Here's how I understand this situation. Some think we have a problem, which is that we only have large team games because we are somehow unable to create smaller team games. Even though we have the ability to, there's not enough desire and/or awareness to get a room going. So, instead of attacking this problem from the standpoint of increasing the number of people who want small teams or increasing the awareness of such rooms, we cut straight to the conclusion that all players, whether they like it or not, must be forced into smaller team games. Oh, and it's all in the name of increasing the player base. Here's how this actually works. If I really really want to play small teams, and there aren't any currently running, I'll create a small teams room, and maybe post in chat if anyone wants to join, or jump in the TAW room, ask around some, and party the people who want to play small teams. If I want to play small teams, but don't have a very strong desire to do so, I'll look to see if there are any to join, maybe ask around a little, but then just jump in whatever everyone else is doing. But, if TAW is well over the player limit and I would have to be waiting for some time to play a game (which rarely happens), then I will choose whatever will get me a game in a shorter amount of time, thus increasing my desire to play in another room. The system you all are trying to create already exists, it just isn't working the way you want it to because most people want large teams. The OP says "only having large team games also makes it losing players." This would be true, if we only had large team games, but we don't. TAW is not even at large teams the majority of the time. By this logic, you'd think the people who want to play 32 player games should be complaining. Sometimes TAW is completely empty and everyone's playing FW, FFA, or some other weird game mode. What if I want to play large team games? Should I rally everyone who's on my side and demand the moderators create a lower player limit, thus forcing everyone to play what I want to play? Guys, if people want to play small teams that badly, then they will play them. Maybe the reason they're not playing them is because they don't want to. In short, preventing the majority from playing the games they want in order to give the minority the match sizes they want is never going to increase the player base.
+2 / -0
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I think it's also a discussion about the type of community of players that you want to attract as a game. Think of BA. I personally didn't like BA years ago, I did not like it last time I tried. Nothing bad with that, many like BA. The curent situation feels like a local maximum: we get ocasionally enough people for a 16v16 but we don't get enough new player (over years!) for two or more hosts like that. I would like a larger and more diverse community because larger communities make games like this (open-source/free to play) last. ZK started as a fork from something else, when some players did not like the direction of the community and made a (huge) effort as developers to make a game they liked and "is better". I do not like the strict room size enforcement as an idea, I would like better tool to organize (like UI elements, ways to advertise games, etc.), but it's hard to know what works and they are not easy to develop. And there is also the whole discussion about "how does a new player perceive the game", which is very hard to assess as someone that plays for that long. But I do not like either a community focused mostly on large games because you have less individual influence over the game and less opportunity to see your mistakes.
+1 / -0
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quote:
And there is also the whole discussion about "how does a new player perceive the game" |
I have been playing for years, and I still clearly remember the first moment I accidentally stumbled upon a large lobpot in Zero-K. That was in November 2019, and from the first moment I knew I found something truly special and I fell in love with the whole game culture around it. I especially liked (and I still do) that the community is smaller, play mostly in one room and everyone kind of knows each other. And the fact that lobpots are active only at certain time of the day (evenings in my case) also added appeal to me, because you need to wait for a certain time of the day and it makes every match something a bit special and different from all the other games. The smaller community in the game, one massive room, LACK OF MASSIVE CHANGES and needing some pre-determined time in the day to play this all added up for me to be the reasons I still love Zero-K so much, even after several years and countless changes that have happened to me in other parts of my life. Even this ancient website is awesome for me. This is just my perspective, but I would imagine every new player that has stayed here would have experience with Zero-K that is at least somewhat similar to mine. Yes you can say that I am weird and other players are not like this, that I am attempting to "skew the results" or whatever, that I have no right to speak for new players, but if I hated the one room culture, I definitely wouldn't have stayed here for even a moment. Same with some other players, I would imagine. I understand that the growth of playerbase is necessary, everyone currently present here will stop playing eventually, but those things that some other players are annoyed with have caused me and some others to stay here. Better advertising will definitely help with the growth, but that's as far as I would go, don't go around ruining some things that make this game so special by attempting to make it like all the other forgettable slop you see everywhere. quote:
The curent situation feels like a local maximum: we get ocasionally enough people for a 16v16 but we don't get enough new player (over years!) for two or more hosts like that. |
You can also look at that like this: one old player stops playing for whatever reason (life happens), but at the same time a new player arrives, likes the game as I did and stays here. Repeat this enough times, and you still have kind of the same number of players, but they have changed. I constantly see new players trickling in, some of them stay, become old players, and in 10 years or so most of the playerbase has changed, but not the number. True, we don't see massive tsunamis of new players, but as long as the above happens, I think we are good. Some of them will also stay for the reasons mentioned above.
