To All Those Who Said Spring Is Dieing/Losing Players

[SwiftSpear]

I think we'll break 400, or at least come very close to it, sometime in the the summer. It's currently at 260, and it has absolutely no business being at 260 at noon on a monday.

[AF]

In the United Kingdom it is currently Half term, although for most people it is now ending or about to end.

As a result an influx of kiddies over the previous week was to be expected.

[Gota]

Ladder games fail!
They fail because you need to go register ia website,than add a password in the lobby and only than host..
If ladder is to become known/played by newer plaers it needs to be outomated...
YOu log into the lobby and you press host ladder than thats it..
Till that is achieved ladder will be for experianced players.

[el_matarife]

The point of the shot was to show we can still get up to the levels we used to, regardless of what some people have been saying.

Yeah you're right, "Spring is dying" is a dumb statement, but I still maintain that both "Spring is dying" and "Spring is growing" are both dumb statements until we can back them up with long term stats.

[SwiftSpear]

It's been pretty steady for as long as I can remember... I'd like it to be growing more.

[LordMatt]

There was, of course, much ballyhooing a couple months back about how spring was dying, which is why I made the thread.

[Google_Frog]

We could have secrets Units you´ve got to unlock, things you have to collect (500 solars)...oh, and i summon the mighty Smoth +5, AFterall Eightballdonutshaphed Worlds should be a good idea...

This would fail, it shouldn't matter how long you've played but how much skill you have. People would grind until they unlocked all the units and where's the fun in that? If a game needs unlockables to increase it's length so you keep playing it's not worth playing.

[Saktoth]

I still think that for long lasting spring survival we need to have mod-defineable lobby filters which can only be turned off via a menu. Otherwise smaller mods will never be able to establish self-perpetuating communities.

Ive said this before, ill say it again.

Until you have a self-perpetuating community, players will log in and see a blank lobby. They'll probably quit and never play again if they cant find a game. If there are other mods to play though, you've attracted a player to playing Spring multiplayer, even if you've failed to attract them to IW multiplayer (Build a strong singleplayer experience though, and they'll surely still play that). If they are starting spring regularly and playing other mods you've retained a possible future IW player that you simply would have lost otherwise.

Until you have a self-perpetuating community, the other mods are only helping you. The only problem crops up after you have a stable multiplayer playerbase, and people have the option of playing either mod, and decide they actually like something else more. The onus on you, then, is just to make a really exceptional game.

IW has a lot of potential for attracting new players to spring due to the 'Star Wars' thing, but its vets and oldtimers which will form the core of your playerbase (hardcore 24/7 gamers are the most likely to kickstart a self-perpetuating community), will be the most valuable to you for testing and feedback, and will set the agenda and tactics that the other players use. Having a ready-built community of veterans is a big advantage to you, try not to isolate them. Embrace it, it has a lot to offer you.

Im not saying you dont have every right to make your own lobby client with its own skin that shows only IW games (Actually, id suggest it, if you want a polished looking game), but if people can tick which mods they want displayed, you can bet people will be ticking 'BA only' >_>.

[AF]

According to your theory there should be no games from any mods at all whatsoever in the lobby right now. Please explain where the XTA and the AA games of the first year of spring came from?

[smoth]

Things have gotten a good bit better with less trolling and mod griefing. the disappearance of elements like smug have helped IMO. However, having the gundam players join the gundam channel by default will give them a place to talk. obviously they can see main etc but having them in main they cannot talk about gundam.

This is a problem, if they started talking gundam in main most of the anti-animu fuckwits would get pissy or bust their balls. NOT something I want to happen. Also, I am sure most of you do not want the anime crowd in main.

[Gota]

Well you cant have a channel opening for each mod you install.
What if a plyer installs all available mods?lol he will have tons of open channels.

The best solution is if a lobby will show a list of specified channels and allow to join them using your mouse and not commands.
Most noobs dont join other hannels but main...If you have a god list of channels that isnt too long and the channel names are descriptive people will join them.

Not GD but Gundam.Not ee but expand and exterminate.

[Forboding Angel]

Saktoth, I understand the spirit of what you are saying, however something we both have to deal with is the fact that people don't like waiting x amount of time for a game.

Thankfully in CA's case this isn't too much of an issue, but for others of us it is.

You can have an exceptional game and still not have it get played a ton, CA being a case in point here. At some point there is nothing you can do.

One of my problems is the fact of system requirements. I break my back to have things in Evolution as optimized as possible, but people playing on 5 year old machines just don't get it.

Last night a guy named Dario wanted to play Evolution but he was on a 1ghz cpu with a GF4. That just isn't going to cut it.

On the other hand you and I target completely different audiences. I target newbies and outside communities (for example, gamereplays.org), whereas you target in many cases the current spring playerbase (if there are outside sources I wouldn't know).

Essentially, there is a point to where you can't do anything more than you are already doing, and that doesn't mean you are doing a bad job.

[Forboding Angel]

Something else I wanted to mention.

ATM we have no way possible of separating ourselves from spring proper, we try (oh believe me, we try) but we have a standard lobby that sucks balls. We can't filter people with our games into our game specific channels, changing the gui ingame is a massive undertaking thanks to certain elements being damn near impossible to work with...

Many of you haven't seen PURE yet as it will be in the new version of spring. IMO it sets the bar much higher than it is currently (whether you like argh or not). You will see what I mean when start up spring with it.

Much of the same could be said for Gundam when it is next released, too bad no one here ever seems to notice.

However Evolution has been breaking out of hardcodedness for a long time and it's not stopping anytime soon.

[PicassoCT]

How about a Auto-Matchmaker? You create your personal IPreferMap&Modlist&Peoplnumber and the Lobby automatically searches for Persons with similar lists- notifying you if you could get a Game together (and even making it with Lichos)- no longer spaming main - you could even get a graph at what times most people with similar interests are on.

PS: You can never get enough Hatemails from the Programmys...

[DemO]

This discussion ended weeks ago in another thread. Last I checked nothing was agreed upon and the consensus of the developers was "Doesn't matter what you think, if we, the developers want to make it this way, we can implement it."

So why not just go and make it this way. You are right after all. We can't stop you with words.

I stick to what I said back then anyway, the same as Saktoth for all intents and purposes.

[PicassoCT]

First the Devs are Humans... so we at least can annoy with a eteranl Brainstorming the hell out of them..

This Post is made by PicassoCT who is currently on your ignorelist.

Hey, now, what about the Freedom of Speach... this is a Developerdictatorship- after all we ever did for you, the rant, the trolling, the bugreports to the paperbin... i mean it is not that we just request stuff like little kids who can´t get enough... or Addicts..
..
Guess for free doesen´t include for free service and ongoing development of everything the Tinfoilheads in the Thrashbagthreads request

[smoth]

I really don't think you guys want weeaboo in main

[AF]

Every single released lobby except TASClient has a point and click channel list as far as I am aware..

[Sertse]

IIRC... (but I'm enjoying Linux (which always had it) too much to try it), the latest versions of SpringLobby now read your autojoin channel and filter preferences from an editable text config file, that can be placed in the Spring directory. As opposed to the old method of using registry

The intention was to make Spring portable, rather than anything about custom lobbies specifically.

However an implication is that it's possible to have custom lobby of sorts, if you include that personalised config file as part of the your download package.

As it was never intended for this it's a bit hackish/several limitations... the SL devs might have more to say since I haven't tested it.

[AF]

AFLobby has had that for the last year and a half, Im surprised SL only added it recently