New server and community
BulletSponge51
Join Date: 2012-03-06 Member: 148294Members, Reinforced - Shadow
Join Date: 2012-03-06 Member: 148294Members, Reinforced - Shadow
If this is in the improper forum I apologize, I didn't see a forum I felt this would fit better in.
The server will be NA East, most likely Chicago
Hey ladies and gentlemen, as the title states I'm contemplating opening a new server and starting a new community. The purpose of this thread is to outline my intention, and see if there is any interest before I dedicate time and money to this. With our wonderful CDT putting in work to improve the game, and the many improvements coming down the pipe shortly, this may be prime time to get some newer blood into or back into the game. In short, I love this game and want to try and make a place that like minded people can enjoy something they also love.
So why a brand new community and server? I see on the server browser quite frequently that many servers are constantly full, and the rest sit with 1-2 people in them and never fill up. I've spent enough time pubbing to know a lot of your names and where you frequent, and it seems that many don't have a server they would necessarily refer to as a "home" server. I'd like to fill that gap and provide a quality environment for many of you to play the game in. Also with the active player base at its current numbers it would pretty much guarantee that everyone who joins initially will be an active participant since most of the remaining player base are the more dedicated fans. This will give many of you who have not previously joined a community a chance to get on board at the base level and be a founding member of a fresh community. This is also the pool that admins\mods will be selected from provided there are members with the ability to effectively fill those roles. As will be discussed here, the community and server are the priority long before pandering to an individual.
The overarching goal of this community would be to maintain a healthy server and fair/exciting games. This will partially be up to the community to enforce themselves. The community members would be tasked with paying attention, and when a game is clearly a one sided stomp, not to restack and try their hardest to keep it balanced. Obviously this will not be possible every time and stomps will still happen, but if there is a preexisting ideal to avoid such things, we may be able to cut down.
This server will also be heavily geared towards positivity and politeness. Yes this is the internet, and yes freedom of speech, but we can still try to avoid being dicks to each other, and once again if the community is already intent on policing itself we may be able to cut down on the negativity. A fair system will be implemented and those who are acting in a manner that is toxic to others, especially rookies will be warned, kicked, 24h ban, 30d ban, perma ban in that order.
On the topic of negativity and politeness the server will have a zero tolerance policy for racism, bigotry, and sexual harassment. If you are found to be doing any of these things the sequence of punitive action stated in the previous paragraph will be followed. I will try to keep myself reachable so that in the event there is no other staff member to handle an issue I will be able to do so myself. This will be done by keeping the core community on my steam list, and steam mobile on my phone so that there will never be a reasonable moment that an issue can fester.
Above all else this will be run democratically. The community will decide what mods should or should not exist on the server although I reserve the right to veto if it will reduce performance on the server. There are many decisions that remain to be made and I'd much prefer input from the people who will be populating the server.
The initial server will be a 20 slot (18 public, 2 reserved slots.) I'd like to keep it at or below 20 for performance unless future patches make it so that 24 slots performs just as well, then I have no issue bumping up unless the community decided that the current numbers are ideal.
Feel free to post any questions, concerns, suggestions or just that you're interested. This is all still just an idea right now but with the help of you fine folks I'd like to make it a reality.
The server will be NA East, most likely Chicago
Hey ladies and gentlemen, as the title states I'm contemplating opening a new server and starting a new community. The purpose of this thread is to outline my intention, and see if there is any interest before I dedicate time and money to this. With our wonderful CDT putting in work to improve the game, and the many improvements coming down the pipe shortly, this may be prime time to get some newer blood into or back into the game. In short, I love this game and want to try and make a place that like minded people can enjoy something they also love.
So why a brand new community and server? I see on the server browser quite frequently that many servers are constantly full, and the rest sit with 1-2 people in them and never fill up. I've spent enough time pubbing to know a lot of your names and where you frequent, and it seems that many don't have a server they would necessarily refer to as a "home" server. I'd like to fill that gap and provide a quality environment for many of you to play the game in. Also with the active player base at its current numbers it would pretty much guarantee that everyone who joins initially will be an active participant since most of the remaining player base are the more dedicated fans. This will give many of you who have not previously joined a community a chance to get on board at the base level and be a founding member of a fresh community. This is also the pool that admins\mods will be selected from provided there are members with the ability to effectively fill those roles. As will be discussed here, the community and server are the priority long before pandering to an individual.
The overarching goal of this community would be to maintain a healthy server and fair/exciting games. This will partially be up to the community to enforce themselves. The community members would be tasked with paying attention, and when a game is clearly a one sided stomp, not to restack and try their hardest to keep it balanced. Obviously this will not be possible every time and stomps will still happen, but if there is a preexisting ideal to avoid such things, we may be able to cut down.
This server will also be heavily geared towards positivity and politeness. Yes this is the internet, and yes freedom of speech, but we can still try to avoid being dicks to each other, and once again if the community is already intent on policing itself we may be able to cut down on the negativity. A fair system will be implemented and those who are acting in a manner that is toxic to others, especially rookies will be warned, kicked, 24h ban, 30d ban, perma ban in that order.
On the topic of negativity and politeness the server will have a zero tolerance policy for racism, bigotry, and sexual harassment. If you are found to be doing any of these things the sequence of punitive action stated in the previous paragraph will be followed. I will try to keep myself reachable so that in the event there is no other staff member to handle an issue I will be able to do so myself. This will be done by keeping the core community on my steam list, and steam mobile on my phone so that there will never be a reasonable moment that an issue can fester.
Above all else this will be run democratically. The community will decide what mods should or should not exist on the server although I reserve the right to veto if it will reduce performance on the server. There are many decisions that remain to be made and I'd much prefer input from the people who will be populating the server.
The initial server will be a 20 slot (18 public, 2 reserved slots.) I'd like to keep it at or below 20 for performance unless future patches make it so that 24 slots performs just as well, then I have no issue bumping up unless the community decided that the current numbers are ideal.
Feel free to post any questions, concerns, suggestions or just that you're interested. This is all still just an idea right now but with the help of you fine folks I'd like to make it a reality.
Comments
@Supafred Thank you for offering your help and experience. I've run an NS2 server before briefly and other game servers in the past so I'm not completely in the dark but I doubt I know as much as you so you will mostly likely hear from me in the near future. Provided I drum up enough interest to move forward with this of course.
Feel free to reuse the rules i made over a year ago for my own server:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1XzYQ3xF6RbukNdLKe-SsFTQ4dXLlCBw61plnIEl7Ogg/edit
Basically at my server everything is democratically.
All players have the same rights until they break one of the rules.
That means moderators and admins are only just another regulars which just move into action in case of that some user breaks those rules or the server has some technical issues.
I'd recommend having a steam group with admins who can set up group play times or announcements (at reasonable intervals) to help drive traffic to the server or set up matches. This also makes it easier for your server members to play with eachother generally. Good luck!
Looking forward to it.
If you get people to donate for some perk (another badge?!?!), then it'd be a lot easier to pay for it. I remember the 120/month to use his servers... the ''good olde days".
Also, @Bulletsponge51, check out NFO Servers. I have used them for tf2 and l4d in the past. Not sure how they preform on NS though.
Please don't put a high ping kicker in (or at least give those on 400 ping a chance).
Hm maybe that's just what I paid for.. ironhorse n I split the cost for a while... but that'd be 240 a month... something is wrong. What am I.
http://steamcommunity.com/id/bulletsponge51/
This server is still subject to tweaking so please be aware this is not the final product. I look forward to seeing you guys game side.