Community Recruitment & Retention of players
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#1: Community Recruitment & Retention of players Author: ActionJacksonDX PostPosted: Wed Jan 26, 2005 12:46 pm
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(formerly known as topic "we need advertisement")

this site has more than a thousand registered users now. how many of them are active at GSA? some dozens maybe. and what we need is more players to keep the game alive.

i think it would be a good idea to have a big fingerpoint at the possibility (and joy!) of online battles on the main page.

#2:  Author: RunningMan PostPosted: Wed Jan 26, 2005 3:35 pm
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w0rd !

#3:  Author: CSO_SbufkleLocation: Canada PostPosted: Wed Jan 26, 2005 3:50 pm
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The CSO over the past 8 years have had the same issue.

Most registered users, even at one point clan members arent active.

Many are 'one hit wonders' who register when they just find the site, (Either CCS or CSO) but then never come back.

Fact is you cant push people, even if only 1 of 20 new users becomes a regular, it beats soemthing like demanding activivty from users & scaring people off.

Plus going over the list & deleting unactive members is not only time consuming, but youd be suprised how many people do eventually come back later on. You have people who get RL in the weay or are themselves in the Military ect ect.

What I will commend is that there are people still wanting to address enrollment & activity int he CC community.

Understand this game is old in the very fast paced world of computer gaming. Its things like RSR, a new direction mod & the other mods & mappers (pats himself ont he back) that keep this thing going.

There is a distinct fracture of the CC community in groups though. CC2, 3 & 5 which are the most active of the series of games. (I love CC4 by the way) All have separate communities in where they meet, organize & play. The common thread of the very active boards like at the CSO or the Dls from here & the CSO bridge the versions no question,buty to only a certian degree. The fracture is still there. You cant compare apples & oranges althought hey are all fruit.

EXAMPLE-Mafi has pumped out some SERIOUS tools for CC lately, but people assume its CC2 related, which is half true, most of his tools are used for multiple versions, in fact they are breakthrough tools that some arent looking at because of the 'CC2' factor.

So basically in a nutshell,(& back to the main topic) while it does bother me of the amount of one shot wonders in the CC community, its been a fact for years & years now. The million dollar question on how to deal with it hasnt been answered, & in reflecting on it now, can or should it be dealt with when all is said & done its a delicate community.

Now.. that being said, the CC community has always puttered on, it seems when the priest is reading the least rights on all of us, something comes along. So personally Ill keep the faith that things will get better.

#4:  Author: ActionJacksonDX PostPosted: Wed Jan 26, 2005 5:13 pm
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hey, i never intended to demand anything from poeple, nor did i complain about dead accounts or anything. just a little advertisement, nothing more.

#5:  Author: CSO_SbufkleLocation: Canada PostPosted: Wed Jan 26, 2005 5:50 pm
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lol! I know you didnt! Just wanted to bring you up to speed on the fact its been like that for years!! lol!

I know hwere your coming from totally!

Just mentioned the 'demanding activity' thing because back in the days there were clans,(LOTS more than today) most got rid of you if you werent active, the only open clan really was the CSO, which is still around, but has gone beyond a clan really. Those dedicated folks at the BR clan are also still hooked on CC2 it must be pointed out!

Fact is how do you advertise a game thats latest version (PLEASE DONT INCLUDE RTB) was released years ago. Its a tough sell... unless a good gimmick comes out! Smile

Again.. I agree with you.. just wanted to share some info!

#6:  Author: mooxe PostPosted: Wed Jan 26, 2005 9:22 pm
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Theres a few things I'v tried to do over the past year to help...

- I have had the GameSpy and BHQ logos up at TH for about a year now... I am sure its helped a bit.

- When CC3 was discontinuted on the zone I emailed about 2500 people that were registered with TH CC2 section about the change, and where to go play. I mentioned GS as primary, BHQ secondary and Zone Misc. room as thier 3rd choice.... It turned out that alot of the people thanked me for emailing them but in the end I am not sure if it helped. (After all the arguing, GS turned out to be the spot to go play.)

