1. The trade part of Lethal Zone has fully been taken over by FoG (Fortress of Gamers) and this site can no longer be used to make appeals. If you feel that your tag is unjust, please file an appeal over at https://f-o-g.eu.trade instead.

Future talks? What to do with LZ?

Discussion in 'Lethal Chat' started by Snelvuur, Apr 20, 2016.

  1. Shadow

    Shadow Registered

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    @Panromir, people don't come to you with ideas because of how you talk to them probably.. The attitude really pushes people away.
    @Zano0 Let me know what you think with ts, but I'd like to have permission cleaning it up before doing it.. as I know there's gonna be a lot of people reacting to it.. tagging @Snelvuur for permission..
     
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  2. Darkness899

    Darkness899 Registered

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    This mostly. We talked about using the big steam group to make announcements about the updated vsh servers back when we were talking about the future of the vsh servers. Wasn't used in the end for whatever reason.
     
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  3. Panromir

    Panromir "10/10 amazing guy"

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    We tried. Didn't really succeed. What people see is an annoying message popping up. Most of them ignore it or leave the group straight away.
    A good example would be the ARK server. The announcement had basically 0 impact. It's just not all that well integrated into steam. Still, it could be used together with other ways of "marketing".

    Again, what we need is something to actually sell to people.
    We need proper ideas and proper support.
     
  4. Zano0

    Zano0 Registered

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    @Shadow I was mostly referring to Yolbe's idea about changes in ts, I don't really know anything about it myself.

    @Panromir said that our ARK announcement failed, because the system doesn't work.
    I checked the announcements that we've made recently and I'd like you to find the most appealing title.

    Lethal.Zone Ark Server is now online! (Passworded [inside], PVP)
    13
    Steam no longer restoring items lost to trading scams
    25
    Who wants Grandpas leftovers?
    36

    The bottom ones were more popular because their titles weren't as clear as the first one had. This ment that the people had to click the announcement to find more information.

    Not just that but the first title and the message were plain boring. The second title was provoking because Steam stopped protecting it's customers = interesting. The third title was humorous and interesting because it felt so irrelevant, it was also trying to offer players something.



    How we should announce things in the future:


    1. Simpler titles

    Too long titles are boring. Too informative titles restrain people from seeking more information.

    We need titles that are short, interesting and don't tell everything at once. Humor and interesting facts are a good way to spice up the title.
    Example: "Donald Trump annihilates TF2 characters"

    2. More diversity to the appearance

    I'm using this method right now. I use colors, pictures, different sized fonts, aling text to the center...
    Compare our announcement to Payday 2 announcement.
    [​IMG]
    [​IMG]

    They mostly use pictures, videos and gifs to announce things to lazy people and it's working. I generally skip their announcements, especially if they were a wall of text. I always check their pictures but I never watch their videos because I don't care. THAT IS WHY they've started to use gifs. They really work and have made me watch them for a while.
    We need to have pictures, videos and gifs, as well as little bit more diversity to the walls of text by making small titles etc. This is one of the reasons why I created the YT channel.

    Example:"Text. A Picture from our FF2 server, which has Trump in it. Text. Video of our FF2 server. Text. Gif which shows Trump destroying a player and "You're fired" text appears."
     
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  5. Shadow

    Shadow Registered

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    Perfect, now just to get someone to do this.. all of it, and have people come and see it, hopefully stick after that.
     
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  6. Panromir

    Panromir "10/10 amazing guy"

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    You can ask Snel to make you a moderator for the group and allow mods to create announcements and events.
    I would but I can't.
     
  7. rswallen

    rswallen Wizzard

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    This is all the Donald Trump I will ever need
     
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  8. Zano0

    Zano0 Registered

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    Nobody seems to dislike the FF2 server idea, so why don't we give it a shot? We don't even have much other ideas. I'll create a new thread where we can discuss more about it soon.

    We need to start doing things!
    But the thing is that we don't know who does what.

