How do we save this game?

[Stabwound]

Everyone knows that Subspace in general is dying a slow and painful death. How are we going to fix that? It really is something that needs to be done sooner than later, because at this point we still have a somewhat decent playerbase. In Trench Wars, we have a bunch of people putting effort into leagues, the websites, etc but all this is doing is trying to maintain the playerbase of mouldy 5+ year players and it's not exactly going to bring anyone new into the game. Nothing is really going on to bring in and keep new players.

 

There is a list of new players to TW here: http://twd.trenchwars.org/newplayers By new players, it means names that have no existing altnick (matching IP or MID) so they could possibly be from other zones, and obviously it hasn't been updated in a few weeks. The thing is, that's a pretty ridiculous turn over rate for new players. We don't have a shortage of new players coming into the game- that's 100 in 4-5 days, but very few of those become repeat customers. This may say more about TW than anything else, but I'm sure other zones probably have a similar scenario going on. Our core playerbase consists mostly of long term players, and very few newer players.

 

Are there any ongoing advertising projects? It would be awesome if we could get SS on the front page of digg, although that's probably not likely to happen. How can we save this game from dying out? Is it even possible these days, when we have Call of Duty, World of Warcraft, etc? I'm worried that TW populations will drop low enough that PriitK will pull the plug on the server, and regardless of your opinion of the zone, that would probably be a death blow to the game.

 

Or does anyone even care anymore?

[»Xog]

A lot has been tried and pretty much everything has failed...We have assessed what the problems are, more specifically with TW..

 

It's that there's no sense of hierarchy, everyone is pretty much the same, nobody gets angry when they lose a duel, nor do they care when they win. The enthusiasm within the game is basically completely gone. I believe a fix is to not have so many competitions and leagues so that there is just one or two major events that everyone looks forward to. Being able to boast 1 title from several events I believe has loosened up the competition and enthusiasm. The trick is to remove these competitions/events/leagues without losing population while everyone gets their mojo back. It's a sense of balance and should be done very carefully.

 

TWDD, TWSD, TWJD, TWBD, TWLD, TWLS, TWLJ, TWLB, TWELD, TWELJ, TWELS, TWDTD, TWDTJ, TWDTB, TWHT, TWT, BWC

 

that's a shitload of leagues, man.

 

Another thing is..

 

If I were to log in right now, what is there to do? I like basing..and pub is full of idiots. I like organized and balanced teams - its a real game and requires teamwork. I usually wind up playing in pub for a while, playing a game of elim, baseelim, then i log off.. very very boring. During that time I have probably seen about 10 lines of text outside of pub. (nobody talks to eachother.. what would be the point in talking to other people if you're here to play a game, right? .. competition is gone, so no reason to communicate)

 

If ?go base is advertised, nobody will show, because there's 120+ people in 3 squads that BD and they are only looking to BD because they want to win TWLB, and people also won't show because they're doing other things like .. being in ?go afk or talking on squad chat or exploring other zones out of boredom.

 

 

Basing is dead. Nobody plays ?go base anymore because there's so many other things to do, like TWBD. TWBD is dominated by only a select few squads, all of which have denied my access to (except anti-scrub, which hasn't seen a TWD game in months.. and i'll be going back with a-s if they get their act together). The competition is scarce. Those few squads are only going to allow those that are in other BD squads to join, it's on its final whim to be blunt. TWLB will be completely dead after this season. All the other basers have quit, become inactive or joined those walled-off squads that wont accept new players and will soon die out completely. TWDD and TWJD are in a similar boat. There's too much interest in all the other things. It was great having so many viable leagues and things to play in, but it is a double bladed sword and is reducing activity as a whole. If you're given 500 apples and 1,000 baskets, well... 500 people are going to have empty baskets.

Edited August 25, 2010 by Xog

[Dav]

The issue is simply a lack of development. The game is currently stuck in a downward spiral.

 

The old guard of this game have been disappearing as real life kicks in and the time to play and work on the game disappears. The lack of development has left subspace miles behind the modern games that draw in the new players and developers.

 

The way we save the game is simple. One of the next gen clients need completion, zones need to be brought up to date to make the most of it and the community needs to re center and reorganize to keep moving forward.

 

The problem is the spiral is now so deep there are very few left capable of actually doing this.

[muse_[13]_bliss]

I'd make a great owner

Dav can vouch for me

[Stabwound]

The issue is simply a lack of development. The game is currently stuck in a downward spiral.

 

The old guard of this game have been disappearing as real life kicks in and the time to play and work on the game disappears. The lack of development has left subspace miles behind the modern games that draw in the new players and developers.

 

The way we save the game is simple. One of the next gen clients need completion, zones need to be brought up to date to make the most of it and the community needs to re center and reorganize to keep moving forward.

 

The problem is the spiral is now so deep there are very few left capable of actually doing this.

Yes, you're completely right on that. If Continuum were still being updated, it would be a huge benefit. Call me a pessimist, but I don't see any of the alternate Subspace clients ever being completed and surpassing Continuum.

 

It's a real shame that Priitk stopped development on Continuum. He only added a few Continuum-unique things before giving up.

[Sass]

Grow continuum: you need more $ than it's worth.

[sefron999]

Thread caught my eye lol...

