Idea to promote GC.

[Cheesy]

you guys rarely online in game+TS and still so afraid for your forum.

You caught me

Unknown number of total unique visitors but probably in the thousands. I'm looking into trying to get better data on unique visitors to GC during that period of time.

We have Google Analytics

Couple interesting facts:



We got about 35k visits to the What is GC? thread in the three days after the Reddit post. 90% of those people just read it and left. About 5000 actually clicked a link in there, either to learn more or make an account.

Around 10% of those, or ~500, actually signed up for the campaign and joined an army.

Of those, maybe 10% or ~50, are active still today (let's check that).

So we have an impressive 1 in 1000 conversion rate

Funny thing is:


In the last year (July to July), daily visits to our site have barely changed. Pretty much everyone who was gonna leave from the Reddit rush did so by July 2012. By that point, people leaving were balanced by new people coming in. If you just go by website visits, numbers have been pretty much flat for a year.

Last thing we want is to have 250 people per army where as duke said no-one gets to experience the GC spirit.

My hunch is we have a happy point somewhere around 100-150 active members. 60-75 show up for any given hour of a Saturday battle. When we go much over that it's just a mess: giant waiting rooms, takes forever to start battles, some annoying guy bothering everyone on TS, uber-stressed officers/TAs, etc. In the mess, people leave until we get back down to a stable point where the server is full but the waiting room is small.

If that's true, then the question is, is it worth it to go through the whole surge if we'll end up with the same numbers a few months later? The pro is we get energetic new blood to run stuff. The con is that a bunch of your vets get frustrated and stop playing. (What happened to the 25v25 we had pre Reddit rush?)

Or, is it worth the effort to permanently bump the scale up. Get our crap together so we can sustain a community of 300 instead of 150? Would you guys want to play in a community that had 2x as many active people? 4x? At one point does it stop feeling like a community and start being a website with a bunch of strangers?

[Necromancer]

The con is that a bunch of your vets get frustrated and stop playing.

i feel like vets are constantly dropping, and new people becomes vets all the time regardless.
"new guys" are only new for like the first campaign (6 month), after that they are pretty much vets.

Or, is it worth the effort to permanently bump the scale up. Get our crap together so we can sustain a community of 300 instead of 150? Would you guys want to play in a community that had 2x as many active people?

+1 for that.

i'd like to double the numbers and keep em that way.
even if it means playing on 2 servers at the same time.

Spoiler: show

not sure about 4 armies though, there are some problems with it RISK wise.

[Jokerle]

a overwhelming crowd infusion is doing no good to any community. Best would be to have a slow but constant stream of new people.
A new, streamlined ( ) website will do its thing for a while and generate new people, as well as the launch of BF4.

[Necromancer]

its overwhelming only if you're not prepared for it.

[RazY70]

I like things the way they are

As long as we can maintain a full server each battleday I don't see any reason to worry. So it makes sense to aim for that sweet spot of Cheesy mentioned, and get a trickle of new guys coming in to maintain it.
I see no real advantage in bumping the scale up and doubling the community size. I don't think we need to go the LevelBF way with their sleek PR machine sucking in every player around.

[KILLERCANKILL]

hey, all the old/vets guys- you're just too afraid of every change.
we will die someday... stop hiding under the sink and hold on to the current.

we will make what needs to be done before, and apply the right change.
it seems like on BD we got 64 people on server and TS,
but both armies struggle right now to keep their side full for the whole BD.
you guys rarely online in game+TS and still so afraid for your forum.

BF3 will die, but people will still play after it, most as it seems will get BF4.
if someone will join now and like what is going on here, he will stay for BF4.

you are right about thinking good before you choose where to grow to.
but not doing anything just like doing the wrong thing, will get the
wrong result. signups for BD are on ABC, watch them and see what's really going on
the BD, for few weeks, and then try to draw the right picture.

this, need to get out of the comfort zone. 21CW did that and today no one really wants to play there anymore. They had the same thoughts, we are awesome, lets not market too much and ruin the experience etc etc. The key to any community is constant growth, its key to survive. Veterans grow old and disappear, its the new blood that keeps you going. GC is fun for sure but its pretty much been the same bunch of guys for 3 campaigns. We know who is in the air, who is driving that lav, who the squad leaders are etc. If the theme of the GC is having fun that the emphasis should be on growth. The point is, dont get too comfortable with what you have today because in the world of gaming that can go away very fast. Dont be scared to grow, be scared to shrink.

