Default Mod syndrome harming spring

[Otherside]

Lol teut BA is hardly the second coming of OTA (but ill keep BA flaming to a minimum)

Blizzard hardly failed SC Became more popular and is still played online competitively and has led to blizzard having a monopoly of the online gaming rts world (and with good reason) hardly fail...

Sure supreme com didnt live up to OTA but then again after 10 years you would expect supreme com to be better than it was.

Also the sad fact that BA is the top mod by default if Spring had a full restart (without the same players) lets say 500 new players with no prior contact and all mods/games would be available BA would not be the most played mod guaranteed. Its just been top for to long by default that people give up and go with the flow and cba to try something new the reason it dethroned AA was simply because it was the same game with minor changes to make it playable without some of the imbalances.

Its the same as DSD being the most played map most people hate it but its the most played map. Most people hate speedmetal and its one of the most played maps.

[Neddie]

Well, Teut, as Sak mentioned, BA is not much like OTA. We have closer approximations to TA on this engine, and they are less popular. It is not a matter, thus, of actual OTA mystique, but of OTA heritage married to playability.

But as usual, Hunter is the voice I agree the most with. His and Sak's statements are both reasonable, as is Teut's addendum upon the position of "better" than. We have no reason to argue over what is best upon Spring, or what current condition is responsible for the shortcomings we perceive. There is no benefit in the erection of "syndromes" or the indication of blame with pointing digits.

I'm moving into a position where I can bring more people into contact with the engine, hopefully, so I will further my efforts to spread Spring as Spring - BA is a necessary element of that as Hunter noted. I cannot in good faith advertise illegal content, but I can focus on the engine rather than the few legal games we have. I think we should all, if we are interested in the future of the engine and the content run upon it, promote it in our own way. I just ask that you do your best to be kind and comport yourself with a modicum of grace while doing so.

I know that last paragraph may seem off-topic, but it is my proposed alternative to this sort of thread. These discussions so often degenerate into a conflict of unsatisfied egos; why not direct our resources into something considerably more productive?

Addendum; CA is not our focus, Otherside. Teut was not addressing the points made by myself, Sak or Hunterw but within the implications made by your initial post, his statements are relevant.

[Otherside]

i brought people in contact with the engine and ive stopped doing it because i dont want them to be disappointed by one the most played mod by two the community and ofc springs user friendliness problem

[Teutooni]

BA is not much like OTA

Well, hence I said BA took everything worth preserving in OTA and improved it. OTA mystique is something more than unit stats. Anyway, my post's fanboi tone was meant to be slightly sarcastic. I think we can all agree SC/blizzard didn't fail.

[Warlord Zsinj]

Does anyone remember my posts regarding the lobby?

I agree that BA is one of the most important things in Spring at the moment, but also something that is strangling out smaller mods. It's a love/hate relationship.

As other people have said, I disagree with the concept of splitting off the lobby. It's something we have considered with IW. I think it's a bad idea, not just because I make it difficult for the current Spring fanbase to play IW (having to open up a new lobby to play IW), but because it's bad for Spring (as any new userbase that I bring in now becomes wholly IW-focused, and I don't contribute to the general Spring player base at all).

However, the current lobby situation (and this appears to be changing slowly with the new lobby work ongoing) puts new mods in a difficult situation, where they have to compete with the behemoth that is BA (and rightly deserved, it's taken a game that's had 10 years worth of balance review and then made it tighter). In this light moving to a private server becomes more of a potential option - if still a bad thing for everyone (imo).

My main suggestions for dealing with this was to allow new mods to filter their new users into a mod-focused lobby within the current lobby framwork. That is, a new IW user that downloads from our IW page is presented with a 'play IW online!' screen or icon that loads up the lobby (preferably IW-skinned), sends users into #swiw, and automatically filters out all games other then IW. Players can later on open up a menu box allowing them to unfilter all other mods.

This combines the ability to have a single, focused community (one of Spring's greatest strengths), while giving smaller mods the ability to develop self-perpetuating communities without being strangled out by BA.

[Pressure Line]

oh god WZ. yesplz.

seriously, lobby developers, shut up and do it.

[SwiftSpear]

BA is simple to use, reasonably balanced, runs on pretty much everyone's machines, and is a reasonably faithful carryover of the gameplay that TA was known for.