 

not intending to hit and run troll this MB... but I had a thought based on what I read through out this post... it's nothing massive on the delusion front as sometimes random light bulb notions tend to be.haha

anyway

As much in my surprise that this game even still existed, I would truly hate to see it vanish completely (even in the sense of a slow decay)

the thought did occur that this game is actually pretty comparable to some of the browser based games that have been cropping over the past couple of years, actually much better in a lot of ways since it still does not chew through massive amounts of memory,cpu and hard drive usage like a lot of the more graphic heavy mmorpgs available today. So the answer seems kind of clear in a sense assuming that this has not been attempted to great length in the past... I am referring to outright stealing the same tactics other smaller browser based games employ to drive numbers up as they do. Not to say that they have tremendous numbers but still I am sure any slight increase would be a plus and since invariably the game is as small and simple to use as it is, it could pretty much circulate itself on it's own momentum and easily stand against titles like evony and dark orbit if put to the test, and not to mention that it's a hell of a lot more satisfying anyway blowing complete strangers in to varying chunks as opposed to endlessly waiting for the construction of varied items that may or may not assist you in not being eaten by twenty other much larger players as can be found in the above mentioned games..

the thing that really made me think pushing the Numbers up to be possible is how very simple it would be if one in lets say five current supporting players made variations on advert banners or utilized any number of message spreading opportunity's available on the net today based on tactics already being used by other company's... even if it didn't work to satisfaction it wouldn’t hurt to attempt it I think.

 

 

Anyway if this is a horse that's already been beaten into some kind of semi gelatinous goo I apologize for the time wasting ramblings above lol .

Much and many thanks for reading through it just the same

[Aileron]

First an foremost, there is an attitude in many that Subspace *will* die. This is justified by the fact that it is by gaming standards extremely old. However, Subspace *can* survive, and it is ironic that WoW has been referenced, because its predecessor Diablo II is a model of success. What made it work was that *because* it didn't have many high-tech features, it was simple to play, and easy on the bandwidth. Things got more complicated when players made them complicated, and that easiness on the bandwidth allowed for more players/bots in the same place. Continuum has lasted so long because it is extremely simply by design and because being designed for the 56k modem, it is super-fast on modern communications equipment. It what other game can there be a 40 vs 40 match up which doesn't cause system instability? So this attitude needs to be fixed, and it needs to be fixed before forward progress can be made.

 

Secondly, as Brain said, we need to develop our developers. Our senior people need to take on apprentices to both cut down on their workload and to train the next generation. Prittk is the worst in this category. He needs a young padawan in the wings ready to take over more than anybody. I swear he masochistically enjoys the pain of being the single pillar holding up Continuum, but it doesn't *have* to be that way.

 

 

There are also some things that could help, which we don't necessarily *need*:

 

We could use a 'standardized' setting to replace SVS. Something that says "yes each zone has their own settings, but this is normal". SVS frankly is crap left over from the development phases.

 

There also needs to be an effort to mentor and protect newbies from the predatory trolls. In Continuum's case, this is not so much a matter or protecting their W/L ratio, but rather we should be doing things to try to assimilate them into the community. One thing that is wrong is that in zones where there are no leagues, there aren't any squads. This is a missed opportunity for social networking and new player mentorship.

 

 

 

 

Overall, to save this game, we need to focus more on building a 'community' attitude rather than a 'everyone is playing for his own fun' attitude. Do that, and the rest of it will happen on its own.

[darkhosis]

probably the same way it was saved 5 years ago

[darkhosis]

or we could start a petition to reinstate trixter's access to the internets. then he can buy it again and save it!

[Yupa]

I'd say a combination of getting ASSS and Discretion into Unix repos and abandoning the over-compromised long-standing zones would do it. Without revolution, few things last.

[wO!]

-a high scores website

 

-a reset on all unused squad names

 

these two things alone would be fucking huge for SS

[PoLiX]

Scores Website...

 

Me and Ghost Ship have been fighting for this for years. One point priit went as far to send the Biller DB Schema to begin work on the site. 16 months later, he finally said he'd be down to get it going, probably would do it the weekend he sent the e-mail. Been 3 months since that?

 

It isn't for lack of effort. Mackie was trying before me. It is just lack of Priit dedicating his time.

[PoLiX]

On Another note.

 

I've gone through quite a few downloads websites where Continuum is listed over the past few months. Total Downloads that are visible just cleared 750,000. Continuum 0.40 came out 3yrs ago.

 

So the big question... where are all these players? How many ran into installer issues? How many saw virus warnings and gave up? How many are playing, but just not as many hours as people use to?

 

I do run into a lot of new players. So it seems maybe we're just not keeping them as long as we use to, or playing as actively as they use to.

 

I found this very interesting. Especially sites where the download was added pretty recently as it is the 7mbish installer I released. 1 I just looked at had almost 22,000 downloads of just that.

[»doc flabby]

I'm working on a new subspacedownloads.com website...I'll be happy to share the source with TT once its done.

[Static Burn]

On Another note.

 

I've gone through quite a few downloads websites where Continuum is listed over the past few months. Total Downloads that are visible just cleared 750,000.

 

That was mostly me and an auto mouse clicking program.

 

 

I found this very interesting. Especially sites where the download was added pretty recently as it is the 7mbish installer I released. 1 I just looked at had almost 22,000 downloads of just that.

 

They probably weren't added that recently, the link may have been updated and now the link to old installer (after i emailed freakmonger and he made it work again) now downloads the new 7MB installer.

[PoLiX]

mm. Well, with the new script we're using for SSGN files (was actually coded for SSDL, but when bajan left, he continued it publicly, and is now helping fix some of the minor bugs left in it for us) we can track downloads a lot better now, and see reliably if it is a player, bot, etc. Shows IP/Browser Info/Etc. of every download a lot more reliably and easier to read than a lot of other ways we have been trying to track them. So should help decipher if we're getting an influx or players, or just bots scanning the site/downloads again.

 

Reminds me, need to finish moving DCME over to it.

[aquarius]

I'd say a combination of getting ASSS and Discretion into Unix repos and abandoning the over-compromised long-standing zones would do it. Without revolution, few things last.