Official ATK Gaming Teams

[Chalex4]

I know that the idea of having an ATK clan has been on the agenda for a long time, but before we get ahead of ourselves, I would like to voice some of my ideas.

In my opinion, creating a clan called (for example) "Symposium of Socrates (SOS)" which would act as the main clan of the community in TF2/CSS wouldn't be such a clever idea, as people wouldn't easily know if there were ATK or not. I also feel that it would split the community up a little too much, complicating things with new tags and websites. There is also no guarantee that it would keep going for long enough, this was the problem with WAGS.

So, here is my proposition. Instead of creating a new clan and making it the "official" clan for the community, we should simply create ATK Gaming Teams. For example, ATK CSS Team #1 which would be the best of the best CSS players from within the community.

Like a clan, we would have a roster and separate sub-forums with a leader of that specific team, but it would also be backed up by the rest of the community, with me as the main admin. This is NOT to say that I would be in the clan at all, but I am there as the link for setting up servers and forums. The clan would be 99% managed by the designated team leader, not me.

This would also mean that we could have more than 1 team for a game, e.g. ATK CSS Team #2 for CSS with someone else in charge and a different roster. This would allow more members from the community who aren't necessarily the best at a certain game, to still take part.

In terms of servers, this would come into effect when we have the infrastructure for separate match servers. At the moment, getting a dedicated server seems like the best way to do this. Some of you may be thinking that we will never be able to afford one, but DCH is offering us a good dual core server with 2GB of RAM for about £150 every 3 months which is very affordable (competitors sell this SAME server for £170 every MONTH).

[Hutch]

It kind of lacks a soul.... Well organised, but its the kind of thing an auditor would come up with.

[Chazlene]

I think it's a good idea, if it gets us more members. The other member-made clans like WAGS, JAM, etc. have the 'soul' Hutch.

[VoX]

That actually sounds like a good idea. I was going to post earlier (but it wouldn't let me) that I won't subscribe, but would be prepared to give fair one off donation.

[Midge]

Very good idea, you see this thing done a lot and it obviously works very well

[Bloo]

Well, there is no rule against having both player made and an offical clan?
Sounds like a good idea all in all, perhaps make teams for different games (though we only really play CSS...)

[Chalex4]

I definitely think that this will boost our member count, since people won't just be joining a clan this time. Also, another thing that I didn't really mention earlier was that with WAGS, setting up the servers and getting the cash together was a big problem, but with this idea, since it is community based, everyone would just use the public servers for normal gaming and some private servers that I set up on the dedicated server.

These teams will definitely have "soul", they just won't have their own custom name, making them much easier to recognise. Having the teams set up this way would also be a larger incentive for people to subscribe, meaning that the rest of the community benefits as well. If you set up a clan with your own name, then you will not supported anywhere near as much as you would with the team idea, especially since I will be helping out with the teams as much as possible, allowing for pages on the site with the schedules for matches, better servers, and more.

I am going to wait until we have more feedback here, then I will be creating forums to get it all going. I doubt that we will be able to get much done before the exams (e.g. servers), but it would be good to get the teams and their leaders sorted out now.

We will need about an extra £25-£35 a month to be able to afford the dedicated server properly as well as website hosting/domains/vBulletin. This is definitely within reach, just 8-10 more people on the silver (£3.50 /month) package would do the job. If you think about it, if you set up a clan instead, you would have to pay a GSP about £20 a month for a decent 100 tick server, so this way the money is used much more efficiently.

Yeah Bloo, I did mean to say that teams will be spread across all the games that we play, not just CSS by any means.

[Bloo]

Hmm, so that they have a little soul, perhaps give them a silly name. Like the ATK 1st Regitment. :p

[Hutch]

Urgh.. remember BRS's name... yuck Bloo

WAGS had a server for about 3 months....

Also, the ATK team idea isnt such a bad one... but can we still have clans not in this roster, for jokes and humorous get togethers, as if you have exclusively these teams, it becomes a clan, not a community.

[Bloo]

Yes, lets not be British X-Wing pilots again.

[VoX]

Can we have Chevrons??

[Chalex4]

Maybe Vox, but that would be something that we would add after it had been up for a while since I would need to do lots to the site.

[Marshy]

I can see arguments comming out of A teams and B teams 'Im better than him, no im better than him'

[Chalex4]

Maybe. You could think of it this way, team 1 is for those of us who want to play matches more seriously with regular training whereas team 2 is more just for fun.

If lots of people want to play seriously, then we will have to have inter-community matches to see who is best ;). All depends on how many people want to be in the teams really.

[Darkeagle]

I would love it and would really get into the teams for the games i had.

[Isphera]

This is a great idea. But some games, such as WoW, will require a single clan/guild, since the way the game works will not allow for teams, and the WoW team-based activity, arena's, allows for many types of arena team, with twice the number of those needed for a match allowed into the team (i.e. For 5v5 arenas, 10 people on a roster). So in some cases a single guild would be a more legit option.

[Chalex4]

Yeah, for games like WOW instead of multiple teams there should be just one big ATK guild, but let's save that for another discussion.

[Isphera]

Gimme a week.

[Hutch]

If we are going to go the way of a community clan thing for CSS, it might be best to change Hide & Seek to normal maps, so that people can practice on a public server, and also we can recruit more normal players that way.

[Chalex4]

I do plan to bring back the normal maps server, but not until we have a dedicated machine. This is because the Hide and Seek server is popular at the moment, and changing servers around without remote desktop to the server is really annoying.

[Hutch]

http://module.game-monitor.com/81.19.217.141:27018/graph/tz:1/player.png?key=d33f0b30e7e2605ddccd52c0cedab7fc&d=1w&40290184

It does have its spikes in popularity (to 8 people WOW), but to be honest, its not as popular as a 24 player normal maps server could be... it could really boost up the community tremendously.

[Chalex4]

As I have already said, I am going to set one up, but setting one up over the HNS server isn't possible at this moment in time. For the majority of last year we had a normal maps server, it was empty so often we removed it, the HNS server is way more popular than it ever was (excluding the C2G times before IP changes).

After exams, when I have more time, I will be getting the dedicated server sorted out and running one off that.


EDIT: Please don't discuss this any more in here, we are going way too off topic.

[Bowlingboy]

Hey dude this sounds great but i feel that on the ts server which everyone will have t be on for tatics during matches. No one really seems to be that interested in css like me, so if we do start a team up will there be enough players to do it and will they actually play enough. I feel i would be good enough for team one, but we all need to be on server at the same time to get a sense of which players in teams. Thanks for reading

Bowlingboy