GC Call Out

[Flitterkill]

Just looking for some guidance here so no "poll" per se.

 

There hasn't been a big GC game that has gotten everyone pounding a GC server for a long time.

 

CSS survived the initial World of Warcraft onslaught but regardless that server numbers are still strong, the days of 20+ hours a day of a full GC CSS server seem long gone.

 

Our UT server is only for a decent ping experience for our members and nothing more.

 

The TF2 server again seems to be a failed experiment (also, is it even up to date?)

 

Our Goldeneye servers seem to be pulling decent numbers which is nice but I'm not sure that will be anything long term (the servers may be full a good chunk of time but there is no activity in the forum)

 

Aside from the CSS server, our other offerings seem to be of the "scratch an itch" variety.

 

So what's out there for PC?

 

Current February PC game sales:

 

NPD Sales Charts February 1-7 (via Shacknews)

 

1. World Of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King

2. The Sims 2 Double Deluxe

3. Spore

4. World Of Warcraft Battle Chest

5. Fallout 3

6. World Of Warcraft

7. Left 4 Dead

8. Call Of Duty: World At War

9. The Sims 2 Apartment Life

10. The Sims 2 Deluxe

 

Steam Sales Charts As Of February 17

 

1. Left 4 Dead

2. FEAR 2

3. Dawn Of War II

4. Counter-Strike Source

5. The Orange Box

6. Fallout 3

7. Call of Duty: World At War

8. Team Fortress 2

9. Counter-Strike

10. Grand Theft Auto IV

 

Direct2Drive Sales Charts As Of February 17

 

1. Dawn of War II

2. FEAR 2

3. Rome: Total War

4. Dawn Of War I+II Special Edition

5. Sims 2 Double Deluxe

6. Fallout 3

7. Call of Duty: World At War

8. Defense Grid

9. Mass Effect

10. Civilization IV

 

 

So...

 

1) Are you playing anything on those sales lists?

 

2) Are you playing mostly consoles now (PS3, Wii, Xbox360)?

 

3) What PC games are you looking forward to?

 

4) Any PC games you didn't play in the past that you mean to check out eventually?

 

 

We may just be treading water until we can find the next community game that gets us all together. If that is the case, we'd like to keep you folks engaged within our community beyond online game play. Hopefully we can get a few ideas going here.

 

------------------------------------

 

Myself -

 

1) Oddly enough, I've played nothing on those lists. Spare time for gaming has been eaten up by other things (and GC membership work)

 

2) No current-gen consoles in this joint.

 

3) Honestly, I'm not up on what is coming down the pipe. Diablo III and Dragon Age are probably the two I have my eye on at the moment. Huxley is a UT3-engine based MMO/FPS thing that may or may not suck; thought it would be out by now but...

 

4) Are you kidding? I'll never get caught up. Oblivion, Bioshock, Fear, Fallout 3...

 

-Fk

[akaM2]

Is it wrong to answer with "The Sims 2 Double Deluxe"

 

serious response in morning

[TheFirstMonk]

1. I play CS: Source and Left 4 Dead mostly. I have the Orange Box, but I've never played any of the games on it except for Team Fortress 2 (I stopped playing before they released Goldrush).

 

2. I don't own any consoles.

 

3. I don't know much about upcoming games except for Diablo 3, which you mentioned. I try reading previews of games on IGN.com, but there's always a lot. I don't really read them all since it's hard to tell which of them seem promising.

 

4. Of those games that you listed, I have a little interest in Fallout 3, Grand Theft Auto 4, Dawn of War 2, and FEAR 2. I'm waiting for the price to drop on Fallout 3, waiting for Grand Theft Auto 4 to get patched adequately (or Saint's Row 2 to get patched adequately first), and looking for more information on Dawn of War 2 and FEAR 2. I was going to get Mass Effect a while back, but I am a bit wary of the DRM debate surrounding it.

 

Out of those 4, Fallout 3 is not multiplayer, so I guess it's not a game we can play together. I don't think people will play GTA4 (have to sign up for Windows Live account for PC or something, and it's a bit old for console people) or FEAR 2 (multiplayer is said to be an average shooter) in groups. I don't know how people feel about Dawn of War 2; I probably won't jump into it right away since I'm bad at RTS. Currently, I try not to spend a lot on games, so I don't know what I'll be playing in the near future.

[MrDuke]

I play CSS GM/DM all the time.

 

That, and full contact Yahtzee.

