Promote Fortress Forever 2.4

[~kev~]

Originally Posted by wakka

well Kev I've known about that before, probably because people like Bridget always manage to get the topic swayed and then posts like yours are missed.

I will join those forums tonight

Wherever I go and wherever I may roam, I beat the Fortress Forever drum and I beat it loudly.

The problem is, not enough Fortress Forever players are beating the war drums loud enough, and where other people can hear them. We can not sit back and be content with what we have. We have to march in the streets, put up the banners, and put FF where people can see it.

For those of you that do not understand comparisons, let me translate. We need to be on other forums, posting screen shots and videos of Fortress Forever. Where there are 5 tf2 players posting in a forum, we need 15 FF players posting screen shots and videos.

You over whelm your enemy, grind their bones into dust and spread it to the wind.

Sorry about the war drums and grinding bones, I got a little carried away.

[Pon]

Originally Posted by ~kev~

Sorry about the war drums and grinding bones, I got a little carried away.

If I had room in my sig, I'd have quoted it by now

[Crazycarl]

Originally Posted by ~kev~

I would love to post some interviews, news,,, something, but nobody will give me anything to post about the FF comunity.

You could set up your own interviews and find the news yourself. We're willing to talk about some stuff, but we don't really have the time to type stuff up for public consumption.

You're coming on too strong in that thread. The guy starts out by saying that he's willing to try FF, and you start getting defensive. To someone reading that exchange, you sound just like another internet fanboy. Comparing FF to TF2 it pointless. People who play TF2 already know it. Just give out more information about FF to those who show interest.

[Mikael_hs]

I posted the same topic before 2.4, and it got the same whine from certain people...

The ideas that came up (being worth mentioning) were these:

1. Post Flyers on College Campus (or any decent place for that matter) -> good idea everyone do it.

2. Have a huge friendslist on steam with people who play other sorta similar games, then they'll ask you what FF is and might play -> everyone can do this so please do.

4. Organizing irc channel, dedicated to help newcommers -> I don't think the euro-pickupcommunity at all does what it could here. I cba anymore trying to tell the other admins what to do so that new ppl have the best possible experience. Do your jobs please.

5. Video tutorial (to help transition form public gameplay to clanbased) -> This is not needed because there's a great ingame tutorial which once out will render a video-tutorial useless.

The rest are solely game-changes:

5.Ingame Tutorial -> there's one already which is real good but it's not entirely finished.

6. Stuff for LAMING around (teleporters, spreading infection etc.) -> talk to devs not me (I think this idea is crap;P)

7. More Character -> talk to devs not me. (now that the voice has more character, people just complain that it's tf2-style)

Also an obvious one:

8. Spam gameforums once mine and wakkas superkewl avi's are out (not at the same time tho)

[Bridget]

Advertising for Fortress Forever is like telling someone "Hey, come on down to my special lemonade stand on Fancypants road. I'll be giving out free ice cold lemonade all day long!" then people storm to Fancypants road and line up outside your lemonade stand for a nice ice cold glass of lemonade. Instead, they get nasty, bitter/sour, warm lemonade made from powder and not real lemons. Those people then get disappointed and leave.

Now, you might be saying. Sheesh! I have a nice stand, and a nice sign and all that, but that's not what you're sellin'. Now, you might think. 'Gee, maybe I should go down the road and see if I can get more people to try my lemonade?' So, you do just that. You return to the park and signal for some more people to come over. You see a few familiar faces from the last group. "Hey! Come on down to Fancypants road and try some free ice cold homemade lemonade!" and they too flock to your stand, considering it's a blistering summer day, and nothing hits the spot quite like ice cold lemonade. NO. They, too, are disappointed. It is still bitter/sour, artificial, and not ice cold. They leave disappointed.

Instead of addressing their disappointment and routing out the problem, you continue, for a few days, trying over and over to get people to like your lemonade. Every time it fails, you just think the solution is to get a new 'handful' of people to try the lemonade. Eventually, you reassure yourself, you'll stumble upon the right group of people who will just adore your lemonade. Obliviously, you go on and on unaware that maybe you should fix the lemonade and popularity will naturally ensue. Eventually, you fix the lemonade. But, everyone is reluctant to try the new lemonade no matter how many times you beg them nor how fuckin' omg kick-your-fucking-taste-buds-out-of-your-mouth awesome it is because their first experience was so bad. It's a cry-wolf scenario.

