Okay, so the current situation looks like this:
The fact is that we currently have close to no new players joining the league.
Alright, every couple of months we'll get somebody new but that's not really a steady rate.
Look at it this way: In the whole world there's one simple pattern that keeps communities alive. People leave - people come.
E.g.: A pro football/soccer team. Old players leave and new players join and take their place.
But here we find ourselves in the situation that more and more old players are disappearing and becoming inactive but not enough "new blood" is joining. In other words, the league is getting smaller and smaller at a quick rate.
In phago I realized, that we're usually matching against the same players. They might change the team or create a new one every once in a while but the players are the same.
This once again shows the lack of new people. So our point is, we [I]need[/I] new people for this league to continue.
The question is: How?
We think that new players need one place where they can be introduced, not only to the map but also to the community in itself.
At the moment we have so many different public servers (as part of the GU-league) running different versions and modes of the hix map.
-bzf 5154 (4 teams, no ctf, no flags)
-bzf 5155 (4 teams, ctf, no superflags)
-bzf 5156 (HiX in slow motion, 4 teams, no ctf, no flags)
-bzf 5157 (HiX in fast motion, 4 teams, no ctf, no flags)
-bzf 5160 (2 teams, ctf, no superflags)
-quol 5156 (2 teams, ctf, no superflags)
-links-clan 6001 (HTF-Style, 2 teams, ctf, no superflags)
-links-clan 6002 (Rabbit Hunt, no ctf, no superflags)
-links-clan 5154 (Old style, 4 teams, ctf, superflags) - just like bzflag0.gamesunited.de
I think many of us love to remember the time when bzflag0.gamesunited.de always was the very first server in the list.
When there was constantly something happening and new players were well included.
bzflag0.gamesunited.de attracted so many people with simplicity:
- always popular with good and friendly players
- CTF
- superflags
- enjoyable atmosphere (no one accusing others of camping, cheating or anything else)
Wouldn't it be nice to re-activate such an atmosphere? Since links-clan 5154 is almost identical to bzflag0.gamesunited.de (even with a stats function that worked so well), I think we should take down the other public servers (of course the owners are responsible for this but maybe they can understand where we're coming from) and get links-clan 5154 active and popular. Maybe we could think of renaming that server to "public.guleague.org:5154" or something similar. If that server would become as popular as bzflag0.gamesunited.de, there will be more and more people who will just select the first server in the list and join.
Just recently benji and I joined links-clan 5154 and within minutes the server had 10+ players, using superflags and capturing the team flags. Moreover a lot of these people playing were players we'd never seen before.
For this to work, the league players need to show a good attitude towards new players. Each and everyone of us is responsible for representing the league in a good way. I also think that we need to stop fighting about small and unimportant things. (during and outside matches)
You might not agree with everything listed here but I think it's our best shot at getting thing up and running again. And frankly, what do we have to lose at this point?