i feel like we need a little advertisement if we want the community to grow in population
I've said this a couple of other times and i'll say it again, advertisement isn't the problem, among the thousands of bot/spam/alt accounts that register on the forums every now and then, we get do get actual new players, some of which are from Steam even, so getting new players
isn't the problem, it's getting them to stay
New players come into Blockland, see the vast emptiness of the world, they get bored trying to build something fun and exciting, they probably didn't even look at the controls or the various options to make their game play more comfortably, so they try going to another server, they don't understand what's going on, they don't know the rules of the server or what they're supposed to do, they quit
Or they get bullied because of the toxic portion of the player base, they get kicked or banned from the server, they quit
Or they just don't enjoy the game in general because they find games like
Roblox, Garry's Mod, or even Minecraft to be more fun, more accessible, and more welcoming (at least on the servers they know are good)
The thing about Blockland is that it isn't very accessible, there's no way to know that player created content exists, or where it exists unless you go into a server to be informed, and i doubt anyone actually does that, and people still don't know to even install the add-ons or how to enable them, or that they have to be enabled
The game isn't always welcoming, there isn't much that can be done about this unless a player is doing something bad enough to get their key revoked, but it's still a fact of the matter, and depending on what server a new player joins, they'll be discouraged by someone's negative behavior and the new player may even assume the worst of the game's community based on whatever bad interactions they may have, which is evident by the various people who have quit Blockland in the past because they saw the community as toxic, nothing but a bunch of trolls, etc
And we shouldn't have to put on a show just to get new players to stick and show them that the game can be fun, it's a nice gesture and such, but we shouldn't have to, it makes us seem desperate, new players should be able to find the fun on their own
There have been a few occasions where i've seen people say that they could start hosting servers again in response to new players coming to the game, if that person stopped hosting their server, they probably no longer felt like it, or had more important things to tend to, so they shouldn't feel pressured into getting the new players to stay
They can do so if they want to, but i just feel like if that person stopped hosting one day, they probably had their reasons, but an influx of new players is now pressuring them to start hosting again so that the new players have something fun to do in order to keep coming back to the game instead of leaving like they usually do
Now the next thing i keep bringing up is
STEAM WORKSHOP, it just needs to be a thing, people who despise the workshop system so much can continue using Blockland Glass, but not every Steam player knows about it or may not want it for whatever reason, either way, a workshop can only be an improvement to the Blockland experience, especially if it's done right and moderated by any players that happen to be browsing the workshop who can report stolen, broken, or harmful add-ons
There's just a lot of things that could probably be done but likely won't, and that's why Blockland WILL inevitably die out like a ton of other games have
There's only so much coal left before the train comes to a stop, but the conductor has yet to say what they are, or aren't, doing on the matter
I'd try to explain things better and talk about some other things, but i've been working on this post for nearly
two hours, i just can't brain anymore right now
