Spring RTS Engine

http://www.darkstars.co.uk/2007/leaky-bucket-syndrome/

And indeed we're leaking potential long-term users like a teapot under a waterfall!

I like how you complain about discussing the problem endlessly in a post discussing the problem.

it's because everybody knows how to solve the problem but nobody can be bothered to put the effort into fixing it

it's far more fun to discuss it on forums or make some cool new mod feature or something

Politics is slowly killing Spring and will continue to slowly kill it until we are left with simply a message board with 5-10 people yelling at each other.

Trolling doesn't help either. Unfortunately, our mods have balls of jelly and can't stomach banning the people who are obviously fucking trolls without agonizing over "forum policy" and "rules violations" and "official notifications" and the like.

Felix the Cat wrote:Politics is slowly killing Spring and will continue to slowly kill it until we are left with simply a message board with 5-10 people yelling at each other.

Trolling doesn't help either. Unfortunately, our mods have balls of jelly and can't stomach banning the people who are obviously fucking trolls without agonizing over "forum policy" and "rules violations" and "official notifications" and the like.

The worst trolls are people like smoth, AF, Fang, Forboding Angel - they're not deliberately trolling but they're often hostile and drive people away. No mod wants to do anything about them because they're content creators so obviously we should make as many allowances as possible. Also, they're all friends with the mods.

BTW, Isaac has been banned for the past month or so.

Felix the Cat wrote:Politics is slowly killing Spring and will continue to slowly kill it until we are left with simply a message board with 5-10 people yelling at each other.

Trolling doesn't help either. Unfortunately, our mods have balls of jelly and can't stomach banning the people who are obviously fucking trolls without agonizing over "forum policy" and "rules violations" and "official notifications" and the like.

Felix the cat for nazi moderation

ahem, I wasn't talking about the forums and moderation.

tombom wrote: The worst trolls are people like smoth, AF, Fang, Forboding Angel - they're not deliberately trolling but they're often hostile and drive people away. No mod wants to do anything about them because they're content creators so obviously we should make as many allowances as possible. Also, they're all friends with the mods.

BTW, Isaac has been banned for the past month or so.

incoming shitstorm! hit the deck!

AF wrote:ahem, I wasn't talking about the forums and moderation.

What were you talking about anyways?

As far as I can tell you stated the obvious, i.e. lots of people download Spring but not many keep playing it.

You only hinted at your views as to why this is, and gave no proposed methods to increase retention rate. You did make sure to complain about lots of other peoples' solutions though!

Hence why we ended up talking about forums and moderation - since you provided very little framework for discussion, we're now discussion one person's opinion (mine), since I'm the only one that has presented a problem and proposed solution.

What do you think the problems are, and what do you propose we do about them?

Tombom, I warned you elsewhere.
Felix, Felony 6.
Sleksa, Misdemeanor 3.

i agree with af here

keeping wat we get is enuff

i know a few people who have tried spring and are put off by the lack of userfriendliness and the fact that the packaged mod isnt played :s and have to download files and stuff

if the inbuilt downloader in the client worked with mods and maps like it used to we would retain people imo

and also userfriendliness is a key to keeping peeps :p

neddiedrow wrote:Tombom, I warned you elsewhere.
Felix, Felony 6.
Sleksa, Misdemeanor 3.

Fine then, heil moderators, you are all perfect :3

It's arguments like this that new people to read, see how hostile the community is, and then run away screaming.

I agree with tombom, there are some people that exercise their freedoms because the modders won't stop them, oh they make stuff don't punish them.

A similar incident happened a few months ago, I was on a server in gmod for a while, I was a great builder in gmod, but as you know, I just couldn't get along with them, and how they put there long term players over the new players, when the claimed to be equally moderating. They've even banned someone who helped them, for cursing on the server, even though when the admins, or respected players do it, they get no punishment.

Case closed.

The problem is anybody coming to spring as a complete ota noob faces discouragement on so many sides:

- He/She needs to get the game to work. Since offline single player mode is only accesible via extra downloads and tweaks, he can only check if the game is working if he has the all the network things worked out too. That means to be able to even see what the game can do, you need to have put in all the effort for it to work perfectly. There is no middle road, no twiddling vs bots offline to see how the game works. They probably even need to download a new map and mod, just to try out the game! A lot of people aren't willing to put all that effort into a game they haven't seen working, especially if they get an error somewhere (spring being the way it is, that happens often enough). This also means that the only viable way to learn how to play is through the lobby, where our friend faces the next problem...


