To All Those Who Said Spring Is Dieing/Losing Players

[Warlord Zsinj]

Sorry Saktoth, I didn't realise you had replied.

I disagree with what you are saying, but first I'll correct a factual error:

...but if people can tick which mods they want displayed, you can bet people will be ticking 'BA only' >_>.

You can already tick which mods you want displayed using the built-in mod filter in TASClient 0.36. Click the little arrow under the mod list.

What I am asking is that when someone downloads IW from the IW website, and runs the TASClient that we package with our download, they are just opening a standard client, but with the filter set to 'display only IW games', and the players auto-join our personal mod channel.

I strongly disagree with your belief that until we develop a self-perpetuating community, the big mods are only helping me. One simply needs to look at the distribution of played mods in the lobby. We've had a number of decent non *A mods around for a while now (nanoblobs, kernel panic, Gundam, s44, E&E, etc, etc), and yet by a vast majority - a strangling majority, the proportion of games played favours BA. Even more if you consider all the *A mods under a vaguely similar umbrella (as being seperate from new-content, new-IP start-from-scratch userbase mods).

If I am a new player, and I download IW for the first time, and log on to the small, fledgling IW community, I am likely to see about a dozen or so people in the channel, and maybe 2-3 games, probably already going. In that situation, I'd probably come in, say hello, and see about getting a game. I'm in a specific channel geared towards IW already (I don't have to go and find it for myself), so everyone there is likely to be able to help me with any questions.

Compare this with the experience of a newbie joining #main, and seeing 2-3 running IW games, and 40 BA games on the go. I'd wager they're going to be far more interested in what BA is and why it is so much more popular then IW. And if they ask IW related questions in #main, if they get any response at all (that doesn't involve goatse), it'll be along the lines of 'play BA' or 'play CA'.

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)

If we can't get filtering, this is likely exactly what we'll do.

But, to be honest, I think that it'd be bad for Spring if we did that. As you say, we have a good potential to bring a lot of people into the Spring fold. For us, that's a coincidental benefit. For other mods it's an essential benefit. If we need to go elsewhere in order to avoid the choking effect of the dominant mod, then Spring itself suffers. I think one of the greatest strengths of Spring is that I can log onto the exact same server using the exact same client as everyone else, and I can see if there are any BA, IW, S44 or PURE games going all in the same window. I think this is brilliant, and I think it ought to be defended at all costs. What I'm proposing does not stop this from happening, but it does let us gain immediate access and control over people that we have brought into Spring without dropping them in the middle of #main and 80% BA/95% TA derivate gamelist.

[AF]

tbh while my profiles idea was all good and well, a toggle that hides games you don't have installed that's turned on by default should solve the vast majority of issues, especially for when games are downloaded from games sites and not the collective spring install.

I'd also like to implement more ways of viewing battles but I need those png side icons and a png mod logo in the archives to extract and display.

For example I wanted MSN Zone style views for the battle list as an alternative, as well as a nice grouping system where you'd have boxes representing games and then their battles inside them, or just a tiled view, with the choice for the user to move between views as they wished..

[Tired]

Yay - something to gripe about to kill time. I've seen 400+ in the lobby, but only twice - two years ago.

Who cares if Spring dies or not? It WILL die - every game does. Spring's already held on for a fair time by pc game reckoning, and the gameplay hasn't enjoyed significant improvement for as long as I've been playing. Core engine hasn't improved that I've noticed, either, LUA implementation notwithstanding. Few less synch errors, few more ID errors; same number of crashes overall. Nope, I don't have hard data to back that up - someone who's played more than I have feel free to contest me.

No one here really WANTS Spring to expand much beyond where it is right now, or else we'd expand it. Some of us might wish to go to sleep one night, wake up in the morning and find an extra hundred players online to add some variety and get a little play for the scrap mods, but no one wants to do anything about it.

Besides, the moderators would only chase them all off inside a week anyway.

Spring has one functional mod attraction, maybe 7 popular maps, and a lot of odds and ends for people who're bored after playing 1,000 games of BADSD. Add in frequent crashes and general instability, rank and pc performance variables that differ radically from one host to another, a game with a steep enough learning curve that casual gamers are discouraged - and "hard core" players get their arses handed to them starting out, an often unfriendly community defined more by individual personalities than the set of standards that the UA theoretically represents, and, compared to the only similar game on the market, inferior graphics and completely inferior sound, and why would anyone new even want to give the game a chance?

Half of what we've got now are people who reminisced about OTA, or whose PCs aren't up to anything with greater demands; the former get griped at, and the latter will become less common over time due to the nature of pc life cycles.

GRIPE OVER!

