Slip

Spectacularly Lethal Soldier
Mapper
I'll keep this short and sweet. There are only two other unusual trade servers in America, FP Unusual Trade and Vatican City. Both are filled to the brim at most times. Bringing a third unusual trade server to the trading community would be a blessing. Not only that, but more traffic to skial!
 

Slip

Spectacularly Lethal Soldier
Mapper
Wouldn't we have to enforce some kind of system in which only people who own unusuals could join?
I don't think so. It's up to Bottiger.
I'm not sure how much demand there is for this kind of server... for trading people just go to the most populated server anyway.
https://www.gametracker.com/search/tf2/?query=unusual+trade
Skial is a well known community, unlike those two empty trade servers. If a few people will join for unusual trade, many will follow. Once the roots are grounded for the server, it will always have users/players.
 

ly_dee

Epic Skial Regular
Contributor
There are only two other unusual trade servers in America, FP Unusual Trade and Vatican City. Both are filled to the brim at most times.
+1
I've always wanted an unusual trade server for skial for that same exact reason.
I have a few friends, one of them being known in the trading community and who could help fill up the server.

Wouldn't we have to enforce some kind of system in which only people who own unusuals could join?
That'd be dumb. What about people who don't have unusual hats but want to buy one?
 

Percilius

Totally Ordinary Human
Contributor
FF2 Balancer
+1
This is a great idea as people who want to trade unusuals have a hard time to find people on the normal skial servers. A server dedicated for trading unusuals would largely benefit those traders.
 

Luke

Legendary Skial King
Contributor
That'd be dumb. What about people who don't have unusual hats but want to buy one?

You're correct - I had presumed this would be for pure unusual trading.
However, why couldn't people just use the regular trade servers?
 

Maddo

Gaben's Own Aimbot
Contributor
What would an 'unusual' trading server have that is different to our trade server? apart from the name.
Partly ninja'd by luke.
 
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courtsnort♩♪♫♬

Banned
Contributor
What would an 'unusual' trading server have that is different to our trade server? apart from the name.
Partly ninja'd by luke.
If you've ever been on a Skial Trade server, you would know that over half of the slots are taken by people just there to mess around and have fun and don't have anything of value to trade. An unusual trade server would definitely fill with more higher tier traders. And as per Vatican and TF2-T, we could hire an additional couple trade moderators specifically for the unusual server to make sure slots are being taken by people who own unusuals or own enough in items to be in the market for unusuals. Moderate it a little bit to weed out beggars and scrap bankers, and you have a very good opportunity to boost Skial traffic and reputation
 
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Sargent¥

Australian Skial God
Contributor
What would an 'unusual' trading server have that is different to our trade server? apart from the name.
Partly ninja'd by luke.
From servers I've been in, there's no fighting or there's very large places where there's no fighting so people can show off their fancy hats and cosmetics, they act as a showcase server. If this does follow through, I'd like to help in any way possible, I miss my daily dose of unusual servers.

+1
 

Meowcenary

Gaben's Own Aimbot
Contributor
I don't think so. It's up to Bottiger.

Skial is a well known community, unlike those two empty trade servers. If a few people will join for unusual trade, many will follow. Once the roots are grounded for the server, it will always have users/players.

Skial being able to fill up anything because it has a big community is a common misconception. Having a big community helps, but it doesn't always fill up anything thrown at it.

One of the reasons Skial is so big is because Bottiger doesn't run dead maps and game modes. He runs what will stay populated while other server communities typically run dead game modes and maps few people play on now days causing them to have little player traffic.
 

BBQ Prophet

Rage-Inducing Forum Troll
In my opinion, having "unusual" in the server tags would be far more beneficial than changing any names or "intentions" of Trade servers. Not being an "unusual server" has never stopped anyone from trading unusuals there; nor has being a trade server (of any kind) forced anyone to trade at all nor should it. A trade server is a trade server.
Suggesting we hire more "moderators," presumably for 24/7 presence, to essentially police this proposed server is an incredibly far-fetched, uninformed, and generally bad idea. To think that this would help Skial's reputation is ludicruous. Dedicating extra manpower to essentially shun F2P's, beggars and skrubs (as absolutely annoying as they are) would make us look like a bunch of Nazis and would alienate a large amount of servergoers. I am very vocal about my opinions of the "poor" players being on Trade servers, but get real. If that many people truly can't stand to be around people who don't have effects on their hats, then Suggestions for rules against begging and series trading would be the proper course of action, not requesting an entirely new server with little to no factual reasoning behind it.
What is easy to forget about hosting servers is that players watching ads is the lifeblood of the operation. F2P's, beggars and skrubs watch ads too. It's not fair to lock them out just so a few players can have a "special" server where it's "okay" and "the intention" to circle-jerk each other about their fancy items.

tl;dr
-1
Add "unusual" to Trade servers' tags for ease of searching by those interested
and to a lesser degree,
make the Trade servers we already have better with Trade server-specific Rules, a la Jailbreak,
and possibly modify our player prioritization plugin that will kick players with "scrap to unusual", etc in their names/trades when the server gets full.
 

ly_dee

Epic Skial Regular
Contributor
An unusual trade server would be for people with high value items. I've been on trade US many times, it is almost impossible and it is not an effective server at all to trade unusual hats because most people trade low value items, there is literally no place for higher tier traders to make their voices heard or sell their expensive stuff because most people there are "poor", or like courtney said
over half of the slots are taken by people just there to mess around and have fun and don't have anything of value to trade.
and that's why i don't see those high tier traders on skial trade servers. It has nothing to do with not standing those poor people it's about effectiveness.
 

Bottiger

Administrator
We have tried making unusual servers before and they never took off.

I'm willing to give it a try, but it will be up to the people in this thread that want it to make it a success. You will probably have to sit in the server every day and get the word around, because I have no idea how else to bootstrap an unusual server, let alone a regular one now.

We have tried starting even new regular trade servers and they never filled. The 3 we have now were started when trading was less than a few months old. You might not have known this, but Trade US was the 2nd trade server ever to exist for TF2. The other 2 were also created very early.
 
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Bottiger

Administrator
If you are all willing to commit to this, the question then is, do we start a new server or do it on Trade NY? And what map do you want?
 

BBQ Prophet

Rage-Inducing Forum Troll
If you are all willing to commit to this, the question then is, do we start a new server or do it on Trade NY? And what map do you want?
I could even create a whole new map for the unusual server if we wanted to.
I still think adding "unusual" to the Trade servers' tags would have the desired effect with no disruption of the way thing are (just fine). Unless we're going to make trade-specific rules (please,) there's no way to dedicate the manpower to make any new server any different from the others; the title of "Unusual" won't keep the F2P's, beggars and skrubs away whatsoever.
But if we were going to convert one of the servers, it should definitely be NY. It's basically the epitome of what an effective Trade server isn't; a complete cesspool. No more Minecraft maps, please please please.