questions?

• how many people from our steam group are logged on steam at peak time US and therefore contactable for a game ?
• my understanding is that people use the friends list, either through the overlay or the main L4D splash menu that shows players in L4D. Am I right in saying that the steam group people do not show in either of these two lists ?
• we have server messages to give easy instructions to join steam group while on the server. Do we also have server message to encourage regulars to invite friends to steam group ?
• if people join the tg server from a lobby and then somebody else then loads l4d, do they see their friends in 'non joinable game' ?

thoughts in a kinda logical order as I come out with them;

• it seems the steam group and friends lists are different things altogether
• people work the friends list as their prefered method
• we can do things to get even more people into the steam group
• people in general perceive one server the same as another as long as it is stable, there is some room to be different that TG pursue eg no meds, but in general people still see servers as all the same, as any server they can vote on they can basically admin themselves into any game mode map etc
• when people want to play they will in order
  1. create lobby and invite friends
  2. goto a server where their friends frequent
  3. join random game with random people
• no. 2 is the way forward, to be the server with a reputation for talking tactics and fun
• sidenote, imo everybody will buy L4D eventually, and play for a while and then come back every now and then, very few play weekly for months on end, its a game with a very transient population, or to put it another way, you have to be re-creating your player base every 2 months
• for tactics and fun, the tactics part will come naturally for us, market to the fun aspect
• create L4D party nights, Fri and Sat, or whatever to concentrate players on certain nights eg like poe2 is doing
• get everyone on teamspeak in one channel , no matter what server they are on for the cross team, cross game banter, this is to add another line of comms for fun
• mini scrim affair, wed is sign up for versus teams and sat is game, then have sun morning results thread with screenies, then have a running ranking system by player, eg played 5 won 3 = 60% wins, the ranking system accumulates over weeks, eg after few months played 40 won 20 = 50% wins, this helps keep people in and turning up
• have multiple mini scrims on sat night, a torni a week
• its all about the party atmosphere and teamspeak is one of the keys to that
• get ready for awesome idea !!!!!!
• the E1st use the E1st steam group calendar, you get reminds pop up, you can do this with the tg steam group, this is the way to reach out to the 650 people who dont even know to turn up or where to go ! calendar invites throughout the week, can have several calendar prompts throughout the week, have standard wed 'party torni sign up thread is opened', then standard sat 4pm 'warmup games starting' then sat 7pm 'party torni starting now', also can have a few random announcements, eg 'this sat is side game of faster through coop in normal mode for 2 points' or 'Avs dragon team needs 2 more for versus comp on dead air this sat'
• so what I am suggesting is several calendar reminders to consistently ping people for games
• you can also ping everybody with a calendar event set for right now, in order to seed the server (only steam group admins can do this

summary

• have a regular party night with games and cumulative scoreboard
• have party on teamspeak too
• ping the 650 in the wilderness with calendar invites several times per week
• create calendar invites for 'right now, to seed server

ps
after all that i expect the token gesture of the normal admins monthly wage of $20