I have a few new ideas for now...

- Place the GameSpy icon on the main page of CCS... I did this somewhat successfully a month ago but the icon would not center itself so I took it down.... I will work on this more.

- Mailing list... "State of Series from a gamers persepective"... With whats new, wheres everyone playing...stuff like that. Right now I have close to 8500 email addressess of people who play currently and have played in the past. Emailing all these people would be borderline spamming.... but you could also justify it as the last stand to get people back to the community. I would say out of those 8500 emails..... 2000 still (semi)actively play online or at home and 1000 emails are bad now or never existed in the 1st place. Combine this number with the 2800 registed in the CSO forums and the 1300 registered at TH Forums and you have around 12000 people to email. The actual number of people you'd reach is far lower than that because of dead emails... same people regged at all different places... spam guards... who knows what else...

Its an idea. If someone wants to get together with me and do it... It will be done.

- Last idea is a push for all clan and misc game sites to promote GameSpy for CC3/4/5 and BHQ for CC2. It could be a simple line at the bottom of your webpage or something bigger.

#7: Some of my thoughts Author: Pizzaman PostPosted: Wed Jan 26, 2005 10:02 pm
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Quote:
Fact is you cant push people, even if only 1 of 20 new users becomes a regular, it beats soemthing like demanding activivty from users & scaring people off.

So true. One of the reason I don't bother with TH is the demand in filing reports. Another wargame group I once belong demanded activity reports once a month, plus battle reports. Simple as it was, I just couldn't be bothered. . .
Quote:
youd be suprised how many people do eventually come back later on.

Again true. CC is my favorite game, but sometimes other demands deny time to play, sometimes for months. CC2 & CC4, at msngamezone I think, was really active once. I was also part of Platoon Clan. Six months later, when I returned, msngamezone nolonger catered for CC, Platoon Clan had ceased.

I followed some suggestion on CSO to find players at BHQ and GS. BHQ turned out to be dead, and GS, everyone was playing CC3 or CC5. I was even reluctant to join closecombatseries for a while, because it looked less active the CSO. But after I while I learnt that CCS was a far superior site. I hardly go to CSO anymore, except with tech probs sometimes.

Mooxe,

You doin a great job. Personally I hope you keep casual. No emailing, activity demand etc. . . Anyone looking for good squad level WWII gaming will naturally gravitate here IMO.

#8:  Author: CSO_SbufkleLocation: Canada PostPosted: Thu Jan 27, 2005 12:59 am
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But the e-mail addys of the 12000 are from 4 different places.. good chance that youll have the same e-mail addys repeating 3 or 4 times.. so its not as tough as 12,000 mails.. although still 4000 to say 7000 isnt anything casual.

#9:  Author: Pzt_WruffLocation: Pzt Befehl Hauptsitz PostPosted: Sat Jan 29, 2005 4:37 pm
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Pointing people in the right direction can do a lot.
I believe that many people simply don't know that we play CC5 at Gamespy.
They end up playing AI or a friend that has the game via I.P.
The CC5 CD still says "Zone" on it, not Gamespy. It's up to us to show them.

They stroll through the community without even knowing where to go.
Gamespy needs to be linked off of all CC5 sites.
I added a Gamespy link today to the Pzt site:
http://www.geocities.com/panzertruppen1/PztCCGruppe2.html


Pzt_Wruff

#10:  Author: bkp_mik PostPosted: Sat Jan 29, 2005 7:25 pm
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i know a few ppl from polish cc community. did not know there are so many of them. on a polish forum i tried to advertise GS a bit, but noticed ppl are still lazy. they prefer to play via direct thanks to announcements on the forum and then using net communicators than through GS. probably some just find one person to play so they dont need place like GS for meeting people.
anyway i feel advertising is useful, i think a few people came to spy thanks to the ad i placed.

#11:  Author: ThatoneguyLocation: California PostPosted: Mon Jan 31, 2005 12:01 am
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When you first buy CC5 and install it it says you con play on mplayer.com. I tried that and it takes you to gamespy im pretty sure.

