How to get more players now?

[maackey]

I just noticed that a newb was asking for a game to play. I suggested CA, then went off to do some other stuff. I came back and he was wondering what version would be good. He found the latest stable, but no-one was playing it, they were all playing the test build.

Imo we need more dedicated players, who don't develop the mod at all, instead of our dedicated mod makers/players. Stable should come out no more than once every couple months (perhaps seasonly releases?), and should be the one that is encouraged to be played. Test should really be for testing new stuff, not for playing.

[CarRepairer]

I'm so frustrated with people saying they can't close nubtron because they didn't see that I made the X appear on mouseover. I'm not going to blame anyone, I'll just change it to be always visible and be done with it.

I think we don't need lockcamera on by default, it's throwing lots of extra bandwidth for a feature that I imagine is used <1% of the time. I'll add a menu item to make it easily accessible.

Vote already went through to make volume bar hidden by default, that will be done shortly.

There's 3 problems solved.

[KaiserJ]

im not great at CA, often when i'm online the only CA games available have veteran CA players, or a clanstack... i rarely have a chance against them, so it's not really much of a learning experience...

and that's sort of a shitty excuse, i know, i should be learning to play the mod, but it's frustrating when a game seems like a foregone conclusion from the outset. i have the same feelings about certain battles of BA as well, so it's more me being selective about who i play against rather than what mod i pick.

so yes, i've been guilty recently of not playing enough CA.

also : the autodownloader never really worked for me on windows XP, it seems to now, but for a long time it was borky... there were many times i would have liked to play, but it would be a test version so i was unable. my suggestion... fewer releases, more of the releases should be marked "stable" and put onto jobjol. IDK, seems like a lot of the test releases have marginal (idk, i havent looked much recently tbh) changes in terms of balancing, perhaps its time to slow down a bit and do a BIG update, that might give people incentive to play, and make it easier on players who don't keep up to date with balance and unit changes etc.

how much content is still OTAIP? seems like less and less every time i look

i like CA.

[Pxtl]

Really? On XP and Vista I never had any trouble with SpringDownloader fetching test version. The only problem I get with SD is occaisionally it seems to get stuck invisible and I have to kill it from the task manager (or is that SpringLobby? Whatever, something does that).

[Licho]

Regarding stables - problem is stables are too infrequent.. Current is some 2 months old and nobody plays it - exactly because its old ..

I wont play it myself as i need to test latest features. And ince most players are devs almost nobody will be left to play stable

And regarding upload to jobjol - thats just the laziness of the person who makes stable. It used to upload automatically but its broken now and det has failed to fix it for 1+ years now.

Regarding downloaders .. it would be best to get some volunteer to finish package downloader already in springlobby - it should be able to get the mod extremely quickly..

I also have updated version of downloader in winter lobby, so if someone wants to update springdownloader with the new downloader feel free to do so.

[Licho]

KaiserJ - the more you play and lose, the better system recognizes that you are not good player yet, and you will be given better teammates..

Balancer on autohosts works like this..

So after some period of time you should reach 50% win rate.

[SirMaverick]

There could also be "day of the mod X" once per month - when all non mod X games are closed or limited to just 1 autohost.
But i think people would just find it annoying they cannot play BA DSD.

Most people know what they want to play. They don't want to be forced to play something else.
Same for ads. I don't think ingame ads will be popular.

[momfreeek]

Regarding stables - problem is stables are too infrequent.. Current is some 2 months old and nobody plays it - exactly because its old ..

I wont play it myself as i need to test latest features. And ince most players are devs almost nobody will be left to play stable

And regarding upload to jobjol - thats just the laziness of the person who makes stable. It used to upload automatically but its broken now and det has failed to fix it for 1+ years now.

..release a new stable version if the current one is too old.

IMO, springdownloader does not work in your favour for getting new players or even keeping old players as the more familiar, reliable route to market (upload to website) has been abandoned.

All mods (except BA) have a problem getting new players... but it seems a worse problem for CA is the habit of alienating both new and old players (through springdownloader requirement, inconsistent release schedules, user interface spam, advertising spam, etc).

ÔÇ£A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.ÔÇØ

[Caydr]

ÔÇ£A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.ÔÇØ

Spore.

[Otherside]

i personally think we dont need any of cars widgets on by default.

Seriously i dont know why some people are beating around the bush of why CA playerbase has dropped. Apart from not retaining all the old players (and some leaving because theres not enough new players to sustain a constant playerbase) all the new players are leaving because of the widget clutter (or at least the vast majority)

I think you need to stop justifying why a widget is on and just turn off the vast majority (people did fine before the mass of LUA) only something that is crucial should be kept on.Untill a new fully integrated GUI is implemented.

Ive reinstalled CA a few times and everytime i have there has been more stuff on screen at start than the last time i installed.

Id seriously just keep

LUPS
Custom formations
Defense Range widget

any other essentials (not stuff like autoretreat/nubtron/menu's etc and random shit that pops up in your screen) just because you can drag around the box as you please doesnt mean new people will do it. I get pissed off that everytime i start pretty much i have to drag one of cars widgets off the middle of my screen.

CA never really had problems with Spring Downloader/Release schedules

[Google_Frog]

I think you need to stop justifying why a widget is on and just turn off the vast majority (people did fine before the mass of LUA) only something that is crucial should be kept on.Untill a new fully integrated GUI is implemented.

