#No.1 is the "Gateway" server.
Old blood leaves, we need new blood to replace it and that's what the No.1 is for
It is by far the most important server we have
This should be the first server any newcomers to the community plays on.
It has to remain as publicly accessible as possible. This means nothing should be required but pure B.I.S Content (Vanilla ArmA3 + DLC's)
Recommendations are there to entice the player to get more involved and to help improve their gaming experience.
To create a rule that players "MUST" use teamspeak is wrong and in some cases would deter potential newcomers.
To ask them to download it because of the reasons stated above is good thing, but at the end of then day nobody should be forcing this. VOIP does the job just fine in those circumstances.
If a player becomes a regular then you would expect in most cases that player to start using teamspeak and the Clientside addon pack that we provide.
They would be nurtured into that by peer pressure, not by a "You will do this"
The entire process is designed so that the player takes smallish stepping stones from newcomer to No.2 veteran player
1) Newcomer to Zeus plays on the No.1, doesnt require anything else.
2) He returns because enjoyed the experience and starts playing regularly
3) He decides to download and install teamspeak because others have advised him its for the better
4) After a few more sessions he dopwnloads and installs the ZClient pack
5) After a while he enrols for the FMT training
6) He now feels at home in the community and wants to play on the No.2
7) Migrating to the No.2 is a big step, however he has already experienced and understands
- How we do things
Where all the support info is
Knows enough players to ask for advice if he gets stuck installing the No.2 addon apps
That's how the system was designed to work, what shouldn't be happening is players migrating to the No.2 too quickly
Reference the current state of the No.1.
I know it has diminishing numbers.
This is because we haven't been able to maintain a critical mass of players on non gaming nights on there to entice those new, onto our server.
What is critical mass, you ask.
This is the number of players you need on the server to start drawing in more players. This value is around 20-25 ish
and must be maintained consistently for it to keep a server full. (That means every night during prime gaming hours (UK 18:30-21:30)
Now I haven't done much to keep this alive basically because PO4 isn't far away and am hoping this will help us to "Kick start" the server again
When it is released, we will need to work hard for approximately 2 weeks maintaining high player numbers, this will entice enough new blood and some of the old blood back.
I don't feel the effort should be put in until that point as the effort to maintain that interest on an old mission would be much harder