    I'll be working on marketing and custom sound stuff for Trump/bosses.
    We need:
    -Someone who sets up the server
    -A modeler if we can't find any existing models
    -Someone who modifies the values and features of the server and bosses, etc.
     
  9. Darkness899

    Darkness899 Registered

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    FF2 is probably more popular than the original vsh mode, so getting a server for that might indeed be a good idea. We had a FF2 servers for a while, I believed it did do good, but wasn't all too popular with regulars?

    edit: another idea I've already expressed ealier, is a community all maps server. Basicaly a server with the most popular community made maps that are not available on the valve servers.
     
    #29 Darkness899, Apr 28, 2016
    Last edited: Apr 28, 2016
  10. PixelBacon

    PixelBacon Registered

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    So how about converting one of the VSH servers to a FF2 server? It's mostly the same, except for more bosses as far as I was told. I'd be more than happy to actively moderate a decently filled server (meaning it's at 12+ players at normal playtimes, not just at 5 or less).

    @Zano0 YouTube channel would need someone with a good PC (for recording and rendering), good editing skills (including programs to do so) and a at least decent internet connection to upload them. Do we have anyone that has all that? Might be better to look for someone like that before setting up the channel.

    @Darkness899 Community servers are rarely visited, especially if there's only maps on there that no one knows from Valve servers. People mostly do not visit community servers for custom maps, but to actually see their custom content (like reskins or remodels) and considering Valve just enabled custom animations on all sv_pure 1 servers, the amount of people going for community servers for custom content will drop a quite a bit. I'm not trying to boo out your idea, I'd love to see some good custom maps on a server that is filled, especially if there's people playing I know, but I just don't see it working in the long run.

    @rswallen So what about it? Would you be up for some more server settings changing? Afraid I haven't seen too much from you in the last few months here on the forums and I miss your voice.
     
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  11. Panromir

    Panromir "10/10 amazing guy"

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    I'm really not sure what you guys expect.
    We had an FF server, nobody cared about it, it died.

    You can't just expect to host a server and it works by itself. You'll have to support it with several people over a longer period of time.
     
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  12. Zano0

    Zano0 Registered

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    Naturally the server will die if there're no people who takes care of it.
    This is happening to the entire community as well because we're doing nothing about it.

    Now if we could only find those people who are willing to support the server and the community. More supporters will eventually appear if we can make the server popular. If we have nobody to even set up the server, then this ain't going to work and LZ will die.
     
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  13. Snelvuur

    Snelvuur King of Sand

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    I have been around for 8+ years now, in those 8 years i worked my ass off making things work. I attended VSH and gave it a lot of attention and nurturing. This made them big and got a lot of followers. The moment i step out of that world and don't give it attention it starts to die off. No idea why, its just something that happens. Some server like surf and jump do just fine without me but admin calls won't be checked if nobody goes for it too.

    FF2, i did a lot of time in it, made a shitload of bosses only to find out that it wasn't proper fight. Some bosses where OP others where too tiny etc etc. What happens is that people just become friends with me too and then people start to complain more and more and i change and tweak it untill everybody says it fine and then all the new people just don't want to come anymore.

    Shadow can go ahead and clean up the channels on teamspeak. Regarding everything else.. we need people that can do server management. Frankly Jelly & me have been doing it for so long that the fun is off for us. Mostly because of the raging/screaming/complaining. Complaining didn't help the servers either.

    I can make cs:go servers in a instant, but i need someone to manage those server, not to mention some form of trust too because it requires access onto the server. Which makes it easy for people to do bad things.

    Regarding the trade spam, i should really find some time and make trade a seperate forum BUT with the same userbase. This is not something done easy. (takes time, and i have the skill for it etc etc)

    Its like saying "can i have these expert skilled people that usually have a good paying job and get their free time and let them do it for free" (because thats me) if i didn't pay for the hosting 8 years ago, it would have died 8 years back. (but like i said at the start, that isn't the issue at all here)

    We had youtube, auto tagging tf2 movies made on our server, but youtube fucked it up for us. Twitch same deal, nobody wanted something..
     
