SCTFL on the Soldat start-up screen/interface?

[Ricrylonten]

Hi. I'm ricr. I'm part of the staff over at Soldat's most successful/primary competitive league, SCTFL. How would the developers/the community feel about adding a small text advertisement for the league somewhere relatively unobtrusive and inoffensive in Soldat's "OK/Exit" screen (much like these plugs for the site and forums)? With league participation and general activity dwindling, we imagine it couldn't hurt if the entire player base can be made aware—at least in some limited capacity—of sctfl.net and the competitive "scene".

(idea by Freeman)

[Wolfskin]

nice idea, ricr! I totally agree, getting more people into sctfl and the competive scene in general is one of the ways to brighten up soldat's future!

[Madow]

Great idea, it would be foolish for the devs not to do this.

[Clawbug]

The problem with Soldat's future is not decline in competitive scene. The decline in competitve scene is caused by decline in Soldat's popularity. To get competitive scene more active with new players, Soldat needs more players in general. Soldat's popularity has been in decline ever since 2007-2008, and same goes for SCTFL. This is easy to understand; there hasn't been a notable influx of new players, and old players quit and become active faster.

I made a thread discussing Soldat's goals for the future here: http://forums.soldat.pl/index.php?topic=42050.0

Personally I strongly believe that the goal for sustained growth for SCTFL and competitive scene comes from growth to Soldat's playerbase instead of making the currently small player base move to competitive scene and SCTFL. The problem is not that Soldat's players don't know about SCTFL, the problem is that players don't know about Soldat. Many people playing in publics don't just care about playing competitively, myself included to some degree(lack of time, other interests, ...).

So while I think the idea of promoting competitive scene to casual Soldat players is good, I very much doubt it would make any difference. Just look at this forum for example, in July 2007 we had 533 new people and 17002 new posts, it went down to 149 new people and 7144 new posts in 2009. Now, let's see what it is in 2012... mere 73 new members and 468 new posts in July. Just think about the numbers. Oh and let me just mention that people in publics do not care about clans! I made an observation:  http://forums.soldat.pl/index.php?topic=41905.0 Everyone who is in doubt can go and check the clan related sections of this forum and see that there's absolutely no activity there. How do you think about creating growth to SCTFL from players who just aren't interested? Won't work out.

What to do? I don't know, but turning degrowth to growth is a start. And to the competitive scene people who might read this, no, it won't happen by fixing eats, netcode, weapon balance, maps or XYZ.(because that won't bring in NEW people) It happens by making people know about Soldat, just like SCTFL tries to fix it's decline by making people know about it. Who will make a push? I'd be very interested in participating, whatever it'd be.

[DutchFlame]

you can't get people to play a 10 year old game too late for that now.. its like the old counterstrike, no one is going to join that and it will only get emptier especially with the new Global offensive..

[Adam]

someone should get MM back in the soldat scene 

[Clawbug]

you can't get people to play a 10 year old game too late for that now.. its like the old counterstrike, no one is going to join that and it will only get emptier especially with the new Global offensive..

So in essence you are saying that SCTFL's only hope is to get the current casual/public players to play competitively and even that won't help SCTFL grow, only to slow down it's decline? What do you suggest to fix this, if not by bringing in new players?

People don't care if the game is 5, 10 or 15 years old, they still enjoy it if it is fun. A game being old does not make it any less fun. CS 1.6 is a prime example, albeit Half-Life is from 1998 and CS orignally from 1999, and CS 1.6 from 2003, people still play it. If you say Soldat is over 10 years old, then by that logic CS is 14 years old. Yet, that 14 year old CS(~42k players right now) is more popular than CS: Source(~33k players right now) which wuld be 8 years old, and far, far more popular than CS: GO(920 players right now) which is in beta phase. For the record, Soldat has only 320 players playing right now(185 players without bots). Do you really believe there's no opportunity for Soldat to grow?

someone should get MM back in the soldat scene 

Not happening. Also it wouldn't make a difference, as long as the current dev team is dedicated enough and won't fuck things up. Developer only creates content, community creates publicity and outreach which results in growth.

[CheeSeMan.]

Guys this thread is not really about why Soldat activity is dwindling... that topic is being discussed on sctfl and on these forums in other threads there is no point jacking this one!

