community members needed!

[DevilsRefugee]

I have come to the conclusion that we need more active community members. I say this because what I see happening a lot is when we have a match/praccy, the community server dies. It hurts me to see this happen, yet to not have matches/praccy is not a valid option (obviously).

I take a look around at other popular servers (namely HH & THG) and they are full almost all day every day. How do they do it? I dont know! I have tried to come up with some plausible reason, and I have none.

But lately the comm server is more dead than alive & I think we need to work out between us how to get it more full, more often.

[DevilsRefugee]

i hear what your saying az, i`ve always thought we need to encourage more "server talking" but i dont think all talk is the answer (HH & THG dont have it enabled and they do really well, so maybe they talk within game and not private?).

but some discussion needs to be had imo, on this issue.

I think we are plenty friendly enough & people are encouraged to join us in the voice server...but ofc not everybody has/wants to arse around setting voice comms up (which is understandable).

I wont ignore you, i feel strongly about the community side and like i said it hurts me to see our once very popular server dead most nights of the week.

[LooseCannon]

Very good point about ingame chat, though I'd really not like AllTalk.  We should just make sure we chat and type ingame more; be more sociable outside Mumble.

[henchie]

I always use random when i join server.

[Humbug]

EVERYONE uses random join when joining teams.. we dont clan stack.. we also lose most of the time even if the random chucks us mostly on the same side.. if it is too heavily weighed on the side where most ne members are then as far as i know ne members change team.. this can only happen though when another member of the OPPOSITE TEAM also go to spectate because of the auto team balance on the server so...invalid argument as far as im concerned.

all talk is not the answer...you guys have to bear in mind that the communities you ave mentioned HAVE been communities since the release of TF2.. we have only just moved that way so we're still babies in this respect.

it aint done over night and neither can u expect |ne people to play on a server that is empty, i see |ne people or at least regulars, going onto the server during the day and also evenings... you cant force people to play at the end of the day

perhaps if EVERYONE tried to populate the server when they played no matter how long it takes (like i did when tf2 was released and for months onwards) then we'd most likely be where people want. I spent hours upon hours by myself on the first server we had getting the server going

[D2S]

ok, well as I'm on a 'how to make friends and influence ppl' rant, existing members need to be aware of when teams are not balanced and CHANGE TEAMS.  The number of times I've seen members teaming up on a side and raping the other one.  New ppl join, get raped for a little while then quit.  Dead cert way to hinder building a community.

About team balancing, as far as I know, every ne uses the random team door but the server just stacks us all together sometimes and if teams are balanced in numbers we can't change (I wouldn't mind changing teams for balance). Thing is, most people don't know about the scramble feature because they aren't informed. There's no server message about scramble vote (or maybe I never noticed it).


One thing some of us already noticed is that the arena server has people in it when the community server is empty (happens quite often). We could try to bring them over to the comm server with player commands that puts them in the comm server or just a simple server message with the IP.

[DevilsRefugee]

d2s, I don't really think that is a viable idea, as people playing arena, want exactly that..arena..but I dunno. I do agree we need to add some server messages (been thinking about this for a bit now) informing people they can use scramble and nominate etc. I also think we should inform them off the ff fun, as maybe lots of people see this, and dont get it, and think its fully ff, and leave..(however much i would hate to see the ff removed, maybe that is more of a hindrance than a help?).

I agree with the team stack thing humbug mentioned..when ne do stack, its normally US that get raped (lol?). I also agree we may be babies in terms of a community, but I also feel we are currently losing players..not gaining them. I agree people don't wanna play on an empty server, hell i rage quit the server last night, because it was 14/24 on, so i figured jump in and try and get players in, but literally 5 mins later it was 6/24..the point being nobody wants to play on a dying server.

I don't think all talk is the answer, but I think the first two things we can all do are:
1. talk more in game.
2. more people willing to jump in and help fill it.

point 1 is obvious.

point 2 is not so much. Its all very good having 8 or so of us willing to jump in and help get the server going, but what we need is more people who are around to help fill it at other times of the day (ie morning). Obviously its a near impossibility for most people to jump on and play tf2 @ 9am lol, and that's a fair point, that's why I think we need more community members, or maybe even offer them some sort of incentive - what sort of incentive, I don't know tbh.

I dunno which way we could go to expand, but at this rate the community is not growing.

edit:
the amount of times i have told the other team "because of the stack, ill jump in spec, and somebody feel free to move over"...then nobody moves...i have lost count tbh.

