are you still playing FF?
 

How many are still active?

Considering the zE's server stats, FF steamgroup and users on this board, there are many people that have played FF at least once in their lives.

at the moment the servers seem to be empty most of the times. I'm wondering if this is gonna change in the near future, that's why I'd appreciate if you guys could answer following questions and could give us an eventual outlook perhaps. also it would provide some activity on this board.


1. are you still playing FF?

2. if not, why not? busy, no time or just no interest?

3. are you gonna start playing again? giving the game another shot?

I just tried to screenshot replying to this thread with a "I'd rather be caught dead than playing FF" from steam ingame browser while playing FF, but it is impossible, it just ends up with the main menu background :(

1. yes

I'm so worried about not being funny I did it
http://pics.pinerider.net/temp4.png

lmao dexter...

Edit: Also no, don't play...haven't in ages b/c I have no time and yes I plan on playing all the time...it just never seems to work out.

I just hope no one catches me playing.

you know what's funny Kube, the first time I did it I spelled it with than :-P

1. No, I stopped a couple weeks after 2.4.

2. The changes have made it so that I just don't have close games anymore when I play. I miss long, played-out games of attrition in AvD which seems extinct in FF now.

3. I'll definitely play again if the balance changes get remedied. If I ever feel like it gets balanced again, I could do a PR campaign with my machinima videos or make a trailer for it. I was thinking of something like an FF equivalent of the "meet the" videos. I could probably get from 20,000 - 100,000 views based on my current fanbase, don't know how many players that would amount to.

1. no, but still dedicated otherwise
2. hardware trouble, not enjoyable (in comparison to what I could be playing)
3. sure, when the problems of #2 get fixed

I just started again the other day, all the cool guys are still around, and I hope 2.5 comes soon. Will be interesting to see what happens.

i'll be playing other games for now, however maybe every once in awhile ill hop on for 30 minutes. next update ill get on 2.5 however 2.5 ain't here yet.

The age old critical mass problem of server admins is now affecting the entire mod. Unless the server population is at least 5 or so, few people will actually join the server because it's not very fun to play with a tiny number of players and more players may not show up in the length of time you are willing to wait.

It used be, about a year ago, that you could just casually join and find at least one server that had reached critical mass, any time of the day. Now you usually find just one populated US server, active in the evenings or at night(european time).

I propose two life-support solutions that could resuscitate casual play at more hours of the day.

The first is experimental and possibly too weak; it's a social convention relying on time zones being integer hour offsets. Basically you try to convince players that if they'd really like to play FF and there are no servers with players they should join a server and idle for 5 minutes on the top of the hour. Waiting for just 5 minutes is significantly less painful than idling and waiting for people to join at random times.

The more tried and true method is gathers announced on the fortress forever steam group. You might try an announcement every saturday, sunday and holiday at 10 AM CST, inviting players to a popular US server. You might try the same at 10 AM GMT, inviting players to a popular euro server.

The science and industry mod has an even smaller population than FF, but it still manages to sport a full server once every weekend by having gather announcements.

I'll pop in the skills servers once in a while... Still play a lot of TFC

that would certainly help mate. :)

I still play, although the past couple of months have been the Fall busy season at work, and I've little time to play. In the evenings, I wouldn't mind someone hitting me up to play. If we could get a small group to hit a server, it would probably get some more people to play.

2. if not, why not? busy, no time or just no interest?
Busy with school, nobody is ever on, banned from OT

that's a very good idea. I don't know how many peeps actually read this forum, is there a way to spread this idea globally, so we could reach a lot of FF players (even those, that don't know this website neither irc)?

^

Also community is still fucked up; snipers ruin any sense of fun I have when there are 6 or less players (or even more); rumors that the gameplay is going to be even shittier in 2.5; lack of players and dedicated admins that don't realize that even though swearing is a-ok (it is, to a point), they should still tempban dumbasses.

(But wait! We can't ban people with the small community! HINT: Excising the tumor prevents it from spreading and killing the mass.)

Where did you hear THAT rumour from, Raynian?

Probably from one of the million inactive beta testers.