Yeah but noone gives two shits about petty drug convictions because your friend sent you a bag of ecstasy. I mean lets take Brussels if those asshole could have just left a banner that said uslzone.com or freeinfantry.org before blowing up the airport instead of going with the canned ALLAHU AKBAR we'd be having hot pub 15 games going on now but nooooo.
Proposal - Enlist or Die! Infantry Campaign
J
To follow up on the last post I made - reading over it it may sound like I think that Infantry is doomed to stay in the 90s with no hope of us ever getting more players. So I'll need to clarify that because there are ways to revitalize the game but it requires a different approach.
The reality is that these things come and go, and as the expression goes "Everything old is new again". I'll spare you the half-baked theories but suffice to say, what kind of game is hot at the moment is like a pendulum that's swinging back and forth between _new_ and _refined_.
The game with 67 million players daily has started out as a basic Starcraft 1 map, which was polished again and again until it was something that it is today - League of Legends.
The RTS genre has never really been popular to be a dominating factor - anyone believing that RTS is popular is a passionate, loyal fan of the genre, but really the majority of the population has never played any RTS game (or very little), and it's almost strictly limited to PC gamers only.
What Blizzard did with SC is very similar to what id Software did with Doom and Quake - they provided very simple tooling (the very opposite of just handing out a complex engine and saying "build whatever you want") that allowed their young audiences to quickly make things and experiment around with making maps with triggers. They built up an audience of developers and players from a young age that when time came again for these kinds of games to shine, DotA was already there.
(Keep in mind when SC1 came out with it's 2D sprite graphics, it was considered obsolete already as there were 3D RTSs already out, so we can rule out visual fidelity as the raw source of potential).
Having said that, FI needs to position itself to play the long game by building up a community bit by bit - no massive marketing will impact it at the moment - and hold out until the current generation of gamers wants to play a game of this calibre. Over that period of time, it will stay in the twilight (which is fine with me) but we won't see an impressive number of people playing this.
It's like the early days of DotA when there's a handful of War3 servers hosting it.
Infantry is really a framework more than it is a one-trick-pony game but I don't want to get into that conversation here - there's a bunch of Infantry Remakes that have failed because of this alone.
The reality is that these things come and go, and as the expression goes "Everything old is new again". I'll spare you the half-baked theories but suffice to say, what kind of game is hot at the moment is like a pendulum that's swinging back and forth between _new_ and _refined_.
The game with 67 million players daily has started out as a basic Starcraft 1 map, which was polished again and again until it was something that it is today - League of Legends.
The RTS genre has never really been popular to be a dominating factor - anyone believing that RTS is popular is a passionate, loyal fan of the genre, but really the majority of the population has never played any RTS game (or very little), and it's almost strictly limited to PC gamers only.
What Blizzard did with SC is very similar to what id Software did with Doom and Quake - they provided very simple tooling (the very opposite of just handing out a complex engine and saying "build whatever you want") that allowed their young audiences to quickly make things and experiment around with making maps with triggers. They built up an audience of developers and players from a young age that when time came again for these kinds of games to shine, DotA was already there.
(Keep in mind when SC1 came out with it's 2D sprite graphics, it was considered obsolete already as there were 3D RTSs already out, so we can rule out visual fidelity as the raw source of potential).
Having said that, FI needs to position itself to play the long game by building up a community bit by bit - no massive marketing will impact it at the moment - and hold out until the current generation of gamers wants to play a game of this calibre. Over that period of time, it will stay in the twilight (which is fine with me) but we won't see an impressive number of people playing this.
It's like the early days of DotA when there's a handful of War3 servers hosting it.
Infantry is really a framework more than it is a one-trick-pony game but I don't want to get into that conversation here - there's a bunch of Infantry Remakes that have failed because of this alone.
Webmaster
👑 x24
👑
Gentlemen CO
Gentlemen CO
Not trying to be a debbie downer but we can only get so far running a bootleg game. No one is making a profit from this game and we don't have a professional dev team that gets paid to develop it. I think that's the biggest hurdle.
Webmaster
👑 x24
👑
Gentlemen CO
Gentlemen CO
6.95!
Don't get me wrong everyone appreciates what you guys do but we can't even get certain zones like Soccer Brawl to work properly because we don't have the source code. Neg when are you going to give it up?
Don't get me wrong everyone appreciates what you guys do but we can't even get certain zones like Soccer Brawl to work properly because we don't have the source code. Neg when are you going to give it up?