Now do you understand?

[Mikael_hs]

seriously go write your own topic. Your opinion is of course allowed, but this topic is not about what you wish to talk about. You first sabotaged my topic with your defeatist attitude and I'll be damned if I let you sabotage another one. Admins can you guys do something about this?

TO QUOTE YOU:

Fortress Forever just needs some minor spicing up. Some character. It needs something to encourage the player and to reward the player. I recently became a beta tester, and let me assure you that Fortress Forever is progressing quite nicely. I would personally bet 2.4 to be the best patch FF has ever seen so far. ;D

2.4 is, in your words about 3 weeks ago, the best patch FF has ever seen and yet you keep writing nothing but unconstructive criticism. Your arguing belongs in the beta-section for one, because it's only with the devs that you can change the actual game, and secondly it's much easier to say what's wrong, than to say how to fix it. "Minor spicing up"... Well ok thanks for that, i'll go put some salt n pepper on the medic!

[Bridget]

Get over yourself. Also, what was the point quoting me? This game does need some minor spicing up. It doesn't need rewrites and radical changes, but it does need some change and some character. This is what I'm getting at with the example above. There's no point in advertising for something that won't keep players. We just keep rallying players and keeping disappointing them, and when we finally do have a GOOD product, they will ignore us because we've 'cried wolf' so many times. It's not that difficult to understand, but.. meh, whatever. In order to advertise, you must have something to advertise.

LEARN WHAT AN IMPROVEMENT IS. Welcome to the English language. Something might improve, but that doesn't make it polished. You might have an F in math and suddenly improve to a D, but is that D the best you can achieve? NO. 2.4 is the best patch in terms of fixes and beginner goodies, but it is no way the saving grace of FF or the king of innovation. There is a lot more work to be done.

[[AE] 82694]

Ok guys it's starting to go astray lets hold our tounues and stay on topic.

[zelenjava]

Originally Posted by Bridget

We have been advertising the game for quite some time now. It's not a problem reaching people or getting them to play, the game does that by itself (It's a free game.) The problem lies in keeping the players here when they make it here. Most of the players can not adjust, don't enjoy the game, or get strangely and ironically banned from certain servers for acting like they would be expected to act on this game (as an adult, not getting butthurt about words like 'christ' and 'poop') and so they leave.

Strongly disagree, i think the game could do with allot more AVI's and stuff. Theres a whole load of free mods out there and i really dont care to look into them. Avi's and media are a great way to spread the word and attract new players, look at the AVI dedicated sites pure ownage etc.

[squeek.]

This argument is age-old and ongoing. It's incredibly difficult to judge when we should push for as many new players as possible, especially since FF is in a constant state of development. Hopefully we can reach that point soon.

[Bridget]

Originally Posted by zelenjava

Strongly disagree, i think the game could do with allot more AVI's and stuff. Theres a whole load of free mods out there and i really dont care to look into them. Avi's and media are a great way to spread the word and attract new players, look at the AVI dedicated sites pure ownage etc.

The game could do with more videos and advertisements that are obtained if the person who stumbles upon them just happens to stumble upon them or is already a valid or 'sitting on the fence' member of the community. However, going and throwing the game up in the face of different websites (see: "Spam forums") and:

1. Giving Fortress Forever a bad reputation by spamming forums.
2. Reducing the probability of people returning by repeating disappointment.

is counter-productive and pointless. As I've said, people have been advertising this game since its creation, and tons of people flock in, and don't stay. Before we heavily advertise (and it should be done right) we need to find out why people are not staying and how to correct it so they stay. Why advertise a game and only have a few people stick when you can polish it and have the great majority of people advertised to get 'hooked'.

