S
Sumac
I put this in dropbox a while ago and was asked to wait while we discussed the Stats issue. Please keep to the point of this thread. Positives and negatives, and don?t move off onto other topics. If we want this to happen we need to flush out the idea further. So with no further ado, let the discussion begin.
Friendly Fire
I was recently looking at the top DoD:S servers and noticed more than just a few are FF servers. I realize with our members it would not be a good idea to switch all servers to FF for more than just a few reasons. Not the least of which being there are probably few bastions of Non-FF servers. Not to mention we have far too much nade spam.
Our Competition
More than a few of the top servers are out of the states. These we will not have much of a chance competing with as their player base is most likely located in other countries. eGO does not have enough of a foreign player base to accommodate a server outside the U.S.
Other than that, we have Lotus, F|A, 6th Rangers, and BG. All of which run FF servers. A good portion of these server's player bases will come from members, another large portion comes from competitive players and community members who enjoy Friendly Fire. All of these servers are 100 tick, we won't be competing with that anytime soon, so we may have trouble bringing some of the competitive players over. So, to compete with these servers on their own level we will need to add a Friendly Fire server. Then we will have these servers at a disadvantage as they have no non-FF servers. I also have no doubt that once DoD:S community members get a taste of eGO and how professional this community and division are, they will stay, and not only that, they will try out our other servers.
Servers
Our Ava server is always top 10, our Donner, Charlie and even Kalt server do well (Kalt more recently). Charlie and Donner have their diehard regulars and Kalt has been gathering steam lately with a strong push from some older members.
Anzio and Flash obviously struggle in comparison to our other servers. Anzio picks up once or twice a week due to point farmers and members gathering to all play together. Flash has been struggling on a fairly long term basis. I am sure this has all been kicked around thousands of times in leadership, including all the issues associated with it...pulling members from one server to fill another, summer schedules vs school schedules, rotational servers, and even FF.
The Draw
When was the last time making one of these servers a FF server discussed? It appears to me that creating a FF server would have the greatest potential of bringing in NEW players to eGO servers rather than having current players migrate for a few months from one of our other servers. The players that enjoy Non-FF will stay on their current favorite eGO server and players who enjoy FF on non-eGO servers will have a new location to enjoy their gaming.
I have no doubt there are players who want a more realistic playing environment, (friendly fire) within a mature gaming community. Looking over some of the comments on a few of the top FF servers, some players complain about abusive admins and disrespectful players. Why not try and snatch up a few of those players that not only enjoy FF, but are looking for a community not filled with jerks. A FF server with good admins, which is backed by a mature gaming community instead of elitists or people less concerned about the enjoyment of their players than their personal score, now that will be a great hook for many.
Just to reiterate, the reason I think this would be a good strategy to try on a single failing server would be the fact that it will cater to players that eGO has never catered to within DoD:S. It's a legitimate chance at bringing in all new players not just retreads.
Issues
Yes, we will need to find a plugin for forgive/slap/burn/slay or whatever, but that seems like a minor issue compared to accessing a very large segment of the DoD:S community we have ignored. Will some players who from time to time join the map now leave it entirely? Possible, but this should be more than compensated by the number that add the server to their favorites. The members that enjoy the server as is now, will most likely simply play on another eGO server as there are few FF servers around.
Will this create issues yea, but there is great potential for new members to the community.
My Server Choice
As to which server it would be, that will be up to leadership, but I would strongly suggest Anzio over Flash. Suddenly having a FF server in eGO and making that server Flash, where nade spamming is a way of life, may be too tramatic for many. Also, Anzio is a normal league map which will help it?s player base. We may also be able to pull players away from BG as one of their top maps (which is almost always full) is Anzio.
DoD:S Community
Let?s be honest with ourselves, DoD:S is not a ?growing? game. Almost all of its members have owned the game for years. We get new players from time to time, but they are mostly players coming back to DoD:S, not players who just purchased the game. A necessary step to increasing our player base will have to include server modification to bring in more players from other servers. Changing maps will simply create a situation where eGO members and pubbers migrate to the new server for a period of time. This is highly unlikely to bring in new members. Adding a FF server however is a huge step toward increasing both our member and puber bases.
