Opinion about Spring

[Gota]

there is a notion ATM,held by many,that Spring will only get players if it remains very uncompetitive,that competitive players are a small minority and do not have the power to draw in other players or be the element which will sustain and increase the stream of players.
Competitiveness is treated like something to be feared of,like something that will keep players out.
Some think that there is no correlation between competitiveness and getting more players and that making steps to encourage competitiveness will change nothing.

Let's put aside the fact that spring is always in beta and not newbie friendly(TBH most other RTS games which are at all interesting or have any depth are not very newbie friendly either,aside from the fact they have singleplayer).

For years now the spring community has had a constant player number with there being less and less competitive players and even though spring has made improvements in many areas we still see no fruits(yes a lot is still missing).

in my opinion the lack of a competitive spirit is killing spring,or more accurately,keeping the players out.
I am primarily talking to the people who have spring by the balls and are the key figures.
Most of you,or maybe all,do not want or do not care about competitiveness but try and open your minds(really try,maybe for arguments of your own) to the possibility that encouraging competitive play and striving towards making spring and the spring community more competitive might improve things rather than the other way around,after all,more competitive players means more casual games as well.

Spring has been floating around adding in features without any regard to how it might influence the community i think we need to consider it now,seriously,and bring this to the attention of everyone.

Competitive players tend to play more,explore the game more and generate cool replays and games that others enjoy spectating or mimicking.
Competitive players know other competitive players and will tell them about the game they enjoy playing.
Word of mouth is the strongest way of advertising spring we have or ever had(aside from the occasional trailer.

In short,we need more competitive players and we need to actively strive towards getting more,not by advertising,which obviously is hard and nobody cares abut it and we have been unable to do much of it in the past,but by doing immediate steps that can be done in the present,do not take much effort and MIGHT,not guaranteed to,bring results.

I am biased,yes.
I like smaller and more competitive games but that does not mean that encouraging competitive playing will not bring benefits to the casual gamers in Spring,I think it will.

Let's try and be positive for just a moment and think about why this might be true instead of trying to debunk it.

[Das Bruce]

Spring is the engine not the game.

[Gota]

Spring is the engine not the game.

I only wrote spring because I meant ALL the games using it.
Since all are using the same server(aside from PURE) and are effectively the same community It's easiest to just call it all Spring.

[knorke]

imo only ba, ca and xta games can sometimes be called "competive"

[Nemo]

I've been balancing/designing S44 with competitive play in mind from the start, just haven't spent much time doing anything to specifically draw them in - one plan was a cash-prize tourney somehow limited to new players. A lot of our plans have been somewhat waiting for a better stable release than our last one (over a year ago now).

[knorke]

cash prizes wont help...it just feels fishy too.
i have not played s44 in a while (and never did that much) but iam sorry to say the gameplay did not feel very solid to me. maybe just because every player was noob?
but in the games i could never see any tactics, just blobs of units shooting at each other from distances so that you would only see icons and then some side would slowly die

Let's put aside the fact that spring is always in beta and not newbie friendly

when people say "spring is not newbie friendly" the many buildoptions of *a mods are only the second think. first thing is how with a few clicks you can end up with unplayable lag, interface that can not be used or similiar...

competive play:
the current gamesetup is getting old, i want games where not all players of team start together but something like this: http://classic.battle.net/images/battle ... /4/xlt.jpg
everytime its one startbox north, one south, rush forward, make a line, push enemy back. startpos spread across map would make teamgames more interessting.

[Gota]

cash prizes wont help...it just feels fishy too.
i have not played s44 in a while (and never did that much) but iam sorry to say the gameplay did not feel very solid to me. maybe just because every player was noob?
but in the games i could never see any tactics, just blobs of units shooting at each other from distances so that you would only see icons and then some side would slowly die

Let's put aside the fact that spring is always in beta and not newbie friendly

when people say "spring is not newbie friendly" the many buildoptions of *a mods are only the second think. first thing is how with a few clicks you can end up with unplayable lag, interface that can not be used or similiar...

competive play:
the current gamesetup is getting old, i want games where not all players of team start together but something like this: http://classic.battle.net/images/battle ... /4/xlt.jpg
everytime its one startbox north, one south, rush forward, make a line, push enemy back. startpos spread across map would make teamgames more interessting.