J
An an aside, IGBL pretty much wrote themselves out of helping. Their leadership made two things quite clear to me: a) they are not interested in advertising whatsoever, b) they do not want to play with newbie players.
This is _after_ Mizz took the time to iron out some of the issues which also fixed a few Soccer Brawl bugs.
They have for years now been stuck on their forums bitching about wanting to play but no one to play with. Talk about a self-fulfilling prophecy.
It's in USLs and CTFPLs best interest to avoid that toxic mentality.
This is _after_ Mizz took the time to iron out some of the issues which also fixed a few Soccer Brawl bugs.
They have for years now been stuck on their forums bitching about wanting to play but no one to play with. Talk about a self-fulfilling prophecy.
It's in USLs and CTFPLs best interest to avoid that toxic mentality.
Webmaster
👑 x24
👑
Gentlemen CO
Gentlemen CO
Both USL and CTFPL have been encouraging new players and welcome anyone that wants to play (for the most part). We're kind of stuck in this perpetual cycle that I don't think we'll be able to break. We have some issues that prevent new players from sticking around:
- Coming in as a new player is hard with the population being largely made up of veterans who stomp the new players and discourage them from sticking around
- People only play at a certain time and perhaps people looking at this game don't know that. If I were to download a game and saw that 0 people were on for the majority of the day (and only play on certain days) I wouldn't even bother.
- There's no diversity. It's either USL or CTFPL and that's it. Is it our fault? Sort of. But we're all that's left and I'm not sure how we can change that.
- The players who are left more than likely just look at Infantry as a novelty at this point and use it as a time waster when they're bored. That's why things stay the same and no one wants to put any effort into changing it.
- Coming in as a new player is hard with the population being largely made up of veterans who stomp the new players and discourage them from sticking around
- People only play at a certain time and perhaps people looking at this game don't know that. If I were to download a game and saw that 0 people were on for the majority of the day (and only play on certain days) I wouldn't even bother.
- There's no diversity. It's either USL or CTFPL and that's it. Is it our fault? Sort of. But we're all that's left and I'm not sure how we can change that.
- The players who are left more than likely just look at Infantry as a novelty at this point and use it as a time waster when they're bored. That's why things stay the same and no one wants to put any effort into changing it.
Referee
⭐ x4
💎
Kays Krew 3
I hope the next time you speak the words soccer brawl its followed with its completely fixed.
Or I swear to god, I will end you.
Or I swear to god, I will end you.
J
Those are excellent points.
- The combination of veteranship and arranged gameplay is a particularly bad combination.
- Skirm is often thought as the reason why rest of the zones have faded - and a handful of people left the community as a reason. It goes back to the point I made in the original post - it's such a great zone but it does not represent Infantry's capacity at all. Frontlines is a bit better in this regard.
To reinforce what Romulocks said in the opening post, it's worth trying at least to replace freeinfantry.org (as it's currently the reigning champion when you search for "infantry online") with a splash page that sells the game better, and maybe lists when the next gathering is and how to get in the game.
Basically, remove rest of the useless site and single-page it to make it a sales page with a very clear call to action, emphasizing community-oriented behaviour and a relaxed attitude towards playing.
- The combination of veteranship and arranged gameplay is a particularly bad combination.
- Skirm is often thought as the reason why rest of the zones have faded - and a handful of people left the community as a reason. It goes back to the point I made in the original post - it's such a great zone but it does not represent Infantry's capacity at all. Frontlines is a bit better in this regard.
To reinforce what Romulocks said in the opening post, it's worth trying at least to replace freeinfantry.org (as it's currently the reigning champion when you search for "infantry online") with a splash page that sells the game better, and maybe lists when the next gathering is and how to get in the game.
Basically, remove rest of the useless site and single-page it to make it a sales page with a very clear call to action, emphasizing community-oriented behaviour and a relaxed attitude towards playing.
M
League Analyst
💎 x10
⭐
🥇
Gentlemen
Gentlemen
Just not enough people interested in playing secondary zones to keep a population (besides basketball after pl and Usl die)
Phenylephrine HCI A
Zone Developer
🔱
🥈
Monkey Business CO
Monkey Business CO
Yep, I don't know shit about coding or modeling, but there is not a soul that exists that knows these infantry editors better than I do.
A
Zone Developer
🔱
🥈
Monkey Business CO
Monkey Business CO
I know Palm has lowbrow humor so that doesn't surprise me. Name one person who has dissected these editors like I have.
Link copied!