Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[ChairmanPoo]

Woop! This thread was started 12 months and forum is still alive! Woop!

[Kagus]

Remember when there were only about 10-15 active members and all we did was sit around in Various Nonsense twiddling our thumbs and playing the 1-2 forum games that were running?

Rumredzim Farms remembers.

[Teneb]

The upper boards are subject to the whims of new releases. The lower boards endure.

[Magistrum]

We lurk in the shadows, waiting for our time to strike.

[ChairmanPoo]

The upper boards are subject to the whims of new releases. The lower boards endure.

Endure. And in enduring, grow strong.

[Kagus]

The upper boards are subject to the whims of new releases. The lower boards endure.

Endure. And in enduring, grow strong.

And in strongering, grow ends.

[Magistrum]

And in endening, grow endure.

[Digital Hellhound]

Interesting perspectives. I’ve been here for... ten years good God. I guess I haven’t noticed forum activity falling so much because I’ve been spending less time here overall. Part of it is general changing life circumstances, part of it migrating over to SV for my forum game needs. I wasn’t seeing a lot of games of the types I liked around at the time. SV seemed like a more active and invested playerbase, though I don’t think there’s a real difference in the end. Player engagement and discussion activity varies so much between individual games and people. It is larger, for sure, but that’s just more room for a game to be lost in. Besides, they do Quests and little else, so more creative and RP-heavy games are more likely to be found here. Unfortunately, I have less time and energy for those anyway. Threadmarks and the whole framework they’ve got is a definite advantage for SV, though.

I’d say Other Games is just as popular as ever. Haven’t noticed much of a decrease in activity in the threads I follow there. GD’s a mixed bag. I’ve read the politics threads for years, and they’ve really become noticeably less active and, I guess, less interesting. There was a time I got most of my news from them. Non-Ameripol political threads on GD have stagnated. I miss posters like Sheb and Owlbread, who used to discuss European matters a lot. People like Sergarr also provided interesting perspectives. LW still blesses us with his presence, but the big in-depth debates he used to have with others are kinda missing. The Middle East thread is very dead. Latin America’s seen a bit of a revival. It’s so much down to particular posters and their activity - I mean, I practically never post in these threads for all that I’m saying.

I can’t speak for the Upper Boards, which I never visit despite playing DF every now and then. I imagine a big new release will draw in more people again. The overall activity might be lower, though, if forums are indeed a dying breed.

[scriver]

What is dead may never die

[Baffler]

I have noticed it's slowed down a lot. It's been slower in my time, but not since the Great Hiatus. It might be that I'm not in the USA anymore and my timezone is weird for an American forum but the "users active in the last 15 minutes" is looking a lot slimmer than I remember even when I do get on EST peak hours, which is a better metric IMO for activity than total number of visitors/lurkers. I haven't been especially active lately, down to a combination of being exceptionally busy and moving to other forums (some of which are even more primitive than this one as far as features go) for most things. I mostly just poke my head in to FG&RP.

[Inarius]

In 11 months what you got, before :

in 2010, think that http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=30026.15960 this one was 1065 pages long for one year and 3 months.

in 2011 -> 370 pages (15 mar -> 15 feb)
in 2012 -> 334 pages (15 feb -> 15 jan)
in 2013 -> 222 pages (15 jan -> 15 dec)
in 2014 -> 240 pages (15 dec -> 15 nov)
in 2015 -> 129 pages (15 nov -> 15 oct)
in 2016 -> 169 pages (15 oct -> 15 sept)
in 2017 -> 112 pages (15 sept -> 15 aug)
in 2018 -> 100 pages of fotf in 11 months. (1 Mar 2018 -> 1 Feb 2018)

[Severedicks]

Oh wow. Regardless of whatever metrics you can think of (absolute df player numbers pulled from discord, reddit or whatever) it does seem that people care less and less about the game.

It's the release spikes that worry me. On April 1st, 2010 the server went down under the load and the brothers got $10000 that month. The 2012 release gathered much excitement and the wiki was updated with research within weeks. Now the artifact release, which brought major gameplay changes, hardly made a blip. I was talking about insurrections earlier, but science on missions, artifact types, etc. is very lackluster, and it's been a year already.

People may support the game more, but they engage with it less. They go like "yeah this game is awesome and super complex and detailed and Toady is a genius" but they don't actually play it. For many people, their image of the game is the same as it was in 2010 (.31.25 or so) or earlier, so they share memes about carps, danger rooms, giant sponges, ancient bugs or ancient dogma about weapons as if nothing changed since then, further proof that they haven't actually tried the new versions yet.

That's a worrying trend, because without the enthusiasm of the 2010's, we wouldn't have gotten dfhack, therapist, armok vision, all these utilities that make the game accessible (some would even say 'playable'). If lethosor retires or decides to raise sheep in New Zealand, what happens to dfhack exactly? If newbies suddenly have to play the raw vanilla game without any starter pack, will they keep playing?

Of course, the fact that Toady doesn't play the game himself, and doesn't actually like Fortress mode (by way of various clues such as always implementing fortress mode features as the lowest priority, or his own admission in a pc gamer interview that he isn't into fort mode style gameplay) doesn't help. If you keep making a game, travel the world doing talks about your game, have your game featured in the MoMa, but nobody actually plays your game, not even you, is it really a game?

[Telgin]

Ironically, this discussion has made me want to play DF, but I won't have time for the rest of the week. 

Of course, the fact that Toady doesn't play the game himself, and doesn't actually like Fortress mode (by way of various clues such as always implementing fortress mode features as the lowest priority, or his own admission in a pc gamer interview that he isn't into fort mode style gameplay) doesn't help. If you keep making a game, travel the world doing talks about your game, have your game featured in the MoMa, but nobody actually plays your game, not even you, is it really a game?

Fortress mode has taken a back seat to adventure mode for the last few major releases, and that's a shame to me since I don't play adventure mode, but I remember some people saying that it was really just adventure mode's turn since fort mode got most of the attention for a long time.

And it is kind of funny that Toady doesn't really play the game, but as a hobbyist game developer, I kind of understand.  It's frustrating playing something that feels incomplete, and surely DF does to him, and knowing all of the mechanics probably dispels some of the mystery and fun.

[Gunner-Chan]

I tend to check here a couple of times a week between like... Month long breaks from remembering the site even exists. And I do have to say It's kind of amazing how consistent the community seems even with those long breaks. Other communities I've been a part of before taking similar breaks from tended to completely and totally change whenever I left that long, even ones I thought were maybe even MORE enduring (RIP doom community).

With that in mind I think this place seems pretty safe and stable. Barring something like toady giving up on the game, which I feel like would even deflate the mostly disconnected lower boards.

[Inarius]

Well, tbh, adventure mode need(ed) MUCH MORE work than fortress. I mean, even in 31 or 40 version, fortress mode was ok, and even fun, while adventure mode felt boring and empty.