Push for Removal of Player Limit

The problem with Zero-K is not that the players choose to play in the same room (since it's fun for them). The problem with Zero-K is that lobbies die from frustration with being forced to spec, player limit forcing people to wait, and (although irrelevant to this post) map picker choosing a map no one wants to play.

GIVE THE FREEDOM TO THE PLAYER BASE! Remove the player limit, and let people who want to play big games play big games, and the people who like to play small games can play small games. It is simply frustrating to FORCE players to play smaller games.

If people get to play the game they want, they'll stick around for longer, and the game wouldn't be dead half the time.

quote: If people get to play the game they want, they'll stick around for longer, and the game wouldn't be dead half the time.

I play this game for many years. For many of those years there was a 32 player limit, and we ended up with the situation before the limit enforcement, where the number of players still felt constant over long periods of time.

I have no clue what will happen next, and what (else) should be tried, but I can't ignore the fact that the previous situation did not seem to lead to an increased number of players.

I do fear that in fact the experiment will have no noticeable impact to the total number of players active - there might be different players playing, but it might be that money in advertisement would have a larger impact than any technical changes.

quote: but it might be that money in advertisement would have a larger impact than any technical changes.

Do the stats graphs not show there are 20-50 new players per day?
But they do not stay. Even after steam release the new players did not stay.

Regarding spending money:
I read in older threads about donations that it is considered too complicated to use it for development directly.
So how about this, and it might sound like a strange idea, but consider it:
Why not pay people to play the game? Like amazon mechanical turk or something.
There are several thousands euros just sitting unused. In Germany the minimum wage is 12€ per hour.
In some countries it is less. You could likely pay like 10 people to play for 2h each day for a few weeks.
You could basically double the online activity during some times or boost it just enough to make a 2nd room possible.
Advertisement has questionable outcome but with paid players you know that you get what you pay for.

Maybe it is a stupid idea. But this is the 62323-th thread on playerlimits and post number 760943250 on advertisement.
So I wanted to post something that had not yet been posted a million times before.

in my opinion, adding a some more content to the game and asking players to play a bit more and spread through word of mouth or on specific forums in a kind of concerted effort may be more effective than spending on ads.

that said, i have no idea how effective ads are, really. I'm very skeptical about them.

In the same vein as "marketing" (which includes advertisement), I am not sure that the ZK website design attracts new players. In my view BAR does a much better job at that. But adjusting all of that (website, consistent communication on specific channels, etc.) is a big effort that requires resources (time and/or money).

It's also important to learn how to compete with the enemy team. What's the point of hiding behind 25 vs. 25 matches? In my opinion, it leaves you feeling dissatisfied: what contribution did you make to your team's victory? Is it more fun? I don't think so. Too much lag, the same old back-and-forth mid-map, waiting for someone to play Paladin or Detri or Rave Party. It's like watching the same movie over and over again.
The beauty of this game is speed, in my opinion, outflanking the enemy and catching them by surprise. With 50 players on the same map, you can't.

Content spikes, word of mouth, ads etc... is all good. The trick is that some players have to volunteer to run it.