4vs4 Cash Prize Tourney!

[Features-]

Originally Posted by aleXtric

hello?

ello

[absolute]

My 2 cents...

With only ~40 players in a tournament, most could probably assume the top 3 teams anyways. So the tourny obviously isn't about determining which team is best. With that said, I'm assuming this tournament is to boost activity in FF. Otherwise it's the most rediculous use of money I have ever seen. Far out-weighing the purchase of a laptop that does not exist.

$1000 (+ $100) could be spent in much better ways to promote this game. This is a 1-shot tourny that will soon be forgotten. You are throwing money at the market share you already have; preaching to the choir. It will go up in smoke faster than you could imagine. $800/5 people is $160/person, after paypal takes it's cut, the reward is minimal. Lets be honest, we're all adults now, $160 is nothing. Gaming tournaments these days are never less than $10K, and often $100K+.

From the conversation we had earlier, it looks like there's about 40 die-hards interested. Lets call it 25% of the community. You have a pretty low ceiling for teams & players.

If your desire is to boost the player base, I say you get together and arrange a marketing plan that is 2-fold.

1, creates further & deeper awareness of the game. 2, encourages users to vote YES on this: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfile.../?id=121303449

Getting on Steam is virtually FF's ONLY chance of influx in players. That, and an updated website.

A plan needs to be put in place, one that makes sense both financially & time wise.

Invest in creating a new-user friendly environment. That includes multiple 24x7 2fort & dustbowl servers. Something familiarfor the TF2 players, which no doubt a good # of your new players have played. Use that $100 to setup servers for the duration of your marketing campaign. You may even be able to partner with a GSP in exchange for site advertising space. I had something in the works with the #1 ranked GSP on google before I went dormant.

Spend some money on Facebook ads, and other big sites. I may be able to setup cheap advertising at www.backpack.tf (over 1.5 Million unique viewers a month) if interested.

If you're hell-bent on a tournament, you may want to consider hosting it on a major 3rd party site, like www.battlefy.com, this allows you to expose the game to their users as well.

Nothing wrong with a tournament, but do it wisely. I suggests doing the tournament when your Facebook count has hit 5000 likes, and the # of active users online is consistently over 1000. At this time, you can look into having someone shout cast your tournament. Find a caster on www.twitch.tv who has a large following. They'll cast your match for a few bucks (they make ad money anyways).
Twitch gets 30 Million unique views a month, hopefully you get some new exposure by casting through a relatively popular channel there.


$1000 could be spent much, much wiser. There's far better ways to generate exposure and interest than a tournament.

[Raynian]

Pretty sure we didn't ask about your opinion on this tourney and where else to spend it in this thread.

You know.

Just saying.

[Features-]

Originally Posted by Raynian

Pretty sure we didn't ask about your opinion on this tourney and where else to spend it in this thread.

You know.

Just saying.

Also, we already have a streamer named NeoNL who streams the matches who has done more help for this community than you.

[homie in reboks']

Originally Posted by Features-

Also, we already have a streamer named NeoNL who streams the matches who has done more help for this community than you.

Originally Posted by Raynian

Pretty sure we didn't ask about your opinion on this tourney and where else to spend it in this thread.

You know.

Just saying.

You're both wrong. According to Ricey,("he's[Absolute's] done a shit ton of work to begin with. 400+ People on Facebook. He's spent his own money helping F-F"), Absolute has done things to help the community. He's not forcing anyone to do anything different with the cash tournament. He's just offering some advice.

Neither of you are putting the money up, by the way. So, technically, his comment isn't aimed at you and can be ignored by you. It's aimed at those sponsoring the cash tournament.

Also, this is why we can't have nice things. Absolute isn't being rude about what he's saying and he's not actively working against FF's growth.

TL;DR: Stop shitting on people's ideas without thinking.

[ian.de]

I think absolute is correct, there are better ways to spend money in order to garner interest in the mod.

When we initially came up with the idea of a cash tournament it was intended to try to get more TFC players to give FF another shot. I've given up any hope of bringing in completely new players to this game.

Gamers these days want hats, perks, achievements, and they want their hands held every step of the way. If another player kills them they need to have that random number generator code and bullet spray to blame.

I offered to donate money for a tournament but I don't really have any interest in promoting or advertising. I love this game and I'd like to give back in any way that I can. If there are people who are willing to promote and advertise then I would be open to discussing funding that instead.

It's completely 100% irrational for me to "waste" my own money, or waste my time making maps that no one plays, or wasting time playing pickups with the same 20 people, but I do it because it's nice to be a part of something good and to me it's worth it.

