First off I love the videos and game deals that you guys do, but something is missing, an official TS gaming clan. Right now I am a trial member in one clan that uses Teamspeak to communicate in games. It's a ton of fun, and I think that with regulations on only TS members getting in would make it a very mature and fun clan to be in. Another aspect is game servers, the clan I'm trying out now has their very own Star citizens, Battle Field, Arma, Rust, and many more servers (which make it easy to team stack against other clans).
When I first saw this I thought 'oh god, clans' and I just thought back to the old call of duty days where 15 year old pot smokers that had more "swag" than brains would shove their clan in your face but.. I actually think this is a really cool idea and when you said "and I think that with regulations on only TS members getting in would make it a very mature and fun clan to be in" it made me want to have one right now!! haha. This would definitely be a great way to have fun with actually fun and sensible people, especially in games full of immature shmucks. Also we'd also have a lot in common. We'd all like computers, a bunch of us would like metal, a bunch would like nature and hills and forests and a bunch of us would also like great beverages. This sounds great! Plus I never see anything even remotely close to a fight on this site so I'm petty confident that everyone would easily get along :)
I love the idea, TS has one of the best communities out there so being able to easily meet people here to game with would be very cool.
The problem, as I see it, is who's gonna run it? Even if you are just talking a casual TeamSpeak server with a bunch of rooms for different games you still need volunteers to run the server. The Tek Syndicate staff and moderators put in a ton of work as it is, so asking them to do it is kinda crazy. And that's not even taking into account the work to run the events and organization that make a clan actually a clan and not just a casual chat room.
Seems to me the way to do it would be to have people volunteer, here or on another thread, to set up and run a Tek Syndicate TeamSpeak server, if Logan, Wendell and the rest are actually cool with that, and see what happens out of that community.
In all honesty, I think it would be a great idea, but there would need to be a section of the site dedicated to it. Members who are very dedicated to running the gaming side of the community would have to control memberships as well as maintain communications among members who run the different admin modules of the servers. Running a gaming community takes a lot of work. I have been a member and an admin for communities like that before. As you have noticed, I have refered to them as communities. Clans, and guilds usually are set around a singular game. Communities revolve around the aspect of multi-game organizations. We already have a few game servers active. It would benefit the community if we could have an update of these server IP addresses within the forums, as well as have more members actually join in them.
I have noticed that the Counter-Strike server for example never seems to have people playing in it. If more members just went into the server to play, then we would begin to have more and more people join in who were not members to begin with.
My rant-ish 2 cents.
EDIT: We already havea mumble server. Either we should use that or just use something like Raidcall. You can integrate twitch streams into raidcall easily, so if you arent playing but other members are, and they are streaming a game, you can watch.
Yeah, i think it would be good if mods or Tek Support members could run it. I would would run it if i am able to, but i don't think it'd be just one person, like a few or so. It could start out as just a small thing that could potentially branch off into a big thing where they end up hiring another person full time to look after it. Just start small for now. And not as such a clan, but a team/group.
+1 agree, but a TS just for clan/gaming purposes seems like a waste of possible potential here......why not implement the idea of community tek podcasts? where you would have your regular Tek but with (previously appointed?) regular members that (are also educated and informed on the topic) are joined in the conversation with our regular hosts :)
i've somewhat always thought of the idea as a upgrade from regular typing on the forums or in the comments section, making this place more advanced than others
If we are looking into a group centered around voice chat mainly, then I would suggest raidcall over TS. TS may be a good program, but the one thing it always seems to lag behind in is audio quality. When you are playing games like shooters, audio quality is kinda a big deal. Raidcall has great audio quality, as well as it is very easy to use. It also has a friends list system and full admin control built directly into it. I tested it out with my friends who I play League of Legends with about a year ago, and we loved it from the get go. I would say try it out before going concrete on TS.
After reading all the comments I have to agree that this would not be something that the Tek Syndicate crew would be finagling with all the time, but I think if Logan made an announcement asking for volunteers, that would be the fastest and easiest way to grow a medium sized community. And as lots of you said, it would start small but could grow. I know I personally play BF4 and other games when ever I get the chance.
I also think that it should not be reliant on a streaming service like Twitch, but in voice chat. I am not saying that Team Speak is the only way to do that, but I know it is a great program that lots of clans use, not to mention it has no bloatware, is responsive, and is really designed for beginners and more technical people alike. Overall though I am really happy to see all the positive feedback.
I think that if we do get approval to do something like this from the higher ups, then there should be different people in semi-leadership positions for different games to lighten the load on them.
I would say we could run a small number of games such as:
BF3/4
LoL
CS:S/GO
MMO games
D3/PoE
Open World Survival (Rust, The Forest, DayZ....)
If we started out with small groups of players in each of those games, we could easily grow as a community. I still say everyone should try out raidcall. Everything about it is free, and groups start with a cap of 10k people. No costs for maintaining, and they have a robust admin system to allow for membership and admin/moderator levels. There is also control of chat within each channel. You can also directly stream music into the channel from the client for people to share METAL!
I still think that this would be an amazing idea no matter what Logan and the rest decide. Any way we can get a reply from the big guys on the subject of having this happen?
If we did a clan I'd like it to be named GameSyndicate and we would support various games. I would totally build and host a website for us and i could possible get a server for chivalry or something going.
That would be an issue. We would want to promote TekSyndicate as much as possible as a gaming clan. This would include keeping the name. Don't fix it if it isn't broken.
A lot of other hardware forums have "official" clans or gaming communities. Hell, Tek Syndicate already has a steam community, some affiliated game servers and a number of people who tag up with something Tek related... so I don't see any reason it couldn't work. The foundations are already there, so all that is really needed is people to run it, and some donations to for servers, website and other operating costs associated with running a clan/gaming community. And the OK of the Tek team of course. It's their name after all, but I doubt they'd be opposed to it.
Really? I have always found the audio quality on TeamSpeak very good. the only thing that ever lets it down is malconfigured mic settings, crappy mics or loud music/games in the background. Although I am interested in this Raidcall, I just hate installing other software I will never use.
And don't forget, being a part of the Tek Support group can encourage stuff like this. Also as I said before, I don't care that much what program we use to communicate, but I would think it a good idea if it was chosen by people that use most of the options out there, just to make sure we are not bias towards a particular one.