Hey Outbreak

[Sir_Conor 946]

Hey Everyone!

I've wanted to make this post at the start of the month but I've recently been busy with work, my apprenticeship and learning to drive that I haven't had much time to do anything but enough about me. Outbreak's current future has been quite a hot topic and I wanted to give my thoughts on some of the subjects and hopefully get yours. 

New Servers

Every time a new game comes out or something in OB gets plenty of players are interested in. Technically the first thing I'll check is can I actually create a community server after that some of the biggest things I look for are:

• What will make it an OB server?

When thinking about creating a new server I want it to be an OB server something special, to give it OB personality. How can OB make it fun and special to new and old players alike. 

• Players

Does the server have a possibility of actually getting players? Is it popular in the community currently or is something we can get players over time.

• Members

Can the players be turned into members. Is there a reason for new players to return to our server? Is there any benefits we can get Members without ruining anything for new players.

• Monetization

Usually, this is just thinking about can the server be monetized to support OB. The OB coffers always need help and I want to be able to do special things for the community like tournaments that can back to people that may not play the main OB servers.

 

There are many more reasons that I look at or for but these are some of the main ones. At least for CS Outbreak has never really had too many people that can either create plugins or want to put the effort into creating them so we've always relied upon our Outbreaks personality rather than being a server that has a lot of technical magic.

Outbreak has only every been able to be the best with Jailbreak, added our own personality making it entertaining for players, giving them reasons to stay. Being able to get a player and convert players into members all while being able to fill the OB coffers. Minigames has always been number two to Jailbreak being super fun but never as successfully as Jailbreak but still being fun for a wider amount of OB members.

We could create a few extra servers like a retake or KZ but I personally don't think that outbreaks personality can help these type of servers. I feel we'd be opening a server that so a few people can play for a really small amount of time before moving on to a well-established server that has been doing that type of server for a while. Do people go to these servers to have a conversation with people?

 

Jailbreak Sendoff?

I've been reading both sides of should we or should we not just get rid of Jailbreak. It's definitely in a bad place currently and has various problems that need to be addressed if we'd want to make a comeback of it, something I do 100% believe we can do it would just take time and effort from both our Administration team and our members to give to the OB personality. Outbreak Jailbreaks always seems to be in trends being one of the top CS JB servers to dying and then making a great comeback. Jailbreak is Outbreaks biggest money maker and I don't want to kill it off without some sort of plan to do something else where we can still be self-sufficient.

 

Outbreak but no game servers?

This is something that has been suggested to kill off our game server and just have a TS and website. Personality I don't want to go this route because I like having a direction, a server to put effort into. Even though its always a challenge with aids trolls, hackers, ddosing little nerds I still love meeting new players, new people, new personality's whether it's only one great person out of a 100 It's still worth it for me.

With this in mind some of you have suggested downsizing getting rid of the dedi and just have individual servers for each server OB server we have (Website/TS/Gameserver) and we would cut our costs by around 50% while would be amazing BUT the fact I still get emails with "Detection of an attack on IP address" makes me really hesitant to doing this. One of the biggest killers to Outbreak has been DDossing as not only does it stop people from player our server but it seems to destroys the morale of the whole community (Definitely mine at least)

 

The OB Summer Games

This summer I'm hoping to get a few tournaments as they are always fun for everyone, I personally don't play or are even into rocket league or hearthstone but I'd still enjoy watching OB in a competitive scene. Currently, I want to do a Hearthstone, Rocket League, League of Legends and CSGO tournaments. If there is any more you'd like to see msg me.

 

A Thank you

Thanks for those who've spent time reading through this thread and I know a lot of people actually care about Outbreak in their own way. That love being here with their friends and although it corny as fuck... a our dysfunction family. I overall think we've improved so much from what we started as and I goal is to with your help to keep being better. I do believe that we all need to take a bit of time thinking about the way we do things and how they might come across, I know I'm guilty of making mistakes but let us try and be better in the way we do things.

I do want to give a massive thank you to everyone that every given time to improve outbreak. Whether its just from being a great member representing Outbreak. Putting efforts into an event or getting new and old players alike playing new things. Or being part of the administration team trying to the Outbreak welcoming and friendly for everyone no matter what. 