[Scratch]

Tired's right its the fault of the community. Not a lack of effort but short sightedness and inability to see beyond an engineering standpoint what makes Spring fail.

In one regard I believe Tired is wrong though because Spring isn't from a company its from an online community constantly trying to improve itself and will probably never die as we are all seeing new players come in every day.

In the same way spring succeeds like this it fails the noobs by not providing single player missions to prep them, instead feeding them to wolves online. After noobs survive the initial pounding some use fighting instinct and really do succeed even against vets with much more ingame time.

Shortly thereafter they leave because there is nothing else to fight for; the amount of skill it takes to win in spring has no payoff and so is not a worthy investment of time.

The reason noobs leave is because there is no reason to stay. What we have is a wrestling match uncoordinated and free form which essentially proves nothing when someone wins, unless they are exceptionally good, then news of their ability spreads fast.

The only way to keep players in this game in my opinion is a properly built ranking system. This is because rank system = community = people staying longer.

[SwiftSpear]

Tired's right its the fault of the community. Not a lack of effort but short sightedness and inability to see beyond an engineering standpoint what makes Spring fail.

In one regard I believe Tired is wrong though because Spring isn't from a company its from an online community constantly trying to improve itself and will probably never die as we are all seeing new players come in every day.

In the same way spring succeeds like this it fails the noobs by not providing single player missions to prep them, instead feeding them to wolves online. After noobs survive the initial pounding some use fighting instinct and really do succeed even against vets with much more ingame time.

Shortly thereafter they leave because there is nothing else to fight for; the amount of skill it takes to win in spring has no payoff and so is not a worthy investment of time.

The reason noobs leave is because there is no reason to stay. What we have is a wrestling match uncoordinated and free form which essentially proves nothing when someone wins, unless they are exceptionally good, then news of their ability spreads fast.

The only way to keep players in this game in my opinion is a properly built ranking system. This is because rank system = community = people staying longer.

There's maby 2 games where the "amount of skill required to master them" actually equates to a real monetary payoff. Every other game ever you just get bragging rights, there's still always someone who has put in an obscene amount of time to be the best. For all games, the reason to stay is fun, nothing else. Hell, even if you're going to go to the highest monetarily rewarded game in existence, starcraft, the reality is, that your still always going to be one of the players who never gets paid to play the game. The guys at the top make a healthy salary, but the other half a billion players get nothing, and they really can't compete with the fulltime players with superhuman reaction speeds and hand motion.

If a game has competitive depth, people will master it for competitive play, simply because that mastery is fun to people like that. Monetary competition is simply a by product of such a game reaching a popularity level where competitive play can be monetarily funded.

[malric]

For all games, the reason to stay is fun, nothing else.

I agree to this completly. And fun is obtained also by not having the same experience again and again (for me this means Starcraft, please don't flame, it's a personal opinion). This is why I love spring - with each game you can have something else happening. Of course, this will not happen each game, but still it is often enough I think.

I play for 2 years and I half and I can't say I'm bored at all - ok, I have also other things to do in life, so I play from time to time, not 8 h per day. In this time the game changed and there were many funny situations, unexpected turns in games, nice people in the community, bad people in the community etc.

There has to be improvements like single player or less crashes but the devs are great anyway, in this version there are few desyns, lua is a great leap forward etc. If anything I would say that devs would need more recognition than other palyers :). (maybe we should put statues of the devs in maps )

[Gota]

If yo want to cater to noobs.
Make nub frindly lobby with outo downloads of content directly through the lobby.
Make a Tutorial that shows how to play.
Support more ways to compete for different level players and make a profile about each player to asses his skill and allow outo match making for ranekd games.
Also kill smurfing and make peopel stick to their account.
Single player campaign.
reward good play more(hard to do since spring is free).
The last part is important cause a donkey needs his carot on a stick to keep going.

Alos stop confusing noobs with the installer. Just install all mods and maps by default.
Would mean more people trying different mods as well..and maps 2.


And also just a general care for newbies.
Like not leaving crazy bugs that totaly ruin gameplay and that you need to look in the forums for advice to solve.
Like the game speed bug and the decals.
These are things that directly hit the newbies and hit them hard since they dont know not only how to play but also where to find help for the problems they encounter.

[AF]

Code: Select all

[list]
[*]list items 1
[*]list item 2
[*]etc
[*]Epic win
[/list]

• list items 1
• list item 2
• etc
• Epic win

[Gota]

. (maybe we should put statues of the devs in maps )

+1
Tobi statue feature.non reclaimable and should shine at ll times with a white light.

