ZE RAID

[All Ts]

5 minutes ago, delirium said:

I understand what you're trying to get at; I just don't think it's feasible. As mentioned in a plethora of ZE threads: the desire to play ZE at our community just isn't there at the moment. Whether it's due to drama or staff decisions isnt relevant at this point. Essentially sabotaging progress that other servers are trying to make to try and build up a ZE following would be a waste of resources at this point in time.

 

Obviously I'm well aware of the servers history and I think eventually it may make it back up there in relation to other CSGO servers but allocating population from one server to another isn't the move here in my opinion. If we focus on current successes and other growth opportunities that are currently in the works or lined up I think the community will be better off in the long run as opposed to funneling people on to a server that has recently been in the dumps in hopes that it works out.

 

Overall, while I can see the good intentions, I think you're letting nostalgia and archaic thinking cloud the bigger picture. Yes, CS has been a huge part of this community for so long that it's impossible to imagine a version of steam gamers without it, but, we need to prepare for a future where CS may not be the backbone of the community as we move forward. Yes, I know that recent forays into other games have been a struggle but I believe that this community will be able to overcome those eventually under the right direction.

We have have near to no success nor experience with any other game and CS:GO is near the most popular it has ever been. Where does this come from? It reminds me of the people who have said that WoW is going to die since it's release or the people who continuously try to short the major stock indexes. Myself or any of the people working to push JB forward who want to help other servers are the last people who can have it leveled against us that were going to sabotage anything at all lol. There are plenty of very obvious people to point fingers at who I could say could of done more, but it doesn't accomplish anything. Better to just ignore them and continue to spend my time doing other things.

 

At SG it's common where even when we bring AT's up on our CS:GO servers that have been up for years upon years they for awhile don't even know how to add a map and are given little support/oversight. The idea we're going to start another server on a different game and have it do well more than some initial push on a static game like Squad or Rust I think is what isn't it chief. If the dedi space is available we might as well use it so yeah I agree with you there, even more so if someone is hosting the server for us at anypoint but CS:GO is still amazing for us. If we want to try to move into S&box or some other game be my guest, but here is the issue with what you're saying.

 

Your argument is that we're splitting ourselves even helping a server that was within the last 5 years one of the largest CS:GO servers ever, but you want us to leave & transition away from a game (and that server) that we have the most experience in for what? That is a complete contradiction. What is the difference? CS:GO cannot be the reason why SG isn't doing so hot right now whilst every other community thrives and the game is doing great. There's nothing nostalgic or archaic about this, these are facts. SG has been on a downward trend. It does bad for awhile, people overreact say it's going to die, it recovers some but not fully and then people get complacent. 

[delirium]

Rust was pretty popular until facepunch fucked the servers over. Rust managers correct me if im wrong.

 

Our community isn't built for a mil sim game like squad at the moment because outside of a few guys from here everyone is trying to play the server casually and it causes conflicts with other mil sim minded randoms. 

 

I never said CSGO was dying at any point in the post I made. Community servers definitely haven't gotten a lot of love from valve though so having options outside of the game makes sense for long term business strategy. Would you really prefer one single stock instead of a diverse portfolio for long term stability?

 

I didn't mean sabotaging literally. I meant focusing on what's working right now is a better option than splitting population. Yes the ROI from actively pulling 5-10 people from the server at any give time could theoretically be huge. I just think the risk involved is greater than the return. As mentioned previously in this thread you tend to get more community integration from players on servers like jailbreak and TTT in terms of forums and discord presence. Add in the fact that you would be removing players from jailbreak which means lower rankings which means less exposure and possibly a loss of momentum from the players/admins who would otherwise show up.

 

Our reputation in the ZE community at this point in time combined with a cycling out of longtime players is what's stopping ZE from being successful presently in my opinion. You can fix a lot of things but scorning the weebs who post loli will likely hang over us for a while longer.

 

Concerning the overall direction of the community: we've been through shittier patches in the past and have been actively steering out of this one recently. I have faith in most of the leadership at this point (gator is a psychopath who points guns at cats ) and want to see how this plays out. Either way you and I are in no position to do anything about it other than lend thoughts and voices. 

[All Ts]

1 hour ago, delirium said:

Rust was pretty popular until facepunch fucked the servers over. Rust managers correct me if im wrong.

 

Our community isn't built for a mil sim game like squad at the moment because outside of a few guys from here everyone is trying to play the server casually and it causes conflicts with other mil sim minded randoms. 

 

I never said CSGO was dying at any point in the post I made. Community servers definitely haven't gotten a lot of love from valve though so having options outside of the game makes sense for long term business strategy. Would you really prefer one single stock instead of a diverse portfolio for long term stability?

 

I didn't mean sabotaging literally. I meant focusing on what's working right now is a better option than splitting population. Yes the ROI from actively pulling 5-10 people from the server at any give time could theoretically be huge. I just think the risk involved is greater than the return. As mentioned previously in this thread you tend to get more community integration from players on servers like jailbreak and TTT in terms of forums and discord presence. Add in the fact that you would be removing players from jailbreak which means lower rankings which means less exposure and possibly a loss of momentum from the players/admins who would otherwise show up.

 

Our reputation in the ZE community at this point in time combined with a cycling out of longtime players is what's stopping ZE from being successful presently in my opinion. You can fix a lot of things but scorning the weebs who post loli will likely hang over us for a while longer.

 

Concerning the overall direction of the community: we've been through shittier patches in the past and have been actively steering out of this one recently. I have faith in most of the leadership at this point (gator is a psychopath who points guns at cats ) and want to see how this plays out. Either way you and I are in no position to do anything about it other than lend thoughts and voices. 

