Trade Forum?

[fernplant]

I'm not sure about the traffic load the forums get but what about adding a few pages dedicated to trades?

[torankusu]

I support this. xP

Even though we don't have many people posting right now, maybe this could get the players more involved. I think we've always had a couple players come in and want to trade, but I've been seeing it a lot more lately. Maybe we could refer them to a trading section on the forum to get more traffic.

If we ever start up a trade server, I'd definitely be in there, haha.

Edit: I didn't see there was a thread about starting a trade forum already. It's been inactive for a while, though.

[Plasma]

If there's a demand for it, I would definitely be willing to create additional forums or whatever you guys need to trade. A trade server is also an option in the future, it really depends on 1) demand for it, 2) money.

Also, I have unfortunately never bothered to trade, so I'm not sure what you guys need or how it would work. If you have ideas, I'd be happy to read them.

[Cirno]

Trade servers... rotten hives of spam and villainy.

[torankusu]

Trade servers... rotten hives of spam and villainy.

Yeah, I have been frequenting them lately. I have never used the mute function on so many people in one server until I started trading and it's too bad they don't have more admins available. Speaking of which, if we ever got a trade server, as I like to trade away my duplicate items, I would be happy to hang around in it. I server hop between trade servers right now, but if we started one, it'd be my main server. xP

Also, I have unfortunately never bothered to trade, so I'm not sure what you guys need or how it would work. If you have ideas, I'd be happy to read them.

I'm not sure if you meant for a server or for the forums, but here are some things I've seen from trade servers (I don't go to trade forums, but I think it's as easy as posting what you want or want to sell and people getting in touch with you):

• There's a plugin that's used to allow players to see each other's backpacks (inventories) provided that their inventory and profile are not set to private and they leave the option to disable HTML MOTD unchecked (this is under Advanced Options, if you're wondering). I believe this is it.
• Some trade servers disable seeing the voice commands ("Spy!", "MEDIC!", etc.) as they'll be pushing advertisements out of the chat and it would cause people to spam them more so they're seen.
• They're usually 24/7 of a small map.
• The two servers that I visit the most, Ozzy Furocity and Reddit's trade server, use trade_plaza and trade_minecraft_b38 respectively. I like both, but I've been hanging around the minecraft one a little more this last week because they have the Headless Horseman spawning every 10 minutes or so and I've been trying to get more of his haunted metal, heh. Also, I think it's cool that it changes things up every 10 minutes so that everyone's fighting a boss.
• On maps like trade_plaza it's easier to spawn camp because there's only one way in and out of spawn. Ozzy Furocity added some plugin that has an orb that floats over the door and it deals dmg to enemies who get within a certain range. You can still get camped, but at least you don't have a sentry sitting in right in front of the door and campers outside are easily dealt with if you have an uber. I thought it was neat and it would be a cool idea if we ever end up using a map where there's only one exit that easily campable.
  
• Instant respawn is on
• Alltalk is on and you can read what the dead are saying so that being dead doesn't affect communication during trades.
• Servers I go to have messages that pop up periodically to not spam.
• Haven't seen this on a trade server yet, but I'd like to suggest giving players the option to voteban/kick/mute in case an admin isn't around (and I think this should be available in our other two servers, too).

Hmm, that's all I could think of for now.

[fernplant]

In terms of adding a Trade section to the forums it could promote registration (aside from being able to use sprays in game) and it could encourage players new to tf2 to play more on the server with people they trade with.