My worries about Blockland as of now

Author Topic: My worries about Blockland as of now  (Read 18794 times)

obviously, so why migrate so soon to an unfinished game that has little content in comparison
Because what content does blockland have now lmao. Dead servers of rehashed ideas from 5+ years ago. No wonder everybody is already migrating I'm sick of hopping on and seeing rising lava and it's the exact same gamemode from 2014. Except thats every server nowadays originality went out the door when all the good content creators dipped on this game. I dont think in the last 3 months I saw any refreshing ideas being hosted besides national socialist Zombies.

Because what content does blockland have now lmao. Dead servers of rehashed ideas from 5+ years ago. No wonder everybody is already migrating I'm sick of hopping on and seeing rising lava and it's the exact same gamemode from 2014. Except thats every server nowadays originality went out the door when all the good content creators dipped on this game. I dont think in the last 3 months I saw any refreshing ideas being hosted besides national socialist Zombies.
personally im busy with school and new years, otherwise id probably whip up some tournaments demake or some pve stuff. i was about 20-30% done with a gamefandan monster RPG remake (new ai, weapons, etc) until my builder quit playing :(

rest of us are probably just busy in general with real life stuff and stress and jobs and school.

tbh the scariest thing about blockland slowly dying off is that i'm making all these big projects for essentially nothing and just wasting my time. but, people still join my game (the 8 - 10 that do), which is what motivates me to keep going.
i deliberated about this a lot, i like making big things in bl but i was upset nobody was ever gonna play them, honestly the satisfaction of finishing a project is good enough imo

personally im busy with school and new years, otherwise id probably whip up some tournaments demake or some pve stuff. i was about 20-30% done with a gamefandan monster RPG remake (new ai, weapons, etc) until my builder quit playing :(

rest of us are probably just busy in general with real life stuff and stress and jobs and school.
I mean not specifically now over the summer the usual peak was <70. Brickadia has 81 people on right now and blockland has 13.
I really think the problem is that the vast majority of players have burned out playing the same gamemodes for years.
That wouldn't be so much of a problem but whenever those years old gamemodes get hosted it's usually pretty close to the same thing I played years ago.

Respect for wanting to reinvent gamemodes but Tournaments has already been done like 3 separate times. It's too late too save this game by doing something that's already been too many times done before. I've said this a lot but the server browser consists mostly of servers I don't care to play anymore. Speedkart came out in 2013 who is really gonna enjoy playing the same maps 6 years later constantly. Throwmod and murder mystery both came out in 2011 and no real significant changes to them have been made imo. Everybody used to rehash falling platforms too for some reason.

I remember the era when people would constantly make new gamemodes and every server had something different to offer. But now it really seems like all creativity has been drained for this game and the only thing people are doing nowadays are hosting gamemodes that were popular years ago.

part of the reason is most new ideas now have to account for the lower playercount (eg have more pve or involve individual players more), which means AI or serious design considerations, which makes it harder to pull off for the average user/coder/modder. and as for new ideas, the reality is a LOT of ideas are unoriginal - its how its spun or presented that makes it feel fresh.

imo there's no point pretending a gamemode is something is not, and if it was originally an attempt to modernize an old gamemode, and eventually grows beyond it (the MRPG i was working on has much more sophisticated bot AI and modular system that makes it easy to add new enemies), i dont see why i should call it any different when old players will immediately make the connection. new players who dont wont even notice its a "remake".

the reality is there is only so many kinds of games out there that can be successfully remade in BL, and the best/most popular are the ones that end up being remade constantly. and there's nothing wrong with that - the most successful ones don't just take the old formula and fix up its parts, they try to expand upon it and add more depth, or refine everything to an absolute polish.

the reality is there is only so many kinds of games out there that can be successfully remade in BL, and the best/most popular are the ones that end up being remade constantly. and there's nothing wrong with that - the most successful ones don't just take the old formula and fix up its parts, they try to expand upon it and add more depth, or refine everything to an absolute polish.
Yeah back then this wasnt a problem because in addition to that new gamemodes were still being created while recycled ones were still popular. But now I assume most people have been burned out on the same gamemodes nowadays because that's literally all that get hosted. Some gamemodes just arent worth reviving. I did freeze tag and that could of been done as a fleshed out gamemode years ago but it wasn't. I don't know why BBB was never fleshed out again because that could of topped murder mystery but instead we are still playing murder mystery 8 years later.

Blockland just took a deep stab wound with brickadia going into open alpha and unfortunately the community isn't gonna patch him up this time.

