New Map Night

BarytaQ · Posted: Fri Mar 08, 2013 11:41 am Post subject: New Map Night

So I was wondering, how would you guys feel if we had an event on the egypt server one night. It'd be a cool way to interact with the community and to see what maps they really like.

I personally think the Koth server hasn't taken off because we've already got such an awesome community on our original server. I also think that Egypt is a pretty shitacular map (Still love it) compared to some of the other mainstream maps out there.
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Shay · Posted: Fri Mar 08, 2013 11:06 pm Post subject:

I'd be down for it, it sounds like a good idea to get the community involved. The only question I would ask would be what kind of event? A one class-only night, or maybe melee only?

BarytaQ · Posted: Sat Mar 09, 2013 12:32 am Post subject:

Nothing like that, the fact that it's a different map will be "event" enough for the egypt server...

Also, if it gets enough support, I think allowing admins to switch maps based on what the admin/majority of players in the server want.
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Shay · Posted: Sat Mar 09, 2013 12:55 am Post subject:

Or an event_egypt map, like the Halloween versions of Lakeside / Mountain Lab / Viaduct. Could tie in pretty well with a community project of people that know how to use Source SDK to create a new version of Egypt. For the event only, of course, so that the server would still match people up through random queue.

As for switching the map to something else, I like the idea of it, but when you look at the the work that they have put into making Egypt balanced and enjoyable, eg respawn times ("balanced") and the arch, they would have to reconcider doing that again to those new maps.

2shoes · Posted: Sat Mar 09, 2013 9:55 am Post subject:

To be honest Egypt is dead quite a bit kinda starting to be reborn all events should be run on the KOTH aka event server
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Messy Recipe · Posted: Sat Mar 09, 2013 11:04 am Post subject:

I'd love to see more of the community on other maps, though I don't know if changing Egypt occasionally would really do that, especially if a lot of people go there expecting Egypt.

At any rate, Atat gave a pretty good rundown in June of why the second server is always empty:

atatme wrote:

In response to Vlad, it took a lot of effort from many CTs to build the Egypt community. I know personally, for the entire first few months the server was functional I would get on anytime I saw anyone in the server, so that I could encourage them to come back. It still took over a month to actually get somewhat of a community going, and it didn't really take off for like 2 and a half to 3. This was a painstaking process, and I have no interest to do it again. I feel like most CTs feel the same way, which is why a community doesn't already exist on the 2nd server. Regulars are necessary to attract other people to the server, picking a map that there are a lot of other servers of and keeping it password free 24/7 wont do it on its own

If we want the KotH server to take off, we need to be messaging people to "start up KotH" rather than "start up Egypt," need to ask the regulars we know to join us or keep at it long enough to get a new set of regulars for that server, need to join whenever people are on or even if they're not, etc. If we're not willing to do that it's going to remain how it is now forever / until we cut it out to save costs.

A possible alternative: we could set it up to always run the next couple maps in UGC HL (unless they suck like Haunt) and post about it in places like the UGC forums, /r/truetf2, etc. Keeping it on that consistently could attract good players who want to familiarize themselves with the maps outside of scrims/lobbies.
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Shay · Posted: Sat Mar 09, 2013 11:56 am Post subject:

Personally, I love Messy's suggestion of using next UGC maps for the KoTH server. However, it wont guarantee non-new players to the server, since a couple of the UGC map rotation contains stock maps. Along with that, we would need to make sure that nobody would be abusing "props or doors", if we want them to play the map like a scrim or a lobby, this isn't necessary of course, but I feel like it would attract more people to the server that know that there wont be a spy in their spawn because of a misplaced teleporter.

Also notable, if this plan does go through, UGC and TrashedGamers made a server (IP 74.91.113.16:27015) with a competitive map rotation; pl_badwater, pl_upward, pl_swiftwater_ugc, pl_barnblitz_pro, koth_pro_viaduct_rc3, koth_lakeside_final, koth_arctic_b3, koth_ashville_rc1, cp_gravelpit, cp_steel, cp_granary, cp_gullywash_final1, cp_process_rc2, and cp_warmfront. Which would be a lot easier to build a map rotation off of.