[Rutabeggar]

This server killed FF...That group of players killed FF...blah blah blah. It's the same argument over and over. OT didn't kill FF off. The "elites" didn't kill FF. Yes, I realize this isn't a thread debating whether FF is dead or not, but how can you promote a game that people are pronouncing dead? I love this game, I haven't always liked the direction the Devs took it (ask them) but I do love it. You can't promote the game because there are people posting on the games OFFICIAL FREAKING FORUMS that it's dead. You can't take a product to a group of people and expect them to buy in to it if the people already using it, don't believe in it themselves! Why would you want to play? Honestly? This is a very unique product, offering unique game play, but the community is too toxic. The only way to promote this game is to remove the toxicity.

You want to promote FF? STFU and get active. You want to increase the player base? STFU and get active.

[zelenjava]

Originally Posted by Bridget

The game could do with more videos and advertisements that are obtained if the person who stumbles upon them just happens to stumble upon them or is already a valid or 'sitting on the fence' member of the community. However, going and throwing the game up in the face of different websites (see: "Spam forums") and:

1. Giving Fortress Forever a bad reputation by spamming forums.
2. Reducing the probability of people returning by repeating disappointment.

is counter-productive and pointless. As I've said, people have been advertising this game since its creation, and tons of people flock in, and don't stay. Before we heavily advertise (and it should be done right) we need to find out why people are not staying and how to correct it so they stay. Why advertise a game and only have a few people stick when you can polish it and have the great majority of people advertised to get 'hooked'.

You are talking rubbish mate, sure the games not finished (so what?). The changes made to FF will never remove the core gameplay of FF, by that i mean conc jumping, movement or dm. nor will it ever remove the defense v offense idea. How can making AVIs possibly ever be seen as counter productive or pointless? Aside from showing the competitive side to FF which you can only experience in pickups, clan style play or organised gathers it shows an active, enthusiastic and progressive community. It further shows the teamplay and skilled aspects of FF and what you can achieve and expect to be a part of if you stick with the game. It shows that FF is developing and changing. Spamming forums? i dont think so.

[Bridget]

I really don't know how to dumb this down to get you to understand. For starters, Fortress Forever will never 'be finished' because games today are all about progressive development (Probably because too many development teams got tired of their games sucking ass. They figured, hm, why not develop the game and have the fans drive it to what they like? That way, we don't make shitty predictions and bomb.)

Making videos and guides and maybe telling a few players about the game is fine. That's not pointless or useless, but then again, I wasn't talking about that when I wrote my post. I'm talking about these heavy spam gaming forum 'campaigns' everyone thinks is going to just open the flood gates to popularity to FF. These 'campaigns' have been done before, and the people did not stay. We have to find out why they are not staying first. Otherwise, tons of people try out, get disappointed, and leave. They will be less likely to try the game again, as people usually judge an entire game on their first play through. Why waste all that attention and and all those first-time expectations when we can polish the game, fix it up, then start grabbing large groups of people when it's guaranteed or highly probable that they will like what they play and stick around.

I wouldn't have a problem with this idea if there were not HORRIBLE consequences. It's not like "Oh, we didn't manage to get a large number of new players. I guess we'll try again some other time." No, If you advertise to 1,000 people and only 5 of them stay, congratulations, now 995 people are less likely to give FF another chance because they were displeased with their first time experience. Should have saved the first time experience for those 995 people when the game was in its prime, was polished, and we found out/fixed why people weren't staying.

[zelenjava]

Allow me to dumb it down for you, people are displeased with your rants and negativity on their threads. If people havent stayed in FF then its because they prefer the easier or more basic play of other games and dont like the core of FF or because they arent experiencing anything other than midmap pyros on aardvark. Most of FFs good players or players who play competatively are all on IRC doing closed of pickups, if anything i'd say people leave because they dont know where to go to play the game propperly as its supposed to be played.

I just fail to see how any of the mentioned by Huevon can possibly be interpreted as bad. I just see you complaining.

[wakka]

Bridget, stop posting in threads to do with advertising... You have no clue. It's people like you that stop people being productive in threads. So get off your computer chair and vent your anger towards the television.

[Mikael_hs]

enough intellectualising. you all can try to spin this every way you want but it comes to 2 options as far as I see it.

1. We promote this game now, and HOPEFULLY it will make it grow
2. We keep "waiting", hoping the game will "be fixed" (??????), until there's no one left to do the promotion but Bridget.

