Newcomer sharing his ideas for community promotion etc

[pza]

Well first of all, i'd like to say "hi", this is my first post in these forums.

I'll make this post as quick as possible, so if anything's doesn't make sense to you, please tell me so.

I made a few experiences with other "old" games and their communities and since i found myself really liking supreme commander, i wanted to share my ideas with you, so feel free to use them. i'd apreciate seeing anything that makes the community for this game grow.

Casts & Streams:
It's a good feature of faf to promote its casters and streamers. we need more of them with even better quality casts and streams. that said, it needs some incentive to be given. the more people watch it, the better they get, the more people get attracted to faf.

Adding Viewers:
- Promotion for casts on different fan sites (are there any?)
- Maybe even colaboration with other casters from other games, like a FAF-Trial day e.g. (for those who know streamer and top player "trump" for hearthstone: he did play portal 2 with his gf or other games on stream, while having thousands of viewers, which partly were really interested in playing it, same goes for many many other streamers)
- E-Sports atmosphere tourneys, with co-casters or real pros co-commentating like in a sports event. show the finalists via videochat. make interviews with them.
- promotion via merchandising (some streamers girlfriends create cuddly (insert unit name) as price for viewers/followers, see here)

Adding/improving rewarding structures besides global ranking / ladder
- sponsored tourneys with price pool, or kickstarter tourneys
- enhanced avatar system in the irc chat or even lobby chat
- maybe (dunno about game restrictions) a skin system based on "xy" insert whatever u want to promote here. for example: your commander equips a fancy flag on its back if you reach 200+ games. or give him the option to wear a different hat for each single player campaign/mission u played through. (yeah i stole that from tf2.)

last but not least, let me share u some links for all of you who are really into improving their casts and their community-building abilities:
this is one of the best and most successful caster for age of empires 2 (yes, there's still a quite big community around that game, fighting for what is often $10.000 prizepool or sometimes way more)
facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ZeroEmpires
youtube: https://www.youtube.com/user/ZeroEmpires
twitch: http://www.twitch.tv/zeroempires
i recommend u to contact him directly and exchange your experiences.

thanks for reading, feel free to respond.

p.s.: special thanks to gyle for bringing me to faf! keep up!

[tatsu]

uhhhm??? KIckstarter tourney??? WHY DIDN'T WE THINK OF THIS! amazing idea!!

[Resin_Smoker]

uhhhm??? KIckstarter tourney??? WHY DIDN'T WE THINK OF THIS! amazing idea!!

This could get nasty real quick and would defiantly make the tuurrney a hostile environment to be sure.

Resin

[Kalvirox]

Kickstarter tournaments or similar have already been thought of before.

The issue is that people will not want to donate money to a tournament that they do not have a good chance of winning. It will also make people very bitter once they have lost. So we decided this was a bad idea.

What I have said before is that we get more money than we need from donations than we use to run the FAF servers ect. This is money that AFAIK is just sitting there. Maybe some of it gets spent elsewhere but since FAF got transferred to the communities control this money would be better used to finance tournament prizes. Specifically those where the most people can apply. Not only would this encourage more donations (slightly) but it would also make the game more fun and encourage the standard of play to increase.

Or used for community promotion, or something.

We have tried to reach out to proper youtubers before such as TotalBiscuit but have had no results. (Interesting that he made Axiom members play other RTS games on occasion and made vids of them playing it instead of starcraft but didn't make them play supcom .....)

[pza]

The issue is that people will not want to donate money to a tournament that they do not have a good chance of winning. It will also make people very bitter once they have lost. So we decided this was a bad idea.

this is where the point of casters is: people will pay for WATCHING a tourney, not for participating. This is how it works for other games. so to get people watching we need tournaments, but to get tournaments we need more people willing to watch. here's where casters and promotions become important.

[Vee]

Just let everyone donate to the tourney, not just the participants. You donate because you want the tourney to happen, not to get a shot at winning it. I will happily donate some € to an interesting tourney.

[Kalvirox]

this is where the point of casters is: people will pay for WATCHING a tourney, not for participating. This is how it works for other games. so to get people watching we need tournaments, but to get tournaments we need more people willing to watch. here's where casters and promotions become important.

Gyle gets 6000 views. We should trial this then.

[tatsu]

Kickstarter tournaments or similar have already been thought of before.

The issue is that people will not want to donate money to a tournament that they do not have a good chance of winning. It will also make people very bitter once they have lost. So we decided this was a bad idea.

What I have said before is that we get more money than we need from donations than we use to run the FAF servers ect. This is money that AFAIK is just sitting there. Maybe some of it gets spent elsewhere but since FAF got transferred to the communities control this money would be better used to finance tournament prizes. Specifically those where the most people can apply. Not only would this encourage more donations (slightly) but it would also make the game more fun and encourage the standard of play to increase.

Or used for community promotion, or something.

We have tried to reach out to proper youtubers before such as TotalBiscuit but have had no results. (Interesting that he made Axiom members play other RTS games on occasion and made vids of them playing it instead of starcraft but didn't make them play supcom .....)

if you're donating money to a tourney pool you're basically aknowledging there's a high chance you wouldn't get it.

For example I'd participate in the spirit of community but I know for a fact I couldn't win.

And tourneys of the Revo standard randomize winning chances in factor unrelated to per-personae skill. these kinds of tourneys have a chance at getting everyone involved since anyone is a potential winner.

(given cheats revolving around smurfing wouldn't occur this time around)