So if people buy the game who want to play online, they will click on the mplayer link go to gamespy, and either decide to download it, or figure no one plays online anymore since the site is gone. However I think having the gamespy logo and a link to gamespy on the main page might get a few new users.

#12: Bump for review Author: CarpeNoctem PostPosted: Tue Jan 17, 2006 5:02 pm
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I know this thread was basically finished a year ago. But I'd like to get it going again.

The reason being is to address the problems (depending on POV) that plague gaming sites.

First off, look at it like any other organization competing for business. Even a community center has the same problems getting people to visit and stay.

In order for CCS or CSO to have a nice member list that returns and participates the game has to be replayable. Address this objectively - without a personal position - CC really doesn't have the replayability that other games do. Even the replayability that it does have has been dried up with the lack of new versions. yeah there are mods, but general users don't like mods. Or rather feel they are too complex. Look at general install packages today, a user doesn't have to do anything really and many times the install gets hosed somehow.

Once a game has this, member sites and forums are busy busy busy. To keep that going is a basic business topic, getting and keeping customers. My personal feelings are to provide more than the other site. Everyone has forums, everyone has a mailing list (for who knows what use) and everyone wants to be the most technically advanced in their field of interest.

Where each fall short is providing the basics. You first need to get your customers and to maintain a steady stream of newbies. This is accomplished by catering to the newbie. Basic articles concerning newbie things come to mind, bugs and patches, tactics, unit explainations, how the game is organized and played (not a manual retype but filling in the details )

Once you are populating your user lists, you can go from there. Maybe extend your articles in intermediate series. Such as a "how to" on a great implementation of a strategic level properly implemented defensive battleplan (the complete defensive battle plan that is, not just a 'defense')

Really beyond that is icing on the cake, implement a ladder system and maintaining / upgrading it. Clan organization manaugement tons of things, but all of which are useless if you don't get new users and if you don't keep the ones you have.

If you are able to do that, you'll have a system in which feeds and provides for itself. I.e. the user base provides incentive to the producers to put out bigger and better products. (only reason DOOM, QUAKE, ETC has the user base it does is because of the user base it has had)

-CN

#13:  Author: mooxe PostPosted: Tue Jan 17, 2006 10:33 pm
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CarpeNoctem very good insight. A thread like this never ends. Some of the problems you mention are being addressed, some are not.

Quote:
Where each fall short is providing the basics. You first need to get your customers and to maintain a steady stream of newbies. This is accomplished by catering to the newbie. Basic articles concerning newbie things come to mind, bugs and patches, tactics, unit explainations, how the game is organized and played (not a manual retype but filling in the details )


Heres what we do at closecombatseries.net

Catering to the beginner. This was the fundamental idea that got us started on this site. At the time we made this site (Aug'04) we and many others felt no site out there was really catering to newbies, staying current with respect to mods and really was not actively participating in keeping the community going. All these points together made it obvious another site was required.

Our goal was to provide the community with a clean, professional, efficient, up to date and useful Close Combat server. Which we did and has been successful. How we do this is by the following;

    1 - With each major mod release, an installation guide is created for it. The guide is written for a newbie starting from nothing level. Ie; games not even installed. Essentially, from CCS, a mod requires you to download 2 files (plugin & mappack), that are located in the same spot on the site and has an easy to understand install guide tailored to a beginner.

    2 - Bilingual How-to guides and main stories. The how-tos portion of this site offers a limited number of modding guides, plugin guides, unit guides and some other related material. The stories on the main list most things that are currently happening in the community. Both of these features are written in English and French.

    3 - Everyone that registers at www.closecombatseries.net and www.tournamenthouse.com is emailed thier registration that includes links to popular sites and mods in the community. (as of late it needs to be re-written here)

    4 - Mailing lists are useful to a certain extent. In the past I have emailed the entire user base about the release of GJS and Stalingrad. A few days after Stalingrad was released I emailed only the users who have not visited the site in 30 days or more. Immiedietly the bandwidth of this site rose immensly, and by end month over 1 Terrabyte in data had been served from here. I think I will stop the mass emails as I consider it spamming, but for a good cause. I cannot mass email 6000 people and have a clear consience.

