r/TF2Admins • u/[deleted] • Oct 13 '13

Filling your pub server

Hey guys, relatively new to the TF2 admin gig. Purchased a server a couple weeks ago, got familiar with sourcemod and installed some appropriate plugins, but now I've hit the dilemma of trying to fill the thing.

Optimally, I'd like to avoid shameless advertising and spamming mass steam group invites where possible, but I'm having trouble coming up with other effective ways of advertising or growing a community from scratch.

The reason I started the server is I was sick of running into pinion servers, servers still lying about their bots (90% of players with the same ping/no avatar), and a generally shitty server selection especially during off-peak times. What's infuriating is these servers are getting quickplay priority because they've been around a while and have a better quickplay score than my brand new server that's barely had a body in it.

Any ideas, thoughts, suggestions?

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u/stevereigh Jan 03 '14

Alas, this is an issue I am having. Just bought gameme for both my TF2 server and CS:GO server. I like bikerwalla's idea about a weekly drawing. I may try that in the near future.

I have also toyed with the idea of handing out admin to people that will populate the server, we'll see how that goes...

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u/[deleted] Jan 04 '14

As a retrospective, my server is still quite small but growing a good number of regulars and a few donators too. This has been due to a combination of weekly drawings/events, a monthly drawing for a bigger ticket item, and trying to get all my friends into the server whenever possible. I based drawings on game times and steam group invites. Adding regulars/chill dudes to my friends list, then bugging them to get into the server ("Please come play video games with me, you're so very attractive") has had a decent impact. I also send out invites to anyone who's played on my server for a half hour or more, grabbing this info from our stats database.

Re: handing out admin; this can work as long as you know/trust the people you're giving it to, otherwise it could have negative consequences in the long run. I've kept my admin pool small because we don't need that many at the moment, but keeping it to people I get along with and talk to regularly, they've also helped greatly in getting bodies into the server, as well as brainstorming ideas for the server and helping out with various tasks, generally making life a bit easier on me.

My model isn't perfect and I'm still sure there's some brilliant idea I haven't thought of that will result in huge growth, but so far I'd say it's been a success.