[Scratch]

You guys just aren't seeing it. All these improvements only make the game more noob friendly which isn't bad but ignore the community it still has.

Cavedog had Boneyards, which was one method of motivating players to play towards a goal. There was no money involved. I didn't play on Boneyards much at all but it did seem pretty cool.

So after people beat TA, they could go online and fight for planets. Now give players something to defend, eg. an online ego penis, and they will come back to defend their territory.

Guess I'm saying we need to expand spring beyond servers. We have a simple client and multiplayer servers but like the Zone it is quite one dimensional in that respect.

[Gota]

If you want stronger ties withon the community you need to make stuff that are not directly game connected.
For example.
If eac hplayer has an avatar in the lobby.
You get a profile and you can ut detials about your self.
Avatar,nickname,a tune,preffered maps,mods,maybe eve nother details.
It seems funny but those things will work and peopel will feel more conected to each other.
You make thingsmore personaly and u give people more characteristics to be rememebred for.

By creating stronger community ties you also motivate poeple to play in a more personal and organized manner since its always funner to play vs and beat someone you know well.

Boneyard is cool but Is very complicated.
Id say We could have prizes if only peopel would get a bit mroe innovative.
For example someone wins a tourney so he gets some control over how the lobby/game experiance is for a short amount of time.
Plus his victory is celebrated with announcments..
Or allow you to make all outo hosts to host a map that you like for say a few hours.
Thre are many possiblesolutions and ways to get people more motivated to play and win and have community ties.

[PicassoCT]

Boneyard! And nothing else.. Stay with Spring or we will lose the Intergalactic War going on..

[Teutooni]

The thrill of battle is all the prize I need to keep playing - The initial contact, the first glimpse of the enemies strategy. The defining moment of the game where your superior skill/strat forces him to counteract with every resource available, and finally the apex when your units break through, ready to annihilate his economy. For me, victory is nothing compared to the battle itself.

A prize system (like the current ladder cup system) only appeals to certain, competitive people.

Don't get me wrong, I do prefer to win, very much so, but for me, it's how you win that matters. Not what you get out of a victory.

[AF]

Gota, your critique is all aimed at tasclient, even though tasclient is the most unlikely to implement any ideas put forward.

What your doing is trying to sell abortion to anti abortion campaigners, bottles of milk to the lactose intolerant, or condoms to the vatican.

[aegis]

after the next release of spring, we can have official dedicated hosts for ladder and such, making it easier for the players -- they don't need to worry about reporting or even registering on the ladder site

being able to track all of the games and users perfectly would allow for fun things -- we could do the same thing as boneyards

[Gota]

The thrill of battle is all the prize I need to keep playing - The initial contact, the first glimpse of the enemies strategy. The defining moment of the game where your superior skill/strat forces him to counteract with every resource available, and finally the apex when your units break through, ready to annihilate his economy. For me, victory is nothing compared to the battle itself.

A prize system (like the current ladder cup system) only appeals to certain, competitive people.

Don't get me wrong, I do prefer to win, very much so, but for me, it's how you win that matters. Not what you get out of a victory.

Everyone likes to make smart and nice moves.Nothing new about that.
If you play vs a good player than to win you would have to doosmething extraordinary...

[Teutooni]

Everyone likes to make smart and nice moves.Nothing new about that.
If you play vs a good player than to win you would have to doosmething extraordinary...

Uhhh, yeah.. so what extraordinary can you do, if not smart and nice moves?

reward good play more(hard to do since spring is free).
The last part is important cause a donkey needs his carot on a stick to keep going.

For all games, the reason to stay is fun, nothing else.

I was basically saying what SwiftSpear said, that we don't need prizes to keep playing.

[Gota]

Prizes are just something extra.
You not tlaking about competitive play Teu.
Your talking about casual play and team games.
You can play poker just for fun but isnt it much more exciting to play it for money?
The thrill of battle? arent you being just a bit melodramatic?
When there is a prize,when you have something to lose,doesnt matter how small it is it already makes you play better,try harder.
In competetive play you find the best plays,the best strategies and most interesting gameplay if the game itself allows for it.

[Teutooni]

You not tlaking about competitive play Teu.

A prize system (like the current ladder cup system) only appeals to certain, competitive people.

The thrill of battle is all the prize I need to keep playing

That's right, I'm not a very competitive player. And yes, it was a bit melodramatic - To give the point some flavour.

[Sertse]

Some of the views expressed really dismays me tbh...I don't want to constantly feel "ashamed" of the way I play this game.

Ok, you like your competitive play whatever. I don't. Don't force it at my expense thanks.

I'm all for improving ladder etc to make it more attractive/ mean more; but continue to make it opt in.