Jus throwing it out there, as you all know we used to have css and tf2 servers, the only running servers are saxton on a good day, surf server and rocket jump. Rest is pretty much dead. Css is already dead and cs:go is only good with hosted servers from valve. There are plenty of other servers to host but not enough incentive from players to maintain and make it great. Back in the days i had all the time in the world but work and a daughter takes up more time and the time i have left i still do like to play a game. So my question to you *the visitor/player* what to do with LZ? It has never been a issue about the money, i got that sorted and i bare that part so you can rule that out. From what i see is that most of the forum posts are from trade stuff and i would almost say to just change the forum to a trade only forum. Keep the LZ steam group and have some groups on there with a few moderators that would like to moderate in there too. The servers we still have would be a addition only. Teamspeak would still stick around ofcourse, since i use that still too. Feel free to hand out some other idea's. Like perhaps a merger with another community or swallow one, i can do server stuff but the core is the hardest for most. I can do that, i just can't tweak constantly anymore. Pretty much the same that Jelly had on Saxton. From my point like i said, ideas: - Make the forum a trade forum, with some "fun/leftover groups" - Move other related stuff to steam forums. - Open up the Ark Survival to the public - Remove any servers that just don't do anything, as in not enough players Or find people willing to maintain (we can host) a server with a good playerbase already. Too many tried to make a great server, but if we don't have recurring players its useless. Everybody likes a game for a period of time and after that move on. Same applies to TF2 for example, it just took longer.
Ah, I've also been wondering about the future of the LZ. The trade talk is annoying xD. I've seen many groups fade away but I've been loyal and never left them untill they eventually died. I'm studying economics and marketing and I noticed that LZ suffers from what many companies suffer, their products lose their shine and eventually customers/players lose interest. Our "products" are the servers. There're four options to choose for a dying product: 1. Invest more resources into marketing -> Will slow down the depression but it's kinda late for that. 2. Maximize profits with little efford: This doesn't apply to LZ, since we don't make profits. 3. Niche strategy has some potential in LZ and is actually in effect. It's about focusing into a small segment of loyal players, rather than trying to please all the players. Increased competition forces many organizations to choose this. 4. Remove the product from the company's portfolio and focus on something else. As you've suggested, this is probably the way to go. Removing the servers which aren't being used gives us resources and more ability to focus on new projects. I'd suggest searching for games where there's little competition between the servers. (Such as Ark Survival I suppose?) Strategy is also important. How are we going to compete the other servers? What do we have to offer to the players? Visibility and communication is one of the most important factors for any organization. We have 123k members in our Steam group, if we made an interesting announcement, there'll be tons of players joining to our new servers. This way the forum will also recover.
It's a shame Valve basically killed hosting by communities. TF2 was a great game that could be replayed for a very long time, but the comm servers are dead, and to rebuild that you need players "filling" them to attract new ones. But "quickplay" is too easy for them.... Hard to find long lasting games that will draw players back for a very long time. The other side is taking on all those short-lived games, but many don't do 3rd party hosted servers, or it comes too little, too late to be able to host 'm on linux (for those companies only have windows exe's ... ), and requires a lot of effort to maintain, handle, fill, find admin's for, etc etc. I've seen several trade communities die off over the years like UHC, UTC, MCT, TF2-Trader, Dota2traders, RAWR, ASBO, Brothers Googly, etc. due the waning interest for TF2, and it's hard to replace it or redirect it. Steam trading will continue to exist and get larger, but I do think TF2 trading of itself will slowly die out. Games that last for years and stay used so much AND are able to be played on servers provided outside the game-maker's hosted ones are far and wide to find.
I'm pretty bias when it comes to this -- for fairly obvious reasons; but the trade section is mostly the same type of report coming through with me making the same response to it (and then that's it, it doesn't go anywhere). The main problem with the trade section is activity of staff, I would honestly really like to build it back to something much greater than what it currently is, and what it used to be. So I would definitely like to see more resources dedicated to that area. Which I'm willing to donate myself if it helps. (P.s out of the country at the moment, which is why there's some reports/appeals I've yet to respond to). I'm not going to input anything on the servers, I haven't been around here long enough, or used the servers themselves and/or other community features enough for that
Hence like trading will stay, was my suggestion to make the forum more "trade" forum. But again, just an idea.
Haven't been playing too much of any online games which could use some community servers as of lately, because Enter the Gungeon and shortly after Dark Souls 3 came out. I was playing those pretty much all the time when I had the time to do so. It's sad seeing this happen to LZ, but considering that this community "survived" the quickplay-pocalypse for this long is quite the achievement. I don't really know which sort of servers would be good, since all I played that goes towards that genre is TF2, and not even that much as of lately (because of the above games being released), but IMO, not even CS:GO servers would be good, since most people just use the matchmaking or quickplay there too (from what I've heard). Like Data said, games that stick around for that long (TF2 lasts for almost 10 years now!) are very difficult to find, since they are indeed rare. If anyone happened to stumble across another one, it would surely peak my interest. We tried out Minecraft here too, didn't go too well after the first few weeks, maybe months, despite good server managing from Shadow and some constant visitors, but in the end it comes down to the same what happened to the TF2 servers: Only a few select players are playing on them, and the grand mass of random players isn't attracted to them, be it for no interest or just no knowledge that these servers exist.