+1 / -0
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quote:
lowering the player limit was a means to an end, maybe choose some other means? |
Maybe every other mean that was tried was sabotaged by the lobpot-system. What do you suggest? quote:
Better advertising will definitely help with the growth, |
Historically no. Even after release on steam, not much changed and there are the same discussions about 1-lobpot as before. quote:
the issues i find with it is that players expect their teammates to be perfect at the game. usually resulting is toxicity... |
Imagine there was enough new players that the teams-room constantly has five new players per side. It would become unplayable, from the fails of the new players and from the resulting toxicity of the older players.
+0 / -0
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quote:
Even after release on steam, not much changed and there are the same discussions about 1-lobpot as before. |
Really? It was my understanding that there was a noticeable increase in players with the launch on Steam and that number has remained fairly consistent since then. I know I've seen a graph of active players across that time period at some point, but I don't remember where to find it. I mean, yeah, there's still one lobpot if that's what you mean. Regarding attracting new players, the best things we can do is polish the visuals, audio, and the website. We don't have people to do a lot of it, but progress is being made. I think that the gameplay and strategy matters most as an RTS game, but the first thing newcomers see is often the website or the visuals, and having exceptional visuals or a very intuitive, helpful, and cool-looking website will leave a good impression on them. To be clear, I think that the website is extremely intuitive and easy to use in most respects, and I'd much prefer that over a nice-looking website that is super confusing and annoying to use, but the website could definitely use some polishing. Also, something    TomBodett keeps saying is that the best way to advertise and bring new players to the game is to just get a prominent streamer to play the game and stream it. quote:
It would become unplayable, from the fails of the new players and from the resulting toxicity of the older players. |
If both sides have the same number of new players, then their fails should balance out. As for the toxicity, I hope we can prevent this from becoming a given.
+0 / -0
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quote:
It was my understanding that there was a noticeable increase in players with the launch on Steam and that number has remained fairly consistent since then. I know I've seen a graph of active players across that time period at some point, but I don't remember where to find it. I mean, yeah, there's still one lobpot if that's what you mean. |
Yes, there is mostly one lobpot and it is only active through a few hours each day. In other words: the bare minimum of what can be considered a playerbase. So by your logic, before this "noticeable increase" by steam...what was it like? Below zero players? quote:
To be clear, I think that the website is extremely intuitive and easy to use in most respects, |
If the website is intuitive to use, why do you have to "remember" where to find the graph you mentioned? Quick test, tell us which problems you encounter: -use the search to find that graph -take a screenshot and post it in this thread quote:
Also, something USrankTomBodett keeps saying is that the best way to advertise and bring new players to the game is to just get a prominent streamer to play the game and stream it. |
Who is TomBodett? I looked at all his posts on the forum (circa 4) and none are about streaming. "Prominent" streamers earn their living by stream. Streaming zero-K will not earn them money. There are several thousands dollars of unused donations that could maybe be used to pay some stream. So far, zero-K team has been hesitant to use that pile of money.
+0 / -0
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quote:
So by your logic, before this "noticeable increase" by steam...what was it like? Below zero players? |
Smaller peak number of players, which resulted in smaller games. quote:
If the website is intuitive to use, why do you have to "remember" where to find the graph you mentioned? |
I think the website purpose was not to analyze the number of players over a period of 10 years - most graphs I have seen (and implemented, like https://zero-k.info/Forum/Thread/34840?postID=250463 for more details - although be warned that that website has bugs that I did not get to fix, mostly because I already realized things were different than I thought, for example most people play anyhow with bots, not PvP) were external to the "game website" (this one). quote:
Regarding attracting new players |
I think retention is also an issue. ZK gets new players, but I think many do not return after some time. We can only guess why. Based on the graphs I made, what new player spend time on is not Team games, but bots and 1v1 outside matchmaker. Only around 1 year of account age the time spent in teams gets similar to time spent playing bots.
+1 / -0
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Steam was the biggest marketing push with years of preparation and polish. It only resulted in a small increase of maximum lobpot size. Older marketing/steam/lobpot-threads mention plenty of reasons for bad player retention. I think nost are still valid. How realistic is it do better than that, with a fraction of active developers? I think zero-k will be stuck in its current state forever. Maybe in some far tuture BAR will open their server for third party content and then zero-K could be played there. (Like the 1944-game lives on as a mod on zero-K server) Some players might check it out as a curiosity.
+0 / -0
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quote:
instgating a review bomb is a step too far but also a step further then not playing because you dont like a change.. |
Y.... yes? quote:
not playing a free game is a protected right |
Not for me. I play ZK because of DIVINE INSPIRATION! quote:
and does not become a review bomb unless you review things / ask others to avoid the game |
You do realize that was an analogy, right? Let me rephrase that. You do not realize that was an analogy. quote:
not playing because you dont like a change is actualy a good thing as it will allow us to see the truth |
Y... yes? That's exactly what I said. Why did you feel the need to rephrase my agrument and throw it back at me?