 

Okay that enough fucking writing for me all the best from me nerds 

Sir_Conor

[Stiqqy 592]

There isn't that many games which offer an opportunity to create a big community, ob itself (at least in my opinion of when i was around regularly) was very small even when JB was successful and full most of the time and never really saw it branching out into different games or servers (the second server to jailbreak was always doomed and failed) because the loyal playerbase who used the forums/went on teamspeak was always quite small, we had phases where we would play a game for example i remember us having a ark server which was fun while it lasted but eventually died out. personally i think ob was always heading into the no server area and thats where i feel it should head however the games i see the potential for creating a new community game server are as follows (excluding csgo)

 

Argo just came out on steam (Standalone total conversion of arma 3, ill leave a link to it http://store.steampowered.com/app/530700/Argo/) and at the moment doesn't look like its doing well with all the optimization etc, however just thought as it came out recently that it could be something you keep an eye on as i think it can have the potential to create a community server (however thats dependent on how successful that game is). 

Games which i know have had succesful communities recently

GMOD, 

Rust/Ark//conan/all fall into the survival game category;

Arma 3 - Has a variety of different gamemodes, the ones with the most popular communities type gamemodes are Life (was apart of nopixel and that had a very large playerbase, new players joining everyday and getting involved on forums etc, definitely don't see OB going into this sort of gamemode as its very developer heavy, never seen any current ob players ever interested in roleplay games), there is king of the hill and wasteland which are also very popular and can attract a lot of new players, the problem with arma 3 is that its just shooting people and other than life koth/wasteland doesn't offer any personality what so ever so it probably isn't the game you are looking for but its there.

Squad

Games which have had successful communities (but i don't know if they do recently)

miscreated/dayz/tf2

 

I just thought i would give my opinion because im bored and it could be helpful (i doubt it , also before anyone says "you're never around anymore", i took a break from csgo but then that turned into a break from ob (None of you invite me to play anything anyway )

 

 

[Aaron 137]

I know I'm a big dino nerd and all that but Ark does have good potential to bring new people into the community.

If you can set up a server with attractive rates and mods to take away the fact the game is such a fucking grind and uses so much time then you can attract a large amount of players. Obviously with Ark its either you want a PvP or PvE, PvP servers are the most popular so it would make sense to try one of them. The only way I seen people making money from Ark servers is by implementing a shop which you can buy in game items from like really good saddles/tools and blueprints for real life money.

The server I'm currently playing on has quite a large community with its own discord where people play other games together.

I know Ark isn't that popular among our community which is why I don't see this happening, but the game does have good potential to bring in new members.

[Lewis 1,276]

I'd advocate putting renewed energy into Jailbreak. Just because a small minority of the older people in the community don't have passion for it anymore, doesn't mean it can't succeed. 

Two memes which are actually true:
1) Attempting to make OB thrive via another game is always gonna be problematic. In general several people will buy a game and get hype around the community then it'll disappear after about 50 hours of gameplay. How many games do we have in this community where like 10 people have stuck to it for a considerable amount of time? Everybody in this community HAS csgo - that's the sort of start you want to be looking at. CSGO is dying in THIS small community under a SELECT overtly vocal minority. Just as I look at the player stats at 9am this morning, it's ranked #2 (as always) with a peek of 550k people. Transferring to another game is already a massive hit on a potential influx of people. As far as I'm aware a PUBG server (if that's even possible in the future) wouldn't be ideal - not really a game you can interact with others beyond your squad of 4 people.

2) You've all talked non stop about how the player base of JB is little kids. School is still in session. Everyone pre year 11 aren't finishing until July 21st. Not to mention people who are only just finishing GCSE/A level Exams/Returning from Uni. It's all happening now. It's like we've forgot that only 60-90 days ago JB was consistently at 30 players. These coming weeks need to be met with strong commitment from those who wanna see OB expand.

Course of Action
Purge the mods who clearly don't wanna moderate a game - we don't need teamspeak/forum mods. Open the apps for young potential. 3 big events over 3 weekends, max players we can get. Jailbreak orientated. Squads of prison wardens vs 40 prisoners or some shit - get people interested again, give priority to randoms for once, our members aren't going anywhere, we want new people. Do something risky, take some new decisions. Events are some of the best ways to get people interested, I've had countless randoms/regulars over the years asking if they can get involved, these are the people we don't wanna turn down this time.