I think i know what we can do, just become a "online" community. I mean we still have plenty of people that like to play a game on teamspeak. So make it a place where you can meetup and play games like dota2/orcs/tanks whatever. I am also on the lookout of possible mergers with other community's. Although "lethal.zone" is indeed a good name, i prefer to keep that one. As example: https://www.dutchwarriors.nl/info/gaming.php is a dutch gaming clan, but what they say is "we are friends, and we play these games" Basicly i want LZ to be something where you can just join and have fun and play together. That is it. Has always been my goal and still is. After all i still play a game of Orcs these days and also that is online again. Sometimes i play dota2.. Perhaps i need to move like something as that example. Time is another issue but we really need to split the trade then. I now see it as trade spam, but we should not throw that away since its a good position and the trade people are doing their best. Trade.lethal.zone would be fine for that, then we could have lethal.zone just be a place where people can find eachother with just the few tf2 servers that never seem to die (surf and rocket jump)
I wouldn't "split" trade off per say, just like disable notifications (don't show in any of the new post areas etc) from anything in a dedicated trade category on the forum.
How about a separate section for trade? lethal.zone/trade(ing?) perhaps? This way you could probably manage which notifications someone can receive I think. In addition to what I've already said on steam. Regarding minecraft, it's not hard to start up a server, it's rather easy. But it comes down to making it unique in some way so people would join, which is a lot of work but I've managed to make my own modpacks that people stuck around for a while longer aswell, but the problem isn't that either. The biggest problem is, there's not enough advertisement about it. People simply don't know about it, those that did, at least tried it, played for a while but since there's not that many people.. the outcome is the same every time. There needs to be a consistent rotation of people. When you get that, that gets more people in simply due to human mentality of people following their friends. That also makes it grow. Sadly I haven't been able to achieve much, been setting them up and putting them down as people desired to play it. But it just hasn't stuck enough.
Even if we managed to make an awesome server, nobody will play it if we don't advertise it. 1. TF2 still has plenty of players who play custom gamemodes. We could create a new gamemode in TF2 which would give us advantage towards our competitors. We could create a guide about it and attempt to make it popular by upvoting it. This requires coordination but chances are that it could go enought viral that when people do Shift + Tab, they could see our guide about our server. 2. Share our servers with "retailers". For example VSH Steam groups https://steamcommunity.com/groups/VsSaxtonHale and websites like this. http://tf2stats.net/server_search/?search=Saxton+Hale&Search=Search at least we're on Gametracker and TF2servers.com 3. Youtube channel. This is one of the best ways to gain popularity, especially if the videos are interesting, more about that down below. JUUD0LF has made quite a few views for LZ. Spoiler: LZ Youtube Spoiler: VSH 4. The use of popular factors: "Do people purchase deodorants that are equipped with pictures of David Beckham purely for their smell?" We could revive FF2 or add more specials to VSH. People are talking about Trump these days. We need to use things that are popular to our advantage. He would make an awesome boss in FF2 with custom sounds and model. If we made a video about Trump as a FF2 boss to our Youtube channel, this could become a jackpot. He's so dang popular even in Europe that we can't just leave this opportunity.
I'd add also twitch but we've also tried doing this I believe, and it just didn't catch the crowd. Hard to gain popularity these days.
Problem wasn't not catching crowds, nobody wanted to stream. TF2 is not a market you should be looking at, no matter what you do. The only viable thing im seeing right now are Early Access games. Eventually hosting servers for Unreal Tournament 4 might also pay off. In terms of youtube, you need a very dedicated community that works together. In the end why wouldnt someone just do a solo YouTube channel and take the revenue for himself. Online gaming communities are just in a bad place right now.
@Panromir I remember when you made that post regarding either... you were looking for something specific... someone who's got the voice, look and can catch a crowd... to start off? I thought from the beginning you expected too much. And in the end nobody was doing it.. so instead of lowering standards, or just plain changing the idea a bit, it just stood there and died.. kind of what's happening now to many different parts now aswell.. lack of interest or interest diverted into other things (common). Why wouldn't we stream whatever with whoever or even yt it.. catch interest of people. Fresh people = Fresh ideas Some new people might also be interested in something we have yet to see become popular and could help them make it unique. All of this is just ideas same as always, someone actually has to dedicate time and effort into it to make it work.. But in the end.. I believe the response will be "We've already tried this/that" so nobody will bother..
