I’m not going to sit here and write an overly wordy and drawn out block of text talking about how good I am or all the good things I’ve done like everyone else but instead I am going to focus on the issues at hand and areas that the community can improve. I really hope this doesn’t end up simply being a popularity contest where people just vote for their friends. I’d rather someone win off the quality of their ideas rather than the quantity of their friends or how popular they are, but unfortunately I don’t foresee this being the case, and if so then so be it. I’m also going to try to focus on the community as a whole rather than just jailbreak like others did. Jailbreak is important but in order for the community as a whole to improve we need to also give attention to other things.
I am going to list issues and go into detail as to what I actually mean by these issues and then I will give my suggestions and ideas to fix or mitigate them.
Population:
Over the past years CSS has been slowly dying and with less people playing the game our population on our servers will inevitably suffer as well. We can have the best jailbreak server in the world but if the game itself isn’t doing well we will also see a steady decrease. The community needs a lot more than just one big server doing well to keep it running (and growing) and I have seen a community die firsthand because of similar circumstances. Here are some solutions I think would work:
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-Put more effort into not only other servers (ex minigames has a relatively high demand) but also other games (CSGO, GMOD, etc). We can’t only rely on one game that isn’t doing very well and if we do try other games or servers we need to actually put effort into not only getting them set up, but also maintaining them (in more ways than one).
- Add a referral system or recruitment system of some sort. The recruitment event or whatever was a good idea but this is the stuff we should be doing all the time and bring attention to. Most clan applications I have seen have a referral box or something of the sort, we could incentivize members to bring new people in by giving rewards like a month of admin, a month of a TS channel, etc. There are a lot of good regulars on the server that would make great members but there isn’t really any reason for members to try to bring them in aside from looking good.
- Increase retention of new and old members. We need to give people of all sorts a reason to stay, a few ways would be having higher quality events, new/improved servers and also more reasons for people to get involved.
- Have the social media team (or another new team) specifically dedicated to outreach and getting our name out there.
TeamsIn my opinion the current team system isn’t doing that much and there are a lot of people in teams not doing anything at all (joining for ez promotion, etc.) I think Staff+ needs to evaluate the teams and kick out members not doing anything as well as try to bring in new ones. Here are suggestions for each specific team:
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- Events Team: By far the best team but still has a ton of problems. There was a thread a few months ago where a large majority of people gave feedback and although some was adopted the rest was either forgotten or ignored. People wanted events for things they were more interested in and events of higher quality, although the events team has taken some small steps in the right direction the team is still not really meeting what people want. Half of the events don’t even happen and the other half that do usually have a less than substantial turn out, so the team as a whole definitely needs to be looked into.
- News Team: I’ve been here nearly a year and haven’t really seen this team do much besides a few community spotlights(?) and recaps(?) which are good but there definitely needs to be more. I’ve seen News Team members try to post world news and such but I don’t really think this is very useful and instead the team should focus mainly on the community and gaming. More recaps, more spotlights, more ways of getting people to know more about each other, more ways to connect the community.
- Social Media Team: I had high hopes for this new team and I was even considering joining myself at one point, I thought this could mean big things but really not much has come from it aside from a few posts and streams. I think this team is very important in terms of outreach like I said before and we should try to take it more seriously. More advertisement, more streams, more posts, more connection.
- Dev Team: I’m not even sure if this team still exists and if it does I’m not even sure if its members know. I was happy to see this team when I first joined because back in NsG we had only one person to manage the servers which was a big part of our downfall, if this team was disbanded it should be brought back. There has been a clear disconnect with this team and Dyno and not much has really been getting done. This team is arguably the most important out of all of them yet it seems the least organized. People constantly are asking for changes to servers or for new servers and people redirect the question either to the Dev Team or Dyno, neither of which actually seem to respond or do anything. It’s gotten to the point where Doldol (who I believe said he wanted to step back from this) had to make some changes because nobody else would.
- Representatives: This is technically a new team but before I don’t think the Reps were doing their job of representing the community very well before. These new changes may help but I personally will make it my goal if I’m elected to take feedback and share it, even if I think it’s a bad idea. I’m also going to give input on reports and such if that still a thing, it was presented as a big part of the rank but only happened once or twice then never again. (This should apply to whoever are elected Representatives).
JailbreakI said I wouldn’t talk too much about JB but it still has some improvements to be made.Here a few ways jailbreak could be improved:
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- Fix the crashing. It may not be a simple fix but it has been going on for about six months and it’s safe to say at least a good portion of the population issue can be attributed to this. If the server can’t stay up people won’t play it. I’m not saying this isn’t being looked into already, but it definitely needs to be taken more seriously and dealt with.
- Possibly add a time requirement to be on CT. This may not be well received so it should be up to the community but having a one or two hour time requirement to get on CT can work wonders in decreasing the number of people only coming on the server to freekill and such. It may sound stupid but we had it in NsG and it seemed to do very well and few people seemed to mind it. Usually the only people really upset are the ones who plan on MFKing.
- Add a clarification section here on the forums. Set it up so all members can create a post that everyone can see, but only the OP and Staff+ can respond to. This would be a more direct and visible outlet for clarification that everyone can see and also decrease contradicting/vary responses from Staff+ since it isn’t limited to a steam message or such. The reason for not letting anyone respond is because usually people who think they know the answer can cause unnecessary confusion or spread false info and if they want to discuss whatever is being clarified they should instead make a post discussing it instead of trying to clarify it themselves.
- Stealth plugin of some sort to make it easier to catch people who specifically wait till there are no admins on to break rules.
I have more ideas that don’t really fit into any of these criteria that I am willing to share and if anyone has any feedback/ideas they want represented I’d be happy to do that as well.