Id seriously just keep

LUPS
Custom formations
Defense Range widget

I agree entirely although we should keep a few more than that. Widgets such as command insert and attack aoe are so unobtrusive they can be kept.

[Otherside]

yeh stuff like that with no obvious performance impact or visual clutter is fine (like custom formations).

[Pxtl]

@Otherside - I disagree that the menu needs to be removed. The whole point of the menu is to give players an easy way to enable all that other stuff. If you're going to hide the widgets that are important to the game, you need to give players a good way to get at them.

The problem with the menu is it gets a stupid screen-location by default.

Honestly, my problem with the current stock of widgets is not the number, but the locations (and the mouse-over-to-kill-nubtron). If the widgets were nicely squared away in the corners and nubtron had a big red X to start with, I don't think you'd hear half as many complaints.

That and some of them are rather opaque. A little set of icons with no descriptive text is useless to the user.

edit: look at Spliff's screenshot. Added all up, there are lots of games with a more cluttered GUI... the problem is that the GUI clutter in better GUIs doesn't appear in the damned middle of the screen.

[Regret]

I disagree that the menu needs to be removed. The whole point of the menu is to give players an easy way to enable all that other stuff. If you're going to hide the widgets that are important to the game, you need to give players a good way to get at them.

F11.

[SpliFF]

F11 is the worst interface concept. For a start you have to KNOW it's there (which means you aren't a n00b). For a second it has no analog in similar titles (usually ESC brings up hidden menus).

In some context the F9-F12 keys do dangerous things (and on many keyboards they're right next to the power and sleep buttons). When I'm trying to push random keys these tend to be the LAST I try.

Anyway, the main point is you're providing access to a hidden object via ANOTHER hidden object which is plainly terrible interface design (and this applies to all Spring mods, not just CA)

[Otherside]

Imo a small prompt on first start up mentioning the f11 list and proper naming and description of widgets is sufficient enough. Right now not all of the widgets are named/described properly this needs more standardisation. This should mean people will be able to play properly without having to access the list but being aware of the options available to them.

Like for example

CA_Gameplay_Autoskirm , Description : Free micro

CA_Visual_LUPS , Description : Eye Sex

CA_Beginners_Newbtron , Description : tutorial for noobs

etc etc

if the F11 list fails really badly maybe there can be an alternative list made with LUA ? . Which with a keystroke other than F11 brings out a complete list of the LUA with descriptions with a good scrollable menu which closes when you hit escape.

[momfreeek]

To a nub, widgets amount to a bunch of options that affect lots of differnent things in the game (gfx/interface/unit behaviour).

To work properly, these options (widgets) should be behind an obvious menu (escape -> options) with proper categorisation and descriptions (like every other game's options). User widgets and anything that doesn't fit elsewehere, you can stick in the 'custom widgets' category.

[Licho]

Yeah thats the plan - plan is to hide menu and let it display on Escape or F10..

Likeways most widgets/settings will be hidden and translated into plain text .. like display->"show ghosted structures" checkbox instead of forcing user to look through widget lists..

[zwzsg]

* widget spam/cluttered UI

Totally. The first time you run CA, you're assaulted by a dozen windows all over the place, all claiming to be here only to help you, but eventually, I have to hurriedly find how to close them so I can start playing. I'm not saying that you should remove widgets, just, as SpliFF hinted, make it so the GUI has fewer element the first time you run it. As a player, I'd like to be able to worry about widgets later, at my own pace, not to have them forced upon me. I bet a considerable amount of noob don't know about F11 and therefore can't even close them, I pity them.

* low performance of vanila CA compared to other mods

That's true. When the game start, and there is only two commander on the map, the framerate in CA unless you've a very powerful computer. Telling people a couple hundred dollar for new PC part is cheap on the forum is not the way to solve this issue. You've got a gadget and a widget profiler, use it!!

* springdownloader is not installed by default anymore - so there is no easy way to get CA now using downloader. Springlobby has package based downloader ready, but its not enabled/missing GUI. BD promised it about 7 months ago, but he still wont have time to do it in the near future.

SpringDownloader and the CA mission editor thing were probably meant to make it easier for newb, but I'm afraid it doesn't always work that way. I'm not that newbish, but I'm often confused by SpringDownloader, and wouldn't even know how to run a mission (though I haven't really tried). I also distrust having SpringDownloader running and uploading god know what files, and prefer simpler method of going to site, downloading file, that way at least I can know what I do.

cartoon style

I like it, and don't even see why you call it cartoony. It's just having properly textured unit that are easy to make out. It's good, and keep it. Grey goo doesn't make an RTS more enticing.

At any given point, we have 3-4 people who used the S44 installer and arrived here with the expectation of S44, but are playing BA.

I read a Pure review that basically ended by saying buying Pure was just your starting point to get into BA-DSD.

Imo a small prompt on first start up mentioning the f11 list

Wrong. Not on startup. There is already way too much info on startup.

[SirMaverick]

No one knows F11? Maybe they should bring back the Eyes widget, which was supplied with Spring. Very annoying, but everyone knew from start that F11 existed.
EDIT: Even if they know, it's not an excuse for having an widget spam/cluttered UI.

ESC brings up Spring's main menu (resign, save, give everything, quit). If you override this, where will it move? What would be a better key for game ending actions?