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How to attract more players?

Posted: 2006-03-15 08:43
by OriginalSnoozer
PRMM is a great mod.
Currently 28 servers listed on http://www.game-monitor.com.
7 servers are ranked with ABR (in my opinion a min.demand for hosting PRMM).

But there are NO players playing. How do we attract more players to this mod?
  1. Explain the ranking system. How to join servers with the ABR client, unlocked weps, how to see your score in BFHQ.
  2. Enable unlocks. Players playing for months to get the PKM, will not play a mod where unlocks are disabled.
  3. How to find servers in the ingame browser.
  4. How to host your own server, how to add AAS playmode, how to make the server ranked with ABR, recommended server settings for PRMM (maybe a example downloadable server config).
Any more suggestions?
This list may seem stupid to the regular PRMM player, but these questions come nearly every night I play (and I play nearly every night).

All these items are explained on this site but most of them inside the forum, not that easy to find for the curious newbie. Making them sticky doesn't help.

Why not a BIG FAQ in the left menu on the frontpage of this site?
This mod need more players!!

Posted: 2006-03-15 09:50
by RikiRude
OriginalSnoozer wrote:PRMM is a great mod.
Currently 28 servers listed on http://www.game-monitor.com.
7 servers are ranked with ABR (in my opinion a min.demand for hosting PRMM).

But there are NO players playing. How do we attract more players to this mod?
  1. Explain the ranking system. How to join servers with the ABR client, unlocked weps, how to see your score in BFHQ.
    -Good idea, i was confused, there should be some kind of sticky on this forum that explains that.
  2. Enable unlocks. Players playing for months to get the PKM, will not play a mod where unlocks are disabled.
    -you cant, its not possible, also, its not realistic and the community is against the idea of unlocks.(for the most part)
  3. How to find servers in the ingame browser.
    -when i start up PRMM it only shows me PRMM servers, so i dont have this problem.
  4. How to host your own server, how to add AAS playmode, how to make the server ranked with ABR, recommended server settings for PRMM (maybe a example downloadable server config).
    -yes, good idea, there are some servers out there that dont play PRMM "correctly" maybe on purpose, maybe they dont know how.
Any more suggestions?
This list may seem stupid to the regular PRMM player, but these questions come nearly every night I play (and I play nearly every night).

All these items are explained on this site but most of them inside the forum, not that easy to find for the curious newbie. Making them sticky doesn't help.

Why not a BIG FAQ in the left menu on the frontpage of this site?
This mod need more players!!
-i can fully agree on this! you PR Devs should get crackin on a basic faq for PR (im sure you guys already are) that has a list of changes with each update, that is easily excessable.

im not sure if they do, but i think GloryHoundz should have a server message that says "visit the realitymod forums at www.realitymod.com" and have it in... uhm, some kind of easy to see color that grabs the attention.

Posted: 2006-03-15 13:25
by Blindeye
im liking prmm with defaults. get away from the instanely accurate weapons of reg. bf2

Posted: 2006-03-15 13:54
by Rhino
OriginalSnoozer wrote:
  1. Explain the ranking system. How to join servers with the ABR client, unlocked weps, how to see your score in BFHQ.
  2. Enable unlocks. Players playing for months to get the PKM, will not play a mod where unlocks are disabled.
  3. How to find servers in the ingame browser.
  4. How to host your own server, how to add AAS playmode, how to make the server ranked with ABR, recommended server settings for PRMM (maybe a example downloadable server config).
1. No, Ranking is not a thing about this mod is just a way to track your stats if you really want to. If we bring ranking into this mod as a big thing all we will see is it turning out like BF2.

2. No, no, no! No unlocks, again we dont want this mod to turn out like BF2.

3. Yes this could be good.

4. If you know how to set up a server it aint to hard to set up a PRMM server. But the forums could do with maby a post for how to, what u need ect.

snooze get away from the fact that ranking, and unlocks are going to bring players to this mod. They aint. What brings players to this mod is the 100% oppisit.

If you really want to get players to come to this mod. Go to EAs Server HQ and blow up there stat servers + all the backups. That will then bring ppl to this mod.

Or you can just wait for some time for the word to get round. Rome wasnt built in a day and slowley, but surely new players are comming to this mod 8)

Posted: 2006-03-15 13:56
by [BiM]Black7
Well for a start the Dev team need to update the site with more feature listing, screen shots / Renders, more community news, give more sneak peaks of coming content all this to lure ppl with eyecandy just to download the mod and test it.

Mayby add some player or commnity reviews of the mod.

Devs need to remeber that alot of ppl dont go into the forums and check for info they trust the site to have updates etc.. yes there lazy but everybody dont have the skill or the time to sreach around on a forum and be 80% commited..

Posted: 2006-03-15 14:00
by Pence
Advertise...

Posted: 2006-03-15 14:06
by Rhino
Pence wrote:Advertise...
Thats easy, and PRMM allready do it. Make a sick render, with ingame screenshots ect and then post it on TBF2's News. Then lots of ppl see it, and download the mod.

Also ive said before, the media side of the site dose needs a update.

Posted: 2006-03-15 15:03
by OriginalSnoozer
'[R-CON wrote:Rhino']1. No, Ranking is not a thing about this mod is just a way to track your stats if you really want to. If we bring ranking into this mod as a big thing all we will see is it turning out like BF2.

2. No, no, no! No unlocks, again we dont want this mod to turn out like BF2.

3. Yes this could be good.

4. If you know how to set up a server it aint to hard to set up a PRMM server. But the forums could do with maby a post for how to, what u need ect.

snooze get away from the fact that ranking, and unlocks are going to bring players to this mod. They aint. What brings players to this mod is the 100% oppisit.

