A vision for the Old Guys gaming community.

[Amance]

Hey mates!

I recently read the Old guys history in the community information section of the forum, and I am really curious about the staff’s vision for the future of the Old Guys community. I would have a few questions.

The last paragraph of the Old Guys presentation stipulates the following:
*The international ambitions are clear: A global gaming community.*

-How would you define a global community? What is its purpose and its long term goal?

-How big are you planning to grow? How many servers are you planning to get? Is the membership fee is going to rise?

-The team is constantly recruiting, and is now opening new servers in North America. The biggest the community becomes, the fewer members can know each other individually. (Especially with North American members who are not playing at the same time than European members). Are you concerned about this issue?

-OG seems to focus a lot on the infantry for its wars. Is the team planning to develop the 32v32 matches, to enjoy the full war potential of the game?

-OG has now more than 10 servers. I am generally satisfied by their response time and their configuration. I will open a topic later to make suggestions for each individual case, but the question about the server configuration is worth to be addressed here. There are two ways to see the things:

1- To configure the server in order to promote the Olg Guys community and to have it filled all day long by external players. In others words, to set the server with what players like (For example 32v32 conquest large on operation metro – which is pure chaos, or a server always running on the same map with a large amount of tickets – like #8. Other examples would be air maps, or any configuration allowing to make a large amount of experience.)

2- To set the server in order to have interesting games, using the full tactical dimensions of maps. I am talking about offering players a satisfying equilibrium between numbers of players, numbers of tickets, map sizes, game types and map cycle. I am convinced that small and medium maps are not intended to be played by 64 players simultaneously (For example, to play operation metro in conquest 8v8 allows tactical movements, and it allows the front line to move. The three flags can be taken and the game can end quickly with a limited number of tickets. Then, the team can rotate and the map can switch in order to offer players more variety).
What is your opinion about this matter?

-Esport is growing internationally. BF3 is very popular, and despite some questionable choices from dice, do you think that the game has a future in competition. The OG has now an esl section, so do the OG have ambitions in competition? Would you support a competitive members section who would like to take the game to the next level?

-And finally, how do you see the OG community in a few years?

That’s all I have in mind for the moment. Thank you : )

[Vercetti]

Hey mates!

I recently read the Old guys history in the community information section of the forum, and I am really curious about the staff’s vision for the future of the Old Guys community. I would have a few questions.

The last paragraph of the Old Guys presentation stipulates the following:
*The international ambitions are clear: A global gaming community.*

-How would you define a global community? What is its purpose and its long term goal?


With a Global gaming community, we mean that members (18+) from all over the world are welcome, from all countries and timezones.
With this, we can ensure teammates 24/7 available on Teamspeak to squad up with, with a reasonable ping. For example, western-europeans, can now play with west-coast US players, due to the new US servers in Chicago. Before the west-coast US players could not play on EU servers, due to the ping.

So slowly but surely we try to connect different timezones (of course there is a limit), but we might be able to connect a lot.
Maybe afterward, Australians might be able to play on west-coast US servers, on on middle-eastern servers with the Europeans.
So for the members, whenever you come online, there are always some guys to play with.

And the long term goal, besides the points stated above, is making ourselves attractive for possible sponsors. This way we can organise events, with some sweet prizes, or discounts on hardware/software if we do group-buys. There is a lot of power in numbers.

Besides this, clan meetings (Like the Gamescom and DICE trip)

There is more to the community than just the game.



-How big are you planning to grow? How many servers are you planning to get? Is the membership fee is going to rise?

Growth: The sky is the limit. There are a number of ways to create several smaller squads to promote teamplay, but not be with 100 guys on one channel. Also, define the amount of members. We got quite a number of members, but not all are online at the same time. So for example, if you have 150 members, maybe only 50 are daily online to play BF3, distributed over the 24 hours a day has.
The community is focusing on the older players, which have also families. So most of them for example, can't play every day, so they won't be online so often. So they won't be active members.
Numbers in this case don't say a lot.

Servers: As many as we need. We can put twice as many servers up in Europe and the US if we want, but it's not needed. We try to make our servers popular, we don't need 20+ servers which are all empty.
The amount of servers is based on the amount of members we have, and the will +need to fill them up.

Memberhsip fee: No, we do not plan for this, and we're always making sure we're not spending more than is coming in. And if that does happen (which is from time to time), 2 people are chipping in to pay the difference. We're not making money on this, i can only say the opposite. But it's worth it, to bring joy to all of the members, to see that people really enjoy it here.



-The team is constantly recruiting, and is now opening new servers in North America. The biggest the community becomes, the fewer members can know each other individually. (Especially with North American members who are not playing at the same time than European members). Are you concerned about this issue?


Like I stated above, more people can interact with each other. But maybe the best thing is to compare it to a friends group. How many good, good friends do you have, how many do you talk to daily, weekly, monthly?
So you will know some of them really personally, and some a bit more shallow. But there is nothing wrong with that. I'm also being realistic, with some people you get along well, others you might not like so much, same as in real life. That does not mean that we can't all have fun together, right?
You will have your 'friends group' in the community, who you speak to the most, but many will have that.

So I am not concerned about this.



-OG seems to focus a lot on the infantry for its wars. Is the team planning to develop the 32v32 matches, to enjoy the full war potential of the game?


Yes, but these wars are not that frequently held. With the smaller wars, we promote teamplay. Many small teams get used to each other, and they know how they play together, they get a 'feel' for each other. These little teams of 8, you can combine in a 32 vs 32 war, where each 2 squads get a specific target, and they know how to to it.

Currently, we do not have the numbers to fight a 32 vs 32 war, therefore we are focusing on the basics.