+1 / -0
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well if we agree then im going out for lunch
+1 / -0
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quote:
quote:
lowering the player limit was a means to an end, maybe choose some other means?
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Maybe every other mean that was tried was sabotaged by the lobpot-system.
What do you suggest?
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I've probably written some somewhere but here's a list: 1- polish the game itself : more units, commander improvements, major balance tweaks (some mods could be a source of new units, namely Future Wars) 2- reworking/improving old maps 3- increase incentive to show up and play consistently for a lengthy time period. Like grind 1v1MM to get some reward, like a badge or commander skin. Atm progress is just forgotten if you stop playing. Could be tied to ladder seasons, like other games (LOL comes to mind) 4- reboot planet wars 5- internal promotion including the broader Spring/Recoil community and ask veterans to cooperate to try and increase activity during some time period (everyone has better things to do but if dozens of veterans who only play occasionally become somewhat more active during some promotion effort, it'll be more effective) 6- changes to how MM queuing works, battle room naming, rules, player limits, etc. 7- external promotion, forums, articles 8- get popular streamers, youtubers to play ZK somehow. Maybe challenge the competitive ones to see if they can get to purple here? A very IMPORTANT note is to coordinate other major developments with promotion efforts (at least point 5, maybe 7 and 8 too).
+1 / -0
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But 22 limit is a low cost change that could be tried, right now. Why not at least try? Unless you assign all that work to yourself, how is any of that going to happen? Some people work on maps, occasionally. GF posts Cold Takes, and they're visible in Steam too. He also participated in some RTS vlog a while ago. Even the big boys are really struggling putting a new RTS out on the market. Frost Giant is not living up to the hype. Not at all, and they were supposed to be the saviors. Total War games (grand strategy), auto battlers, tower defense and MOBAs, all spawned from RTS, are all succeeding way more than pure RTS. What is the most recent, most successful RTS? Age of Empire?
+3 / -0
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Mod edit: Just ignore the knorke smurfs.
+0 / -0
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Just like to point out that the poll is slightly biased. People who hate the change and left ZK won't be here to vote.
+1 / -0
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I think there are 2 types of players, new and experienced. New like the larger games, as they it doesn't require as much skill. If something slips, someone else can just step in and help Experienced players find that they don't really do much in the lobster game, so they want smaller games. With these two player bases, we can't get more experienced players without the large lobster battles. so it might not be good for the players in the long run, but I feel it is important to attract more players and get them up to speed so that we can have enough players for the smaller battles to happen more often.
+0 / -0
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 Amnykon, that's not true at all. There are plenty of experienced players that don't like small teams.   Galamesh for instance said he hates small teams. Just look at the ladders for MM and Casual, and you'll see that what you said doesn't line up. I think the bigger reason people like to play Casual is because that's just what it is, Casual. That's also why it makes sense that people just jump in the 32 player room even if there might be something else to play, because a lot of people just want to have fun and experiment with strategies in an environment that's not going to harshly punish them for doing so, or put a lot of stress on them to perform well. TAW provides a place for people to relax from the hardcore playstyle of small teams. That's also why trying to push those players into small teams isn't going to work without completely reforming the playerbase.
+4 / -0
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It's generally true though. I'm an outlyer in this. Higher ranked players generally prefer smaller teams with peers of similar ratings, which is why they tend to hang around in Palladium more than lob pot. The main reason why I don't like Palladium so much is that it tends to have all the drawbacks of super competitive games (very clearly defined meta applied systematically) and none of the rewards of 1v1 (essentially bragging rights of winning on your own). TAW is just crazyness. The leading team usually wins, but sometimes they just do their best to squander a seemingly unsurmountable lead. I'm finding my fun in countering specific strategies some players seem to employ every game and that never happen in teams with only skilled players. If you dig through posts, the one recurring criticism higher ranked players have with TAW is they feel like they're the only player of their team trying to make something happen on the front, while players behind kinda play simcity and don't help much, if at all. Also, if you happen to have the highest rating in the room by a fair margin, the balancer usually throws in your team the whole bottom of the skill spread and that tends to go very badly. The question I have is, if ZK exploded in popularity and it was possible to have an all purple 16v16, would it ever happen? I have no concrete proof, but I tend to think it wouldn't. I would wager they would stick to small teams and there would just be several lobbies going on (or MM).
+3 / -0
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i wonder if puple players ever avoid other purple players.. because its risky to play vs them
+0 / -0
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Galamesh, you're right, but I was interpreting "experienced" to mean more playtime, not more skill. There are plenty of people who play a lot and are not that good.
+0 / -0
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