Having said that, I would rather not spend $1000 for a cash prize tournament if there are only 5 active teams... that is pointless, I might as well just give the money to Team Name and Team Ragequit right now.

I think that coming up with another plan is not a bad idea. The bottom line is that we need an active pub to bring in new players, 24/7 2fort or dustbowl is not a bad idea.

I wish this game had bots, maybe I should pay DrEvil to finish coding the bots. If there were two bots in a server then newbies would join not knowing any better, and then more people would join.

Imagine downloading the mod only to find that, not only are there no servers showing up in the refresh list, there are no servers with people in them period.

Uninstall.

[homie in reboks']

Originally Posted by ian.de

Imagine downloading the mod only to find that, not only are there no servers showing up in the refresh list, there are no servers with people in them period.

Uninstall.

This is the biggest issue for FF at the moment. Especially if FF does get on the front page of Greenlight or whatever.

There needs to be something that keeps players playing. Hopefully it's other players, but there has to be something there.

Also, I hope any PR attempt won't be tied into the pickup community at all. Since the pickup community is about as negative and counter-productive as it can get. The focus should definitely be on PUBs first and foremost.

[CaptainAhab]

One needs to start building from the ground up if he wants to maintain a solid foundation for the future. I agree, it should all start with pubs and going from there.

No successful competitive game has started right off the bat with a competitive scene -- that always comes later.

[Dr. eXpl0si0n]

I agree the tourny is silly to ask players with very little FF experience to come get dominated by the top 3-4 teams :/ It's just going to create more rage to the ones who try it and push them back again.... You'd have to ask the "good" players to not try, GL with that

[FDA_Approved]

Is there even a full team of people who don't already play FF? I think there's one. Tourney would be a huge waste atm.

[Drakonal]

Well what is the plan with the tourney then, because in 8 days people who did put in the time to get teams together or promote the tourny are going to be asking that question.


Maybe more time allowed for teams to form up or scrap the idea all together and risk alieanating those who took the cash tourny seriously, esp the not so regular FF players.

[-mooney-]

Ive taked to go hard or go home and inadequacy and they wont be playing this tourney.

[Peppas]

I would agree with absolute and ian 100%. The money could and should be used for other things to benefit the game. I guess you can say I'm boycotting this league because I know whats going to happen. People stack teams with a small community and only have 2 or 3 teams like what is previously stated. The money can be used for a different advertising purposes.

And on the subject of pubs. Talos is a great pub, its normal players are awesome and I would like to thank them for helping this community out. Only thing I have to say is that Talos can have a awesome 16 player game going on ksour or destroy easy, but they have so many maps to choose from on the server non popular maps come up in the vote and sometimes a unpopular map gets played next and a lot of people drop and the server stays low on players eventually to empty. (I could be wrong but its my opinion). Yes it is good to have a lot of maps available to the community but it can backfire. When you look at your popular servers back in TFC they were like a 24/7 of a popular map or had a popular rotation of maps.

Maybe we can try to have another pub server like Talos, with a set map rotation of the most commonly played maps.
Destroy, Ksour, Openfire, Monkey etc.

Just something to think about, don't bash me for my opinions.
And Ian, thank you for supporting FF with your $$$!

[WubbaDucky]

U know
i am here . Finishing up some big projects, and i made a promise.

Most of the active FF players by now, know what i do or what i am willing to do.

[WubbaDucky]

Originally Posted by absolute

My 2 cents...

With only ~40 players in a tournament, most could probably assume the top 3 teams anyways. So the tourny obviously isn't about determining which team is best. With that said, I'm assuming this tournament is to boost activity in FF. Otherwise it's the most rediculous use of money I have ever seen. Far out-weighing the purchase of a laptop that does not exist.

$1000 (+ $100) could be spent in much better ways to promote this game. This is a 1-shot tourny that will soon be forgotten. You are throwing money at the market share you already have; preaching to the choir. It will go up in smoke faster than you could imagine. $800/5 people is $160/person, after paypal takes it's cut, the reward is minimal. Lets be honest, we're all adults now, $160 is nothing. Gaming tournaments these days are never less than $10K, and often $100K+.

From the conversation we had earlier, it looks like there's about 40 die-hards interested. Lets call it 25% of the community. You have a pretty low ceiling for teams & players.

If your desire is to boost the player base, I say you get together and arrange a marketing plan that is 2-fold.

1, creates further & deeper awareness of the game. 2, encourages users to vote YES on this: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfile.../?id=121303449

Getting on Steam is virtually FF's ONLY chance of influx in players. That, and an updated website.