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  14. Zano0

    Zano0 Registered

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  15. DataStorm

    DataStorm Registered

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    To have a server, it means having a base group or at least several players that are going to "fill" it by being regularly on it. Most people will only join a server if enough (and depends on the person what they find "enough") to join it. If nobody there, they wont join that server. It also means that there must be a skeleton crew of admins that will handle stuff on said server, so it stays lively. As soon as the "base" crew steps out, the people in their friends list won't see them anymore on those servers and they won't join them. It's in a way directly related to it.

    The time that servers filled themselves are long past. Maybe in the future such may be again for newer valve games, but the way it goes, I don't think valve is really trying to let communities have their go again as in the past. Which is a shame imo, rather have a decent server with some stuff enabled/disabled to my liking via a community (all talk off is a huge preference for me etc) then the same exact "vanilla" again.
     
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  16. Enstage

    Enstage Not so custom title
    Trade Administrator Reputation Thread Mod

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    Can I recommend a Discord server? Discord is a chat + voice; the voice part is a small part of the app and certainly not the main feature, my own community still uses TeamSpeak over the Discord voice chat. So it by no means has to replace TS (but it could).

    Anyway, Discord servers really promote activity among community members, I've been running a public Discord for a few weeks now and it really is great. We often get together to play random games and surprisingly the use of Discord has increased forum activity.

    Here's the link to it: http://discordapp.com
    Heres my server if you want to join to test out the functionality (definitely not forcing you, don't want to be seen as advertising my server here): https://discord.gg/0yAS6nDe2BWbKQEd

    I would be happy to set one up with correct permissions and channels then hand it over to Snel for managing, let me know your thoughts. Regardless of whether this idea goes through or not, I would like to set on up for the Trade Admins at minimum <3

    Thanks.
     
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  17. Shadow

    Shadow Registered

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    I honestly hate discord highly due to the fact it requires me to make an account to use something that is basically teamspeak/mumble which offers the same thing... without needing one..
    Already left a community because of their switch over pretty much because I've lost all voice contact and communications die out after that..

    Our teamspeak license is free.. so I see no reason why we would switch over..

    All in all.. my humble stance is if anything regarding discord happens I'm most likely never gonna be there..

    In another note:
    Due to the replies in the Overwatch thread, someone could consider setting up something regarding that, and easily get some word out there about us through youtube/twitch because it is still growing, people wanna see it currently. Think about it
     
  18. Panromir

    Panromir "10/10 amazing guy"

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    I kinda have to agree with Shadow here.

    Discord may be cool and all, but since we have a TS3 community license, it really is obsolete.
     
  19. Enstage

    Enstage Not so custom title
    Trade Administrator Reputation Thread Mod

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    You're misunderstanding what Discord is for I think, it's 90% text chat. You can basically completely disable the entire voice part of the app anyway. Discord also costs no money (completely free, no ads or anything, I don't know where they make their money to be honest). I thought I'd made it clear that in no way does Discord replace TeamSpeak, my TeamSpeak server has had just as much activity on it as it did before I introduced the Discord, they are two separate services.
     
  20. rswallen

    rswallen Wizzard

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    I'm with Enstage on this. I've only been using it for a few weeks, but I love it. Its like a cross-breed of Teamspeak, Skype and WhatsApp and superior to all three.

    Best of all: Inviting new players is really easy (ridiculously so). With Teamspeak, new people have to download and install the program, choose a name, connect, then navigate to the correct channel. With Discord, they have to copy + paste a URL into a web browser, choose a nickname and that's it.
    • Teamspeak setup: 1-2 minutes (minimum);
    • Discord setup: 10 seconds
    @Enstage, looks like they currently fund it through merch but I also saw this under features (1st block after table):
     
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