At least these are some of the things I'd do, if you want to try another game for the 10th time then go for it. You just need to remember that in a community founded/evolved from CSGO, another game is never gonna be as popular with the entirety of the member base. If we want to revive JB these few weeks are the time to attack, I'd be willing to help in several ways.

It's alright just saying 'I'm fine with teamspeak and forums' - but maybe the admin team doesn't want to just run that for us, maybe they want to... expand xD

Edited June 25, 2017 by Lewis

[The Untainted One 452]

It's all well and good going onto steam and looking at numbers for CSGO and saying its not a dead game but the reality is it doesn't matter how many people actually play. CSGO may have had a peak of 550K players but in reality how many of those people actually want to play jailbreak. My guess would be less than 1% of that. That is 5500 players, but it's not really a big player base. (This is just an example number). The potential player base may not be huge but there are ways in which we can help the server.

Speaking from whenever I look at the server on game tracker, the server is always dead before the younger players finish school. You might see 4-5 people on but half the time the server is dead. Around 3-4pm UK time the server always started to fill up with activity. But these days that doesn't happen as the server never has people on it before that time. Maybe if the server had players already on it around the time when the biggest part of the player base is looking for a server then it would start to fill up a bit easier.

If members of the community came on the server around 3-4pm then that would help a lot to get the server to fill up. Nobody wants to sit around alone waiting for others to join the server. If we have a community hour where members make an effort to populate the server for an hour around peak times then jailbreak will be twice as likely to have some people playing on it. It seems like everyone is so concerned or worried about the problem but nobody is willing to put in the effort to help fix it. I remember days when unseen would sit in a server alone just trying to populate it. He may have been admin but it's not part of the admin role to sit in a server for hours to help get players on. 

A perfect example of this is the surf server. Some of the community bitched and moaned about getting a surf server and it didn't go well. At the beginning it was new and a lot of OB players were interested in playing. But as time wore on and the server lost the attractiveness of newness, the server only had players on when the same players who moaned about it were on. Not even those players were interested enough to sit on the server until it populated. Not that is was ever populated unless members were on anyway. 

Just as a side note, I'm not saying that if you don't put that sort of effort in then you don't care. Some people don't have the time to do that sort of thing but for those that can, spend a week coming on jailbreak between 3-4pm and see if it makes any difference.

I'm not going to say anything about minigames because I have no idea what makes people get on it.

[Kai 840]

10 hours ago, Stiqqy said:

Arma 3 - Has a variety of different gamemodes, the ones with the most popular communities type gamemodes are Life (was apart of nopixel and that had a very large playerbase, new players joining everyday and getting involved on forums etc, definitely don't see OB going into this sort of gamemode as its very developer heavy, never seen any current ob players ever interested in roleplay games), there is king of the hill and wasteland which are also very popular and can attract a lot of new players, the problem with arma 3 is that its just shooting people and other than life koth/wasteland doesn't offer any personality what so ever so it probably isn't the game you are looking for but its there.

There's no denying that roleplay life servers are the most popular server on Arma and I think it would be able to convert those players into members since people spend a long time playing on life servers and obviously that will make them want to be a part of the community more. But I have seen people try to start life servers on Arma 3 in the past and it wasn't very successful, maybe OB will be different because of us already having lots of people who come on regularly who might play though.

Edited June 25, 2017 by Kai

[Scrobbesbyrig 422]

12 hours ago, Sir_Conor said:

 Jailbreak is Outbreaks biggest money maker 

so....we are a business?

 

 

[Lewis 1,276]

1 hour ago, Veng3nce said:

It's all well and good going onto steam and looking at numbers for CSGO and saying its not a dead game but the reality is it doesn't matter how many people actually play. CSGO may have had a peak of 550K players but in reality how many of those people actually want to play jailbreak.

I'm fairly sure everybody, or at least 95% of people who started playing the gamemode jailbreak found it by accident - they don't actively go searching for it.

