm only trying to help.

I was not contradicting to myself, I don't think you understood what I was saying.

An incentive like the double green coins for a short period of time (which was just a suggestion) would guarantee some of the active Mr.Green users to want to go and play for that short period of time. After which, the casual users would join purely by the fact that there are other users in the game. The difference between that and the incentive of doing a give away of items to the most active user, is that there is always going to be a couple of users that are more active than others: regardless to whether or not there is a giveaway. There wont be an increase of players at any set time, causing the server to fill up from that, as these active players who are at the top anyway wont have to play any more than they already do, meaning everyone else won't bother trying that much.

I said it would go to a couple of people because, as I've said several times, there are already a handful of 'veteran' active players on the green server, who aren't going to need to bother putting in the extra effort = not increasing a boost in players after the server is on 0 players. Its not an issue of needing more members, there are thousands of people on this forum and tons of people that would play the green server if it were full, its an issue of getting those first 6 players on: something that the thing I proposed would improve,

It is just illogical. If someone could suggest some other ideas, maybe similar to this but not being bias towards veterans who play the game anyway, then we would make some progress instead of people jumping onto one idea

[Balmung]

The original tactic of get in the empty server and wait until someone else jonis seems to be the only working solution right now, managed to become full again yesterday and still had a strong playercount into the night.

I don't see anyway that we can continue to keep popularity late at nights without Clavus resituating the sever to america so that they're more likely to join, All the bigger servers like UK:CS, saigns.de Etc. All suck up the big pool o fplayersUnless we were somehow able to actively promote our community somewhere I don't see this changing for a while, no matter how many different gamemodes we try and shove in.

[FishWithAHat]

Ohhh one thing i forgot to metion, that might be a biggy.

"Server restarting in 10 seconds"

How come it some times just goes on a restart spree?

[Iulian]

@

mogadonskoda

You can't make a complicated system because you dont have space where to do it. We need new players, so simple tags as Free Items and an ingame advertising system will help.

[Dr.Minky]

Yeah Balmung, you're right

I think as long as a select few of us come on at around the same time in the evening whenever we can then it'll fill up

As long as other people are willing to come do that too then I'm more than happy to wait around to get it to fill up

[Luke Nukem]

To be honest it only fills up when I am on because we go on STEAM chat and message people to come on. I have gone on a few times and it's been full, but now it's normally empty when I go to play, so I have to go and play on my other server which is Lotus. Been playing for 4 years now and it's not a game I get bored of, so it would be nice to have a constant server flow instead of kids that get pissy because it's a map they hate. We all have maps we hate at the end of the day, but ditching your team because of it isn't good enough

More players = More game player = GREEN COINS!! = ZS UPGRADES = ZSNESS...

Most good servers that fester in the depths of Team fortress are mainly American or highly advertised in the EU such as UKGameplay and UK2fort 24/7.

Edited May 1, 2012 by Luke Nukem

[Balmung]

It just depends on dedication to get it fill up, I've spent up to an hour just completing rounds before someone joins but it works, like yesterday for example. Played a few rounds and Nphect came on we then managed to build it up to a full server, looked this morning and there were still 6 players which was quite a suprise.

[Jeffmcgee]

Today seemed especially dead. Myself and Balmung sat in the server messing about until people joined. we waited about 5 rounds and then 1 person joined. We managed to eventually get another friend online, making the server count = 4. Eventually our friend left, and so did the other player, leaving only myself and Balmung for about another hour. No-one else in that time joined, regular or casual players.

That occurred between 7 and 9 PM GMT, so the issue isn't a lack of non-EU players to keep the server populated after EU people DC, the issue seems a lot bigger than that.

[Dr.Minky]

It is exam season too, keep in mind, I wouldnt be surprised if more people started playing again next month: I know I will

[Raxan]

Hats have started to drop on Dota2 so people are playing the shit out of that.

When it comes out tf2 is gonna die real fast. The only way to have an active server is to have regulars but they have all either gone away, been banned (lol) or stopped playnig tf2.

Edited May 1, 2012 by Raxan

[jedabia]

As it now seems to be "trending" to use Twitter's abbreviations i shall too.

@jeffmcgee I think you mean Balmung and I.

@Luke Nukem I think other players have also invited people, so please don't try and retract from what other, more active, people are trying to do. Also i for one wish to question your motives. You refuse to post an actual suggestion and then make out that the only reason you wish to help the TF2 server is so that the Zombie Survival server can be upgraded.

@Dr.Minky I understand that this is currently a busy time in people's lives and we should help those special few through these arduous times.

@Raxan I'm not familiar with DOTA2 but i did also see that most people from this community are also playing Guild Wars 2. With those two games now on the market, TF2 will struggle to keep a strong and regular player base for all the private servers.

[Raxan]

Thing is that there are more people here on the forums that are either talking how to fix thing but not doing anything, or not giving a fuck about tf2 anymore and use the sideblog thing.

Edited May 2, 2012 by Raxan

[Dr.Minky]

Thing is that there are more people here on the forums that are either talking how to fix thing but not doing anything, or not giving a fuck about tf2 anymore and use the sideblog thing.