    5 - At the top of this page you will see a link to download the latest version of Game Spy. Its recieved hundreds of hits, but it will never be clear who actually joins us in GS because of this link.

    7 - We stay active in the gaming and modding, keeping up to date on what mods and submods are coming out. Offering any assistance this site can give. Ie; Forums, webspace, Combat Camera, story on main page highlighting the initiative. Basically, anything that the server can offer, we offer to make available. At the bottom of this page you will a link to upload files to the server. Just click on it, login, copy and paste your files and we will publish them.

    8 - AT_Zappi4, Homba and I wrote an article which was published for the French magazine "PC4WAR" showcasing the community, popular mods, where to play and provided links to CSO, TH and CCS.

    9 - Finally, we started offering features no other site was. Team Speak, a user or clan can have thier own channel/server and the Combat Camera, a user can upload any type of CC picture for everyone to view.


Here are some plans for CCS coming up to generate and retain more users and help beginners;

    1 - Automatic email to a user who passes the 30 day threshold of no activity listing whats new and where to go for what. When the user passes the 90 day threshold, a final email goes out showcasing the happening in the community from the past 60-90 days. This can be setup for any period of time.

    2 - We are going to host the full retail version of CC2 shortly in ISO format for anyone to download. This will probably generate as much flak as praise. I have big shoulders though so bring it on!

    3 - Continuing to develope our install guides section. Right now it only lists for the major CC5 mods. I want this to encompass all major mods.

    4 - All CC5 submods that are available have been converted to plugin format (except beta mods). The helpfullness is obvious. CC2 plugins are being worked on slowly and whatever plugins need to be made for CC3/4 will be done.

    5 - More languages on the site. Currently, I do the English, Zappi does the French and only recently has Dima offered his services to translate stories to Russian cyrillic. This works out great because 50% of our traffic comes from non-english speaking countries.


Thats about all we can do. CCS is only a 5 man show, 4 of which do the work, and one 1 who pays his share of the cost. So far we've done a great job I think, or so we've been told. But there is still alot we can do ourselves and with volunteers.

Quote:
Where each fall short is providing the basics. You first need to get your customers and to maintain a steady stream of newbies. This is accomplished by catering to the newbie. Basic articles concerning newbie things come to mind, bugs and patches, tactics, unit explainations, how the game is organized and played (not a manual retype but filling in the details )


Thats a very good point, and very true on CCS. We do cater but I guess not good enough. I suppose articles and how-to guides need to be re-showcased every now and then. This makes sense because new people coming wont necceserily see the stuff published for the new users 6 months ago, although it still is in the site. How would we go about doing this? Thats a question for you CarpeNoctem and everyone else reading.

#14:  Author: CarpeNoctem PostPosted: Wed Jan 18, 2006 3:15 pm
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Thanks for replying to the post I made. I hope that noone takes my post as a flame or finger pointing.

While staying current with mods and such is a good plan, I think that caters to mostly the advanced members of the 'demographic' so to speak. With several years of CC pseudo-experience I don't consider myself advanced, more of a newbie because my experience with CC is less than a hobby.

I do really enjoy CC very much and I am now taking more of a hobby approach to it. But in trying to research the basics, I find newbie tutorials on gameplay few and far between.

Let me give an example of how 'newbie' I am, and keep in mind that I am an IT professional for more than 10 years now.

With CC5, I obtained a copy of it secondhand without the manual, so what really? I had CC2 and CC3 already. How much different can it be? I have had CC5 for several years now and didn't know that in a GC you could move your battlegroups each morning. How lame is that? Sad

But thanks to CCS, i was able to download the manual and determine that. I am now armed with knowledge. Let me tell you, the game is totally different now. (I don't know if there is a tutorial about the BG screen, I stear away from the lesser tutorials in the game considering they are repeats of previous tutorials and they take a long time to complete; besides severly lacking in the thought process of why you do something.)

