I'm reading a lot of cool ideas here, but I think I'm missing something. There's talk about what to do for potential new community members, but shouldn't we focus on getting people to play on SpA to start with? Currently there are not so many people to offer these incentives...
A lot of players filter through the servers everyday, and don't return, not because they're not satisfied, they just might not have an incentive to comeback to our paticular server. Returning players are more valuable, all good filling the server up with a load of randoms for one night, but we need players who will return, and bonus points if they join the community, and have other regulars on steam. Typically they'll be learning the game, or be already quite skilled at it, and a higher skill level server brings in more dedicated tf2 players, and I think we've really neglected this.
During the f2p rush the servers were full of new one time only players and there was little teamwork, and anyone without a reserve slot had trouble joining, or if they were already on, they would dropped if someone with a slot joined. Loads of players I remember from when I first started tf2 just sort of disappeared after that, our skilled playerbase mainly consists of community members whenever they're on, or a few who's stuck around. Comparing servers now to before, we've lost our "come to SpecialAttack and get your arse kicked" appeal