Author Topic: The Blockland Theory - A look into the game.  (Read 4908 times)



     The blockland theory is my perspective at this game in general, its forums, and its future. First, lets look at the game's community. I won't begin on the forums just yet, because I'm going to talk about the ingame aspect.

     The ingame community's majority is painfully simpleminded. They join only the servers with the most players (tezuni, cough cough) and nothing else. This blocks new servers from being created, and new ideas surviving more then twenty minutes. Basically, if you are at the top, your going to stay at the top. If your at the bottom, your going to be there for quite some time.

     When the people who only play on the 'top' servers go on the forums, they start complaining about how there is no "good" or "creative" servers. They fail to realize that this is their own doing. They are the ones making the "bash the bottom" effect. This way, things never get better.

      Yesterday, I did a test. I hosted a server called "Project Throwmod WIP" and about 3 people came on, minus my staff. All of them said "were is da thruwmod areenaz1?!?!!1?." They failed to read the "WIP" part of the title. After that, I multicliented for some laughs with my friends. I changed the server name to "SlaveLand" after about 6 people where connected to the server. I used one multiclient to leave the game and monitor the server list. SlaveLand had made it to the top of the server list (minus tezuni). Also, there where almost NO other people on the other servers (minus tezuni).

      SlaveLand got 24 people at its peak, and the server was literally Box and I building a sandworm for our upcoming throwmod plus a playful land of staticshapes for nubs to build on. This just proves my point that once your at the top, your not going down and once your at the bottom your not going up.

      Lets look at a move terrifying aspect of blockland-- its forums. The forum community isn't one of the worst--- but isn't nearly one of the best. Once someone said "If Steam read our forums wouldn't that give us a even lesser chance of being greenlit?". This, sadly, is very, very true. General Discussion is ok, Off Topic should be forbidden, Creativity is nice, Help is dead, ect. Even though, it is a very entertaining forum. I just wish more people where on help.

     Now we are going on to a serious topic-- the games future. Honestly, it is nearly impossible to speculate what is going in Valve's head about Blockland. I cannot tell if it will get greenlit or not. The best way to boost Blockland's chances are to make some update that will totally boost the game up in attention because it is so revolutionary. Another way would be to make a community update. If the level of creativity is high maybe it can get valve's attention. But honestly, if the game doesn't get more attention it might have a limited life span. Although, Blockland has been surviving. In v0002 people said it was dying and it would never make it to 10,000 players (not shure number, estimate). Honestly-- suprise me. I'm 12k and beleive me, I've been impressed before.


My purpouse is not to bash this game, just giving my point of view.

uhh what are you talking about

uhh what are you talking about

in order to understand thee you must have a brain and body

in order to understand thee you must have a brain and body
Can I only have the brain? I left my filthy meatsack years ago.

in order to understand thee you must have a brain and body
i'm basically asking for a tl;dr


he is comparing blockland servers to capitalism or some stuff

i commend the effort but in reality there's no way you can sum up everything objectively and/or correctly.
when i participated here two years ago, I saw the forums vastly different than I do today. Not to mention four years ago.
And really the forums haven't changed much since then.
in addition there's no way you can make such wide generalizations that can even remotely be considered correct.
Quote
The ingame community's majority is painfully simpleminded. They join only the servers with the most players (tezuni, cough cough) and nothing else. This blocks new servers from being created, and new ideas surviving more then twenty minutes. Basically, if you are at the top, your going to stay at the top. If your at the bottom, your going to be there for quite some time.
have you considered the exceptions? Like Bones4's Titanic server? Bones4 doesn't even have people help, so his server always starts out empty. His idea is old, older than the time I've been on this forum. And its hardly his first titanic.

i just suggest you step away from this idea before you say something that will piss somebody else off because its so vastly incorrect and/or overgeneralized and/or -simplified

in addition you lack evidence. you make statements like
Quote
Lets look at a move terrifying aspect of blockland-- its forums. The forum community isn't one of the worst--- but isn't nearly one of the best. Once someone said "If Steam read our forums wouldn't that give us a even lesser chance of being greenlit?". This, sadly, is very, very true. General Discussion is ok, Off Topic should be forbidden, Creativity is nice, Help is dead, ect. Even though, it is a very entertaining forum. I just wish more people where on help.
but how can you say so? And don't just give us links to topics which you are using as evidence: you have to explain how it supports your position. And the evidence you do provide is examined one-sidedly, as if you made the conclusion first and then found evidence to support it. There's a reason why the scientific method begins with "observe" and not "hypothesis." Look at things from both angles, not from the angle you think is true.
again, this idea is noble and commendable but you need way more time spent on individual sections than you have now. There's a reason why string theory isn't complete yet, and why most scientific papers and brown townysis are limited to one book/subject matter. You don't see people writing books on the overarching themes and ideals that humanity writes about as a whole


there's just too much to explain to condense it here. simply-put, don't attempt this unless you want to spend the next 2-3 months doing research and brown townyzing things from all perspectives, if you even can.
« Last Edit: July 16, 2013, 05:32:10 PM by Conan »

servers with two players are less fun

the forum community loves the forum community (me, included)

if there's a server called "slaveland" with some players, people will be curious on what exactly it is and how it got the players

they could have thought the staticshapes were cool

I'm afraid that some of this is true.

The forums has a large amount of people who just make fun of you/troll you/continue doing what makes you mad no matter what (see; elecro being called handicapped after he says specifically that he hates being called that and Nonnel calling his dead father as handicapped as him) and it also has a good amount of trolls, sure the forums has like 40,000 users on it, but if I remember correctly badspot estimated only an amount of 5,000-7,000 people are actual users who are registered and posting. Sure the forums is also filled with the good people who you actually like and they're friendly and yadda yadda, but still there's also that one large amount of people (see; start of this post)

Sometimes the community (game community now) is fun and nice, but recently i've noticed things like hacks going around, and people are beginning to just take things too seriously and some can't even take a damn joke.


EDIT; i'm not saying "EVERYTHING IS BAD IT WON'T COME BACK" like I said, most of the time things are fine, sure you have your bad servers but then you have good ones.
« Last Edit: July 16, 2013, 05:37:22 PM by Decepticon »


you should work on your grammar

if there's a server called "slaveland" with some players, people will be curious on what exactly it is and how it got the players
Both ANT and I have the same thing though? When we host a server with purpose like a TDM or project, the server is nearly completely ignored. Only the odd few players will appear but other than that, it's just us two a few friends.
But as soon as we just put a silly name or most of the time just "Server" it gets so much attention. ANT has had a server completely full when it had 0 bricks and was called "Serber". It doesn't make sense ;-;

One thing that does boost the amount of people that join a server can be topics on the forums and getting the word around. Maybe not for those one time servers but for established ideas that you plan to keep on rolling it can do a great deal of good.

ok to comment on that

i host tdm's and stuff and they don't always get players. but once I hosted a server named "Art-titecture" and people came along and freebuilt and stuff and it was a nice chat server while we build small things.

i would correlate server popularity with two factors: how many players are there right now, and the name of the server. Name of the server goes above how many people there is in the server. In addition BLID may play a role in people deciding whether or not to join a server, as well as previous experiences in it.
this would explain why servers like Bones4's Titanic quickly gets so many players, and also why servers like Tezuni's have so many players. Players know that these servers either 1) have something really interesting to look at or 2) have something fun (or not) to do. Nobody joins a server where they don't expect anything to happen, to catch their attention or pique their curiosity or motivate them to build.

Oh no! No one is on blockland because of vacations in the summer and a bunch of people playing their new steam games!