The idea here is more about making the current player base aware of www.sctfl.net, which I think most can agree is a good idea. DEVs could even also link some of the sub-game mode communities which I think are still (some) active or even soldatladder.net :S

F12!

[Clawbug]

There is no thread hijacking, what made you think there was? The topic discusses whether or not such a banner should be put into Soldat. What I mentioned is that I disagree it'd be needed(in terms of making SCTFL popular) along with quite elaborate explanation why I believe so and why I believe it's a false statement to say competitive scene is Soldat's future and how I see that Soldat's growth directly influences SCTFL's growth too. Isn't this pretty obvious? :p

I have nothing against the suggestion itself, I just strongly believe the actual benefit to SCTFL will be far more limited than what perhaps the SCTFL staff is hoping for. Especially in long-term.

[Bonecrusher]

I don't see why not, but if you want to advertise sctfl you should also add other leagues there.

[Overkill]

I agree with Bonecrusher should advertise for ESL or any league that wants to start up CSS leagues etc SRL. Lets get more people in every community saturated again  

[Illuminatus]

Is the small ad on the window which shows up for unregistered players before starting the game still there? Put a sctfl ad there.

[Shoozza]

Totally didn't notice this thread. No idea why.

I'm not sure where to put the links for the league games.

Is the small ad on the window which shows up for unregistered players before starting the game still there? Put a sctfl ad there.

I'll look into it. Sounds like a good way to integrate it as it can also be updated. At least it worked in the past.
Does anyone see ads in the splash screen?

I wonder if it still works.

[Illuminatus]

Oh yeah, that would be nice. If it works how about putting some other ads in the rotation? Like:
- Come visit Soldat Forums blabla. --> http://forums.soldat.pl
- Check out the weekly updates of Soldat's desperate dedicated devs! --> http://forums.soldat.pl/index.php?board=50.0
- ...

Also it would be awesome if you could provide us with updated stats (if there are any).

[Petterkowski]

What happened to this great idea? This is the only way to gather public players in one place. I'm just sure that everyone wants to have fun in a competitive way but the majority is just too lazy to check if it's possible. Let's make it easier for them to notice where's the heart of Soldat. Not everyone will follow the add on the Soldat window but we can definitely increase competitive player base.

I don't see why not, but if you want to advertise sctfl you should also add other leagues there.

I completely agree. However, SCTFL is the only one existing league in Soldat at the moment. If there's a new one, the add should be added straight away.

[Shoozza]

Wow, totally forgot about that thing.

The exit tab is really crowded now (hardly able to add new devs now) but the popup for unreg players could be used.
I will look into it (and hopefully not forget it this time)

[Petterkowski]

Yeah, i've noticed it's pretty crowded and messy but I'm sure you can figure out how to best optimize the space so we have another link. Maybe put these green plugs above the footnotes. or maybe there's another way that we can put all these things together. I'm just thinking out loud but what if we have a separate column called "Info" for instance in the Soldat's main window. I'll visualise it.



You could put all the important informations there like the list of devs, Soldat's main page, leagues, important stuff related to Soldat, and it would be much more easier to notice for everyone

[Shoozza]

Nobody would look at the info tab + there is no space for an info tab (because of some translated languages with longer words).
My current solution is to add them to the unregged popup and think about a better solution for 1.7.0.
 

[duz]

Why not a COMMUNITY tab with the active forum topics, news (etc) and the competitive area?

[Petterkowski]

Yeah, the info tab with a brief summary was just the example. I believe you may create something special here. Duz's idea can be combined to form even more complex ideas. Inside mIRC?(it would've been so cool), leagues or forums as suggested. Saying that no one would look at the info tab is far from true. I'm playing this game quite a while already but actually i've never noticed these green plugs in Soldat's "OK/Exit" screen until i read this thread. You don't even read what's written there because you immediately press OK. Maybe it's just me but the way i see it, people pay more attention to what's inside Soldat's popup. You change your nickname, you want to join the game, there's no way you can miss the new tab, as your eyesight is attached to the upper parts of the Soldat's popup. Also, the lack of place for a new tab should not be the cause of difficulty. You can merge Start game and Exit tab into one by placing the red rectangle near the green one and here we go.