New ideas for the TF2 servers

[average_emo_gril]

Basically as we all know the servers have sat empty for weeks on end, sadly enough. however I and several other members of the community wish to change this around, so I am asking y'all for some ideas to spin things around or in other terms: make the servers unique enough to gain popularity.

I will start with an idea of my own: when a player reaches low health (self damage doesn't apply) they have a chance to roll for a random powerup in order to change the fight around (can only happen every 10-15 deaths to make it less abusable)

 

[Ric]

Great idea. Is this a plugin?

 

[average_emo_gril]

sadly no. just an idea I came up with earlier. but could be cool if someone were to make it

 

[Ric]

sadly no. just an idea I came up with earlier. but could be cool if someone were to make it

Let's see what we can do! I love the idea.

 

[Hero]

In terms of ideas for the TF2 servers, one of the best ways is to look at what is popular to try to go with the flow or create something entirely new and unique to be its own game mode or spin-off to a gamemode.

Out of the 3 core servers that TF2 has, 2Fort and Harvest already perform decently with good playercounts and an established playerbase.

The main issue is Payload Rotation which struggles to get players - this is likely because the server is recent and hasn't had the time to develop a playerbase itself.
If we wanted to do experimentation on different ideas, it should 100% be on the Payload server, as if we used the other two servers it would overall be detrimental as there already are people willing to go on and play every night.

Some of the current, more popular gamemodes/plugins currently are:

• Deathrun
• Trading Server
• Zombie Escape
• Class Wars
• Maps with Multipliers

Another very big suggestion is an EU based server.
The majority of daily players in TF2 are in Europe - this would mean this server would like recieve more players if it were to have any success. The primary drawback is this is a hard change, and eGO is based in the USA.

Completely up to the people responsible for TF2 now, but these are my personal suggestions.

The unfortunate reality about having regular maps and gamemodes now, is that the issues surrounding bots and cheaters have mostly been fixed in casual, so the player counts for all community servers have decreased however, many servers still have players willing to play on the server every day.

 

[SnakesandKnives]

Being an ego harvest main, I found that the emptiness of the server was due to a mindset rather than player availability. People chose to not join the server since it sat empty and yet when me and my friends would sit on there for about fifteen minutes we could start a server fill. I've seen other servers with ping notifications to fill the server. That's how one of the bigger pl servers keep people in their lobbies. There were pings for events and other things for the other servers but that wasn't appealing to the general community of players who focused on 24/7 harvest dm all day. There can definitely be a balance, but it would be nice to have people more engaged in the discord so that you could use the discord to fill servers and that entice the newer players to join on. I believe we should be focusing on groups joining the servers instead of hoping for individuals to stick around. Events help with this, but it was hard to keep event retention when the vanilla fill rate was already so low. Adding more bells and whistles to the server won't really attract the people I've seen populate the server before. I'd rather suggest a stronger focus on the DM experience since there are so few servers that do that properly nowadays. I, of course, am extremely biased to this idea since it's how I play tf2 so often, but if I wanted to play any other version of the game I would just go to a different server since good pl and wacky servers are what makes the bulk of the tf2 community scene. I think the only way to weave the more "creative" game modes into our server rotation is by establishing that base game mode.

 

[Ric]

I love the ideas. I think, at this point, we want to attract different kinds of players to our server. By different, I mean try something else. For whatever reason possible, our players we had here didn’t really play on our servers except occasionally and when a server ping for a fill was called upon.

Our servers sat empty for weeks on end, and we’ve heard all the excuses for it. Contrasting events, those had decent turnouts - but it was always the same individuals.

If you look at Minecraft for example, they spent time building and learning. Through that effort led by GrumpyCatJen at the time, the weekly murder mystery event grew and attracted more and more players. When I attended events in TF2, while they were fun, I don’t think they grew. We did capture a famous someone on our events, but most of our player base was the same individuals.

I don’t want to share too much just yet, but we’re listening to your ideas and we’ve got some great help coming aboard. Not just in TF2, but across the community.

 

[Satan]

dustbowl

 

[Idol]

Turbine with a fast respawn did really well in the past. Not instant, somewhere around 5 seconds works.