[8-1-17] Future Expansions

[Roy 10,832 / 0]

Hello! In this update I will be discussing a few points such as:

• What games we plan to expand into.
• What games we have already tried, unsuccessfully, to expand into.
• Discuss our current expansions and view their progress.

 

Expanding
I first want to talk about how we’re going to expand. GFL has a history of successfully expanding into divisions but also has a history of failing to expand into certain divisions. 

 

Failed Divisions & Our Mistakes
I want to first list divisions we’ve failed expanding into and why we failed from my point of view. This list includes:

• Rust
• Chivalry: Medieval Warfare
• Killing Floor
• Red Orchestra 2
• Rising Storm
• Pirates, Vikings, & Knights
• Fistful of Frags
• Minecraft

 

Rust

I believe our Rust division failed due to the fact that we didn’t have a dedicated developer focusing on the division. We also gave up too early on the division, in my opinion. I feel that if we get a decent developer, dedicated to the division and give the division more time, it has a big chance to succeed.

 

Other Divisions
The other divisions suffered from the same problem in my opinion. Honestly, I created a majority of these divisions due to specific events (e.g. C:MW and KF had a free weekend). With that said, a majority of these divisions were also created because I wanted to put our NFO Frankfurt machine to use since it was highly underloaded.

 

The servers in most of these divisions were initially very populated. However, they died off quickly, the reason for that is because we didn’t have someone within GFL that was highly dedicated to the divisions. All of these divisions didn’t have a dedicated manager and most of the server work was done by a few GFL higher ups, including myself. Eventually, we lost interest and nothing got done on the servers resulting in them dying.

 

These divisions had potential, in my opinion, if we found a team dedicated to working on them. I still think making these divisions was a good choice since it advertised GFL in different games. However, we could have done a better job by finding a team dedicated to helping the divisions. I still think some of these divisions have potential once we find dedicated teams who are motivated to pushing them forward! Perhaps we’ll rebuild a couple of these divisions in the future with a full dedicated team and see how it goes.

 

How Will We Expand?
As mentioned in the last section, the previous divisions failed due not having a dedicated team to push them forward. Therefore, I want every division we expand into to have a dedicated and motivated team. Team members should be focusing only on that division until it lifts off and becomes stable.

 

There should be at least one team member who is technically trained in handling the division as well. Either that or we have a Technical Administrator deal with that side of the division. Basically, we need to ensure our servers are prepared and supported on the technical side.

 

A concern most players will have in the community is if we end up expanding too quickly. In my opinion, if we have a separate dedicated team willing to push a division forward with a good plan, we should give them a chance. However, I don’t want any team members to be focusing on starting up more than one division at a time. I also don’t want two divisions starting up at the same time that require an existing player base (e.g. players in GFL) to help start them up. It is okay to have multiple divisions starting up as long as they:

1. Have a dedicated and motivated team with good plans.
2. No team members are trying to start up more than one division.
3. Don’t require an existing player base to “kick-start” the servers with population.

Overall, I believe if we use these “guidelines” to expand in the future, we’ll have a very successful setup.
 

Divisions (Game Servers)
I will now list divisions we are, or plan on, expanding into in the future. Divisions with game servers are easier to start up compared to mini divisions. However, they still need a lot of effort put into them.

 

Call Of Duty 4
The first division I want to talk about is Call of Duty 4. We’ve already opened this division and setup one server (Hardcore Free For All). I will talk about the HC FFA server along with other servers we plan to open in the future after HC FFA is stable and all the work is done.

 

HC FFA

So far, this server is doing very well! The server started out a bit slow, but after gaining regulars, it’s starting to reach over 24 players daily as a peak. I currently idle in the server at night and it fills up by the morning. While this server is doing extremely well, there is also a lot of work that needs to be done to it as soon as possible. This includes:

• Setting up B3 (an RCon tool) which will enable admins, server chat advertisements, etc.
• Finding an active admin team who will heavily recruit players to the forums and TeamSpeak 3 server.
• Looking into a third-party anti-cheat plugin that will ban hackers automatically.
• Setting up other small plugins such as anti-camp and see if regulars like it.

 

Once this list of things are completed and the server starts filling up without idlers, I would consider the server stable.

 

TDM With Custom Maps
The next server we will likely be setting up after HC FFA becomes stable is a TDM server. A few players from GFL requested this along with having custom maps. Our HC FFA server is quite hectic at 32 players since it’s every player for themselves. I feel a 32 player TDM server will be more peaceful and relaxing due to it being 16 vs 16. With that said, TDM is also a more popular game mode in my opinion. Therefore, it may be even easier to populate this server compared to HC FFA (although HC FFA is already easy to populate).

 

Zombie Mod
Back in 2010 I used to play a Zombie Mod server in CoD 4. In my opinion, these servers were very fun. There are two types of Zombie game modes. One includes bots as zombies and the other is fully multiplayer (no bots and zombies are players). I would eventually like to expand into both.

