Competitiveness creates activity. It was proven today with JMR's tournament. The European scene is alive. That was also proven by JMR's tournament. So, as a community lets make it remain competitive. Not just tournaments. We can't depend on 1 or 2 people to put forth time frequently for tournaments. Jitspoe does some stuff to improve the game every blue moon, and wont end up having time to do anything for the competitive scene.
How can we do anything?
Simple, first is getting IRC. I understand the convenience of TS3 to get matches. But euros sit on OTB which is blocking out 50% of the scene (NA) to expand into it. If everyone goes back to IRC you can get/find/contact people much easier. Your team can have private channels made by you to communicate / save information / leave messages to eachother. It's a great tool for contacting your team and other teams for communication and matching.
IRC also benefits by allowing teams to have their record placed publicly so everyone can see this. This causes teams to be more competitive by wanting to win more. Teams never want a negative record. Teams want to look like their record is the best. And teams with "great" records, or undefeated, cause other teams to want to end their big streaks. That's been a source of DP being competitive for years.
IRC also allows new players to be able to contact the majority of the scene due to the chat tab on this website. You can use that or download mIRC. Lets new players get help to their questions quicker if it's a populated area. Therefore, potentially increasing activity.
IRC is easier for organizing tournaments as well (it's annoying to change teamspeaks as an NA team, or idle a teamspeak with 1000 people PM'ing me on ts3). on IRC you can make a private channel for captains to get info to servers, and a main channel for everyone to idle. Worked perfect in every Blaa tournament.
Old players coming back often check IRC before anything else. If they see IRC having some life, people online/matching, they might actually think about coming back.
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How simple? The community doing a small thing can actually have a decent impact. There's enough players for the game to have 12-15 teams playing relatively actively. And it can also grow a bit in size and competitiveness causing people to want to stick around.
Opinions?
EDIT: TO SUPPORT THIS TRY TO IDLE EVERYONES CHANNELS (DONT DEMAND OPS) TO SUPPORT IRC COMING BACK. HELP PEOPLE WITH SETTING UP THEIR CHANNELS. PEOPLE CAN PM ME WITH IRC QUESTIONS.
Channels to idle: (post yours)
-- GENERAL --
#paintball
#tournaments
#globalgamers (for help)
-- CLANS --
#team_nB
#unlucky
#team_eX
#team_spec
#team_aT
#3oo
#Dollar
#oxmoze
#unknown
CONNECT TO irc.gg-center.net and /join THESE CHANNELS.
TYPE "/ns register accountname password" TO MAKE YOUR ACCOUNT. WHEN GIVEN ACCESS IN A CHANNEL ONCE LOGGED IN, TYPE: "!AUTOJOIN 1" -- ONCE AUTOJOINED YOU JOIN THAT CHANNEL INSTANTLY ON LOGGING/AUTHING ACCOUNT
REMEMBER TO: !addgame DP ---> This lets you get scrim requests to see when others want a match
BASIC IRC COMMANDS:
/cs register #teamname (gets you a channel)
!topic "random topic coding" (gets you topic)
!members "insert names"
!set givevoice 0 (voices everyone automatically)
!kb name (bans someone)
!addgame DP (adds game)
!r (resyncs commands)
!addop/addhop (gives access so users can autojoin)
!autojoin 1 (lets you automatically join on authing)
ANYONE WITH ANY ISSUES IN IRC, PLEASE CONTACT MYERS OR ROCKITUDE. WE WILL HELP.