Lets not get into mod/game criticism,everyone has his own tastes.
You are not the problem,this is old for you cause youv been playing a lot and IMO every game feels the same cause most players are at a low level of play.
the issue is new players not people who have been playing this for years.

Perhaps we can divide the communities.
This is a big change but What im talking about is completely cutting off every game.
Each game has its own installer,its own website.
Projects can still use the same lobbies and tools but when you connect to play,say BA,you open the BA lobby and join as if a BA restricted server where only BA games are hosted and obviously the only people you'll find there are BA players.
Same with every game using Spring.
They can all use the same server just the communities will be stronger divided.
Perhaps the fact there is this soup is exactly the thing that is stopping the communities from growing?
This will force games to go and advertise themselves and will raise the minimum quality of a project,not to mention simplify things for newbies.
A project having less players will force its members to search for new ones more actively.
This is a bit of an artificial kinda thing but it might do the trick in terms of every project standing on his own legs and becoming player oriented as oppose to development oriented when half of the player base are devs or map makers.

[knorke]

as i said in the chat already, thats stupid.
like i mostly play ca and xta but if there is a gundam or kernel panic game i join that too.
now if i was isolated from the gundam/kp games, i could not play them and the newb hosting them would have no one to play with.

A new S44 player will not idle all day long in an empty lobby until there is somebody to play with. But if he can play some BA in the meantime he might stay?

And most problems of newer players are the same among all games (camera, omg i am stuck in fps mode, lolz there is stuff on my screen, whats this cross in the middle and where is my mousepointer?) so it makes no sense to split the players.


the real problem is that 2 new players with no help have a hard time starting a game (no matter what mod)
- playerID <-> teamID
- start positions
- not playing on a map that is superlarge and thus you never find each other
- they might use different lobbies without knowing. so they can not even tell each other where to find the ready button!

[knorke]

This will force games to go and advertise themselves and will raise the minimum quality of a project,not to mention simplify things for newbies.
A project having less players will force its members to search for new ones more actively.

projects can and do search for new players in the community.
do you think it would have been possible to play something like this http://springrts.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?f=43&t=22881 otherwise?

[Jazcash]

I think one big problem is people are developing things which don't really change Spring's actual being all that much. You know, a few tweaks here and and there aren't really going to shift the playerbase all that much. And as nice as these small new features are, most people would prefer to see some meaningful changes.

Things like a profile system, proper clan integrated support, more meaningful statistics and achievements to keep people playing and aiming for targets.

I think one of the biggest things that needs to be focused on if people want more players is the newb-friendlyness of the game. People should only have to download an installer, install it and be able to start playing right away. When you've got unofficial download sites hosting mazes of content which is hard to shift through if you're new, is pretty confusing.

It's like:

• Find the right Spring download for system and download it
• Open up the installer and click yes to everything
• Whoops I clicked next to fast and now I can't see what that option was that I should have probably had a look at
• Hmm, what's this? Where's the actual game? Spring.exe doesn't do a lot (No maps or mods yet)
• Hmm, what's this SpringLobby thing?
• Oh, it's a lobby client? Error error update update lots of confusing buttons
• Oh I need maps and mods to play?
• Which mod is best? Which maps do I need?
• So, what do I click now?
• Finally gets into a game
• Waits for about 10 minutes
• Gets ingame - Woah, wtf, there's like a billion options...
• Get trash talked cause you're a newb
• Get kicked cause you're a newb or not doing a lot cause you dunno what to do
• Finally get another game
• Get pwned cause you're a newb
• Leave Spring

[forest_devil]

as a still relatively new player. biggest off putting thing about spring is the player base.

70% of us are trolling arseholes that rage at newbies for being newbies tbh i still have days were i want to give up on it entirely.

[Petah]

I gave up trying to be competitive because the really good players are always better then the average-good players, and most competitive players are really good.

Its no fun getting you ass womped in 5 mins a pissing around for another 20 waiting for them to finish you off.