If you really want to get players to come to this mod. Go to EAs Server HQ and blow up there stat servers + all the backups. That will then bring ppl to this mod.

Or you can just wait for some time for the word to get round. Rome wasnt built in a day and slowley, but surely new players are comming to this mod 8)
1. OK, if the ranking is not there for the unlocks, whats the point of having stats at all? If I don't get any benefit from ranking points (more than I get a better pos in apply-for-commander-queue, wohoo) stats are pointless.

2. How will unlocks "destroy" the mod? Some people will have them, some not. Isn't that to reflect reality? Since the PRMM dev team models the unlock weapons, they have full control over its possibilitites I guess.

Posted: 2006-03-15 15:13
by MonkeyNutz
The hardest part about selling PRMM is it's not about eye candy, or for that matter increasing art assets but the drastic change in gameplay (for the better).

When it first came out I didn't play much as the first thing I did was test it locally to familiarise myself with any changes. It's not really until you get online that what you could have initially written off as a minor code tweak mod actually makes for a whole new experience.

So encouraging them to come ply with the existing community and a better tolerance by all to teach them were needed.

Posted: 2006-03-15 15:14
by eggman
Have to be carefulk about unlocks and stat whore issues... don't want to go there.

Totally agree about the player base.... but it's not just us. Check custom maps ... check the other mods .. EA kinda altered the mod community with the ranking system.

That said, you have some good suggestions and we should do more to try and attract players. When we had a news announcement on TBF2 we got a lot of new players, but very shortly afterwards BF2 1.2 came out... was buggy as heck and we spent some time trying to get 0.25 out... I think we lost a few players in tha cycle.

We'll do a much more concerted "publicity" effort around 0.3 (within the limits of the fact that we're all doing this on hobby time).

egg

Posted: 2006-03-15 15:24
by Rhino
the stats are there to track your k/d. Thats all what i want from them and see what weapons i need to improve on.

As for the rest of it you obviusly dont have any clue about this mod and go back to paly some BF2 if you want unlocks.

What i want to see is weapon slection. Use the "unlock" system to give players a choice of weapons, that they get withotu having to knife a AFK guy 50 times in a row...

We dont want stat whores, we want team players!

Posted: 2006-03-15 15:40
by OriginalSnoozer
'[R-CON wrote:Rhino']...
What i want to see is weapon slection. Use the "unlock" system to give players a choice of weapons, that they get withotu having to knife a AFK guy 50 times in a row...

We dont want stat whores, we want team players!
I agree.

ABR = optional
Unlocks = will not happen
Selectable weapons = Since new weapons are being worked on (e.g http://realitymod.com/images/mg/c8_2.jpg), getting more weps will probably not be a problem. Just let the new version bring em on!

PoE has a weekly update on http://www.totalbf2.com. Maybe throw out some new renders/ingame shots on that site every weekend to let the crowd know progress is being made? And put more stress on the dev team :mrgreen:

Posted: 2006-03-15 15:45
by Rhino
the huge prob is it would be very hard to do a weekly update with PR. POE has a HUGE team, that are really fast, orginsed pros where PR dose have a big team, but cant work as fast as POE. Its best to gather a good, solid update for this mod and post it when its good for the mod. If its quility, then it will attracked more ppl 8)

Posted: 2006-03-15 15:49
by Peter-SAS
well said Rhino :)

Posted: 2006-03-15 16:27
by MonkeyNutz
..the answer is really really big gaming magnets.

Posted: 2006-03-15 21:12
by Blindeye
i hope people dont come to this mod for stats my prmm server cant have stats but i still want people to come to it. also i'v been advertising this Mod since i got to play it i like how it is. i have got tons of friends and clan members to download it and try it, they all love it.

Posted: 2006-03-15 22:09
by Pence
'[R-CON wrote:Rhino']Thats easy, and PRMM allready do it. Make a sick render, with ingame screenshots ect and then post it on TBF2's News. Then lots of ppl see it, and download the mod.

Also ive said before, the media side of the site dose needs a update.
Yes you alwase need alot of pictures (renember that the human brain is truned on by colour).

Just look at Forgotern Hope, its so popular not only because of the nature of the mod but by the news every time a model is completed they realese it with high resolution ingame shots and render shots! (Some might see it as self-glorification thogh)

Posted: 2006-03-15 22:30
by Rhino
High rez pics is a very big key to show off your renders. No 1 wants to look at a small 50x50 icon :p

And also FH2 mod has the ppl who use to play the old FH for bf42 aswell.

Most of this mod sofar is just code. You cant show off code apart from if somone plays the mod itself. But as the mod moves on you guys will be making much more stuff and be able to show it off ;)

Posted: 2006-03-15 22:42
by USM-ST3.Spyder
Yeah in real life there are no unlocks. And the unlocks are all non US weapons even though ur on the USMC team.I can however help you with advertising. I am finishing my last business class my school has to offer.

Posted: 2006-03-15 23:02
by [7E]ToJo
'[R-CON wrote:Rhino']the stats are there to track your k/d. Thats all what i want from them and see what weapons i need to improve on.

As for the rest of it you obviusly dont have any clue about this mod and go back to paly some BF2 if you want unlocks.

What i want to see is weapon slection. Use the "unlock" system to give players a choice of weapons, that they get withotu having to knife a AFK guy 50 times in a row...

We dont want stat whores, we want team players!
I think this may be the best direction for PRMM. Use the unlocks as more class selections and give everyone all unlocks.

example: Normal Anti-Tank and unlock could be Anti-air with a handheld stinger instead of the anti-tank rocket.

This would be nice but for right now EA doesn't support different unlocks for different armies. (key word here is support - this would make me think that it is possible!) So both sides would have to have the same unlock classes for now.