EDIT:Just checked out blockland again and the two most popular servers are literally the EXACT same gamemode they were 6 YEARS AGO. This is the real reason blockland is gonna die. Even with hosting old popular gamemodes they cant be the exact same down to the builds they were using 6 years ago. forget it blockland has been on this downward trend for the past few years only this time we don't have enough players to sustain hosting the same gamemodes. Normal people are going to get bored and want to stop playing after playing the same gamemodes for 5+ years.
« Last Edit: September 13, 2019, 12:05:34 AM by MonkeyFunkyMonkey »

the mall save i was making got lost in transfers and there's no way i'm rebuilding it

the mall save i was making got lost in transfers and there's no way i'm rebuilding it
NOOOOO NOT STARCOURT

Brickadia is literally better, why be so clung to the past just for the sake of it.

Brickadia is literally better, why be so clung to the past just for the sake of it.
What exactly makes it better? Improved graphics with reduced gameplay value is not better imo

And for the record I don't hate Brickadia or anything like that, it just boggles my mind how ready people are to leave Blockland before Brickadia has anything in comparison from a gameplay perspective. I feel that we should continue with BL until Brickadia is closer to a finished product at least

What exactly makes it better?
devs who arent neglecting the game like its some bastard child

What exactly makes it better? Improved graphics with reduced gameplay value is not better imo

And for the record I don't hate Brickadia or anything like that, it just boggles my mind how ready people are to leave Blockland before Brickadia has anything in comparison from a gameplay perspective. I feel that we should continue with BL until Brickadia is closer to a finished product at least
it isn't just the graphics.the building controls are so far beyond blocklands, I am serious. Having real sideways bricks alone is a huge game changer. It feels so much more like building with real Lego. They are also just more intuitive for new players in general. I don't think people realize how alienating blocklands stupid number pad controls are to new players. All my friends I've tried to make play BL with me refuse to stay because building is too hard so they feel like they can't make anything cool. In addition to sideways bricks the brick selector, brick resizer, and micro shifting tools are just great. Your imagination is so much less limited.  There's propor brick collision so you can bump wedges and ramps next to each other without some stupid separate brick pack that just turns off brick collision. What a broken work around for something that should be a default feature. Blockland is full of broken ass workaround mods for features that a game like blockland should just have from the beginning because of whatever reason or another. I don't know anything about coding so I feel less inclined to blame badapots skill/motivation and more inclined to blame the stuffty 20 year old engine the game was built on.

Sure, Brickadia doesn't have nearly as many game mode options and there is no wrench tool yet. But all these features are coming. And when they get here they're going to be so much more fun to play with because the base game is already a better base game.  When's the last time you tried playing blockland vanilla? Never. Because it's a bad game. Hell. The guy who made the most important thing to make blockland bearable (the duplicator) is one of the leads on this new game lol.. what does that tell you.

Edit: on the note of building mechanics, anyone who argues against that i want you to look back and reflect on when you first picked up blockland. Did you feel like a total noob? Idk about you but it probably took me a year before I could build anything half decent, and that was probably just building the muscle memory to hit the keys. Part of that was me being a dumb 12 year old and part of that was blocklands building controls not being an intuitive design, rather a set of inputs you have to learn. Games, especially with ones that have appeals to children should be easier than that.

Edit Edit: I realize I didn't really address your second point about early adoption. Really, its just personal preference. Some people get really excited about new tech and they wanna early adopt. Some people don't wanna switch until they can move their entire life from one thing to another. I get it. But no one is forcing you to make the switch. And if you're concerned that Blockland's playerbase is dwindling because of Brickadia I think it's really quite the opposite. Blockland's playerbase has been dwindling for a long time, and at no fault of Brickadia existing (because it didn't yet). I think the majority of Brickadia's current players, though, are people who gave up on BL a long time ago and are just  curious to tune into what's happening next for their old favorite game. Half the people I've seen playing haven't been active on BL in a loooong time. I've ran into people from literally 8 years ago. People are just really excited about the prospects of a new version of their favorite game and they like what it is enough to look past the things that it isn't. I'm not going to encourage you to try it or anything if you don't want to, Blockland still has a lot of great things about it that Brickadia doesn't have yet.
« Last Edit: September 13, 2019, 10:29:27 AM by Jay the Cartoonist »

how do the building controls work exactly in brickadia? ive only ever been on it before all of that was really fleshed out

how do the building controls work exactly in brickadia? ive only ever been on it before all of that was really fleshed out
there's numpad controls still aka "detached mode", there's point-and-click too (which u can click and hold to drag out and place multiple bricks, using scroll wheel to add spacing), there's orbit mode which ur camera is attached to ur ghost brick while building, and there's a duplicator, resize tool (drag a 1x1 brick into whatever, or any other brick that can be resized)

the duplicator and resize tool use click-and-drag too

so much better

how do the building controls work exactly in brickadia? ive only ever been on it before all of that was really fleshed out
if you want to play, its public alpha, just have to join the discord and send a message in a #registration channel. the only thing is you'll have to link your discord account to a phone number for verification (brickadia can't see it, its just to prevent bots/discourage alts)