One of us (or Badspot) pay a popular YouTuber to play the game.
It may result in slightly more cancer, but it will increase the playerbase by a lot.
do we really want new players though? pretty much every time some new guy comes in we tend to ignore or screw with them
Cancer is good. So long as the new players are generally clueless then it will make the game that much better for the more intelligent players. That will drive retention and end us up with more players for a longer time.
What makes a server fun anyways? In the end, it boils down to feeling superior: In TDMs, it's about your kill efficiency (ie, k/d). In any rpg, it's about grinding endlessly to overpower others. In strategy games it's just being smarter than your opponent. Do you see why importing dumb people would make this better? It will depend on how satisfied you are by stomping noobs, but generally this is a rule that works pretty well... because a ton of morons actually do feel superior. (See: minecraft factions and the pay-to-win disease, or any pay-to-win crap in general)
And the method of obtaining your superior status needs to be some percent legitimate to reflect the winner's personal skill level-- the more intricate the climb to the top is, the more validated they will feel. That's a big component for determining quality: awesome servers will make it difficult to climb to the top without using some predictable formula, like well balanced tdms and RPGs, and lousy servers will make it easy to win with a copy-paste method, like botting or grinding (hi cityrpg). Cheap and easy happiness like a drug. (And it's not the only component but I'll be damned if it isn't make or break for a ton of servers)
Oh, and the kicker is the validation one feels varies a lot based on how dumb they are. It's why kids can consume heaps of garbage for games because they want the easy route, and it works pretty loving well! (Again, see Minecraft pay2win crap.. I'm not angry...)
Main idea-- cancer is good because it will attract a bunch of noobs. They won't be bright but that makes them much easier to control, if you're into that.. :P
There should be a large variety of quality servers that display the best blockland has to offer before you try to get other people to buy the game. it would have to be a strategic operation that most of the active community would have to participate in. Like a number of community members setting up high quality servers for a week, and at the same time Badspot putting the game on sale for 5-2.50 and possibly getting someone with influence to play the game at the same time.
I've been wondering why the player count has gone down a little faster than in say 2010. Ok, so here's some abstract reasoning: When I "move on" from a game it's usually because there's nothing left worthwhile to remember-- I'll play a game to create good memories and have fun like anyone else, and it's what keeps me playing. So when I think of a good time in blockland, it's all about the environment.. not entirely, but this is an important concept we lack and it needs to be discussed. I've asked a bunch of oldcigarettes what made the game so good for them, and the response is typically how immersive servers used to be. Big maps work a lot better for immersion than small ones, there's multiple areas to explore and mentally divide up. It's why Heedicalking's tdms were so fun, they had huge territories to conquer and actual strategy you had to devote time to and think about. Even if you were no combat genius, you would end up thinking about this subconsciously. Those subconscious thoughts are what generate nostalgia and the feeling of wonder and exploration, they're immersive.
You can see how this ties in for modern blockland: the extent of a map now is severely limited, and unless you cut up the map into islands to create the illusion of size (which works quite well for what it's worth), a bunch of servers will just have small maps because anything bigger takes weeks of effort. They aren't very immersive, and I don't have many good memories of brick/slate maps-- I keep thinking, "THAT'S IT?!" I want to be delusional and feel like the game is bigger than it is, like there's more to explore. Those awestruck from the size of the bedroom know this feeling well, for example. Or the fact that being trapped in a build with no windows weirdly makes you feel like the world outside is bigger for some reason (seeing that ground plane and infinite nothingness is pretty depressing I guess). It follows that small maps won't do this justice.
To get back to the big idea: if I'm going to keep playing a game, there has to be recent good memories so I feel obligated to come back again, because I want MORE (like, duh??) So, why do you think retention has gone down?? Like I said, small brick maps just seem to be less memorable, and there is no reason to check out that lego game on steam I bought on a sale again, because I don't remember anything. Not to turn this into a terrain argument but they did a great job at establishing an atmosphere, an idea supported by what the oldcigarettes said and probably what a lot of blocklanders feel but don't know how to explain.
I guess if you want to make a successful server, or more generally a successful game, it's all about appealing to the basic psyche. Same reason why cancer players exist in large quantities.. it will come down to poking the brain in the right spots whether they know it or not, and some are easier to poke than others (stuffbrains). Let the subconscious part do the heavy lifting!!
This game is 10 years old. How many games that were active in 2007 are still alive? WoW, TF2, and ??? Even those are on the downswing. Minecraft is the juggernaut in the creative sandbox realm and I don't think there's much that can be done with Blocklamd to take any share back.
I'm convinced age does not matter. By mentioning age you are basically saying the game looks old and functions crappy, so as a comparison why does minecraft succeed then? My goddamn grandchildren are going to be playing that game, and there's nothing short of a vasectomy that will prevent that. It helps to break it down into the the big ideas again: blockland and minecraft have that simple design that looks nice and doesn't really age, which happens when simple shapes are left to the imagination to fill in the details, since all the brain cares about is the concept anyways (ie, the brain only cares if something actually looks bad, but otherwise it's satisfied with "simple looking blockhead is holding gun?? That makes sense." It's about how details are broken down to abstract concepts, like reading a book to understand the big picture of a characters actions. OK enough with this sidenote!!) Ok, so it doesn't look crappy for the most part. Functionality wise, the only things I can think of that need improving are better weapon prediction and higher res textures, but even without that blockland still kicks minecraft's ass in both. Actually, blockland kicks minecraft's ass in just about everything if you're going by technical metric. Vehicle physics? Minecraft barely has vehicles. Modability? Blockland is superior by a long shot. Combat? The aforementioned networking superiority makes combat better tenfold. You can't host a popular minecraft server without an anti cheat installed either-- why this is considered acceptable is beyond me. To put age into perspective by technical abilities, I would expect minecraft's """engine""" to be 5 years older than torque. It's just that bad.
So why the heck isn't blockland popular?! It's
better?! It's all about that stupid immersion, more generally the appeal to basic psyche. Even minecraft classic-- before weapons, pvp of any kind, or any true interactive blocks were added-- had a stupid amount of players. It wasn't about the cost. Something about the environment just clicked (working skydive, lava flood survival, noxyryan's ancient ctf maps... they were all HUGE and FUN to explore and play in. And amazingly the procedural generator worked quite well doing this too!) It's the same way a ton of minecraft clones are
better, why, they have technical abilities that outshadow minecraft by far! So why does nobody play them...
(Note: I edited this later because I feel like it will be an important point later on and it needs to be well thought out)
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