Ideas to "revive" blockland (tip: living things cant be revived)

[IkeTheGeneric]

i also do the same thing but that doesn't mean that the server list will balloon with players if there are enough good games to play, the amount of people who 'peek' like that cant possibly be more then twice the amount of players who play routinely

Just saying, but when crown was hosting his jail server, trogtor was hosting his floating city freebuild and heed's server was up, the amount of players online almost doubled

it doesn't necessarily mean it'll be a huge boost, but having a bunch of fun servers to catch people's interest long enough to get that ball rolling, it would definitely be a benefit

[Ad Bot]

[beachbum111111]

not to mention that sometimes simply updating a gmod add-on is needlessly complicated
not to mention that every time you launch gmod you get a giant lag spike to update add-ons
not to mention that sometimes an add-on suddenly dissapears because it got taken down for whatever reason

That's because GMOD is horribly built. Most of these problems are with  Source than a problem with Workshop.

I think we definitely need workshop. Most people on steam who buy this game will play it for 10 minutes, get bored, and then refund it or never touch it again because they either don't know it has mod support or think it would be too much of a pain in the ass to get mods (And lets be honest, the Forums search function is garbage to begin with). If Workshop was implemented we would have more people downloading mods and making interesting servers on steam, even if it's a hastily thrown together server (which, personally, I think are the most interesting) more people would play for longer periods of time.

[tber123]

some douchebag named magenta is constantly filing dmca complaints because he/she believes they hold the rights to any kind of mod that uses similar code

Magenta in general is an starfish. When Spy got into a heated argument over her coding for the MPCB Weapons, she nuked all her addons at the time and got her own brainwashed cult of personality to side with her against Spy.

[RTBARCHIVE]

Magenta in general is an starfish. When Spy got into a heated argument over her coding for the MPCB Weapons, she nuked all her addons at the time and got her own brainwashed cult of personality to side with her against Spy.

what

[Space1255]

Magenta in general is an starfish. When Spy got into a heated argument over her coding for the MPCB Weapons, she nuked all her addons at the time and got her own brainwashed cult of personality to side with her against Spy.

Holy forget I've never seen you so aggressive.
What do you mean "nuked?"

[tber123]

what

Magenta is some user on Steam that makes addons for Gmod, Spy is the name of another user on steam that makes addons for Gmod. Both of them were involved in a stuffstorm a year or two ago over MPCB Weapons on the Workshop, resulting in Magenta pretty much deleting all her addons and denying them to everyone.

[Space1255]

Magenta is some user on Steam that makes addons for Gmod, Spy is the name of another user on steam that makes addons for Gmod. Both of them were involved in a stuffstorm a year or two ago over MPCB Weapons on the Workshop, resulting in Magenta pretty much deleting all her addons and denying them to everyone.

Ah.

[RTBARCHIVE]

Magenta is some user on Steam that makes addons for Gmod, Spy is the name of another user on steam that makes addons for Gmod. Both of them were involved in a stuffstorm a year or two ago over MPCB Weapons on the Workshop, resulting in Magenta pretty much deleting all her addons and denying them to everyone.

ah. Thanks for elaborating.

[ZERØ]

That's because GMOD is horribly built. Most of these problems are with  Source than a problem with Workshop.

I think we definitely need workshop. Most people on steam who buy this game will play it for 10 minutes, get bored, and then refund it or never touch it again because they either don't know it has mod support or think it would be too much of a pain in the ass to get mods (And lets be honest, the Forums search function is garbage to begin with). If Workshop was implemented we would have more people downloading mods and making interesting servers on steam, even if it's a hastily thrown together server (which, personally, I think are the most interesting) more people would play for longer periods of time.

You should read my post about how the workshop is poorly made in general, I stated that the issues don't just apply to gmod, but other non source games as well, finding a skyrim mod nowadays is really hard because of the horrible sorting and category system they have, in Distance its hard to find a track that requires textures or not and theres no way of downloading track textures on workshop because they aren't supported so you have to go outside of the workshop and still mod your stuff outside of it. Not to mention in many games their "Most Popular" section can be manipulated by upvotes and most upvotes come from steam bots.