It is exam season too, keep in mind, I wouldnt be surprised if more people started playing again next month

Edited May 2, 2012 by Dr.Minky

[Balmung]

It's not exam season for everyone.

[Raxan]

Thing is that there are more people here on the forums that are either talking how to fix thing but not doing anything, or not giving a fuck about tf2 anymore and use the sideblog thing.

It is exam season too, keep in mind, I wouldnt be surprised if more people started playing again next month

Dude, this has been going on for close to a year now. That is no excuse.

[Jeffmcgee]

Yesterday there were some good matches played although the server never had more than 10 players for long. At one point it was fun playing with Nex destroyed, Voidpekarn, Balmung and myself. The teams were massively unfair, nex and void against balmung and myself, but they were fun. We even managed to win once.

The issue is still player count. For MineCraf advertising i know where to go and what to do, but i'm at a blank with TF2 as i am relatively new to the game.

[Shoogoo]

Hey fellas,

I've been scratching my head and here are my thoughts on the matter;

1/ The way I see it, that quickplay plugin is like trying to lit a fire. Get 6-8 people in the server and people start pouring in as if a huge door opened to the realms of teh F2P. My suggestion would be to add each others on steam friends, and everyday (at best) when you join the server, invite all of those people through steam. Last monday I invited 4 people when Balmung and Jeff were already on the server, and a minute later the server was full and kicking. Doesn't matter if we know each other or not, even if we like each other or not (rax is an asshole) the point is to be in each other's list to get that bitch started.

2/ Remove Cranetop. I cannot stress this enough. I don't know if the map is good or not (didn't have enough time to play it since it empties the server), but people flee the shit out of it. Since there is no timelimit on the maps, it's easy to tell when did the server die, and so far I've always seen it die on Cranetop, and you can see it on gameme too.

[Balmung]

Hey fellas,

I've been scratching my head and here are my thoughts on the matter;

1/ The way I see it, that quickplay plugin is like trying to lit a fire. Get 6-8 people in the server and people start pouring in as if a huge door opened to the realms of teh F2P. My suggestion would be to add each others on steam friends, and everyday (at best) when you join the server, invite all of those people through steam. Last monday I invited 4 people when Balmung and Jeff were already on the server, and a minute later the server was full and kicking. Doesn't matter if we know each other or not, even if we like each other or not (rax is an asshole) the point is to be in each other's list to get that bitch started.

2/ Remove Cranetop. I cannot stress this enough. I don't know if the map is good or not (didn't have enough time to play it since it empties the server), but people flee the shit out of it. Since there is no timelimit on the maps, it's easy to tell when did the server die, and so far I've always seen it die on Cranetop, and you can see it on gameme too.

I cant agree enough, Most people dont want the hassle of downloading maps, Theres another download one too which seems to do a pretty good job of clearing the place, If these two maps are removed it should help retain some players, If you're worried about reducing the amount of maps in the cycle you could always add plr_Pipeline back in. I never really understood why it was removed, It just seemed like 3 people said they didn't like it so it was taken out.

[Dr.Minky]

1/ The way I see it, that quickplay plugin is like trying to lit a fire. Get 6-8 people in the server and people start pouring in as if a huge door opened to the realms of teh F2P. My suggestion would be to add each others on steam friends, and everyday (at best) when you join the server, invite all of those people through steam. Last monday I invited 4 people when Balmung and Jeff were already on the server, and a minute later the server was full and kicking. Doesn't matter if we know each other or not, even if we like each other or not (rax is an asshole) the point is to be in each other's list to get that bitch started.

Agreed, I said this the other day :

Can't really comment on the second one because I already have all the maps downloaded, but if its making people leave then its for the best

[Jeffmcgee]

the map Balmung's on about is frontier.no matter how many times i play it, even on L4G, you are still required to download .nav files.

edit:

With regards to adding people, i'm fine with that. I've added a few people, one of which was Raxan, and those were just the people that i found to be decent and slightly active when i was. It'd be nice to be able to invite people when the server is dead.

Edited May 7, 2012 by Jeffmcgee

[Raxan]

Hey fellas,

I've been scratching my head and here are my thoughts on the matter;

1/ The way I see it, that quickplay plugin is like trying to lit a fire. Get 6-8 people in the server and people start pouring in as if a huge door opened to the realms of teh F2P. My suggestion would be to add each others on steam friends, and everyday (at best) when you join the server, invite all of those people through steam. Last monday I invited 4 people when Balmung and Jeff were already on the server, and a minute later the server was full and kicking. Doesn't matter if we know each other or not, even if we like each other or not (rax is an asshole) the point is to be in each other's list to get that bitch started.

2/ Remove Cranetop. I cannot stress this enough. I don't know if the map is good or not (didn't have enough time to play it since it empties the server), but people flee the shit out of it. Since there is no timelimit on the maps, it's easy to tell when did the server die, and so far I've always seen it die on Cranetop, and you can see it on gameme too.

Sounds good ..

(rax is an asshole)

oi :<