The point is that 1M csgo players creates a much bigger likelihood for an influx of people than going to a game with 75k active players - which is furtherly unstable as a game for future. We don't even need to be thinking about 1000s anyway, this is outbreak, a communiy which has maxed about 70 players, we'd be content with like 3 new people a month.

The problem is not the amount of players available, we have evidence that JB works from 5 years ago in CS:S (when the player count was much smaller) and 3 months ago, CSGO is still perfect, and the most optimal game to bring in new people for us, right now. The problem is commitment from the community/mods, not with ideas/support/dedication, but simply server playtime. 

[VENGA BUS 2,027]

Lewis, you know that CSS then is vastly different compared with CSGO now. 

Back then, everything was done via the old server browser. Now, with the Xbox Live generation, people just go to matchmaking - largely for competitive, largely for rank purposes. They've been conditioned that way. I completely agree re: our not needing huge numbers of new people, but populating JB requires quite a lot of effort from the 'small minority of older players' (read: pretty much all of them), which they aren't willing to provide at the moment. But also remember that in the original post, when Conor was discussing the personalities of OB, he was largely referring to older and more established community members (not just the 'vets', but all those who've been around a while). Unless they suddenly become interested in JB again, I don't see how we're going to have a personality strong server - unless fresh faces come to the fore.

 

Vengeance mentioned that we could have a community hour, where we put in the effort to get people in from 3-4pm. This is a good idea in terms of getting players onto the server, but probably won't provide the steady stream of players that I think most of us would like to become members nowadays. They'll be kids, with maybe a few non-rancid ones among them. We'd be keeping the server active, but not necessarily enriching the community. Kind of like observing the letter of the mission, but not the spirit of it.

 

Everyone now is older, and I think that is probably the biggest challenge for us at the moment. We've outgrown the cradle that is Jailbreak, in my opinion. If we force ourselves back onto jailbreak, we'll be expanding the community for the sake of expanding it, rather than improving and building upon what we already have - and I think we need to think about where to pivot to, where to go next. And if we need to take a break for a while, then we can - it would also give the admins time off from being hassled about 'dead JB' or whatever other shit we find reason to hassle the poor guys about. I would suggest we look at what we have now in terms of members, as it'll be vastly different from the 16 year old core base back in 2012 and prior. It's changed - so what should we do to reflect that change?

 

Finally, why are we so fixated on 'growth', which largely translates to 95% attritional members, who'll be gone in 3-6 months anyway? We are not a business, and if we need to pitch in to keep the old girl afloat, I know the core will be up to the task. Besides, our base has grown plenty, and that's what's more important to me - the people who will be here regardless of servers and whatnot. The TS is consistently around 40-50, when in the bad times it was <20. Perhaps we should try and focus on what those people who've been here in terms of years/months rather than weeks want, as if you can get them onboard, they'll happily provide the passion and personality. It's just a matter of figuring out what this discordant bunch can find in common and enjoy. It might even end up being multi-games, lol.

 

If this post has been garbage, I apologise. I'm extremely hungover.

 

Conor, thank you for prompting this discussion with your brilliant post. Sincerely. Big +1. Would honor u again.

 

Edited June 25, 2017 by VENGA BUS

[Sir_Conor 946]

51 minutes ago, Keiji Motori said:

so....we are a business?

 

 

Jailbreak, when popular didn't just sustain itself it made money that could be put into the community. And we kind are a type of business just a non-profit one much like your local hobby clubs (Not that many people in OB go outside) where its sustains and advances itself from the goodwill of people.

[Lewis 1,276]

@VENGA BUS SMH STOP.

[Twiixtor 252]

No matter what direction we go in, I will try my best to support OB and it's playerbase.

I'm just glad that everything got cleared up and we know where we are at the moment. All the confusion made it seem like nothing could be done but there is always hope and there will always be something that can be done.

Everyone else pretty much said everything already so I'll just add that I would like to see an Overwatch Tournament :)

[Jamie 2,319]

HE LIVES!!! THE MAN THE MYTH THE DADDY

[gaffeR 1,380]

Wait for battlegrounds to release servers :)

BG COMMUNITY!

[Stiqqy 592]

7 minutes ago, gaffeR said:

Wait for battlegrounds to release servers :)

BG COMMUNITY!

 its going to be fully moddable as well, looking forward to when that comes