Hi
So! This is all good stuff to keep talking about. The health of the css server is important. I hate seeing GC empty. Playing anywhere else just feels wrong... With all those the good points made in the original post, I'd like to agree with two of them real quickly:
The objective to bolster the CSS numbers and the "sorta kinda competitive(ness)".
In an effort to sound informed I'd like to refer you to the steam stats pages where you can see that CSS consistently pulls a peak of nearly 100 thousand players on a regular day. One might suggest that you could tap into those players to ramp up the numbers of players on GC. This does likely mean that peak times will have the server bursting at the seams but you do need a player pool to help fill up the server during all hours of the day. Ah, "Tap into those players, that's all very good but how?!" one might whine. Well this hands us off to the next part "sorta kinda competitive". As you might already know, competitive play in CSS has the noteworthy requirement of owning a copy of CSS. Participating in events in any way you can is a good way to reach players you know will respond. Sure not everyone, but you'll get a better reaction than at the supermarket. Hardfought drove a lot of it's activity on being a competitive atmosphere, having a competitive team, selling crappy tees or mugs and doubly so by hosting competitive lan events. GC already has a lot of those elements existing and could reorient them to attract new players with a great deal of success. As good a suggestion as any.
So there it is
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