[akaM2]

Now for the serious post, I play CSS only. No other games compare really for me.

 

I do think there is something wrong with the server, dont know what, dont know if people ping worse than before or what (i know where on the same network)

 

But when we had the old retro, we only had to jump in and it would be full instantly, random people would join, I see alot less random people on the new server. Prolly out of the 20 last night I didnt recognize 1 person.

 

To have 19 or 20 regs is nice, but those regs wont be playing at all times.

 

I dont know if were not appearing in the list as much as before, or if our region code is off, just seems weird.

[Clueless]

Aging game, people may just not be as into it as before. Back when we were rockin and rollin in a big way...we had a very different group of people, many of which aren't around much if at all anymore. Many of these people were like the glue of this place. It may be the people, may be the server, may be the atmosphere, may be a combo....no way to say really. But what I can tell you for certain is that when we were flying high, it was all about the people as much , if not more that the game, and the server was where we hung out.

 

In my opinion, other games are a nice diversion, but CS should be able to sustain itself...in the right setting.

[akaM2]

The game may be aging for people who have play it before, but there are alot more people than 2 years ago

99,401 102,922 Counter-Strike: Source

72,163 74,976 Counter-Strike

 

Those are players right now at 11am on a Saturday

 

back in the day css was at 70,000 or so, its something on our end. Were too strict.

 

 

We have the regs to maintain a good standing CSS server, something is just off from when we only had 1 CSS server with NFO, random pubbers would always be joining. Now there are hardly any random people playing, all regs.

[Clueless]

The game may be aging for people who have play it before, but there are alot more people than 2 years ago

99,401 102,922 Counter-Strike: Source

72,163 74,976 Counter-Strike

 

Those are players right now at 11am on a Saturday

 

back in the day css was at 70,000 or so, its something on our end. Were too strict.

That kinda just made my point, lol. Nice find.

[mohawk]

remove all bans! joking of course.. but it would be interesting to see how it goes for a week.. i wonder if the server would go to h e double hockey sticks or if we could ponzi scheme the server back to full population throughout the day.

[YoMamma]

1) I've been playing Left 4 Dead mostly since it came out, but I'll be switching back to Team Fortress 2 starting Tues when the new 'Scout Update' comes out, and some Counter-Strike:Source from time to time.

 

2) I own a Wii, but I haven't touched it since I beat Mario Kart last summer.

 

3) None.

 

4) Nope.

[YoMamma]

We have the regs to maintain a good standing CSS server, something is just off from when we only had 1 CSS server with NFO, random pubbers would always be joining. Now there are hardly any random people playing, all regs.

 

That's because everyone who's not a reg is on our ban list

[JackieChan]

1) Are you playing anything on those sales lists?

 

Just L4D and... World of Warcraft

 

2) Are you playing mostly consoles now (PS3, Wii, Xbox360)?

 

Not really. I do have a Wii and 360 though.

 

3) What PC games are you looking forward to?

 

None, honestly. Haven't seen anything I thought I'd like.

 

4) Any PC games you didn't play in the past that you mean to check out eventually?

 

Probably, but will never get around to it.

[Bewildered]

Were too strict.

 

On a new server I feel numbers are greater than values. I'm not sure this really applies to retro, but on a brand new server I'd tend to want to ignore the random swear word or bad name on a server that is too fragile to fill up for more than an hour. Really ticks me off when I get a fragile server full and then someone hops on for 5 minutes and starts gettin all upity and kickin my numbers. YOU play in there by yourself for hours on end.

[Sgt. Slaughterâ„¢-TopBrass]

1) Are you playing anything on those sales lists?

 

- None.

 

2) Are you playing mostly consoles now (PS3, Wii, Xbox360)?

 

- None, I do not own any consoles.

 

3) What PC games are you looking forward to?

 

- Dawn of War 2

 

4) Any PC games you didn't play in the past that you mean to check out eventually?

 

- Red Alert 3 and Fallout 3

 

I don't have the desire to put much time into games anymore. I have a new focus in my life and games don't hold much value to me anymore. They are a good distraction every now and then but that's it.

[ilovetomatoes]

I have been playing CS:S and TF2 mostly. I think the hard part about getting the TF2 server going is getting people to get it up to 3v3 or 4v4 where other people want to join. Once it hits 6-7 people it fills up pretty quick. Having bots would be nice, but I don't know of any right now that work well...