Organizations that are failing mostly use the same excuse: "The increased competition is the reason for our demise." Natural selection applies to almost anything. The unsuccessful organizations that refuse to adapt to their surroundings are forgotten as the others move on. I'm seeing Lethal Zone falling to this category, we haven't adapted to the changing environment. We barely have any strategies. We haven't done much about marketing. We have no Youtube channel. We haven't done much about our servers. Yes, TF2 is dying but the competition has always gotten tougher whether the community was dying or not. The market is still big enought for new ideas to flourish. We should definitely look into new innovations that could gain players. We should also seek for new games where we could claim ourselves some land. ---------------------- As Shadow said, we need people who innovate and act. I'm ready to do that, regardless that I've stopped playing TF2. Let's start by doing ourselves a Youtube channel which I could arrange and share with the staff. What we need to do is to create something innovative and fun to our servers, which would gain people's attention when we start marketing it. I personally think that Donald Trump FF2 boss would be hilarious. I can already imagine Trump flying around and shouting "YOU'RE FIRED" when he kills people. When people search words like TF2 + Donald Trump they'll eventually end up to our server.
The Twitch data was always publically available to anyone who might have asked. That said, it still applies. If your PC is shit or your internet or your voice is annoying, nobody is gonna watch your stream. Pretty much common sense.
Panromir is volunteering to be recorded for the trump voice. 'You're fired!' I was hoping you'd grow out of the bad mojo that surrounds you. Guess not. Regardless. Let Zano give it a shot then. Set him up and see where it goes. Got nothing to lose at this point anyway right?
I'll set up the channel and I can share the password with staff like Snel, etc, so you can do modifications and upload videos if you want. If we're making the Trump thing I can suggest sound clips if somebody takes care of em. I'm not sure how the rest goes, since modeling, server stuff is required etc. I think that there should be a whole new thread about the FF2 server what it should be like. Trump has so much different quotes that we could make tens of different sounds like Saxton has. Unlike what these guys are doing:
I remember @Panromir saying that TF2 is going to fail someday and we have to concentrate on CSGO or LoL. I still believe he is right. If you want to have a community so everybody can play any games with friends, you should really think about a cover up for the forums and teamspeak. I once joined a german csgo/lol/rocketleague community to find some players to play some competetive gaming and I never failed to find somebody. What they did is simple. They created a forum (which kinda nobody uses), but they organized the teamspeak server that well, so everybody could join a channel of his interests like: "Looking for team: CSGO" , "Looking for team: LoL", "Looking for training: CSGO", "CSGO Gaming Channel 1", etc. etc... After waiting some minutes, you will always find people with your interests. On that team speak server, you could find just anything what you were looking for. So, here are my thoughts: Completely remove all the trading related stuff from the forums. It's kinda just spam for "normal" user. Re-organize the teamspeak server to create more channels which might people want and remove all "useless channels" which nobody knows who they belong to (For example the channel "Yolbe and Friends". Yolb is such a cunt) Find a "manager" for each game. Somebody who is here at a specific time to help people for this game. Organize social events like TF2 tournament, CSGO tournament, give-aways.You need to get your members back. Most important: Marketing, Marketing, Marketing. Use your 150.000 LZ steam members to announce news, updates, events or just say hello to them. Imagine if a third of them reply? Thats like 5000 potential members.
Youre still not susceptible to common sense. I dont have the Twitch data anymore, also what's the point of using that twitch channel really? Why not do a personal one and advertise LZ on that instead? The point of the LZ channel was to host community events. Again, that means that as a Community Channel it would be for community events that a solo person could not do. There are a few community channels like that. For instance the Warframe channel, the Unreal Engine Channel, all channels organized by casting studios. Those are usually central around a single game though. In terms of LZ it would be central around a group of people. Just turning on OBS and running it in the background doesn't do it. You have to do something special. So much for twitch. If you really want to I can make it avaialable to you, but the effort might be more effectively invested somewhere else. Again, if you *really* wanna do the twitch thing, no problem. PM me on steam, I hope I can still get the data. As for the other points. Everything is worth a try, but really, Competitive TF2 is pretty much dead and Competitive CS:GO is professionalized so much, I'm not really sure how you'd want to enter that market. For a while all I've seen in terms of promising games are basically EA games. ARK specifically. To make your community shine in such an oversaturated game, you could either give modders a platform to test their mods and therefore achieve a certain level of exclusivity or you just host several different, well administrated servers. Of course that requires willing people, since back in the days I couldn't find a management script for ARK. We still dont have a web script to do it. Basically the same applies for other games. But its a much more promising approach than starting a twitch channel, if you wanna invest your effort into something. Something people seem to be missing here: You could *always* talk to Staff (which I guess is basically me and maybe jelly now?) and Snel about new ideas, questions and games. In my case, nobody ever did.
Just doing a small "to do list". -Youtube channel ✔ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQUrZEU8CAGuPD3JE6VVOcQ -Marketing, marketing, marketing X -More unique servers X -More games to put more servers X -Twitch? X -Get rid of trade chat spam X -Do something with teamspeak? X The channel pictures still require a little work, I need opinions.