Most people join spring because they are told its "TA in full 3D". I can appreciate the desire to move away from the shadow of the collosus here, but that's not really realistic. I really hate to do this to modders, because I know you guys are working your asses off and it's really not an issue at all of intelligence or hard work, but the reality is, until the modding scene can produce a mod that stands on it's own, attracts new users in reasonable numbers, and keeps users playing, we're going to continue to be the project that "remakes TA in full 3D". The ball is in no one's court but the game developers here. No one else can make the community, or gaming scene at large, take you seriously.

We've already reached our limit point of which we can reasonably promote game developers within the community. Ya, I'd like to have a few more constructive and positive advertising methods, but at current I'd be willing to bet pretty much no new spring player has played the game for more than 2 weeks before someone has promoted or pushed them towards some mod or another. The ferocity of the old boy's club community group in spring in promoting mod/game content boarders on straight out harassment a huge chunk of the time. The reality is that we need to start developing projects that hold their own in the indie gaming scenes, and we need projects that are basically better than TA was in pretty much every way. Not an easy task. Greater internal advertising or more robust community maneuvering will only further shrink the community.

[Sleksa]

Easy to say you need to make something better than BA to replace it. There is something in OTA that makes it stand out. The balance in complexity, pace (potentially exponential economy growth, but not unmanagably fast or anything) and scale , along with several awesome gameplay features like physics, reclaiming and a large variety of unit types (2 land types, surface sea, sub, air, hover, amphib) each with their own builders and factories.

Yes. When people say that BA feels like ota, the main complaint usually is that "lol defenders dont shoot ground" or "lol unit costs", which gets the whole thing wrong.

Ota is something more than just defenderforests and flash/samson mix. The complexity of the game can become mindboggling, a tank carcass left in a random spot can later on become crucial in blocking a HLT's LOS into enemy's guardian being built behind it.

These are things BA is preserving, and has even improved the balance - not talking about unit stats, but the scale and pace etc.

Yes, its not just copypasteing stats from OTA, but preserving the feeling and fun players had in OTA in ba

The reality is that we need to start developing projects that hold their own in the indie gaming scenes, and we need projects that are basically better than TA was in pretty much every way. Not an easy task. Greater internal advertising or more robust community maneuvering will only further shrink the community.
BA is simple to use, reasonably balanced, runs on pretty much everyone's machines, and is a reasonably faithful carryover of the gameplay that TA was known for.

Most people join spring because they are told its "TA in full 3D". I can appreciate the desire to move away from the shadow of the collosus here, but that's not really realistic. I really hate to do this to modders, because I know you guys are working your asses off and it's really not an issue at all of intelligence or hard work, but the reality is, until the modding scene can produce a mod that stands on it's own, attracts new users in reasonable numbers, and keeps users playing, we're going to continue to be the project that "remakes TA in full 3D". The ball is in no one's court but the game developers here. No one else can make the community, or gaming scene at large, take you seriously.

+1

Blaming BA from stealing your players is like blaming CS because crysis didnt build a equally huge playerbase

And what comes to the BA not being worthy to be the "unofficial" flagship of spring, BA is the most played , easily available and easy to get to (what button maek flash??), what it lacks is "full use of the engine" and pretty graphics, so if your mod can get all those things done better, it should naturally become the #1 mod ~~

[KDR_11k]

Most people play Spring for the TA feeling.

I think that's self-reinforcing, if you didn't play TA it's nearly impossible to figure a *A mod out so the only people who remain are those who have experience with TA.

As for other mods trying to break into the "market", they make the mistake of being all about competitive play when 90% of the userbase isn't good enough to handle that. They got their competitiveness from memorizing the TA gameplay and would have to relearn everything with a change. Making a mod that tries to capture the competitive players while ignoring or possibly even demonizing ("We have no porc, yay!") weaker players is a recipe for desaster.

[Pressure Line]

agreed 100% Swift, thats why i came here in the first place, and Ive played a lot more BA in the past 6 months than I have anything else (for anyone doubting my sincerity, ive been playing TA since i bought it shortly after it was released, and i still have the box, so nyaa.)

An saying that, im all for giving people the tools to make it so that they can screen 'their' noobs from a gamelist full of BA games. the people asking for draconian measures (lets have a no *A server! lets just have a no *A month!) are being petty and unrealistic.