[malric]

as a still relatively new player. biggest off putting thing about spring is the player base.

70% of us are trolling arseholes that rage at newbies for being newbies tbh i still have days were i want to give up on it entirely.

Still, I think it depends on mod. In my experience XTA and NOTA are more newbie friendly than BA...

A single player campaign would help a lot. Then people would have time/know units/buildings before going to an aggressive multi-player game.

[Sucky_Lord]

I think introducing any form of win/loss rank system will deter people from playing games with anyone better than them, which means everyone will end up playing with others their level. This will completely destroy all player improvement, because there is nothing to be learnt from others at your skill level.

Instead we need some really decent maps for 2v2 and 3v3, which will hopefully encourage people to play this gametype more often.

In truth i think it would be disappointing to see the Spring community grow too much. At the moment everyone knows everyone else, which i find is the best way to enjoy games.

[SirArtturi]

This kind of disucussion again... I thought we have gone through this already. We could move from words to action next and now!

It's all about accessibility/userfriendliness and aesthethics to make something noob friendly. After that comes playability and competitiveness. The later mentioned point I think is the strongest side of spring and reason why im still here... But all the rest we are dragging behind. Especially considering the accessibility and userfriendliness. Lack of singleplayer and all the lobbymess are just one examples. I've already talked about this...

I think this pretty much summarizes my accessibility point:

It's like:

• Find the right Spring download for system and download it
• Open up the installer and click yes to everything
• Whoops I clicked next to fast and now I can't see what that option was that I should have probably had a look at
• Hmm, what's this? Where's the actual game? Spring.exe doesn't do a lot (No maps or mods yet)
• Hmm, what's this SpringLobby thing?
• Oh, it's a lobby client? Error error update update lots of confusing buttons
• Oh I need maps and mods to play?
• Which mod is best? Which maps do I need?
• So, what do I click now?
• Finally gets into a game
• Waits for about 10 minutes
• Gets ingame - Woah, wtf, there's like a billion options...
• Get trash talked cause you're a newb
• Get kicked cause you're a newb or not doing a lot cause you dunno what to do
• Finally get another game
• Get pwned cause you're a newb
• Leave Spring

[Satirik]

maybe you should stop talking and actually do something for spring ... when we had a working mission editor, who tried to make a campaign ? no one ? who tried to make a simple mission ? almost no body ? etc etc etc

[Gota]

I asked from its former creators to patch it to work,i am very interested in making a solid campaign or at least missions since a campaign also needs more features to bind all the missions together.
Maybe it will eventually be patched.

[JohannesH]

Things like a profile system, proper clan integrated support, more meaningful statistics and achievements to keep people playing and aiming for targets.

Or a finished ladder site!!



But what would help most, or at least of things without huge effort, would be to make nice looking informative sites for the games themselves. With easily working installer, guide for getting started, guide for playing... Announcement for a coming tourney easily visible, maybe someone to commentate on the games on livestream...
Yes, many games have sites already but many still depend on a crappy wiki page on this site.


But what exactly is competitive play... Other than trying to win and trying to improve, but that is what probably most people do to some extent?

[Sucky_Lord]

It's like:

• Find the right Spring download for system and download it
• Open up the installer and click yes to everything
• Whoops I clicked next to fast and now I can't see what that option was that I should have probably had a look at
• Hmm, what's this? Where's the actual game? Spring.exe doesn't do a lot (No maps or mods yet)
• Hmm, what's this SpringLobby thing?
• Oh, it's a lobby client? Error error update update lots of confusing buttons
• Oh I need maps and mods to play?
• Which mod is best? Which maps do I need?
• So, what do I click now?
• Finally gets into a game
• Waits for about 10 minutes
• Gets ingame - Woah, wtf, there's like a billion options...
• Get trash talked cause you're a newb
• Get kicked cause you're a newb or not doing a lot cause you dunno what to do
• Finally get another game
• Get pwned cause you're a newb
• Leave Spring

Well i can only see this as a good thing. Its like a selection process, and if you're pro enough, you pass the test

[Gota]

A proper profile system with achievments,ranking and combat smurfing!!!