A plan needs to be put in place, one that makes sense both financially & time wise.

Invest in creating a new-user friendly environment. That includes multiple 24x7 2fort & dustbowl servers. Something familiarfor the TF2 players, which no doubt a good # of your new players have played. Use that $100 to setup servers for the duration of your marketing campaign. You may even be able to partner with a GSP in exchange for site advertising space. I had something in the works with the #1 ranked GSP on google before I went dormant.

Spend some money on Facebook ads, and other big sites. I may be able to setup cheap advertising at www.backpack.tf (over 1.5 Million unique viewers a month) if interested.

If you're hell-bent on a tournament, you may want to consider hosting it on a major 3rd party site, like www.battlefy.com, this allows you to expose the game to their users as well.

Nothing wrong with a tournament, but do it wisely. I suggests doing the tournament when your Facebook count has hit 5000 likes, and the # of active users online is consistently over 1000. At this time, you can look into having someone shout cast your tournament. Find a caster on www.twitch.tv who has a large following. They'll cast your match for a few bucks (they make ad money anyways).
Twitch gets 30 Million unique views a month, hopefully you get some new exposure by casting through a relatively popular channel there.


$1000 could be spent much, much wiser. There's far better ways to generate exposure and interest than a tournament.

U are not even close how to approach this type of rebrand.

[ian.de]

Wubba is a smart man!

And Peppas you are correct sir, everything you said I agree with. Building a base for any game starts with the pub-scene.

The most important ideas expressed so far in this thread:
1) New players download the game, refresh the server list and nothing comes up because no one is playing.
2) Trying to bring retired TF veterans or TFC players into FF pickups is a useless plan. This is because of the large proportion of unstable personalities versus calm, respectful, and mature personalities. As Features pointed out in another thread, there are losers in every competitive community it's just more apparent in FF because there are only 20 people in the whole sample.

Moving on to things we can change...

Talos really should have a rotation of only the most popular maps. Whenever I am playing on Talos and fucking xpress comes on, I always ask people what maps I can nominate before I RTV and and kill the server with a map no one wants to play.

I want to be clear, I would stay true to my promise and donate a cash prize to a successful tournament, meaning people actually participated and it did come to completion. Will this happen? I don't think so but I'm also not going anywhere so we'll see.

[Features-]

Well considering TALOS has a limit to 12 players dunno how that goes to 8v8. Also, I agree to the pub scene needing to be bigger, but no one wants to sponsor a server that doesn't get players in it maybe once a week.

It doesn't help that out of '3 public servers':
1 of them is dedicated to not knowing how to play and has a ridiculous set of rules.
Another of them has just a ridiculous amount of downloaded files jsut to play on the server, and the server owner still hasn't realize how to replace a .dll file to have the fix so when spy's sabtoges SG's doesnt crash.
Then the final has 12 player limit that gets filled too easily when playing the '3 map rotation' usually. Which pub players are fine.

So just going to one server to another you abide by these server rules, and most people have an unenjoyable experience. Since an admin will say if you don't like it go somewhere else? Where else.

[KubeDawg]

Originally Posted by Features-

Another of them has just a ridiculous amount of downloaded files jsut to play on the server, and the server owner still hasn't realize how to replace a .dll file to have the fix so when spy's sabtoges SG's doesnt crash.

wrong lol. NFO locks their server dll files. This means when an update is released where the server.dll file has been updated, I have to wait for someone in the development team to notify NFO of the update and apply the changes. As you can also see here, I have brought this to the attention of the devs so it can possibly be fixed more quickly.

The downloadable content is limited to 50 downloads per map on my server. There are only 165 files in total (mostly tiny file sizes), and the 50 downloads takes less than 30 seconds to download on a DSL connection. They never have to be downloaded again, so providing you are around long enough to play 4 maps on my server, it quickly becomes a non-issue afterward. Also, you have the ability to turn off these sounds so you are not bothered by them. I could change the download amount per map change to something lower, but it wouldn't effect the overall amount of time it would take to download them all.

[FDA_Approved]

Still annoying to download. I just reinstalled the other day and have been downloading the junk. It's honestly pretty rage inducing to want to play a game, only to be forced to download a bunch of shit that doesn't even pertain to the game. It's not really horrible, but it can take more than "30 seconds", and it's worse when you have to pair it up with a map download.

[KubeDawg]

Alright, I have significantly reduced the number of sounds a player has to download. There are now 56 sounds instead of 165. Just the essentials. I've also set it to download a maximum of 20 files per map.

This should cut the time by over half. I've also gotten rid of the longer songs on the server too so mostly tiny clips now.