Blockland Today - The Fun Is Missing (Original Post/Topic)
They say all good things must come to an end, but I assumed Blockland would still have a couple of years on it yet. I've been rather on and off for the past few months, occasionally working on my programming skills and knowledge of torque, while trying to refine myself as an individual to better accompany the apparently high standards players seem to think everyone respectable should portray. But, that's another story. What I'm here to discuss is the seeming downfall of Blockland as a form of entertainment. I've stuck around this game since v8, and back then, things were fun, I was continually discovering new mods and games to play, as well as tons of interesting and unique builds. Lately however, I've seen a massive decline in overall gameplay and general fun. For the first time ever it seems that the stupid, uncreative and underdeveloped servers are the ones at the top, rather than the interesting and well made ones. If I had a dollar for every time I saw a "Floating Knife TDM" or a "Family/City RP" of any kind, I'd be rich. And so far, the only servers to offer anything different was a fort wars server with a travel time of 20 minutes, and a fight time of 5 seconds; and a "boss battle" server that has literally no bricks other than platforms to get from point A to B. It also strikes me as unfortunate when the only impressive builds I see, never see the light of day after they're started (Mine included, although I try to avoid it). Fact is, when I join a server with a half-way decent build, I save it, not because I'm going to use it , but because I know I'll never see it again. Anyone with building skill uses it to make vistas, as opposed to gameplay, and those vistas are never even reused. It's a sad state to be into. This, combined with the fact that I'm pretty sure the average age of players in the game has dropped from 16 to 9, just seems to depress me. The people I even deem "respectable" and those I deem "capable of producing fun gameplay/builds" spend all their time prodding the forums, remembering random things and making post after post all day long, it's rather unfortunate. Did you know that the off-topic and drama sections of the forum have more posts than any of the others? It's simply a disgrace to even think I would play a game where it's more important to talk about when the next episode of MLP is on, or how some random guy called you a friend somewhere, then it is to actually do ANYTHING fun. I am by no means trying to single out anyone in particular, or make people feel bad. I merely wish to convey how I feel about the situation.
Is there hope for Blockland? I like to think there is, and I am by no means posting this with the intention of giving up. I keep trying to motivate myself to make something fun, and to get others to as well, but so far, we're not moving anywhere fast. There are still plenty of good builders out there who are open to good ideas and innovations, but we have to keep pressing the envelope. We need to keep trying to make things for everyone to enjoy, things that can make us as proud as I was to be playing Blockland back in v8/9. Fact is, the thing that makes games fun, isn't the game itself (Although it helps), it's how fun the players make it.
Perhaps there are some situations I missed, or things I overlooked, I'm not as vigilant as most people, and neither am I as good at brown townyzing situations as I'd like to be. And, to be honest, there were random isolated incidents where really fun things appeared on Blockland, but they never lasted long enough to be properly enjoyed.
So, what do you think? Am I hitting the nail on the head? Or speaking total rubbish?
New Developments!
As a way to fix this issue, me and a group of dedicated individuals are planning to create a series of informative videos/toutorials on how players can learn how to be good builders/eventers/server hosts, to make the game more fun for everyone.
Check through the topic if you're interested, or shoot me a pm.
So far, the active list of ideas for said toutorials are...
- How to become a good builder.
- Proper etiquette in the blockland community.
- Useful and efficient building techniques for good builds.
- How to host a good server.
- What add-ons are recommended for good servers?
- The basics of handling blockland (Download and installing add-ons, managing add-ons, ect.)
http://steamcommunity.com/groups/BLMUEven if you don't think there's a problem, I'm pretty sure we can all agree that this is a good idea, right?
Slimabob has been nice enough to post his toutorials for installing add-ons on a
Mac and on a
PC.
Check out the fancy project logos so far! Maybe once we get a few more, we can start up a vote.