 

With Bots
Here’s a video of Zombie Mod with bots:

 

 

This server would most likely be a 32 player server (excluding bots).

 

Without Bots
Here’s a video of Zombie Mod without bots:

 

 

This server would most likely be a 48 - 64 player server since it’s fully multiplayer.

 

Overall
Our Call of Duty 4 division is off to a great start and I’m very excited to see how the division turns out in the future! Currently @Ariistuujj and I are focusing on the division. If we find dedicated team members in the future, we’ll assign them to this division.

 

Battlefield 3 & 4
We had Battlefield divisions in the past. Unfortunately, they both were closed.

 

Battlefield 3
The only successful Battlefield division we had in the past was Battlefield 3. The division had a dedicated manager and an active admin team. 

 

Our Battlefield 3 servers included:

• Team DeathMatch (EU)
• Rush (EU)

 

Both of these servers were at one point very popular and in the top 15 BF3 servers according to GameTracker.

 

Unfortunately, this division was closed due to financial issues back in 2016.

 

Battlefield 4
We tried expanding into Battlefield 4 when the game launched for the first time (2014). The expansion turned out to be a complete disaster. We purchased a machine dedicated to BF4 servers (right before the game launched). We set up four servers (I forget the game modes).

 

At first, the servers were populated but due to constant server crashing (a bug in the game), they eventually died off. It took DICE over a month to fix these server crashes and by the time they fixed the crashes, it was far too late for us.

 

Why Should We Reopen These Divisions?
I want to reopen these divisions because I feel they both have a lot of potential. With that said, we have a team ready to start helping us expand which includes @Rukus, @sl3yz, and possibly a couple others. Battlefield 4 has became stable since launch and DICE has introduced a few new features that has made the game better (e.g. adding a server tickrate modifier). Servers are also stable and don’t crash as often as they did at launch.

 

@Rukus currently manages a BF3 community with a server in the top 3 (goes up to #1 occasionally) according to GameTracker. Rukus will be dedicating his time into helping GFL expand in the near future! I will write more about Rukus after officially announcing the Battlefield divisions.

 

@sl3yz was the manager of our BF3 division. He did a great job at keeping the servers stable and formed a great admin team. He is going to be coming back to help us expand into our BF divisions!

 

What We Need To Do Different?
There is one big thing I want to do differently when expanding into our BattleField divisions. Although the BF3 division consisted of two very popular servers, I do feel we didn’t recruit players to the forums & our TeamSpeak 3 server enough. One thing I want to focus on while expanding this time is ensuring our admins and managers are heavily recruiting players to the forum and TS server. We have an active forum and TS server already. Therefore, “not having anybody to talk to” shouldn’t be a problem. Our server admins also should be active on the forums & TS server. 

 

We will also be doing things to help recruit players in the future such as giveaways, tournaments, etc. I’ve seen a couple BF communities in the past successfully recruit many players to their website and TS server. One community’s forum was almost as populated as GFL’s and a majority of the players were from Battlefield. Their TS server also had over 150 clients (a majority were from BF). Although this isn’t going to be easy, it IS possible. It will require a lot of dedication but I believe, with the team we have, we can achieve this. Recruiting players to the website will also bring in donations as well once they see what perks our BF servers offer (e.g. reserved slot and immunity to team balance).

 

Overall
These are more big divisions I want GFL to expand into in the near future. We likely already found a dedicated team and I have high hopes that the division will do well. I believe we are going to start off with a BF4 server. I’m not sure what the game mode will be but we’ll discuss it. When we get close to launching these divisions, I will make an announcement with more details.

 

Arma 3
We will be most likely opening an Arma 3 division in the future. We were planning on doing this sooner but the project was temporarily put on hold while @Vidmar is looking for a new developer.

 

@Vidmar and his team are very dedicated and motivated towards this project and I have no doubts they’ll do a great job once the project is finished. This division has a lot of potential and honestly may be a major division for GFL in the future depending on how it goes!

 

Counter Strike 1.6
Another division we will likely try to start up in the future is CS 1.6. Currently, CS 1.6 still has a good amount of players on daily (even more than CS:S). We will likely hold up from starting up this division until we successfully start up other divisions unless if we find a dedicated team who will only focus on this division. 

CS:S SteamDB graph:

 

CS 1.6 SteamDB graph:

 

Rust
Although our Rust division has failed multiple times in the past, I believe we still have a chance at succeeding once we find a developer along with a team dedicated to the project. This is a division that will require an existing player base. Therefore, I’d prefer waiting until there are no divisions we are expanding into before we try giving Rust another chance.

 

Counter-Strike: Source
We currently have two stable servers in our CS:S division. There have been players who want to add more servers (e.g. Minigames and Deathrun) to the rotation and I did mention in the past that we’d likely get a Surf Timer server. I plan on talk to @Thomasdavid097 more about this when I get the time.

 

Mini Divisions (No Game Servers)
Mini divisions are more difficult to start due to the fact that we don’t run game servers. However, if started successfully, I believe they have a lot of potential. Mini divisions are ran by our community advisor team, so I won’t be going into detail within this post in relation to them. However, they will be making an update post very soon regarding this.

