How to build a server community?

name your unique features

Some things that might help are:

1. Take feedback from your players, end of the day if the majority of players are saying something is wrong then it should be changed.
2. Don't be afraid of getting rid of certain players if they are going to cause other players to leave, for example, if a player is constantly breaking the rules and they are obviously not there to play the server then it is better to remove them rather other players leaving since they have to deal with that one player.
3. Keep committed to the community, it is easy to give up if you have a dip in players but that is what can set you apart from other communities, some of the biggest servers on gmod are the ones who have stuck around for years through the issues and this is since people want to play at a community they know they can come back to in a year and they will still be there.
4. Keep doing things that keep your community fresh and interesting for players, if you are no different from the 100's of other servers in the same category then there is nothing to keep players committed to you, so keep pushing new unique features and content as much as you can.
5. The community should be for the players rather than for the money, if you are running a community just to make money chances are you will fail since a lot of these servers end up with pay-to-win mechanics which can put new players off the server when they see they need to spend money to have a chance.
6. Make decisions based on how your standard players will feel, for example when designing the rules rather than using wording like 'No RDM.' add a description explaining what RDM is and so on as for players who may not understand the terminology it will cause confusion and could lead to issues like them leaving.
7. Be prepared to spend a lot of time improving the community, whether this is time running things from a community side like ensuring rules are being enforced how you expect them to be or taking time to develop new content if you want the community to be a success you need to be able to commit the time and effort to make this happen.
8. Spend time on your server even if it is empty, lets be honest if you see a server on the list with 0 players chances are you will not join it, if it has 1 player it is unlikely but there is a chance, if there is 2 then there is more of a chance so to build up players do all you can to keep that number up even if it includes you and your staff committing as much time as they can to the server as this is the only way other players might be interested in joining.

Overall players attract players, so if you want to grow your player base you need to ensure the players that do join have a reason to stay if they don't stay the server will die off, if they do stay then there is an increased chance at new players. I am no expert when it comes to this stuff but I have been around gmod for long enough and seen enough communities come and go to have an understanding of common mistakes I see. It is going to be harder to build a community these days as gmod has less players than it once did but there is still enough that if you put in the work you can build a decent size community.

When starting AtomicRP, me and the owner imanoob2000 always had huge problems with the big kahuna, the first 10 players.

They could be your mom, your dad, your brother, it doesn't matter. You need to find ways to get large amounts of people on the server at certain times of the day. We always made sure 1 of us was on 24/7, but we'd recommend at least being on right before peak times for your timezone which for DarkRP is 9pm EST to 1am EST typically. But once you get to 10 players, you get right to the point where players looking on the server browser have the opportunity to see your server. What helped us pick up initially was the large group of friends we used to play DarkRP with on other servers, so if you have anyone like that we highly recommend getting them on!

When people do connect, show them human decency and do everything in your power to entertain and get them bought into your community. While that may seem like common sense, it's the 1% that makes the largest difference to people and makes them want to pick your community over others. It takes a lot of work to cater to every individual player, but it's what makes people remember your server over others.

It doesn't happen overnight, and there's going to be a lot of times where you're right on the edge and you'll want to give up. For the community I work with, it took us a full year before we really started to see any actual traction. If you really believe in your project, there is nothing that is going to stop you.

If you want to talk more about this or you have any other questions, feel free to drop me a DM on Discord, best of luck to you! (!Wilkers!#4231)

Hello my name is Josh, I go by the name of Cobalt in the GMOD Community, I've been playing GMOD and Other Games of the sort for the past 15 years, but developing servers and creating communites for the game for the last 11 years, behind me I have multiple servers and communities that have become successful amongst them are some of these names;

RealityRoleplay - Garrys Mod Serious Military Roleplay

IceFuse Networks - Garrys Mod Multiple Roleplay Servers, Star Wars CW Roleplay, PoliceRP and Sandbox Competitions and Star Wars The Old Republic Roleplay

Marshmallow Gaming - Star Wars CW Roleplay, Police RP and Sandbox Competitions and Star Wars The Old Republic Roleplay.

Horizion Gaming and Horizon Roleplay - Star Wars CW Roleplay, Police RP and Military Roleplay and Star Wars The Old Republic Roleplay.

OmegaRP, OmegaReborn and OmegaRedux - Star Wars CW Roleplay, Police RP, Military Roleplay, Sandbox Comeptitions, Dark RP and Star Wars The Old Republic Roleplay.

Pictures and Videos Can Be Provided for Proof.

Those are some of the servers in the last few years I've developed on my own or with the help of a few of my fellow staff members, When I have been asked to develope a server/community, I go through everything with the owner and create a customized list on what the owner would like to be implemented within the server in-game and externally e.g. Discord/TeamSpeak and Forums.

You give me a bugdet on what I can work on, If I do not have the addons that you would like from the hundreds I have collected over the last few years, It would be customized to your liking.

If you would like to talk to me about any ideas of servers or community set-ups you are currently wanting to do, Send me a message and I would be more that welcome to chat with you and your team about any ideas you have. Anyway in the mean time Happy Gaming

Josh

Cobalt#5346

Damn so many helpful people on here haha. I'm creating a DarkRP server for my first time and I was posting on steam to get feedback on somethings because I've never made a server and I have no friends to help me lol, but ppl are just mean on there and say don't bother nobody will join anyways xD. It may not be a crazy fully custom server but I've been putting sooo many hours and got lots of nice addons for it so I'm hoping I can even get it to a stage where I can make it public whilst still in development because right now I've still got things to tweak and figure out. Hard though coming back to game from playing it in 2009-2016, then stopping all these years and coming back things have changed lol. Gonna try and benefit from all of the comments in this thread aswell :D