My next research project is finding tactic tutorials. Now here, they seems to be a black hole. Part of the reason I see is 'they' stopped putting out strategy guides with CC3? Very disconcerting. Anyway, I had hoped to find masses of tutorials on the web.

I found 'references' in forums to compiled tactics, but following links produce page not found errors because the author has let things go. Not putting them down, life has responsibilities, maintaining tutorials on a game should place last on someones list.

I did find an 80 page article from some Army officer describing Company, Platoon and Squad tactics and makes reference to CCM, but this is kind of hard to read due to the military origin. A good article nonetheless.

Thanks for the participation in this thread, and I hope that the information gleaned from it is put to good use. I'd like to offer any help I may, but please realize that I am a newbie myself and I have a family.

Best regards,

CN

#15:  Author: platoon_michaelLocation: Right behind you PostPosted: Tue Feb 14, 2006 12:20 am
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The best thing I have seen from here is the option to join and play with other members.
While I havent done so,it is a great option.

Having a team GC where one can grab the file and play as time permits suits us older fellas much better.
With work (real work) Home,then homework for the kids,dinner, playing goes to the back of the rack.
Now your stuck trying to find/play that one maybe two people who are on your same time frame.

Having a list of people interested in such a GC is great,having thier MSN,Yahoo or whatever handle to add to your favorite instant messenger is even better.

The only problem is people who put to much focus on winning and beating the newbies to death when they loose an important map.

If you are a newbie reading this dont be upset if your first or maybe second clan isnt working out for you.
Finding one you like is most important,one thats fair and play honest would be a good start.
If the guys are hell bent on winning no matter the cost,you might want to bail out.

#16:  Author: SAS-Recon-MajLocation: Stevenage, Hertfordshire PostPosted: Thu Feb 16, 2006 5:32 pm
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Thanks for the email mooxe been away for a while, been involved with other games i.e. Call of Duty joined a clan and been generally busy with fitting in with them. I still have all the Close Combat games on my hard drive with all their mods and maps, wouldnt want to loose all those after all the work it took get it all running properly. What im trying to say is you cant beat the Close Combat series and would always come back and play again even if it was a long time since I last played. By the way have only ever played them on GameSpy. Smile

#17:  Author: aikmenLocation: Toronto Canada PostPosted: Sun Apr 23, 2006 1:01 am
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just bored reading through threads trying to find someone to play with on GS!!!; mooxe what you have done with ccseries is just fantastic, i dont know how to generate interest in this game really.... I cant even convince one person that I personally know to play with me, but GL

Aikmen,

#18:  Author: rufus PostPosted: Sat May 20, 2006 12:11 am
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make no mistake im a hard core cc player,and ive got a reguals opponent to play cc online so it isnt a problem for me,but i feel that if ur new to cc online and u cant get some to fight
ur get bored waiting at GS and give up.i to find this problem when my pals are off line,so ill play COD not because its better but because i know ill get a game.whilst playing COD ill mention "has any body heard of close combat" and the most commen reply i get is"that is soooooooo 90's dude"so basically ive given up mentoing cc to other on line players(fed up with the ridacular)and being accused of being and old fart(which is fine by me)it seems to me that now a days people just want a game when u rush, kill an move on.the less thought the better,dumbing down big style.its a pity but this ccv has been around since 98,how many games have been around that long?lets hope all this talk about cc6 will regenerate interest in this truley classic game,not for our sake but for all those ignorant masses out there who think that it is soooo 90's

#19: New members Author: WavellLocation: Horsham, West Sussex, England PostPosted: Sat May 20, 2006 11:02 pm
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I have tried to find out more about membership of CCS unsuccesfully. It seems that a registered user is not a member, but the site does'nt make it clear what you do to become a member. Not to me, at any rate, and perhaps not to others.
What's the difference between a registered user and a member, what are the benefits of membership, and how do I become a member if i want to?

#20: mmm Author: ANZAC_Lord4warLocation: Sydney Australia PostPosted: Sun May 21, 2006 5:01 am
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if u have registered then u r a member!
as for benefits they send Xmas cards.



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