Forum

Quoted from SHIN

[…]
Sorry, but thats wrong. Lots of community servers like the reddit ones or the german Kifferstübchen have a lot of custom maps and they are populated until the latest night.

Then again its easier to start with a standard map pool and THEN introduce custom maps to the playerbase you built up with the standard maps. Custom maps no-one knows will not build you a playerbase.

Quoted from ash

[…]

Then again its easier to start with a standard map pool and THEN introduce custom maps to the playerbase you built up with the standard maps. Custom maps no-one knows will not build you a playerbase.

Pretty much.

The likes of Kifferstuebchen and reddit do well because they have a huge player base.

If you’re relying on a bunch of competitive players to sustain it (ie. people that know the maps) as well it won’t entirely work. Match times will draw all the life out of it, and that’s if people who are forcefully imbalancing teams aren’t steering people away.

A few years ago we tried to introduce some custom maps onto Uberium and it just destroyed activity. We even tried with maps like steel before they became official. Even the good customs can be hard to populate.

I count 16 maps i’d potentially have to download to play there – it’s quite a lot to start with. I’d maybe try a handful, see how they go and swap the least popular ones out for a couple of other new ones. You can afford to have more in when you have a player base built but even as an experienced player: that’s a lot of learning when all I wanted to do was play some casual TF2.

Good luck though! It’d be nice if it works out. I’ve chucked it on my favourites.

The truth is the majority of good community servers can only survive on a longer term basis through Quickplay traffic.

Sad truth these days :(

Edit: We used to run a dynamic map cycle – where it would switch between cycles if player numbers dropped below a threshold. This meant more popular maps came on when it started to quieten (to fill it back up). Not sure if this plugin is still working at all but if you can find it then it might be useful where you can set customs to only come on when there’s >16 players or something so then you should have some percentage that stay.

We will see how it works out. I am looking to attract a not-so-casual group of players. I suppose these will know and have the maps.

Hi quell, congratz again to winning last season^^ i know its a little late but better late than never right?
considering your critique. i am however looking to get some good players in there. we had a pretty decent group of gentlemen (/ and women?) on there earlier today and it was very bearable. I personally enjoyed the 5cps and people did as well if i understood correctly.
however if it doesnt work out we can allways change the rotation.

thanks for the advice everyone

.

Quoted from Cornelius

nymthae we worked out a system that allows us to have a main rotation of standard maps to create traffic while still havein the custom maps used in competiteve up for vote so when there are enough people and such map is demanded we can play those. hope thatll be the best of both worlds. also we intend to introduce a nomination system so the community can play certain maps if they wish to

On our server we’ve a handful of custom maps on our nomination menu so we’re sort of doing that. I think it’s a good way. The way you described is good too, standard whilst it’s filling then moving on to more custom maps.

However we’re still worried about even nominating customs in case that empties the server and kills it even though they’re pretty standard comp custom maps e.g. process, snakewater. We feel we’ve got to time it just so for the right time in the evening!

Thx for the input berath

Like said earlier, keep the amount of custom maps low. Don’t delete gully and swiftwater from the rotation, I suppose those could be great in pubs!