Please stay focused on this topic. What map is less important than getting a FF server up and running.
Friendly Fire
I was recently looking at the top DoD:S servers and noticed more than just a few are FF servers. I realize with our members it would not be a good idea to switch all servers to FF for more than just a few reasons. Not the least of which being there are probably few bastions of Non-FF servers. Not to mention we have far too much nade spam.
Our Competition
More than a few of the top servers are out of the states. These we will not have much of a chance competing with as their player base is most likely located in other countries. eGO does not have enough of a foreign player base to accommodate a server outside the U.S.
Other than that, we have Lotus, F|A, 6th Rangers, and BG. All of which run FF servers. A good portion of these server's player bases will come from members, another large portion comes from competitive players and community members who enjoy Friendly Fire. All of these servers are 100 tick, we won't be competing with that anytime soon, so we may have trouble bringing some of the competitive players over. So, to compete with these servers on their own level we will need to add a Friendly Fire server. Then we will have these servers at a disadvantage as they have no non-FF servers. I also have no doubt that once DoD:S community members get a taste of eGO and how professional this community and division are, they will stay, and not only that, they will try out our other servers.
Servers
Our Ava server is always top 10, our Donner, Charlie and even Kalt server do well (Kalt more recently). Charlie and Donner have their diehard regulars and Kalt has been gathering steam lately with a strong push from some older members.
Anzio and Flash obviously struggle in comparison to our other servers. Anzio picks up once or twice a week due to point farmers and members gathering to all play together. Flash has been struggling on a fairly long term basis. I am sure this has all been kicked around thousands of times in leadership, including all the issues associated with it...pulling members from one server to fill another, summer schedules vs school schedules, rotational servers, and even FF.
The Draw
When was the last time making one of these servers a FF server discussed? It appears to me that creating a FF server would have the greatest potential of bringing in NEW players to eGO servers rather than having current players migrate for a few months from one of our other servers. The players that enjoy Non-FF will stay on their current favorite eGO server and players who enjoy FF on non-eGO servers will have a new location to enjoy their gaming.
I have no doubt there are players who want a more realistic playing environment, (friendly fire) within a mature gaming community. Looking over some of the comments on a few of the top FF servers, some players complain about abusive admins and disrespectful players. Why not try and snatch up a few of those players that not only enjoy FF, but are looking for a community not filled with jerks. A FF server with good admins, which is backed by a mature gaming community instead of elitists or people less concerned about the enjoyment of their players than their personal score, now that will be a great hook for many.
Just to reiterate, the reason I think this would be a good strategy to try on a single failing server would be the fact that it will cater to players that eGO has never catered to within DoD:S. It's a legitimate chance at bringing in all new players not just retreads.
Issues
Yes, we will need to find a plugin for forgive/slap/burn/slay or whatever, but that seems like a minor issue compared to accessing a very large segment of the DoD:S community we have ignored. Will some players who from time to time join the map now leave it entirely? Possible, but this should be more than compensated by the number that add the server to their favorites. The members that enjoy the server as is now, will most likely simply play on another eGO server as there are few FF servers around.
Will this create issues yea, but there is great potential for new members to the community.
My Server Choice
As to which server it would be, that will be up to leadership, but I would strongly suggest Anzio over Flash. Suddenly having a FF server in eGO and making that server Flash, where nade spamming is a way of life, may be too tramatic for many. Also, Anzio is a normal league map which will help it?s player base. We may also be able to pull players away from BG as one of their top maps (which is almost always full) is Anzio.
DoD:S Community
Let?s be honest with ourselves, DoD:S is not a ?growing? game. Almost all of its members have owned the game for years. We get new players from time to time, but they are mostly players coming back to DoD:S, not players who just purchased the game. A necessary step to increasing our player base will have to include server modification to bring in more players from other servers. Changing maps will simply create a situation where eGO members and pubbers migrate to the new server for a period of time. This is highly unlikely to bring in new members. Adding a FF server however is a huge step toward increasing both our member and puber bases.
Please stay focused on this topic. What map is less important than getting a FF server up and running.
