Hey Dice, these are some good questions. I'll try to make sure I answer all of them as best as I can.
First, I want to highlight something you mentioned:
The average csgo player who enjoys the competitive nature of Counter Strike doesn't participate in these mods.
There are numerous people in the community, myself included, who do enjoy the competitive nature from time to time. We also partake in the servers we have. While I cannot speak on behalf of the average player, I think with the nature of CS:GO game the "average player" may be a bit broad. Perhaps the "average competitive player" (ACP if you will) would be a bit more accurate. In that case, yes many of them I would say stick to matchmaking or a deathmatch server to warmup.
With that being said, we also need to look at what there is to gain from those types of servers. A single map, or rotation map, server has been tried a few times before with little success. This is because there is no gain for the average competitive player. This ACP will be more interested in getting back into competitive as opposed to sticking around to help fill a community based server. Don't be fooled by by server rankings on gametracker. Keep in mind, (exaggeration incoming) that for every top 100 deathmatch/rotation server you see, there's another 100 sitting empty. Additionally, while you may see some deathmatch servers or 24/7 dust2 servers, those are actually not the kinds of servers the ACP, to my understanding, will be looking for. These servers are more likely to have people running around with a knife or zeus for fun, ultimately hindering the ACP's ability to get into the competitive mindset.
At the same time, the ACP is faced with a choice. Do they manually look through the server list at, quiet literally, thousands of potential servers to join where they are restricted by the rules of that server, or do they let valve's matching automatically place them on a valve server? For the ACP, as I mentioned previously, they want to get back into a match quickly. The quickest option is to join a server using the in-game matching system supported by valve for valve servers. As a bonus to playing on an official valve servers, you can gain experience to increase your in-game rank (not matchmaking rank) to get a drop when you rank up. As another bonus, the CS:GO community has noticed that if you play on an official valve server, skin/case drops are more frequent and the quality of these also increases. While there is no official statement by valve, years of observation to seem to suggest that is the case.
Just to recap so far, the hardships with hosting a community based competitive server:
- Thousands of these servers already exist
- The ACP is less likely to find it
- ACPs are not likely to remain for a long period of time
- Official valve servers offer better benefits
Now, as a community we do have an answer for the competitive community. Have you heard of our
Last Man Standing (LMS) server? I'll leave a link so you can look into a little bit. It is actually a custom plugin that only eGO has. That's right, we have launched a one of a kind server into the CS:GO community. But just launching a server isn't enough. Now that we have worked out a lot of the kinks, come December we are going to be looking at pushing this server very hard both inside and outside of the community. We feel that once word gets out of this new competitive game mode, we can attract a portion of the ACPs to try it out and begin to build the server's popularity. Keep in mind, LMS is not the same as other competitive servers like rotation or deathmatch servers. CS Leadership has decided that we no longer need to struggle in bringing something that the CS:GO community already has. Instead, we are bringing something brand new that can excite the entire community. And, in my opinion, that has potential for a larger impact than bringing in another rotation or deathmatch server.
Sorry for the massive wall of text there, Dice. If you have any other questions let me know!
