Rebuilding the TNR TF2 Community

[Gorbachev22]

Most folks in the community are probably aware that the TF2 wing of TNR has been contracting or stagnant for at least half a year now. While #nrpug remains fairly popular with pugs occurring most days of the week, we rarely have new people joining, and the public servers are consistently empty. If we wish to remain viable as a gaming community (particularly financially) it's useful to have an active player base. The goal of this document is to suggest a manner in which we can reinvent our TF2 community in order to escape this stagnation by taking advantage of our competitive player base to transform us into a “competitive” TF2 community while continuing to encourage pubbing.

The TF2 wing of our community has the opportunity to reinvent itself as an “elite” gaming community because of the disproportionate number of competitive players that we have developed through our pubs/pug system. I believe that we should embrace this opportunity in several ways.

Firstly, I believe that TNR should formalize and expand its support for competitive TF2 teams. At present, Omega is the only squad supported by TNR and fields both a mid squad (in CEVO-A and ESEA-O) and a low squad in UGC-P; TNR has supported the team by providing TF2 and mumble server access and assisting with ESEA-O league fees. I believe that we could immediately increase activity in the community by offering sponsorship to 2-3 additional teams. 1-2 of these teams could be at Omega's level or lower, and offered free TF2 and mumble server usage and access to a private sub-forum. We could also put out a call for an intermediate or invite level team, which we would need to provide similar benefits along with ESEA or CEVO league fees. We have plenty of TNR alum who have played at a high level of competition so they may be able to help us find such a team. In return for sponsorship, all of these teams would be required to: i) wear some form of NR tag, ii) provide mentoring through a TNR service, and iii) help populate community pubs and pugs. Regardless of whether we could attract a top tier team, the addition of 1-2 more teams would increase pug activity and potentially donations. In addition, if we had 3 teams of players helping to populate the public servers this could trigger their revival. If we manage to attract an I or IM team, this would make us a presence in the TF2 community, which could serve to attract a number of new players (particularly through mentoring) and would benefit our low and mid teams. In summary, the first element of this plan is to embrace our competitive player base by expanding the number of sponsored teams and offering mentoring for TF2 players.

The second set of changes that we could make involve our public servers. We currently have 4 public servers, which are typically empty. Firstly, to reflect the competitive nature of the community we should transform 1-2 of our servers into something more desirable to competitive players. This could include: the MGE Training Mod, ammomod, deathmatch, B-Ball, or jump maps. With our remaining 2-3 public servers I believe that we should transform one of them into a trading server. The only reason for this suggestion is that there are currently only a handful of servers with the “trade” or “trading” tag and they are usually packed. This could be the quick and dirty way to increase our player base. This would leave us with either 1 or 2 traditional public servers, which I see as advantageous. It removes the question of which TF2 server to join and will allow us to concentrate our “workforce” (from sponsored teams) on filling a single or two servers. These servers need to have map votes, functional admin, and up-to-date plugins. With a fresh infusion of players from the trade server and a group of folks employed to fill the servers we may actually be able to have 1-2 active public servers. This increase in activity and membership should hopefully result in a similar increase in donations. In summary, the second element of this plan is to offer public servers designed for the competitive community, offer a trade server for a player boost, and maintain 1-2 traditional public servers.

Finally, we would need change the TNR front-page to reflect this change in direction. We would need to advertise our mentoring service, #nrpug, the trade server and MGE training server, and our sponsored teams. In addition, it would be useful if we could bring on 1-2 folks to help with content creation for the front page regarding our sponsored teams, #nrpug and any special events that we may choose to host.

This is only a rough outline for how we can work towards an active TF2 community at TNR. I would say that the only idea that I am particularly attached to is expanding our support for competitive teams; it really seems that our strength lies in competitive play. However, the primary goal of this document is to begin a dialogue on reviving our TF2 community; let's have a discussion.

[WiseGuy]

tl;dr - i support gorb.

[monty slick]

tl;didr - I support Gorb.

I feel like a numbnut searching other pubs for a game to play for a half hour or so. It also feels dumb to spam my friends list to do that for an NR pub that I'll only be in for a half hour or so. I guess I miss the old days.

[manofphat]

I support this shift. Looking for more feedback.

[Blitz Ap0C 552]

I having been trying to help get the TNR servers populated for a while now. I always try to get guys together to get them started. I usually succeed.

As long as TNR keeps stock repspawn, NO alltalk, and a 24,7 dustbowl, and a 24/7 payload, I will continue to play only here.

Too many servers have fast respawn, and all talk, which i both really hate.

Anyways I think we could make 1 server competitive focused, drop 1 server completely, and refine server 3 and 4.

Basically I think #3 and #4 need the play slots increased a little bit. I like 28 players tbh.

We also need to remove decidedly crap maps like pipeline and hoodoo from #4 rotation.

[ugly]

I think Gorb has some quality ideas. It kind of seems lame to resort to a trade server, but if it is useful to bring people in, then go for it.

I've always liked B-Ball and wished we would have kept it up. I'm kind of indifferent to jump maps, since I usually just play them on my own if I want to, but I do really enjoy the deathmatch style maps. I really like the idea of trying to encourage players to get better. It was something I wish was available when I was starting out (and let's be honest, I still need it).

Most of the time noobs just get yelled at instead of being helped. And I found a lot on the TNR servers, given the amount of quality players, teams kind of got stacked easily. I understand people want to play with their friends, but one team consistently getting steam-rolled clears out a server pretty quickly.

[Crayola]

If you want to make competitive pubs the best thing to do is keep them as vanilla servers/competitive mods and to also have only 1 or 2.

[SharpShooter]

Welcome to CSS, hope you enjoy your stay.

That being said, I wish you all good luck with this Gorb. However I am giving it about a 20% success rate just due to past experiences with regards to the CSS server. So many times people have made posts like this about reviving the community and I have yet to see one succeed that provided long term success. Countless times people have gotten together and got the servers going again for a short period of time. Then once the servers start to get full people just assume that they will stay that way. All the people that are saying that they support what Gorb is saying that is great but are you actually going to put in the work to get the servers up and going again and then maintain that work to keep them at that state. If you can find enough people that are willing to step up to the challenge and sacrifice their time to do this then I think you will have a good shot at reviving the TF2 community.

Good Luck to only those that are willing to put in the time and energy to revive the TF2 community not to those and just say they support it and will do little to nothing else.

[monty slick]

Good Luck to only those that are willing to put in the time and energy to revive the TF2 community not to those and just say they support it and will do little to nothing else.

There are communities out there that don't need a whole lot of effort to populate their pubs, it's doable.

[Crayola]

this is not one of them