Disappointed at player turn out

[~kev~]

Last night, a couple of players were talking about how few people are playing FF.

To say I am disappointed is an under statement. This is an awesome mod, just about everything I had hoped for. After the first patch or two, and a little fine tuning, FF is going to be even greater.

Why are so few people playing? There are several reason for this.

1. Bad timing.

A. Halo 3 was just released. A lot of the console gamers are playing this instead of PC games.

B. tf2, that piece of C***P was released.

So FF is having to compete for people in the gaming community.

Now the disturbing thought. The mod has not been well received by the TFC community. Most of the TFC servers that were full before the release of FF, are still full. This is a big change from previous game releases.

When Quake 2 (Q2) was released, Quakeworld (QW) servers were almost empty within a week. Not because everyone thought Quake 2 was better, but because it was new. Some of the people that tried Q2 went back to QW a few weeks / months later.

The same goes for Quake 2 and half-life 1. Q2 was the "in" game until half-life 1 was released. Within a few weeks after the release of H1, the Q2 servers were almost empty.

Quake 3 however barely put a dent in the Half-life community. This may have been in part because counter-strike and TFC had been released.

The old school TFC players might not be ready for a change just yet. A lot of them are older in age and just want to stay with what they know. A lot of them will have to upgrade their computers to play FF. As an example, one guy playing FF last night had 384 megs of memory and a 900 MHZ P3 processor. His frame rates were about 30 - 33 fps.

One community has held true - the Fortress community. A lot of the quake world team fortress players moved to TFC and have been there ever since. The hard core fortress fan has stayed true to the community through the release of dozens of games and now sadly through the release of FF.

Now for the humor:
To get more TFC players into FF I suggest a microsoft battle plan.

A. Tell everyone TFC is full of theoretical (it could happen) security holes when in fact there are none at the present time. The only way to get around these security holes that will be exploited in the future is to upgrade to FF.

B. Get these fake security holes and their theoretical effects published on several highly visible websites. Every website then should direct the TFC fan to update to FF.

C. Get into the steam forums and criticize everyone for playing a 10 year old game (TFC). Then tell them they should "upgrade to FF."

Hey, microsofts plan works on mac and linux, why not TFC?

[Nuk3m]

Now for the humor:
To get more TFC players into FF I suggest a microsoft battle plan.

A. Tell everyone TFC is full of theoretical (it could happen) security holes when in fact there are none at the present time. The only way to get around these security holes that will be exploited in the future is to upgrade to FF.

B. Get these fake security holes and their theoretical effects published on several highly visible websites. Every website then should direct the TFC fan to update to FF.

C. Get into the steam forums and criticize everyone for playing a 10 year old game (TFC). Then tell them they should "upgrade to FF."

Hey, microsofts plan works on mac and linux, why not TFC?[/QUOTE]

lol

[GhostBuster]

roflmao

Yes a lot of those things are true but then its just a matter of time they realize how limited is tf2 and how cool is FF, for the halo 3 well.. i dont know.

My guess is lots of players stayed in tfc because the hardware that it requires, think that many people like me in the past could only play tfc (not cs or any other mod because my onboard 32mb video card) and the hardware that FF requires well.. its just a little too much if you ask me, more than hl2, css, etc. and not all of us can upgrade our pcs.

[SoBe Green]

Its the same problem CS Source has. I'm part of a CS community and we would love to switch to Source but its hard to get people to switch from a game they have played for so long.

[GhOsT]

I'm willing to bet all the money I have in this world that Halo 3 had extremely little to no impact on the number of people playing FF. Evidence of this? Look at all the people playing TF2. On the other hand, TF2 is probably the major factor on why you feel the need to make this post.

Also, a lot of the QWTF community hated TFC and still hates it to this day. They moved on to Q3F or stuck with playing QWTF.

Originally Posted by GhOsT

... On the other hand, TF2 is probably the major factor on why you feel the need to make this post.
...

Now please don't get mad at me, but I'll definitely agree and corroborate this. I'm a big TFC fan for the sheer fun of the game. I'm definitely not competitive(couldn't bunny hop to save my life), and in all my gaming years, TFC was actually the only one in which I was in a clan for any period of time. Well, I had a tag in my name for a while(and will admit, I've totally forgotten which one it was, just that it was a Belgian-based one). I just frequented some server and caught some people's eyes so they 'took me in' so to speak.

In any case, I'd been still playing TFC on and off(the odd 24-hour dustbowl 32player madness. lots of pole humping) and keeping a sideways glance at the FF site every now and then, just to see how it was faring, and any news of its release(watching videos and the like). When I heard of its release date I was really very excited and couldn't wait. Then when I heard that TF2 was going to have the same beta start date, I winced as I knew it would sway me(I love cartoony stuff, Monkey Island games, et al).

