Originally Posted by cowmeat
Yeah, let's just ignore all reason when it comes to improving this game. Let's not worry about small details like the reality of the situation.
Let's just dish out ridiculous ideas and ignore people when they point out how ridiculous the idea is because "Truths do more harm than good"
What you are literally saying is that "Ignore the person who is right because I don't like what he is saying". What a great attitude on how to improve something.
Gosh what a dumb thing to say.
Not going to argue since the creator of the thread has said he doesn't want that happening.
Not really interested in explaining the concept on why being an asshole is bad anyway.
In short, what I quoted from your previous post would have been enough.
Looking forward to sir's response on some of this stuff.
Originally Posted by Cheshyre
First of all, I'd like to know how many users actually use the Matchmaking. Not trying to insinuate that it isn't worth using, just wondering if it's an addition people are even taking advantage of.
Will get the data at the end of the month, probably post it here.
Originally Posted by Cheshyre
What's the next step you guys are trying to achieve? What problems are you currently facing that might be slowing these steps down? What do active players have to look forward to that might keep them active?
Currently reworking how ES event rewards are going to work + continuing matchmaking updates. There's more stuff being worked on but I'm not a fan of speaking about it because there's a chance that things might go wrong and we can't make it public.
Originally Posted by Cheshyre
You've been working on Matchmaking and Tutorials, awesome. Correct me if I'm wrong but I don't think you fellas even mentioned Tutorial changes were being worked on, the only publicly accessible thread I can find it on is in the 5.12 release post you made. At that point it was already done and over with, and from what I can tell from the very few people who even noticed it who posted were morso excited about a bug fix.
Wouldn't be a big deal but the game having poor tutorials is something that tons of people know about and probably would have liked being a bit more involved in. Or at least, informed it was happening. Just an example.
http://forum.toribash.com/showthread.php?t=588152
Anyway tutorial update is something that should just be in a game, not sure it's worth making emphasis on the fact it's been updated.
I'm thankful that you opened up to us in your response, sir.
With regards to the community manager situation, I'm assuming that you've rectified the problem? Do you now act as that intermediary between the community and Dranix? Or have you just assumed greater oversight over the process?
That line wasn't a general statement, it was specifically about your lack of concern about forum activity. You don't seem to disagree that you're not overly concerned about it. We can agree to disagree on our triaging.
What I'd like to know is what the next step is (after your tutorial rework). Clans? Other new-player retainment schemes?
Also, what's the reason for the ST change? I've asked this question in the announcement thread as well.
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You're doing a good job of interacting with the community sir, so again, thanks. Keep it up!
With regards to the community manager situation, I'm assuming that you've rectified the problem? Do you now act as that intermediary between the community and Dranix? Or have you just assumed greater oversight over the process?
Originally Posted by sir
Regarding the "It's like you've given up on it" line etc. etc. etc.
That line wasn't a general statement, it was specifically about your lack of concern about forum activity. You don't seem to disagree that you're not overly concerned about it. We can agree to disagree on our triaging.
What I'd like to know is what the next step is (after your tutorial rework). Clans? Other new-player retainment schemes?
Also, what's the reason for the ST change? I've asked this question in the announcement thread as well.
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You're doing a good job of interacting with the community sir, so again, thanks. Keep it up!
Last edited by Ele; Apr 27, 2017 at 01:51 PM.
Originally Posted by sir
Ok, I got it.
Well yeah, I think that forum activity is not the main parameter when it comes to judging the overall player activity in a game - number of users playing is. Has it been declining since the Steam release? Yes, of course. Is it reaching catastrophically low numbers? No.
Some more graphs
When we got a Steam release in 2014 it gave the game an immense boost - we got 2.6k concurrent players. Since then, the number of concurrent players has obviously been declining because that's what happens with games over time. While I agree that we could do more to keep people interested, things aren't going as bad as you may think.