The best we can do is advertise the forum's addon section on the game page somehow, and that will fix the "Not everybody knows" problem, or hell maybe even get Badspot to place a link in the game that opens the forums to the area where addons are.

Workshop needs to be re-done completely to function properly, and by that I mean they need to let it save the actual addon locally and not have it get deleted whenever an author nukes his/her upload, as well as a complete overhaul of the category system, and search system.

[sir dooble]

A button on the main menu of the game that opens up the Forums in your browser would be good. Labelled "Find Add-Ons" or similar.
Like the button that took you to Blocklands Greenlight page.

[JBlitz404]

Now, I really don't know if I'm right or wrong but the reason why new players simply leave Blockland is because of how seemingly newb unfriendly this game is. You have all of these players who see the Steam trailer and think, "Wow, that's really cool!" Yet, once they actually play the final product, they join some servers, good stuff indeed. Now, they want to start their own server. The player is confused. The building is frustrating for new players and making high-quality work requires other mods/add-ons. There is a large skill gap in Blockland when it comes to being experienced to a person who just joined in on the fun. The player then becomes angry wanting to make their own high quality server. Once, they eventually get out a "decent" project, no one joins. Hard work left in the dust. The player then leaves, play some servers, repeat. When it's the last straw for the player? They just pack their bags and go.

[ThatDarkNinja778]

Also Fox is correct, Player retention is key, not just gaining more players. When BL was on sale and we got 1800 players, how many of those players actually stayed? A couple of them, but most of them left and never touched the game ever again possibly due to their poor first experience with the game.

The main problem with the game is its outdated engine and its stuffty limitations.
Not only that, but the fact that it's more GPU intensive than some current games is absolutely absurd.

This. My main problems with the game itself really just stem from the outdated engine. If BL was on a new engine the game would be practically limitless and a hell of a lot more polished and prettier too. Unfortunately the possibility of that happening is zero for multiple obvious reasons.

The real issue isnt that blocklands playerbase is shrinking. Its that the majority of the current playerbase are kids from steam, most of whom literally have no idea this forum even exists. Thus the forum ends up seeming sparse (the clan discussion board has gone the way of the AoT board, with only about one or two new posts every day, and with the oldest thread on the 1st page dating to over a month ago).

Problem is that every new user that learns about forums immediately gets scared away from the place because of the forum's reputation for having a hostile community.

[SteveJenkins]

I don't speak for everyone, but often times people scan over the masterlist for something appealing to play, and if there isn't something that's interesting from the getgo they'll just log off

Server titles need to catch people's interest to gather traction

guilty of doing this

imo if we want to at least keep the playerbase we already have, there needs to be things to actually keep us interested in playing

[Zeblote]

Now, I really don't know if I'm right or wrong but the reason why new players simply leave Blockland is because of how seemingly newb unfriendly this game is. You have all of these players who see the Steam trailer and think, "Wow, that's really cool!" Yet, once they actually play the final product, they join some servers, good stuff indeed. Now, they want to start their own server. The player is confused. The building is frustrating for new players and making high-quality work requires other mods/add-ons. There is a large skill gap in Blockland when it comes to being experienced to a person who just joined in on the fun. The player then becomes angry wanting to make their own high quality server. Once, they eventually get out a "decent" project, no one joins. Hard work left in the dust. The player then leaves, play some servers, repeat. When it's the last straw for the player? They just pack their bags and go.

Here's what I imagine happens when a steam users joins blockland:

1) Start the game having no idea what it really is because the trailer makes no sense
2) Click "Join a Game" because it's the most obvious button
3) Probably sort by players and join a random server
4) Blockland starts downloading 3000 files, so he leaves the server
5) Join another server
6) Still 2000 files
7) Alt tab and do something else while it loads for 20 minutes
8) Spawn, no idea how to do anything because the tutorial doesn't have an obvious button on the main menu
9) Ask how to do things
10) Get yelled at for not knowing how to do things already
11) Repeat with a few more servers
12) Leave

[Conan]

yeah the tutorial needs to be plastered on the main menu or something on first startup so people don't miss it

i'm pretty sure it wouldn't be terribly hard to implement some sort of first-time-on-startup popup that asks the player if they want to play the tutorial.