[Hitman47]

GC has been around for a long time doing things the way they are now, why fix it if it ain't broken? BF4 is coming out soon, it doesn't matter that we all know now who is in the air, who is in the tanks, in BF4 everything is new and people who were awesome at jets maybe won't be awesome in jets anymore, maybe some people want a change and will use this opportunity to try other things, basically everything will change, and with the same people it will still be new. IMO, if we double our numbers we will lose what is GC along the way, heck we even almost lost it with the reddit rush. Understanding community dynamics is important in making this decision, it's not just about having more people to play with there are many other things that have to be considered.

People joined GC because of what it offers, if you lose what it offers it doesn't matter how many people you recruited, it will crumble.

[Digz]

you guys rarely online in game+TS and still so afraid for your forum.

You caught me


well you should do something about the cheese smell

[AdmiralGiggles]

i'd say there is definitely a need of fresh blood.

[FisherMan9999]

i'd say there is definitely a need of fresh blood.

+1

[Necromancer]

@Hitman.
I dont think itll be easy to wipe GC essence.
It comes from the top, from the General, through the HC and goes down. Its safe to assume none of the new people will be a general in the current nor following campaign. Im doubtful they will even make it to the HC this fast. On top of that theres the beurocratic TAs and EXECs that further make any changes hard to impossible.
Reddit rush didnt wipe GC feel, so a more moderate and controlled growth won't do it either.

[RazY70]

Fresh blood is one thing; a 300+ sized community is a completely different beast.

I have no idea what some hope to gain from a huge community size. I didn't see much in the way of explanations other than current = BAD; change = GOOD

[Necromancer]

I feel were restricted and can't use all available tactics and strategies when we are 10 people down.
And meeting new people is always fun.
Why not have a bigger community and play on both servers simultaneusly? Cus we afraid?

[matsif]

I think some of you are not understanding the point here. The point isn't that the higher powers don't want more people, don't want to pay for 4 servers, things like that. As a community, we simply do not have enough human resources to handle running more than 2 armies (and there are days when I feel we struggle with that). There's not enough SLs, there's not enough FCs, there's not enough people willing to do risk, etc.

So what some of you are saying is, that getting another 300 people to sign up and then running 4 armies with basically no leadership because we have to spread what we have around those armies is better than having 2 armies with much better leadership that can show people the way that it is done. And then, for those 4 armies, the officers that start the campaign would not want to be officer again for quite some time, because each army would have at best 1 truly competent FC and maybe 3 truly good SLs who would be so burned out after the campaign that I'd be surprised if they didn't just take the next one off.

As razy said, fresh blood is never turned down, but suggesting that we as a community can handle another rush of 250-500 players right now or for BF4C1 is ridiculous in any capacity.

I feel were restricted and can't use all available tactics and strategies when we are 10 people down.
And meeting new people is always fun.
Why not have a bigger community and play on both servers simultaneusly? Cus we afraid?

are you going to lead one of the extra armies? Who's gonna SL and FC for you?

[KoffeinFlummi]

Why not [...] play on both servers simultaneusly? Cus we afraid?

No, because it is, in my limited experience extremely hard to manage and make fun. First of all, you need to make sure the RISK system is compatible with that. What if both servers play at the same time, with only 1 division defending. Attackers win on both servers. What now? Plus, in C2 it was pretty much always, atleast how I remember it, 1 team owning on one server, while the other one does the same thing on the other. That's not fun for half the players, while right now we can atleast have a chance at creating somewhat balanced battledays. Plus, even though we get new people, we don't have enough SLs and FCs to support that in the first few months.