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Back around about christmas time we missed a trick big time when we failed to keep our TF2 server running. At the time of our burnout, we had just started to see new members filter through onto the forums from the server, as well as finding a couple of possbile new members for XDC itself. Their interest faded in us as quickly as our apparent interest in the game faded. When we changed server host a few of us spent several hours trying to revive things on the server, but it had become much more difficult to fill, and so we’ve spent the time since then trying to work out why that is, when other servers around us are thriving more than ever.
A few things we’ve decided to implement:
1. Map Voting – with this enabled seems people don’t get stuck as much on a map they hate and consequently leave server. This is now on and currently anyone can start a vote when admins are not on, but I’ll be looking for feedback on this as I think it’ll need some fine tuning. For example would it be better to allow anyone to initiate a vote at anytime, and instead give admins a heftier vote (i.e. admin votes count as 4 punter votes)? Also I need to see whether the custom maps are being picked up by the voting system.
2. Custom Maps – the most popular servers out there have a wide selection of custom maps, I’ve added a shit load to these to our rotation, and they’re now setup for fast downloading.
3. Hlstats – This is a great wee program which presents your overall stats and ranking, but don’t worry this is everywhere these days and I’ve yet to see an example of stat padding, you just can’t do it on a full server. The Hlstats portal is here, and there’s potential there for all sorts of community related options, the sort of things that keep people coming back to us. We’re still trying to get our heads around it atm so one or two things need ironed out, but it’s up now anyway, and I’ll be interested to see how many people this pulls from the server onto the forums. Special thanks has to be said here to mugs who spent a shit load of time on this only to get frustrated by lack of proper resources, and just as much thanks has to go to Gonzo who really flew the flag for customer service on this one and got us those missing resources, and I’ll be singing his praises again publicly when I get around to a thread about this outside private, rackage really were excellent.
Actually you might wonder why I’m keeping this in the private section at all, but it’s because we have to have a look at this with a view to the future of xdc. I’m not suggesting that XDC become exclusively TF2 related, although I wouldn’t be too bothered with that, but what we do need is some effort put in somewhere to inject some new life into the place. Waiting around for a game that’ll bring us all together again is wishful thinking in my opinion, and I think we’ve been holding our breath on this for far too long already. XDC’s at a stage again similar to what we had prior to BF1942, and I think the same kind of drive we had then is needed now to secure our own future. This doesn’t just have to be with TF2, that’s just where I’m putting in my effort, but anyone one of us can take up the mantle and push another game that they feel deserves more attention. We still have a good solid active membership, but we’re too fragmented atm to get the most out of the servers we’re paying a lot of money for, and this is something we really need to look at. The only way to sort it out is for us to recruit for each game we play, and to do this we must put in the effort on our own servers. In January Mugs and myself showed what can be done with two people hammering a server, we had success but we burnt out after a month. This time if we’re to have any long term success, we need help from everyone who can help get the server filled up, and for all of us to be on the look out for potential new members.
So on TF2 can I please request we help each other out on this one, and make our own server our default choice, lets tweak our rules and settings together, and make a real go of it this time. There’s a lot of potential here if we do this right, and a lot of fun to be had a long the way 🙂
Alzir old Fuhrer
I must apologise as some of the server outages are my fault. 😳
That said, I have been getting a bit worried that things are fragmenting a bit but do believe we will pull through as we always do. I know that I have not played online since the 4th December (a farkin record in my book) but I now have my kick arse laptop and will be online again as soon as I have kicked the fookin decorator, plumbers etc etc out.
Then the one man Recruiting Orrifice that is Pharty will get peeps in. Which game though? No clue but we will see.
I look forward to getting back to the online life and I hope that other inactive types likes Wipers, Neon, Jar, Queeks and all the many others have, like me, been taking a sabbatical and are getting geared up to kick arse etc etc and have a good chunter on TS.
Now if we can just persuade peeps to stop that console gayness ………………
i’d love to be back online playing games again but working nights kinda kills it all stone dead……….last game i played was FH2 at Xmas 😥 hope to be back at some point.
Miss the games such as BF22142, havent seen a lot of regulars in a while now, which is a shame. Guess COD4 is just not the sort of game, most folk really enjoy, compared to the EA series of games.
I havent played for about 6 months either… Pc currently has no sound, and is reaching the glorified doorstop stage! Not given up on PC gaming, but PS3 runs stuff a heluva lot better than my old wreck does 🙁
Just wondering – how many active players have we got at the mo?
I’m between houses at the mo, my gaming comp is in stoke, I’m in Manchester. Will get it sorted soon though, although I’m off to Thailand for a few weeks in a fortnight!
well queeks and i have been around since the new year and there just hasnt been very many folks around when we are on so gaming has been a bit tough, played some tf2 with jonny and matt last night had fun but dont know the maps and weapons well yet so bit tough.
Golf takes up alot of my time during the summer soz its hard to see me before the sun goes down on weekendsbut we are still here and reading the forums so lets get this stuff going ill play about any game around as long as its with you fellas and gals.
I’m still playing BF2 and BF2142 I think on another forum post a couple of the others guys said they were interested in playing it again.
I’m still around lurking on the forums. Unfortunately other commitments seem to have taken over what little free time I have available at the moment. Haven’t played BF2142 or BF2 for almost a year and to be honest was getting pretty bored of them. Bought COD 4 had a few games but it really didn’t grab me the way BF games have in the past. Been playing GTA 4 a bit recently when I get the opportuniy and still only completed about 20%of due to limitation on free time.
I think what also needs to be considered is that it’s summer. People tend to venture out more and socialise, in addtion to taking holidays so that may also be a contributary factor in the apparent slowdown on the forums, but I will try an make an effort when i get some free time to jump on the TS and play a few games with you .
@=XDC=MADMAX wrote:
You dont know what the outside looks like do you Lammie! 😀
Yeh… Max has been chilling by his pool for the last week…!!
(Manage to sell it Max?!)
i ahve been playing a fair bit of tf2 of late, and have been joining whatever server i see other xdcers on but hanging out in our server would be far more preferable.
tbh matt, from what i saw of the server last night, it needs some serious work. It seemed laggy as fuck and the comms were cutting out. Seemed very poor in comparision to the -=CRAZY=- server 🙄
I think the problem might be that Matt and Mugs were rarely on TS when I was about so it was hard to get games going, I may be slightly out of line here, but when I have been on TS I normally get a game of something, even Trackmania sometimes. Just a thought, but if you want a game, get on TS and harass others into it!
I think the wrong end of the stick has been picked up here, my only purpose is to point out we’re trying to pimp the tf2 server now that it’s setup nicely. There’s no need for excuses why indiviuals can’t play etc, this is xdc it doesn’t matter, we all have other stuff to do. I’m just hoping to drum up a little support amongst the active tf2 players, but also remind people that anyone can pick up the gauntlet for a game, there’s no xdc overlord/hierarchy stopping it 🙂
Oh and ts has nothing to do with anything Paddy, I’ve spent hours in there counting the tumbleweed flying past, and even when there are people, TF2 has not been the game of choice. I suppose if we all used ts then you might have a point but we don’t, and steam serves the purpose better. That’s not the issue though and, again, I’m not trying to get at anyone, I just want to alert people to what I/we’re trying to do atm. So please, TF2 players, if you see me sitting on the server by myself, lend us a hand, the servers up and running and in some real need of attention 🙂
I hurried the orginal post for this thread, as I was anxious to get onto the server at the time, so I’ve probably come across wrong. I’ve hurried this post as well, as I’m omw to bed, so I hope it’s not too blunt, but just to clarify, nobody is being blamed or got at here.
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