Is TT as we knew it,DEAD?

[stinkfingers]

all this equivocating. yes, grrreat, TT as we knew it is dead.

it's still possible to find a pick up games at times. other times, not so much. in the ol' days there was great competition to get on scrumbag, and while you waited it was possible to play indy in one of a couple servers with many other players. now it's pretty rare that a TS server is full. if it is, i'll almost guarantee you that no other server has humans playing scrum.

a couple years ago decreased participation could be explained by seasonal cycles. not so much now. in the dead of winter participation wasn't noticeably higher than it is now.

loss of strong servers plays a major part IMO. as cannon says, the loss of Roos is going to cost us players from Europe. and truthfully, if it weren't for Doc's server, I also might have left. Now that Dash is back, I'll stick around. I can tell you that playing solely on E coast servers from the US detracts significantly from the experience.

oh, i almost forgot: the other major factor in decreased participation is a player named rogue who has been driving away players since august of 2007. must be true because i once read it on wikipedia.

[get some]

i can tell you my interest level has dropped like a stone in recent months. personal reasons combined with no pickup games are the main culprit.

[dad]

I'm not much for scrum but I can tell you that tbm games are there at certain times. The biggest problem I've seen lately is the problem with players. You have your new players, then you have vets using aliases. Unable to even teams, twice this week it's been me and two bots against five humans. You try to even the teams and get the "lols" from the aliases, I'm finding it to be less fun.

[Jerry]

I see the alias around quite often too. I look at as " if you don't want to be yourself then ya must be afraid that some noobie is gonna kick your butt". The main problem I've seen is some vets have little patience with the new players. A little encouragement goes a long ways with some. I've seen many of the new players that have promise in this game just to be ignored or kicked just because they're new. I know that theres a pecking order here, but if theres no help or patience for the new ones then it will die.

[niKo]

Since the community has grown so small, I would suggest setting a time either a few days a week or every day for a group game where aliases, imbalances, and lack of players wouldn't be a problem.

-N

[dad]

^lol, problem solved?

@Jerry agreed with new players, most understand, some think they don't have to listen. For example the other day, I asked someone to change color, the reply was "no". I then changed the color myself, only to have the player rejoin under original color. The importance of balancing was explained, the player still said "no".

[drsawbones]

math is important and I agree, 5 on 1 is no fun - but it does make you fight harder and better, longer....

We still average a fair share of new members, I'd guess an average of 2 a week that are actual humans.

[LGM]

Boy, that patience thing is big. I need frequent reminders on that. I was looking through my chatlog, and I think I'm doing ok.

I know I try to explain how things work, why we want what we want, and so on. I also know that I get worn down when some of the truly inflexible new players won't listen. Then I get tempted to wield my admin powers and kick, etc. I especially get that way when my server gets trashed up with bming and camping, etc.

I have to keep reminding myself that I was a newb at one time, too. Just because I'm one who has been on for a number of years and has made connections that allow me to admin some servers give me a license to be a power hungry fool. Just the opposite. I should try to show how it's done with balance.

If you want to grow the game, do what you can to make it a positive experience for new people.

[stinkfingers]

patience is important.

i've seen many admins boot newbies for minor infractions. not good for the game.

[Dazzle]

^ WOOT!! Sounds great...... Go you Smacky

If you ned any help just buzz me, also Roo made a sorta final rotation of maps before he went, I can send that if you want.

I am not sure if this thread is exactly correct, there are still a lot of people who play, and about this time every year there seems to be a drop off but it comes back. In the last 7 days since I released CTF there have been 238 downloads of the CTF Preload. Now I think we can all agree that is not bad in a week and its much more than I expected, which of course is great news. And add to that in the last 17 months there has been 3605 downloads of my upgrade pack!!

To inform new players of http://www.Planetthinktanks2.com and to let them know they need to install the TT upgrades to get into the modded scrum and gametype servers I have put up a locked server that says "NEW PLAYERS CLICK HERE" when they click on the server text appears in the name list box giving the information they need - I have cheked and this server also shows up in the demo version. I though I would give this a try and see if it would have any effect in bringing new members and additional traffic to this site and our community. I have noticed in recent times that there are new players in game but not many know of this site. So it will be a good exercise to see if this in anyway works, if it does I will just leave it up there.