Leadership's Guide to Quick Play, Recruiting, and Server Ranks

[MSK Impostr]

Raving about Ratings

thanks for the post! it does settle some of my rage over respawn times. Lets hope we can make ranks to get some fast respawn servers again!

I suppose that if this is simply a matter of boosting ranks back up, I'm sure I could get a bunch of old regulars together to bring back some of the fervor. However, I get the feeling that once the ratings are up for this new 2fort, that will simply be used as evidence that the change back to fast respawn won't be necessary.


-MSK Impostr-

 

[vudu]

Regarding 2fort, If I remember this was one of our highest ranking servers for tf2, and I think it was in the 100's or something because it was that pro. That was without Quickplay.

Nope. When we were ranked 72 that was WITH quick play. Valve disabled quickplay shortly after then the ranked dropped 200 slots. Hence why we disabled it.

that thread talks about the respawn times, and if you look at that poll, the people who voted for fast respawn times has over 4 times as many voters as the ones who voted for slow.

I personally like faster respawn times to, but that doesn't keep the server full. We tried doing the preference thing with VALVe maps and it would not stay full. Now it's at it's best rank since the server change with quick play.

 

[vudu]

I can see these types of changes being made after you warn us of pending changes, but doing it without consulting anyone outside of leadership and dropping a "we need ranks" bomb leaves people to draw their own conclusions as to why something's being done.

I agree better communication is needed. That's why I made this thread. Unfortunately in most cases, we need to make decisions that go against what the community wants. For example, most of leadership wants VALVe maps to have no crits but that simple does not work. The server was diving until we enabled quick play.

The main issue I have with this reasoning is that 2fort was already the highest ranked of our TF2 servers, and was almost always filled if I recall correctly. What that equates to in my opinion is risking the community to try and raise our ranks for more money.

Another common misconception is 2fort was doing just fine until quick play was enabled. This is completely wrong. Take a look at this graph:

We are trying to keep the servers full. It's not about money per se; it's about if we don't have full servers Council will take our servers away.



.

 

[vudu]

Eventually the people who want to have faster respawn will just leave or give up trying to get it back, so essientially that part of the community will be gone by the time we can try to form a new community vudu

Possibly. We have a handful of regulars but the majority of the players are from Quickplay.

Also, our ranks would go down as soon as quick play was off again, so even if we did start to rebuild that community, it would eventually be dissolved because our rank wouldnt stay in the low 200s anymore.

Not necessarily true. If we have enough regulars then the server will stay were it is, constantly full. This is what happened with BlackMesa for many, many months.

We would need more members and dedication to the server which would have to surpass what we have for valve maps.

This is true. The point is, if we are recruiting members off of the servers then we build the "army" that is needed to sustain a server that does not have quick play enabled. Take a look at our ventrilo compared to CSS. We don't have enough dedicated members to support 1 custom server let alone more.

 

[2di4u]

All I know is that most of the regulars are pissed it is no longer instant and are gaming elsewhere

 

[vudu]

What matters when dealing with communities is the people on the ground level, those who are effected most by changes like these.

We need to worry about the community that we already have, instead of worrying about the community that we might have in the future.

I agree with your first point. The problem is the second point. We don't have many people on the ground level. We barely have a TF2 community. The number of eGOs that play TF2 is despicable compared to where this group was a year ago. We have about 50 people that are very, very dedicated, you being one. But we cannot fill 4 servers with our current community. I'd rather have 8 servers that are full so I have options when I'm choosing what map I want to play on.

 

[vudu]

That having been said, I just can't seen to bring myself to launch TF2 lately. It's just not the same without seeing the same bunch of friends. For me, it's about the regulars, and not the pubs.

This is the core of the problem. Many "old" players are not playing TF2. Join a server at 9pm PT. The 3 top servers are full and there are member 4 eGO members on each. I would like to see 20 eGO members on each server but right now, that just doesn't happen.

I hope that, once server rankings are where you want them, then something like 2FortIR can come back. I agree that it's not a big stats-buster, but it was a long-term continual community of close-knit players who helped to show those pubs who did join what eGO was truly all about.

The plan is to grow our community and find an additional server that the community wants that can also be supported (stats wise) by the community. Even the most loved No Crits VALVe maps could not stay full despite the mass amount of people that loved it as a no crits server.

 

[vudu]

I get the feeling that once the ratings are up for this new 2fort, that will simply be used as evidence that the change back to fast respawn won't be necessary.

