[Applied] Time to retire ZE?

[Che]

Just now, Mikey. said:

Then why just single out ZE when the only server that has had constant pop is JB, why not get rid of MG where its in the same situation, or TTT.

As Bom said, no need to remove servers because no harm of having them there. Was just thinking around this for ZE because I don't think it has as big of a following as say TTT.

[oSen]

10 minutes ago, Che said:

As Bom said, no need to remove servers because no harm of having them there. Was just thinking around this for ZE because I don't think it has as big of a following as say TTT.

 

if anything ze has a bigger following... did you not see the gametracker ranking when people were pushing for it?

[Kataoka]

16 minutes ago, Che said:

As Bom said, no need to remove servers because no harm of having them there. Was just thinking around this for ZE because I don't think it has as big of a following as say TTT.

Literally just said the same thing. Tbh definitely ZE has got a lot more support and interest than TTT. otherwise TTT would have people on it like it used to..

 

Not to be bad towards TTT i think the changes are great but no se, Point is ZE isn't going down for the same reason the other servers with 0 pop like MG who is in the same situation as ZE so ye

[Phoenix_]

1 hour ago, Che said:

That's the thing, a server shouldn't have to rely on just events for it to just get pop. If we were to do bi-weekly events ZE would have pop once every 2 weeks?

I'd rather that than no pop at all. Events generate pop and benefits our servers, you should know that-- you're on the events team, right? 

 

1 hour ago, Che said:

As Bom said, no need to remove servers because no harm of having them there. Was just thinking around this for ZE because I don't think it has as big of a following as say TTT.

The ZE discord has 250 members alone, people from outside that discord would still join. ZE has much more of a dedicated following. When they want to pop they will. We literally got the server to top 300 and hit max pop not even 6? months ago. We just got burnt out. It's as simple as that. 

 

Each server dies for different reasons. A server like MG is dying because the gamemode itself is more or less dead. There's pretty much one server in all minigames servers below rank 1000.

 

As I said in an earlier post, our servers are slowly but surely dying. The playerbase that was once here and had a large portion of our servers in the 500 and below ranks have grown up, gotten jobs, started families, etc. Gaming has moved into a new era that is leaving community servers in the dust largely. There are very few games out there that rely on community servers. Only stuff like Rust, GMOD, CSGO, CSS, and (if it ever comes out) S&box. 

[lorax]

4 hours ago, Che said:

I believe it's time for the Zombie Escape server to be removed from the SG servers. The server honestly only ever has pop when events are made for it and never has pop otherwise. The most pop I see this server get is 5 without an event on. It is just not enjoyable to play ZE with under 15 people or maybe even 20. I get there is players that love playing ZE but it's time to realize that the server just isn't doing well anymore and just be considered removal. I know there will be a discussion below but in my opinion ZE doesn't have players without events and even look at this picture, 

THE TOP 15 players literally have less than 3 days on the server yet are still on the leaderboards. I don't play ZE much but by looking at a lot of the stats and just checking the community browser page on CS:GO I never see people on. Another picture for you all which was taken a while ago in a previous thread called, "Retire dead servers?* It was in July but now the population is even worse as you can see by the other screenshot.

Another statistic from recently. These are the stats of the last month december 1st to 31st.

 

for as long as I been on the SG servers Ze always had on and off phases, relatively recently we had full lobbys and sweaty sundays and all of that so i think ze is kinda just hibernating or something

[thuxys]

4 hours ago, Che said:

I get there is players that love playing ZE but it's time to realize that the server just isn't doing well anymore

Bro we've been realize that, we're not in denial. Events and server pop goes hand in hand when it comes to creating a thriving server, so I don't know where you got the idea that a server is supposed to thrive without consistent events. That's how you build momentum. Tell your event buddies to crank out these "server wide activities" or I'm wiping you guys off the global radar.

[lorax]

3 hours ago, Che said:

That's the thing, a server shouldn't have to rely on just events for it to just get pop. If we were to do bi-weekly events ZE would have pop once every 2 weeks?

I mean when servers literally get no events, pop isn't that good lmao. ZE gets pop because people like trying new things during evnets, and once pop gets high it keeps that momentum and stays up for the rest of the week usually

[kabLe]

6 hours ago, gwert said:

ZE has been one of our flagship servers since this place was created. I mean, yeah, it ain’t looking too hot right now, but the ZE team has shown just how capable they are of bringing it back to life. 

no it hasnt

[gween]

27 minutes ago, kabLe said:

no it hasnt

[Kieran]

11 hours ago, Phoenix_ said:

Generally speaking, most of our servers sit dead. It's not a fun thing to admit, but it's the hard truth. Unless a server gets a giant push to get people on, chances are it will sit vacant.

That's the general state of CS:GO community servers. It's an ugly truth. 

Mostly agree with everything you said here and in your other posts. I mentioned this in the TTT dying post, but I would really like to see more drastic changes to jumpstart this community, and I hope those discussions are already going on at the higher up levels. Events do nothing for population. They are a luxury, not a solution, sorry dafty. Any success you see from them is mostly not sustainable. The asking people to seed strategy has flopped every single time in recent memory and shown no signs of success. If you need people to seed, then there is something probably wrong with what your server provides or changes need to be made. No need for anyone to go after and blame the management, I believe the intentions are there, but evidently nothing done has been enough.

 

Take everything I say here with a grain of salt as I was not involved with any of these launches, but I felt like there didn't appear to be any legitimate long term strategy for our expansion servers after launch. If there were, they clearly weren't winning formulas. TF2, Squad, Rust (in particular) from my perspective seemed to just be mostly dropped on the community and left to go on its own shortly after. None worked out. I remember the latter two expansions being called successes and then proceeding to die within a month. No personal disrespect to any of these guys, but I noticed our previous original Rust managers playing exclusively on other Rust servers daily while their server was actively dying. I think any future expansions probably need a more detailed and thought-out post-launch plan and the selected managers really need to be on board and dedicated. Shoutout @John tho, I know u really cared about TF2.

 

I don't have the information to say whether its our community servers in particular that are dying or if CS servers are dying in general. If its our servers, then we definitely need to be exploring drastic changes. Fundamental changes to our servers, dropping certain gamemodes and shifting our focus to generally more popular ones, and anything else to jumpstart our CS community. If its generally a CS server thing, we need to possibly look to transition to more popular and promising games. I think it could also be worth reflecting on how much gaming servers as a whole should fit into this community's future. Maybe it's time to transition to a different community format? Nothing here is a clear cut solution. I know some ideas I brought up seem incredibly drastic, but I think at the very least everything can and should be discussed at this point.