Anyway, the 'surprise' early FF release was awesome and I played that every chance I got for the week it was out before the 17th. I grew very attached to the Pyro(really really really love it), with its burn levels and all, checked this forum a lot during that week, etc.(the "no humping" sign was a lovely touch, haha). I checked the steam stats and like the "6th place" post showed, it had quite the number of players.

But ever since that fateful day, I haven't even loaded it up once, which I really regret because it's so great. But TF2 has just kept me that little bit more enthralled(personal opinion! please don't shoot). I also noticed that drastic drop to ~200 players from its previous +1000 or so.
Hopefully though, I see myself settling in to TF2 and finally getting past its novelty, then going back to FF like I did with TFC, when I crave for its different and more familiar style of gameplay.

So yeah, I'm definitely not surprised at the sudden drop in players, and I lament it. But ya'll seem dedicated enough to keep it alive and definitely keep the hope that people will slowly but surely trickle back into it. Maybe once those TFC players upgrade their PC's or something, heh(speaking of which, I definitely couldn't imagine myself playing TFC again with those graphics after running around in the FF world).

[~kev~]

Originally Posted by GhOsT

I'm willing to bet all the money I have in this world that Halo 3 had extremely little to no impact on the number of people playing FF. Evidence of this?

Its a theory, so I do not know where to look for data. Its a notion that tens of thousands of teen agers, who would be playing PC games, bought Halo 3. Instead of playing in front of a computer screen, they are sitting in front of a TV. Halo 3 broke all kinds of sales records, those people had to come from somewhere.

[greenday5494]

many many Halo players are just sbox people. they have no idea what Team Fortress is, except the slight possitlilty of hearing about it in an ad for the X360 version. 360 sales more than doubled when H3 came out

[GhOsT]

I think you are making the false assumption that a person cannot own a 360 and play PC games at the same time. Also, that console gamers didn't exist back when Quake came out.

PC gaming is still alive and kicking. There are still millions of people playing World of Warcraft. There still hundreds of thousands of people playing CS and its offshoots. The people are out there.

However, you do have a point in that there are a lot more things out there competing for a person's time. Back in the Quake/TF era there wasn't much out there in the area of online PC gaming. There also weren't really many mods either. However, now there are so many more choices. With that said, I still feel that if Halo 3 didn't exist FF wouldn't magically gobble up all, or even a number large enough to mention of those people.

[greenday5494]

did i ever say that? i own an xbox 360. im just saying, the majority of xbox peeps dont usually play PC games. ask anyone in a halo online game if they heard of TF.

[greenday5494]

yes, exactly, i dont think Halo 3 made a bid impact. people can play both pc and 360. im going to pick up overrated halo3 in a bout a week or so.

[~kev~]

So must of you think it is unlikely that PC gaming was affected by Halo 3?

Out of the millions of copies of Halo 3 that were sold, just a few were to PC gamers? My theory is, even if ten thousand copies of Halo 3 were sold to PC gamers, that ten thousand could affect FF and other gaming communities.

Oh yea, I forgot about Bio-shock. It should have been on my first list.

The theory is, the FF community was affected by the release of tf2, Bio-shock and Halo 3. The biggest influence was tf2, followed by bio-shock and lastly halo 3.

[Dr.Uudge]

No sweat. TF2 officially released and it still has crash bugs and compatability bugs.

Plus there's no curve to learn new skills, other than the usual point and shoot. It's all about gameplay depth, and the deprivation of it, due to what some people considered "balanced and fun gameplay" is going to allow people to get bored of it.

There's a new custom hunted map on kali i was playing yesterday, and it's trimp mania. Community made maps are prone to have this type of minute, yet significant, additions to their maps, and as always, more variety + balance = more playerbase.

It says something very good about a TF mod, if you can port/remake maps from other mods like ff_cbble or ff_hallsofthegiants, have them converted for the mod, and still work as CTF/AvD/hunted.

On the other hand, there's something very odd or even broke about a supposed TF game that you can't even port/remake previous TF map concepts like hunted/dustbowl/well without having to add wait time for "balance," take out CTF concepts, litter the map w/ medkits and ammo, throw a random dice for quad dmg, and encourages camping base(due to respawn time), instead of going after the flag/objective. There's actually 3 specific maps i'm very interested in seeing how they will be converted/remade/interpreted - hunted, rock2, flagrun. Only time will tell.

[Boogieman117]

Originally Posted by ~kev~

So must of you think it is unlikely that PC gaming was affected by Halo 3?

Out of the millions of copies of Halo 3 that were sold, just a few were to PC gamers? My theory is, even if ten thousand copies of Halo 3 were sold to PC gamers, that ten thousand could affect FF and other gaming communities.