Hey mates!
-OG has now more than 10 servers. I am generally satisfied by their response time and their configuration. I will open a topic later to make suggestions for each individual case, but the question about the server configuration is worth to be addressed here. There are two ways to see the things:

1- To configure the server in order to promote the Olg Guys community and to have it filled all day long by external players. In others words, to set the server with what players like (For example 32v32 conquest large on operation metro – which is pure chaos, or a server always running on the same map with a large amount of tickets – like #8. Other examples would be air maps, or any configuration allowing to make a large amount of experience.)

2- To set the server in order to have interesting games, using the full tactical dimensions of maps. I am talking about offering players a satisfying equilibrium between numbers of players, numbers of tickets, map sizes, game types and map cycle. I am convinced that small and medium maps are not intended to be played by 64 players simultaneously (For example, to play operation metro in conquest 8v8 allows tactical movements, and it allows the front line to move. The three flags can be taken and the game can end quickly with a limited number of tickets. Then, the team can rotate and the map can switch in order to offer players more variety).
What is your opinion about this matter?


I think we have this balance, only the 32 slot conquest in Europe is missing. The point is, that the servers stated at point 2. need to be filled every day, which is not an issue, but has to be done.
I think we are accommodating our community with all the modes possible, but suggestions are always welcome!


Hey mates!
-Esport is growing internationally. BF3 is very popular, and despite some questionable choices from dice, do you think that the game has a future in competition. The OG has now an esl section, so do the OG have ambitions in competition? Would you support a competitive members section who would like to take the game to the next level?

Yes, for now we're getting in a lot of small, unranked wars in the evenings, to get experience. After that, we can go on ESL. However, being also realistic, we would be aiming for the mid-skill level on ESL. We're not pro, we got many casual players, who would like to play a war from time to time.
However, if we have a squad which does want to more forward and go pro, we will fully support it.



Hey mates!
-And finally, how do you see the OG community in a few years?

That’s all I have in mind for the moment. Thank you : )

- More games
- More members
- Regular meetings (real life events)
- More advantages for members (discounts, tournaments, events)
- More professional, but not losing the personal touch
- A bunch of gamers, playing together, having fun, like we're always doing




I hope I answered your questions. If you want to know anything else, let me know!

[Lennna]

tl;dr

[Amance]

Thanks for your thorough explanations.

My questions got satisfying answers and I don’t have much to add.

That’s very important for me to understand all that stuff. It is good to know that a highly motivated staff is at the helm and direct the team in a direction which has been carefully discuss and choose. That’s a good way to motivate members to contribute to build that vision.

Your answer is not a big surprise anyway, as I already knew that the Old Guys was a quality community before I applied. I wish to contribute a great deal and I will keep making suggestions.

See you on the battlefield OGs.

[Burning]

Hm, intresting post this is.

Good that you all put the community infront of just sheer numbers (like opening 20+ servers) and making money.
Not going for any profit is a essential foundation in building a community in my opinion.

Thanks for posting this :)

[Freaknchronic]

Excellent thread !!!

Great questions and great answers, I for one am enjoying this gaming community and look forward to watching it grow !

[iNco782]

A really good thread!

[RPGforYOU]

Hm, interesting post this is.

Good that you all put the community in front of just sheer numbers (like opening 20+ servers) and making money.
Not going for any profit is a essential foundation in building a community in my opinion.

Thanks for posting this :)

Membership fee's you pay ... are for teamspeak and the website. And also the game servers!
Which is for BF3 on decided boxes that OG buys them self I think, at least for a part.

OG isn't really here for making profit ... If they have fee's over they just save it.
For when the time it needs, or to pump up a new game. So it requires for instant a server investment.
To recruit members, who then will pay for the server afterwards...

[DragonBoon]

I agree with the infantry argument.

I also agree on the recruitment argument. We have enough members and yet we have problems to get a decent training done. The people that are applying to matches and training are always the same. And thoose that aren't are also always the same. I understand that people have real life, but why then anyone has time to almost always play the game?

I think we need to motivate the members to participate more into clan affairs. I think people should understand a E-Sport Clan, which in fact we are, even though we're just a fun clan, is comparable to a soccer club. Would just join to play games, or would you join to play games, participate in forums and teamspeak, give input into general clan affairs, speak your mind in general, participate in training and matches etc. etc. etc.?

About servers: I yet have to wait for a "64 Players, All Maps+BTK, 200% tickets, All Weapons allowed" server. The servers that are most frequently used are Metro 24/7 and Karkand 24/7. I'm using Metro only to improve my stats and never use Karkand, 1. because it's hardcore, 2. because I overplayed this map on other servers. In order to fill up our servers we need to advertise them any place we can. If we can flood the Battlelog forums with application forms, we can also flood it with advertisments about how cool our clan and our servers are.

There's a lot of things to do, and I have some many ideas how to improve the clan, and I'm sure others have too. So why not give all thoose ideas a structur? Like only one person is responsible for advertisment, trainings, maps, programms, squads, teams etc. Give away tasks to new members if you feel all the responsibility and work as a Admin/Game Leader is to much. Build a staff around you, to give all the feedback and ideas a sctruture that then can be implemented to benefit the whole clan. In Germany we call something like that "Arbeitsgruppen". I know all of that doesn't sound fun and sounds like work and responsibility, but if I listen to the leaders talking about participating in the BF3 E-Sport League, how do we achieve that, without structures?

This clan has the numbers, this clan has the fun, this clan has the servers to getting even more awesome then it already is. Let's do it...:D

[iNco782]

Server 8 Karkand 24/7 is not hardcore. ÂÂ*If it was i'd be playing on it :D

[error.exe]

Even tough this seems to be mainly aimed at Battlefield 3, I still find it highly interested.
+1 for a very nice and well build up post from Frank!