/*im going to use S44 as the example mod here*/

a lobby game-filter that can be preset to filter out non-S44 games (but can be unset) and autojoins the #s44 channel instead of #main doesnt seem unreasonable imo. All that is really needed is a *chance* for non-BA packages to get a start, without being instantly drowned in BA. And either succeed or fail on their OWN merits as a game, without the inevitable comparisons to BA.

tl;dr:I like BA, I play BA, I have nothing against BA. Just make it so that other games have a chance to stand on their own two feet (and make it easy to do).

[AF]

Thankyou for utterly ripping off my primary mod syndrome moniker.

I think youll find a slew of blogposts and threads started by me on this subject already.

[clumsy_culhane]

Most people play Spring for the TA feeling.

I think that's self-reinforcing, if you didn't play TA it's nearly impossible to figure a *A mod out so the only people who remain are those who have experience with TA.

My first game was a BA team game on DSD, and Spring was basically my first RTS game. I think the main problem for noobs (and im trying not to sound too harsh here) is that they dont do a lot of work for themselves. IE: Noob: How do i get mods and maps for spring?

I mean, most of the time they havnt even looked around (googled) or even thought a bit, they just start blabbering to anyone in #main.

[Pressure Line]

the have-it-easies. these people aren't stupid, but have always had everything handed to them on a plate (im not strictly speaking about material things) they have no information gathering skills, its not that they are too stupid to look in the #main MOTD, it just never occured to them to even look.

in saying that, spring is a bit different to any commercial game. it has no 'default' installation, a commercial game comes with a huge swathe of default content. look at Dawn of War, for example. It comes with a good sized set of units and a few dozen multiplayer environments, allowing someone who has only ever played on a PS2 to install it, start it up, and now with auto-configurers pretty much standard it should run fine without having to tweak any settings, hop onto the multiplayer server and play a game, without having to use anything that didnt come with the original disc (disregarding any patches), and, without having to use their brain.

Spring on the other hand requires that you choose what you want, something many people are unaccustomed to. Hop onto jobjol and load up the mods page, or the maps page, and look at the massive lists of things to download. for someone who knows nothing about Spring, but wants to try it out because they have seen an ad, or someone at school/work told them about it, this is confusing, 'what maps do i download?' 'look at all these mods, which one do people play?'

the installer addresses some of this, providing an 'easy way out' for people to get up and running. the only problem is, a total Spring newbie doesnt know what anything is, and, if they are anything like me, they will look at filesizes, grab the smalled sized map pack, and the smallest mod (iirc thats KP), log into the lobby, and see 20 BA games. so they download BA, but it doesnt work, oops, need OTAcontent! download that, fire it up again, join a 4v4 on dsd, realise they dont have the map, download that, join the game again, get ingame, try to get a handle on the controls, build a few things, get kicked, swear a little, leave the lobby and uninstall.

eh, im sure i had a point, but ive forgotten what it was now

[Teutooni]

There is much truth in Zsinj's posts. Even though BA isn't actively oppressing other mods anymore, the sheer size of the playerbase is doing it passively. Optional filtering (configured for each mod) could really improve things in the long run. Even if all the people intrested in IW/KP/Gundam/Pure/Evo/whatever won't give a shit about *A, they would make Spring more widely known and recognized. Needless to say, a good word and increased coverage would mean more players for every mod.

In other words: +1.

[koshi]

seriously, lobby developers, shut up and do it.

good thing that the preset filter has been possible for months now in SpringLobby, so i don't have to shut up and can repeat myself, yay

[Pressure Line]

seriously, lobby developers, shut up and do it.

good thing that the preset filter has been possible for months now in SpringLobby, so i don't have to shut up and can repeat myself, yay

sweet :D i really ought to try SL

[clumsy_culhane]

seriously, lobby developers, shut up and do it.

good thing that the preset filter has been possible for months now in SpringLobby, so i don't have to shut up and can repeat myself, yay

sweet :D i really ought to try SL

Tascleint Beta has this too, jsut add a filter for Balanced Annihiliation and bam! lobby is clean...

[Pressure Line]

can it be pre-defined on install to filter?

[Otherside]

the world does not revolve around you AF

[Hoi]

There is much truth in Zsinj's posts. Even though BA isn't actively oppressing other mods anymore, the sheer size of the playerbase is doing it passively. Optional filtering (configured for each mod) could really improve things in the long run. Even if all the people intrested in IW/KP/Gundam/Pure/Evo/whatever won't give a shit about *A, they would make Spring more widely known and recognized. Needless to say, a good word and increased coverage would mean more players for every mod.

In other words: +1.

What if there are no games/ not enough games? the player will leave and not play spring again.