I'd rather a portfolio 100% SPY S&P 500 ETF than to diversify into a bunch of stuff that I don't know anything about. (CS:GO is the S&P) Wanna know why? Because that is what historically works. Hedge funds, stock pickers and financial advisors who try to beat the market fail more than not. They spent a fuck ton of money creating HFT just to etch out what profit they could, and smart people just sell options to idiots using the VIX with enough income to keep accumulating. Examples aside... you haven't answered my question on why diversification is okay when it comes to other games vs. you wanting Jailbreak to be strong rather than us send a few people to ZE lol. Make the CS:GO servers strong again, then we can go worrying about what else we wanna go do. That is what makes the most sense to me, especially when it's not some hail mary to do so; it's what makes the most sense. It is what has worked in the past in the most undeniable way I can possibly think of. 

 

Most games have pretty shit support for their servers albeit games specifically made from the ground up with servers and modding in mind. I do agree though, CS:GO and Valve in general have made it incredibly shit for developers and it's only by the graces of the SourceMod community and SourcePawn, which is only used because it is well-documented that we've been able to stay afloat. SourcePawn is also a cock to work with... In a perfect world SourcePython would be used and well-documented, and you'd have little kids able to make great shit.. but we don't live in a perfect world. Higher variance servers like what we have on CS:GO that require time developing, tweaking, building communities is what gives us a competitive advantage over joe schmoe who would go download Hosties, Electric Razor and think he had a chance. A game like Squad or Rust, that type of thing does not exist and is why it's incredibly hit or miss. ZE, TTT, JB, they're practically akin to developing games. It would be an annoying amount of work to clone any of our servers, and it would be even worse for someone to try to build a community even if you had something great. 

 

The servers are in an dire state, pretending that this is like other times is either purposefully ignorant or maybe you happen to have inside knowledge on projects the rest of us don't know about. People shouldn't be advocating to throw the baby out with the bathwater just because we're not doing so hot. As for the last part-  Normal people at SG could do a lot, and do a lot compared to some staff at times. Just because I made poor decisions in the past that has put me in this situation doesn't mean I'm just gonna sit on my hands when I could spend a relatively small amount of time doing highly impactful things. I need no ones approval to help and if it's meant to be reading one of my autistic posts or entertaining one of my weird ideas will not be what stops someone from doing something that could potentially help. 

[delirium]

Not sure how many times I can reword essentially the same statement. Having a difference in opinion on business strategy is okay. All the best on getting ZE back up and running . I honestly hope it does work and you pull in a new generation of population to the server. I just don't think the effort involved is worth the risk at this current point in time.

 

 

 

[TheZZL]

Yeah forcing players to all leave one server is bad, I don't know where the conversation turned into an analytic lense on the SG servers. I proposed an idea to the EMs that Prez proposed to me a while back. Its basis was to do MGTs on a macro level and for specific servers. He called it something specific I don't remember, but I proposed we do a "Bi-Weekly Get Together" where people on the forums get back on a server that not too many people play on, have some fun, nostalgia, and basically seed the server for a bit. It would be like an event, but we wouldn't be following a theme or playing the gamemode modified. It should be noted we have a decent presence on the Forums of those who don't play SG/CS:GO anymore, but would and do in certain instances for some fun here and there.

 

 I think it's a strong idea, and as long as we don't do so often it'll be interesting and fun for people to get back on our servers. I'm not sure why the thread got closed and rejected so quickly but there's nothing wrong with making an idea like this, or an edited version of what Roddy suggested an official thing.

 

I know this was discussed at the EC/EM level and rejected, but please reconsider it, I think it has potential to be very or at least somewhat successful.

 

[Bright]

Bring back ZE

 

 

[kabLe]

1 hour ago, Bright said:

Bring back ZE

 

 

They did

[GG EZ]

On 10/5/2023 at 4:06 PM, kabLe said:

They did

Where population  

[jazzy]

hi all--

 

ZE will be back in CS2. We have a working server (depending on what valve breaks with each CS2 update*), however there are a few restrictions:

1) You need to run -insecure for your game client (as well as the server on our side)

2) You need to personally import the maps into your cs2 map folder (valve has not given us support for FastDL/Steam workshop download).

 

I will run an event in a week or so for ZE CS2 to join. I am waiting for things to stabilize as every single day the people at work for S2 ZE/ZR have uploaded new code to compile for CS2Fixes, and Valve has been *frequently* updating CS2 which causes issues as well (they already broke metamod once).

 

CS2Fixes as a project has come along nicely and as of writing we finally have a player/admin management system.

 

What we are somewhat missing is working maps. CSGO ZE ported maps to CS2 work, but most of the func_tracktrain entities are really glitchy so you will typically be shot off of a boat or a helicopter, so I'm thinking to try and focus solely on ZM maps for the initial start unless we can find a set of ZE maps.

 

In regards to that- I am evaluating new ZE maps every day. So far I really don't have a great maplist just yet, as most of them have issues, but they are playable to a degree (if you accept dying to some bullshit once and a while :))

So continuing on with that...

When Valve releases a way for server owners to deliver maps to clients via fastdl/workshop, and assuming we no longer need to run -insecure, I will host a mapping contest for ZE. This will not a small prize pool, most likely $300 for first place alone. I hope you all can spread the word on this to your friends to start evaluating the new S2 mapping tools and think of ideas for maps. I want to give back to the ZE mapping community and this is a great first step. Thanks all. I am always available on discord to talk more, if you have interest in understanding the current ZR plugin and its state please let me know and I can get you into my playtest server so you can understand where everything is at.

 

Like I said, I want an event, but I need a bit more stability and hopefully at least 1-2 maps that just work totally 90%.

[jazzy]

Event planned for THIS Friday Oct 13, at 5PM Central:

More details here on how to join-

https://discord.com/channels/399344695970496512/1161019626721915001