[Humbug]

i think the community has grown.. we now have lifeless and storm in ne squad that were regulars on the server AFTER we became a community, we also have frymaster and fruitbaticus along with them as regular players (as and when life permits). We also have gained Riddla and EM-Jay.  along with others.. yes it's slow but like i said we are babies and have missed the boat in having a large community because of it.  Let's be happy with the community we currently have and carry on as we are.. 'rome wasn't built in a day'....

we are gaining members all be it slowly, but there are people on the arena server (who plays on there from ne match squad or ne community??) which is part of us and perhaps encouraging them through messages on the server is a great idea.  like was already said though, you cant force people to do something they dont want and i think is the most sure fire way of killing a community.

As for the FF on round start etc..   i agree that we should have a message about it..

[Carth]

Maybe we should have a message saying "if teams are uneven type !scramble". Although that feature is easily abused and frustrating. It's annoying for the defenders because everyone goes back to the base. Remember the time when we had about 5 scrambles in a row, until it was threatened to ban the next person to type it.

[ekay]

Several things going on here, let me try break it down.

The Teamspeak/Mumble thing is not really an issue for non-community members (these are the people that populated the server when we aren't around). /But, it's more of a problem for regs (or community members as you say). I tried installing Teamspeak one time, but it was borked and I gave up. I barely chat on the mic anyway, despite having one. I do feel like I'm missing out, especially when I go on a backstab killing spree, but at the end of the day I'm still having fun without installing some software.

As for other servers being popular all the time I can easily narrow it down to one word; Gimmicks.
Ok, gimmicks might sound like a naughty word, but yes they can be really fun. Infact we have a gimmick here, 'friendly fire' at warm up and humiliation. Although (and I'm sure you can agree with me here), most non-comms do not realise we have it, and at end of rounds the chat is usually full of "OMG you teamkilled me, how did you do that", followed by one of us explaining FF while making sure they understand it's only at round end.

Suggestion: Make our gimmick more obvious. At the end of round have an alarm go off, massive on screen text saying "FRENZY!" or get some Unreal Announcer sound clips on saying "Team-Killer" etc.

Another gimmick I've played with and really enjoyed; Melee only sudden death. -all players forced to same class and melee only. So if you agree that gimmicks is [one of] the reasons that keep people coming back then it might be worth considering.

But, after saying that I guess I also have to point out, I have not been around on the server as much as before. This is just down to RL rather than anything to do with "not wanting to play on ne" (which is what is being suggested here). So my view on things can be invalidated since I don't play much anyway.

[Paranoia]

Teams can't strategize with alltalk on, and that's a crucial part of the game for lots of players.

[Humbug]

all talk ruins the game as you can't chat to your own team like a lot of us do to try and organise an offensive without the other team knowing which makes the objective of the game defunct.

imho you don't need to verbally welcome someone to the server.  in game chat is good enough for that, but if you want to, and your on their team, by all means say hello over voice chat

The way round that do that everyone can chat (if they want to) is mumble.  Can chat to anyone on there but, and most important, can chat to your own team in private to organise stuff.

I will look into the suggestions posted by ekay as i quite like them. csay message saying killing frenzy and or a soundbite taken from somewhere to play when it happens. i think he's right in respect of gimmicks make popular servers.  However i would feel reluctant to change anything too drastic that would effect our current regulars as they know that most of the time they get a decent game. Obviously i'll go with that the community decides as a whole, i'm just sayin my thoughts

i'll update the messages today to say about start of map and end of round FF being turned on also.

[SexuallyAbusedPanda]

The reason why HH and THG are always full is because they have members log on in the morning and play. This then attracts a few people and sooner or later your server becomes known as a "always full" server. Sort of like how our server is an "evening server" its just a case of trying to get 10 people onto the server in the morning (say 10am onwards) to get this server into the whole all day full server. It will likely take a long time but it will come if people want to try. Then again most of us, me not included, have jobs so cant.

[Paranoia]

Agree with most of what you say, Humbug. As the majority of the time we're on payload maps, we don't get many stalemates anyway!

Make the messages witty, yea? I know that might be hard for you... Seriously though, I think it'd be good if they're banterful. How about something like:

"Annoyed by your team-mates? Here at Nervous Energy we understand. BEFORE and AFTER the game, FRIENDLY FIRE will be ON so you can get your revenge."

Feel free to not use that obviously - but I think something in that tone would be good, imo.

[Zofo]

Using mumble doesn't do you any favours in relation to outsiders joining the voice chat though, Its the 1 reason the UT3 side still uses teamspeak, its widely used, most have it and its piss easy to set up, now I know mumble has better quality..blah blah yadda yadda but its new and most won't go to the trouble of installing it just to talk

Just my 2 cents, although i doubt thats whats keeping people away but i would imagine it helps