Insomniac · Posted: Sat Mar 09, 2013 12:05 pm Post subject:

Honestly, Egypt is becoming kind of stale recently...So I'm perfectly ok with UGC maps or Koth maps. If we come to an agreement I'll try to start up the 2nd server as much as I can.

Vlad Piranha · Posted: Sun Mar 10, 2013 12:38 am Post subject:

Even our Egypt server isn't staying full as often as it used to, so the necessity of our second server has really been questionable lately. Not long ago, I'd considered bringing back the New Map Night events and doing the door prize feature again, but I use so much of my free time doing Avast work these days that I lack the drive to really push something for an entire evening. I also know many people will be pressed for time as their school years come to a close. This is on top of how few people I was able to get to show up for the last NMN. Eight of us can have fun in just about anything, but that's not nearly as many players as we'd need to really get something worthwhile going.

Should we use our funding for that server to host something for a different game entirely? I've been wondering about this for some time now. Seeing Minecraft become a smaller past-time for some members was encouraging. I'd like to think that we have the potential to branch out and have many options available to us.

I'm not advocating anything one way or another, I just want a frank discussion about getting the most out of our hosting options.

Eugene · Posted: Sun Mar 10, 2013 11:58 am Post subject:

The only time our second server sees any use is when a new map or a new holiday event is out. Past that all our traffic is gone. It would take time to build a community, and it would have to be people who are serious about it. Even when we had a full on TF2 playing CT it was hard to get the second server going.

Even the minecraft server had trouble (and btw, I still have the server files and you can add me on skype if you want it) despite an initial great reaction. I think towards the end I was the only one using it, and it was just burning a hole in my wallet.

Personally I think at the moment we should look like this:

24 slot+replay Egypt
Mumble

Really because outside of holiday events and scrims we never saw much activity on the second server. If people are really keen on getting the Koth server going then I recommend the following:

Take it up to a 24 slot+replay
Constantly get people on promoting it. Start a new community for KotH don't steal from Egypt. This way we can get people coming to both instead of having A->B and then being stuck with two half-filled servers or switching the problem around.

2shoes · Posted: Sun Mar 10, 2013 4:57 pm Post subject:

Its been used as a UGC match and scrim server before so no biggie on it maybe we should do like a friday or sat night CT vs All event
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Sparrow wrote:

...if pirates stays on bf1942 i'd hate to see the community grow even smaller, but i know i'll always be around and i hope the rest of you will too!

Special Jimmy wrote:

This mod is rightfully ours, and fuck everyone that stands in our way.

fair winds and following seas, lil shoes 8/3/94-6/23/09

Draco · Posted: Sun Mar 10, 2013 5:24 pm Post subject:

I forget, do we have map download working on the servers?

AlMightyBob · Posted: Mon Mar 11, 2013 1:56 pm Post subject:

I'm up for using the second server more, maybe we should utilise the Steam groups event thing for spontaneous server filling. Would save having to individually message folk.
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fionn · Posted: Tue Mar 12, 2013 4:29 pm Post subject:

What about using the 24/7 KOTH server as a 24/7 Attack/Defend server (without egypt obviously) because lots of people really love the A/D judging by how many people play egypt.

Either that or we could do some sort of raffle for noobies on the server? <3000 points?

Shay · Posted: Tue Mar 12, 2013 5:52 pm Post subject:

Well, if you wanted to say that people love A/D because a lot of them play Egypt, you could also say that a lot of people like CTF because of how popular 2fort is amongst pubbers. Personally, I love a lot of the KOTH maps, but if you want something that will attract members that want to keep coming back, consider a custom map server. There are few custom map servers, and I know a lot of people love to play on custom map servers, if it's fun for them to play on.

As for the raffle, I like the idea, but I think it should go the other way, encouraging people to play on the server and earn points (-farming). Maybe a minimum being 5,000? Another thing to think about for the raffle would be, where would we get the items? I would offer but I lost pretty much everything of value when I traded for an buds.