- He now has to learn how to play in an enviroment where a big portion of other players are pros. Not pros in the "OMG rANDY kills all" sense, but good enough to beat the shit outta random j. noob. If he joined a teamgame, his team will give him hell, possibly even kicking him. We should make games where there is an upper limit to skill, not a lower one. Games for n00bs, who can play there without the fear of being pummeled into a soggy heap. Smurfs could mess with that kind of thing, but if this was considered seriously, we could make account experience IP-based, so that you could only be a noob to the system once.

The CA online help thingy is definitely a step in the good direction, I'd lobby to have CA included with the spring download just for that. A lobby client with good ais and an easy to use (offline) skirmish mode would also be a very useful addition to the main download. Also, more maps! I don't think random downloaders will not download spring because of an additional 50-100 megs worth of maps and mods. They will stop playing though if they see that they cannot access any games in the lobby without additional fuss.

rcdraco wrote:I agree with tombom, there are some people that exercise their freedoms because the modders won't stop them, oh they make stuff don't punish them.

That's not true. Everyone was equally not punished.

tombom wrote:The worst trolls are people like smoth, AF, Fang, Forboding Angel - they're not deliberately trolling but they're often hostile and drive people away.

I dislike these (occasional) outbursts as much as you do, however they're not really the cause for people to leave. If someone decides to turn his back on Srping because of an internet argument, then he (or she) seriously needs to grow some balls.
I can't remember many who left Spring behind because of trolling.

Anyway, the reason why people are leaving is most of the time job/uni/what ever interfering, lack of interest or new shiny games rather than trolling. In my opinion.

How about dropping this for once and all because:

Skid wrote:It's arguments like this that new people to read, see how hostile the community is, and then run away screaming.

It's not scary but ridiculous. Like what shit makes people to become mad at each other.



I'm not really for a constant flow of new guys to compensate for the loss when you can expect 8 out of 10 to be no-brainers who can't even spell their name right.

lol felix makes a comment about trolls and tombom obliges with a lovely example of trolling. Round of applause gents.

tombom wrote:The worst trolls are people like smoth, AF, Fang, Forboding Angel - they're not deliberately trolling but they're often hostile and drive people away. No mod wants to do anything about them because they're content creators so obviously we should make as many allowances as possible. Also, they're all friends with the mods.

BTW, Isaac has been banned for the past month or so.

All smoth tries to do is help people, but he has gotten torn limb from limb at nearly every turn for over 2 years.

Af has his moments, but they are generally geared for getting soemthing done.

Fang, in a way the same as smoth. EE is not BA, therefore he should be flamed.

And me... I have tried to help wherever I can. My personal list of accomplishments on spring:

87+ maps (not all are on UF)
I am one of 2 people to make a fully functional FINISHED SM3 map (mufdvr would be the other)
9 Climates created and released to the community (via the program they run in, trust me, L3dt trial is phail)
Created an entire cursor set (public domain)
Put together and arranged all of the sounds for GD and URC in EE
Written the most complete tutorial with detailed information on mapping (when I started, documentation was pretty much non existent)
Taken part in various projects that provide 0 benefit to me personally
Put together 1 TA based mod
Working on a completely 100% copyright free content mod which will be released into public domain




Yeah, I'm a real asshole.

In the meantime, if you weren't so busy trying to knock me off whatever pedestal you propped me up on in your mind, you would find that I am actually a very nice and helpful person. The funny thing is, I think of the avatar tombom and draw a blank, because I can't remember why I should have a problem with you, besides the fact that you're a destructive troll, which makes me inherently dislike you.

You can choose 1 of 2 options:

1. You can continue to troll myself, smoth, and fang. Until we eventually complete our goals and leave (at which point, concerning content creation, you've lost a sizable chunk of possibility of anything new being introduced into spring). <--- Editing myself: That is worded very badly, and at face value does not say what I mean. In other words, you lose a big chunk of extra content creation for spring.

2. You can be constructive and add good thought to discussions without sniping at people and causing unnecessary strife. Become active in helping create new content, if only in the realm of suggestions, because whether you want to believe it or not, ideas, imagination, and suggestions are the main force behind content creation.

Also, something to note, when making something new, af, fang, smoth, and I are generally workhorses because we see the end possibility, and that's what makes it fun for us. We enjoy making stuff for other people to use freely, hell, that's one of the main reasons behind my mod. is so that when I'm done, any joe-blow that wants to use anything I've created in making his own project can without fear of reprisal.

Say what you will, we get things done, while you only talk about it and bitch.

Shut up.

Really.

Nobody asked you about the size of your e-peen.

You tend to come off as arrogant because of the "I make stuff therefore I'm better than you" posts and that sort of thing.

Double post!

AF, if you could answer my previous post about precisely defining what the problems are and proposed solutions, it would really lend some direction to this potentially useful thread.