Oh yea, I forgot about Bio-shock. It should have been on my first list.

The theory is, the FF community was affected by the release of tf2, Bio-shock and Halo 3. The biggest influence was tf2, followed by bio-shock and lastly halo 3.

In short, what you're saying is that a lot of big-name games (TF2, Halo 3, Bioshock) came out at or around the time that FF was released, am I correct in that assumption?

If so, then I reply by saying this. Just keeping playing the mod. As long as there is a LIVING community for the mod, it'll continue to thrive. The more interested pubbers = the more attention the devs give you it = the moregooder it gets. We just have to keep building the base.

The reason that we probably had 1000+ at the word 'go' was because it was new. They made their decisions early and maybe they left. I did the same with Halo 3; I went to a friends house to see what the hype was about. After beating the game and playing the MP; it got old. So, I move back to FF.

As far as the old school TFC'ers go, I'm clocking in on 8 years. I love FF, and that's why I asked and still am, a beta tester was to make sure it played like TFC yet still had the modern upgrades and graphics. If it's not your cup of tea; don't knock it, just keep walking. Internal fighting isn't helpful and doesn't help the morale of the community and doesn't look good from the outside-looking-in.

Anyway, that's all I got. I'm heading home from work to populate my server and hopefully crash my lil' server box.

[~kev~]

Originally Posted by Boogieman117

In short, what you're saying is that a lot of big-name games (TF2, Halo 3, Bioshock) came out at or around the time that FF was released, am I correct in that assumption?

Bioshock was released August 21, 2007
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bioshock


Fortress Forever was released on September 13, 2007
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fortress_Forever


tf2 beta was released September 17th, 2007
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Team_fortress_2


Halo 3 was released September 25, 2007
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halo_3

Records
According to Microsoft, first-day sales of Halo 3 reached $170 million in the U.S., making it the highest grossing entertainment product within 24-hours of release in history. The performance beat the previous record setter, predecessor Halo 2, which earned $125 million within 24-hours after its launch. Halo 3 has beaten other records as well; more than 1.7 million copies of Halo 3 were pre-ordered in the U.S., making it the fastest pre-selling game in U.S. history. Worldwide more than US$300 million worth were sold in the first week, helping to more than double the sales of the Xbox 360 when compared with the weekly average before the Halo 3 launch.

The game also drew over a million Xbox Live members to play online in the first 20-hours, making it the biggest day for Xbox Live gaming in history.

In one month and a few days time, four major games were released. To answer your question, that is exactly what I am saying. Since the orange box has been unlocked, I look for the number of FF players to go down even more.

I'll keep playing FF, through thick and thin.

[Paft]

FF is just an unofficial hl2 mod, it won't achieve number 1 title...

Most people don't solely play one game. Also lots of people today own and play all sorts games on platforms as well as PC.

[barronofhellion]

well, i just found 2 more people to try out the mod, there both pritty new to the mod thing... told them it was free and they both went FREE ???? and i can play it forever its not a demo ?!?!?

[chilledsanity]

Well I'm probably a minority anyway, but the thing that sucked me right into FF was the ragdoll physics. I play primarily push maps (especially dustbowl) where's there's always a lot of action. Seeing bodies getting tossed around like confetti just wows me and I also find it absolutely hilarious, definitely more so than TF2, which almost tries too hard to be funny. FF can get so ridiculous in terms of the action I'm just blown away by it.

That said, there's not a lot of options for push maps right now, just dustbowl and cornfield and even less populated servers for them. I really miss warpath and also liked avanti. I don't know if this would help win over the TFC crowd or not, but it's the #1 thing I'm looking forward to with FF in the future.

[greenday5494]

you cant forget unleashing hacked sentry guns on the engys. then the engys are like WTF?!

and guys, there a LOT of people of the Steam Forums, hating TF2, becuz its so different, they do NOT know of FF. i PMed one dude, and he was like really!?!?!? and he downloaded, and hw LOVED it. just keep asking the people you tell keep telling other people. then it starts a chainreaction!

[GhostBuster]

Originally Posted by greenday5494

you cant forget unleashing hacked sentry guns on the engys. then the engys are like WTF?!

and guys, there a LOT of people of the Steam Forums, hating TF2, becuz its so different, they do NOT know of FF. i PMed one dude, and he was like really!?!?!? and he downloaded, and hw LOVED it. just keep asking the people you tell keep telling other people. then it starts a chainreaction!

Nice, try to send lots of pms with like some elaborated text of how much tf2 sucks and FF rules if you can, it would be great! here in argentina we are all turning our backs to tf2 but unfortunately of aproximated 50 only 10 of us have original steam acc with hl2, so we have to put a craked server so people could get it in with pacsteam.