[Primus]

I've gone back to playing UT 2k4 and COD4 I'll pop in and play L4D once in a while, but thats about it.

COD5 is ok, but I like the modern weapons in 4 better. Haven't played CSS in months. TF2, tried it for a while but couldn't really get into it. I'm not a WOW player, MMO's lose my interest after about an hour or 2.

 

I did like the new Crysis, I like the suit stuff you can use. I think they need to come up with more game types with that. How about more game types with a new updated Counterstrike, that would be fun. Ok, thats my 2 cents.

[bushwack]

1) I beat the main quest and have another lvl 20 character in Fallout 3 but really haven't played it much in a month.

I have TF2 but rarely play it any more.

I've taken up with UT 2004 again, mostly Freon DM and noob demo servers.

 

2) Only game I play on our Wii is an old title for the NES called Wario Woods, a highly competitive puzzle game I play with my wife. It's only 500 points so get it. We used to play it back in the day on the SNES and we were happy to find it in the downloads.

 

3) I'm not looking towards anything, not Diablo 3, not even Starcraft 2. I just got done beta testing Anno 1404 and I will pick it up when it drops to 20-30 dollar range. The Sims 3 might be interesting. Oh yeah looking for a Fallout 3 expansion bundle when it hits retail, will be a must buy for me.

 

4) Wanna hit the original Fallout this year, I have it installed... Also replay Oblivion now that I have all expansions and goodies. Maybe I need to go and finish the original Half Life, I think I only finished a quarter of it back so long ago.

[ZeroDamage]

TF2 update out tonight. Get the TF2 server up to date and lets populate it with only the new maps. This is how we get a player base on a still popular game. NOW IS THE TIME with a major update. Those that get their servers up first with the latest update win! Should also make it a 32 player server if it isn't already. Most people, myself included, list internet servers based on player count.

Edited February 24, 2009 by ZeroDamage

[bushwack]

TF2 update out tonight. Get the TF2 server up to date and lets populate it with only the new maps. This is how we get a player base on a still popular game. NOW IS THE TIME with a major update. Those that get their servers up first with the latest update win! Should also make it a 32 player server if it isn't already. Most people, myself included, list internet servers based on player count.

I for one, hate 32 player servers. Random death and spammage ftw, but for some reason they seem to get populated. I'll jump in the server to night if I see some people in there.

[ZeroDamage]

I will be playing TF2 tonight for sure. The question is whether I will be in our server or in some random server that happens to be updated. I would like to see ours populated, updated, and in use.

[ilovetomatoes]

I will join up as well, but I don't have the powers to update it. Hopefully one of those that do is reading this

[mookie]

When is this update coming out eh?

[bushwack]

When is this update coming out eh?

I thought it was Thursday?

[ZeroDamage]

Supposed to be tonight. Who knows, they've put it off before.

[ZeroDamage]

http://store.steampowered.com/news/2288/

 

 

Updates to Team Fortress 2 have been released. The updates will be applied automatically when your Steam client is restarted. The specific changes include:

 

New features

 

* Added The Force-A-Nature, The Sandman, and Bonk!

* Added 35 new Scout achievements

* Added crit boosted on/off sound effects

* Added new sounds for upgraded teleporters

* Added new sound for a fully charged medic dying

* Add bonus points section to scores

o Scouts earn a bonus point for killing Medics who are actively healing a target

* Added several new speech concepts, mostly hooked up to new Scout lines

* Added new "Remember last weapon between lives" option to the Multiplayer Advanced dialog

* Spies can now control which weapon the enemy team sees them holding. Hitting the "last disguise" key while disguised updates the disguise to show the Spy's currently held weapon

* Added several new Arena mode announcer speech events.

* Added "First Blood" to Arena mode

* Removed 2x item respawn times in arena

* Changed backstab handling to fix facestabs

* Spies disguised as enemy team can now see player IDs for enemies

 

 

New maps

 

* Added community maps: cp_egypt, arena_watchtower, and cp_junction

* Updated cp_fastlane with Arttu's new version

 

 

Mapmaker requests

 

* Added new input for forward speed modifier to FuncTrainTrain

* Added TeleportToPathTrack input to func_tracktrain

 

 

Bugfixes

 

* Fixed a bug where players would sometimes gib from non-gib damage kills

* Fixed stat screen showing an entry for a class called "map."

* Fixed item model panels not using team skins

 

 

- Fixed obscure bug where spectators were able to carry the flag