2016 was, in my opinion, completely wasted, and I still blame people who took the leading staff positions (will explain why I think it is staff's fault and not devs'/hampa's). Instead of getting dev team to polish the matchmaking and make a proper 5.0 release, what the community got was an alpha build we tested in late 2015. Stuff that was added after that (not that it's a whole year of development): staff prefixes in 5.01, nothing, basically nothing too. The reason here is that people who took the manager positions did not actually have any idea on what to do about the game. It is not a secret to anyone that hampa keeps distance from the community / the game in general and almost all the coding stuff gets done by Dranix - so when you officially apply for a "Community Manager" position in Toribash it's anticipated that you'd act as a mediator between the community and devs. Not just tell them about every single thread in S&I in skype, but figure out a general strategy and work towards it. There was a development plan when I was around in 2015, it got neglected for a whole year I was away. Dranix is a great coder but he doesn't play the game much - which is why there always needs to be a person to tell him what to add to the game. As any dev he can also be kinda lazy so you have to control the whole process from time to time. It's probably not what a "Community Manager" in its regular understanding does, but Nabi is a small company - and you have to do bits of everything when working on an indie project. Especially if you're aiming at getting paid (and getting a community manager position to get free TC sounds weird).
Toribash development speed isn't the best too but that's what Item Forgers and GMs/ES exist for - to fill the delays with new content. Looking at IF releases throughout 2016 the only thing that comes to my mind is that people who greenlit those items didn't even bother to release something that a regular player would want and be able to buy. 35k for a Pilgrim's Hat, 50k for a Flower Crown (which should have been a seasonal item in the first place)? Like, really? There were items that nobody bought before we changed shop pricing, and that was absolutely hilarious to see when I came back. No successful game sets such ridiculous prices, nobody would want to play thousands of games to get a crap item - and that is one of the reasons why players drop out. At the same time, they added more ST items (and ES started hosting less). Ugh.
Regarding the "It's like you've given up on it" line, I'm not sure if you were paying attention at what's been happening in Toribash over the last 4 months. Matchmaking, Steam trading cards, tutorial updates, new item releases (and hey they sell well), upcoming ST change and other updates I can't speak about yet - we've probably done more in Q1 2017 than what was done during the whole 2016. Finally got an active forum dev too which is awesome. So no, we obviously haven't given up.
Hey then nvm. See we don't get to see what's getting done or the info. The way the game has been feeling and servers dropping to as low as 2-5 created. I just definitely think it's time for atleast another sort of advertisement. How can we go about contacting a youtuber or someone like pewdiepie, (bleh) jackseptic (bleh) to play this? Or can you some how convince Hampa to do another Nabi recruitment? Of course toribash have a Twitter page? If staying away from forum ads on our website to pay for regular ads, you can always ask the community to help. I know a lot of people that have been discussing paying for advertising to help the game. Myself included.
"People never grow up, they just learn how to act in public."—Bryan White
Youtubers have done the game before. Good luck finding someone in the community that came because of them & stuck around for longer than 5 minutes.
As for getting them to cover it - they wont unless either:
a. They see potential $$$ and do it themselves (which already happened during the Steam release).
b. You pay them a silly amount to play it.
Either way it'd be a flash in the pan boost, and they'd all be gone again within a week. Youtubers aren't the great advertisement that people seem to think they are; especially when it comes to games that require a large time investment to become competent at.
The best result from an advert is still the 3 page spread + review that landed in a few Linux magazines in '08. Can't imagine that being cheap to do.
As for the Twitter thing - yup, there's a pair.
@NabiStudios - it's tied to the FB page so no one controls it (afaik no one even has the account details for it anymore)
@Toribash - looks like sir is on that one.
As for getting them to cover it - they wont unless either:
a. They see potential $$$ and do it themselves (which already happened during the Steam release).
b. You pay them a silly amount to play it.
Either way it'd be a flash in the pan boost, and they'd all be gone again within a week. Youtubers aren't the great advertisement that people seem to think they are; especially when it comes to games that require a large time investment to become competent at.
The best result from an advert is still the 3 page spread + review that landed in a few Linux magazines in '08. Can't imagine that being cheap to do.
As for the Twitter thing - yup, there's a pair.
@NabiStudios - it's tied to the FB page so no one controls it (afaik no one even has the account details for it anymore)
@Toribash - looks like sir is on that one.
<Erf> SkulFuk: gf just made a toilet sniffing joke at me
<Erf> i think
<Erf> i think i hate you