 

Overall
As you can see, we have a lot of plans to expand into multiple divisions in the future. We want to learn from our mistakes and ensure we have a team dedicated to starting up each division so that they have the dedicated support they need to thrive! Now, as long as we stay focused and keep ourselves on task, I believe we will do well!

 

Google Doc

 

Thanks for reading!

[Darkling 2,041 / 23,430]

Both myself and the CA team are writing the post about the mini divisions. We are looking forward to posting it. 

[Roy 10,832 / 0]

That is done. The next update I will be writing will address things with the community itself

 

Thanks!

[Chormee 2,973 / 29,227]

Maybe this time we don't have otter manage rust.

 

 

[Pyros 1,794 / 30,512]

9 minutes ago, Roy said:

TDM With Custom Maps

I don't agree with this, I personally would rather play on a ground war server to add a little bit more diversity

 

9 minutes ago, Roy said:

Battlefield 3 & 4

time to start learning how to play battlefield 4 with a mouse and keyboard, since I would say I do quite well with a controller

http://m.battlelog.com/#lang=en

[Cab 20 / 1,889]

can't wait for minecraft server...

 

 

 

 

 

or roblox....

 

 

 

[Domps 300 / 5,273]

So are you saying the Minecraft Division's were a success? If not why did they fail?

[Aquaticfilly0 394 / 7,334]

2 minutes ago, Domps said:

So are you saying the Minecraft Division's were a success? If not why did they fail?

It was Minecraft?

[rapperdan 2,323 / 0]

7 minutes ago, Domps said:

So are you saying the Minecraft Division's were a success? If not why did they fail?

Thoughts on @Fx280 and @Violator making dicks on the server?

[-_Fx_- 666 / 11,186]

Just now, rapperdan said:

Thoughts on @Fx280 and @Violator making dicks on the server?

hey my dicks were masterpieces THEY MADE THE SERVER BETTER

[Cab 20 / 1,889]

8 minutes ago, Domps said:

So are you saying the Minecraft Division's were a success? If not why did they fail?

Wait, there was a Minecraft server? 

[Happytree 93 / 2,293]

41 minutes ago, Charmy said:

Maybe this time we don't have otter manage rust.

 

 

 

never played on the server 

 

edit: 

Edited August 2, 2017 by Happytree
had to make it not look like a drama starter

[Domps 300 / 5,273]

1 minute ago, Cab said:

Wait, there was a Minecraft server? 

We have had like 4.5 minecraft servers. They have all pretty much flopped, due to a whole heap of reasons in my opinion  

[RVFK 1,037 / 15,970]

I'm still waiting for a rainbow six siege division 

[DarkHeroz 93 / 3,517]

I would like to see cs 1.6, truly I had been playing it for 4 years (zombie mode) before moving to csgo.  Now I have a hard time to find good zm server to play.

[Cab 20 / 1,889]

1 minute ago, Tahytn said:

im actually surprised minecraft failed, it seemed like it was a great idea, roblox next?  

For sure, but if they're going to make a roblox server, they'll need to watch this 11 minute video teaching all the things on ROBLOX RP with 1/2 frames per second!

 

 

The joy it would bring......

 

 

I didn't watch even one minute of it...

See how long you'll last.

 

 

[Bae 2,489 / 41,437]

11 minutes ago, DarkHeroz said:

I would like to see cs 1.6, truly I had been playing it for 4 years (zombie mode) before moving to csgo.  Now I have a hard time to find good zm server to play.

We have dm server on 1.6 :D You go in and there's bots xD

[Eli 708 / 11,586]

I'm exited for more expansion into CS:S. I wanna see deathrun on there reborn. I played it once when we had it before and it seemed pretty fun. I'm very very very exited for BF4. I had no real motivation to play it after 600 hrs but with a server I can dedicate myself to and play against other in the community, I think i could get back into it. I love rust. I've played with Joel and Rick and others a bunch and would love to see a server made for that so we can stop changing servers every wipe.... Personally I'm terrible at 1.6 so I dont really have any interest in that, but I like a TDM Or ground wars. Both seem like a fucking amazing idea.

Edited August 2, 2017 by Eli

[SashaGrey 346 / 5,983]

1 hour ago, Darkling said:

Both myself and the CA team are writing the post about the mini divisions. We are looking forward to posting it. 

I am excited to work with @Darkling and the other Community Advisors on the mini divisions. 

[rapperdan 2,323 / 0]

1 hour ago, Darkling said:

Both myself and the CA team are writing the post about the mini divisions. We are looking forward to posting it. 

 

18 minutes ago, SashaGrey said:

I am excited to work with @Darkling and the other Community Advisors on the mini divisions. 

End result of this is @Roy commenting 

 

1 hour ago, Roy said:

That is done. The next update I will be writing will address things with the community itself

 

Thanks!

Guys I hate to say this but @Roy just destroyed every CA.