For one there's not like theres a lack of gamers out there. so even if we currently dont have the MAXIMUM EFFICIENCY of having people stay, I'd be more than happy if a 1000 people tried it out, and only 25-50 stuck around. There's more where those 1000 people came from. This game is getting old, we got to do something now and not later.

[reaper18]

Originally Posted by Mikael_hs

enough intellectualising. you all can try to spin this every way you want but it comes to 2 options as far as I see it.

1. We promote this game now, and HOPEFULLY it will make it grow
2. We keep "waiting", hoping the game will "be fixed" (??????), until there's no one left to do the promotion but Bridget.

For one there's not like theres a lack of gamers out there. so even if we currently dont have the MAXIMUM EFFICIENCY of having people stay, I'd be more than happy if a 1000 people tried it out, and only 25-50 stuck around. There's more where those 1000 people came from. This game is getting old, we got to do something now and not later.

As long as we keep promoting and keep getting people to play the game, we are more likely to get the group of players THAT WILL STAY.
Bridget, do you get it? If we get more people to try it, then theres a more likely chance that some of the people, though not all, will stay.
I see players come and go, some bitch about one thing and others the next, and then sometimes they leave. But theres other times where they stay and keep playing. And you fail to see that side of it.
So srsly, stop being such a debbie downer, fool o.0
Maybe theres a way to reach out to more ex/current tfc players

[Bridget]

That's probably the worst idea ever, but you guys just don't seem to understand why. If we go through 10,000 people and only like 25 of them play, you guys might find that to be positive because you're desperate for new players, but if we advertise to 10,000 people we should expect numbers higher than 25. Now, those remaining people who didn't stick might have refused to do so because of something they disliked, not because they just 'couldn't get into it'. This has happened before. Tons of people leave because the Engineer is not up to shape as they see fit. Tons of people leave because bhop is not intuitive and they feel it leaves them out of the game.

If they don't stick, that group of people we appealed to has second doubts when a new version of FF comes along. They might give it a try (from an advertisement) and still not like it. It becomes a cry wolf scenario and they become more and more less likely to give the game a shot another time as time goes on. The time it takes for them to reach this stage is increased when small-fix and addition patches are advertised, leading them to believe they're major patches. Finally, FF gets amazing fixes for what they had problems with, but the majority of them refuse to give it another shot because they've done that over and over and were disappointed yet again.

You guys counter this argument by saying "Oh well, there's more people where those guys came from" but it's not that easy. Fortress Forever is a very different game compared to what the majority of gamers want today, and there's not an endless sea of people willing to try it. So, don't EXHAUST the available crowd on patches that don't address key issues. Don't push the 'sitting on the fence waiting' crowd off. I don't see what's so hard to understand.

Look at how FF's patching usually works. 2.1 was a huge patch and everyone was excited for it. It had some awesome additions and fixes to the gameplay. It even had an excellent preview video and it got everyone excited. I watched that damn preview video over a hundred times in anticipation and when 2.1 was released, I quit TF2 ten minutes in to installing it and went back to FF. This was a key time for FF to be advertised, and a great deal of the fanbase came in from it. Look at the updates that followed 2.1? 2.2 and 2.3 were released quickly afterwords as 'address patches' that fixed the issues with 2.1. 2.4 was just like 2.2 and 2.3, I think. We need to wait for the '2.1s' of FF to advertise. That's why I think the dev team should do ONE BIG patch followed by 5 small fix patches done on the sidelines of the main development and then bundle all the stuff brainstormed, tested, and finalised 'in field' for single patch releases, which should be suited for advertisement.

[Hawk Eye]

I can see both sides here. On quite a few points, I agree with Bridget. It's not that FF doesn't deserve to be advertising, but we should definitely make our big push, if you will, when a major patch is released... something that would be seen as "major improvements", or at least quite a bit of changes.

At the same time, however, I see the theory behind the advertisement now. Yes, 5-25 seem incredibly small, and I realize the wolf cry effect, but a major factor in what keeps players in game, or playing at all, is other people playing. Small advancements, over time, would ultimately increase our "recruitment efficiency" by that regard.

The question, though, really- is how to balance these two effects to make this game flourish.