The plan is

a) Get servers high ranked
b) Grow community
c) Ask for a new 5th server
d) Poll community for server ideas
e) Implement server that will also do well based on feedback from community

If part D entails 2fort IR then that we will definitely see if that is possible. The problem in the past (for the past 1 year at LEAST) has been that people say "I want _______" and ______ rolls around and the server fails. It has happened repeatedly since the core group of players that are dedicated to the server is simply too small for success.

 

[RofLCopter]

Why not do a test drive... We have the events server that is unused most of the time... why not use that one as Quickplay + Regular Respawn and keep the other as fast respawn for a bit and monitor what happens?

 

[vudu]

Why not do a test drive... We have the events server that is unused most of the time... why not use that one as Quickplay + Regular Respawn and keep the other as fast respawn for a bit and monitor what happens?

Please see the graph a few posts up. The server dropped nearly 300 ranks in a matter of a day or two once Quick Play was disabled.

 

[WyrmMage]

My point being vudu, that Until we amass an army of people who want instant respawn back, and are dedicated enough to the server to keep it full, that this community would never return. After so much time, there will be few people left who still want Instant respawn, the others would have moved on to other servers or other things. Pubs who are randoms may form a new community, but this community would be based on normal respawn times. Some may support changing to IR, but the majority of them would be indifferent, as they are just random pubs being sent by quickplay. Thus without a large following of eGO members, instant respawn is not going to come back as long as we need to keep our ranking high. If im not really clear please let me know so I can elaborate better.

 

[vudu]

I understand what you are saying. The problem is there are very few players who want IR. If there are more, well they certainly didn't show up on the server after quick play was disabled by VALVe.

Thus without a large following of eGO members, instant respawn is not going to come back as long as we need to keep our ranking high.

This is not necessarily true. Historically, we have tried out servers that have previously worked in the past despite the number of players that are screaming for it.

 

[WyrmMage]

Wait, you would try out 2fort IR even without people asking for it? But 2fort IR worked in the past because of quickplay I assumed. Without it, trying it out would be like making another black mesa, do we really want that?

 

[vudu]

Wait, you would try out 2fort IR even without people asking for it? But 2fort IR worked in the past because of quickplay I assumed. Without it, trying it out would be like making another black mesa, do we really want that?

Not necessarily. When we vent new servers we look at

a) Votes from the community
b) What we haven't done for a while but has worked in the past
c) Something random

BlackMesa fails right now because it's not new and exciting and most of the "old" folks that supported it have moved on. If we bring a new server in there is an aura of excitement which does unusual things.

 

[WyrmMage]

But, 2fort without quick play, has been shown to not be successfull from your graphs in the previous posts, so how could it be successful later on. I dont think a ton of people will magically start going, Hey I want to play IR 2fort. The people we recruit from quickplay could lean towards either side, they might like it, but they also might not want it. So there is no real reliable future for 2fort by this logic. Meh I will stop posting, I am not helpnig this situation so Ill give it a rest.

 

[Sequel Sentry]

The issue with this is that people are trying to portray the idea that quickplay is working because of a small bump in the rankings today.

The graph shows a constant decrease, yet quickplay was re-enabled on the 17th of March or earlier. It didn't stop falling. As I'm sure it's been stated 100 times before, a regular 2fort server has to be pretty special to draw people out of the sea of clouds, yet fast respawn was special, and since many 2forts would have switched to fix quickplay, the fast respawn players would look for a new server.

I'm just disappointed that this many people have had this issue brought to that server. Especially because most of these members have been supporting 2fort since well before I joined.

 

[MSK Impostr]

I agree. As Vudu stated before, there has to be something special or unique about our servers to draw people in. If the majority of servers are changing to normal respawn, then all of the other fast respawn players from across the TF2 community will be searching for a new place to call home. Why not eGO? Why not let fast respawn be what makes us different?

-MSK Impostr-

 

[RofLCopter]

Not necessarily. When we vent new servers we look at

a) Votes from the community
b) What we haven't done for a while but has worked in the past
c) Something random

BlackMesa fails right now because it's not new and exciting and most of the "old" folks that supported it have moved on. If we bring a new server in there is an aura of excitement which does unusual things.

Mesa doesn't fail.... life's been hectic... otherwise I'd fill it

 

[Sequel Sentry]

Mesa doesn't fail.... life's been hectic... otherwise I'd fill it

Eh, it's rank 1723 and hasn't been full in forever...Mesa's a dead server unfortunately.

 

[vudu]

Why not let fast respawn be what makes us different?

Because it was, and then our servers dropped 300 ranks in a few days.

We are missing the connection here. We do not have enough people that are "regulars" to do this. We need, I would guesstimate, around 60 people per server to support custom maps/settings.

This is exactly what happened to VALVe maps. Now VALVe maps is doing VERY well that quick play is enabled.