[The E]

Hoover is a fan. He plays things. He gets involved with the community. That's all we can expect from a normal member of the community. He's the guy the actual creators on this site make **** for. His presence on the board is its whole point, in a sense.

Yes, HLP values creators highly. That's as it should be. But at the same time, we must also value the fans, the people who actually play the **** we make. In the hierarchy of users here, those are the only two that matter.

People who come here just for the politics? They're .... less important (sorry, GD peeps).

[General Battuta]

You didn't answer my question. If you believe HLP should only be for modders, fine - then that cuts out anyone who just plays the game. If you believe that it should only be for modders and players, then fine - that cuts out everyone who's just here for the community/art/etc. But what do you believe?

Got rolling with Knossos! to match this post.

HLP is for modders and players. That doesn't cut out people who are just here for the community/art - those things will continue to exist.

But when you're talking about how to make HLP more active, but not working to make HLP more active, you're just contributing to the problem.

And when you're a global moderator (!) - notice that word, Global, all of HLP! - you better fish or cut bait. Your flag says I'm about what this site is about. You've gotta carry that flag.

Come on. How is this discussion harder than just opening the game? Did you have crash problems with BtA? Post a debug log, let's get to fixing them! Have you tried The Antagonist? Short campaign, completely fantastic.

[Colonol Dekker]

HLP is for everyone.

What would steak say.

[xenocartographer]

Battuta, I can see the issue you're bringing up, but shutting down an uncontroversial suggestion regarding advertising HLP is not the way to raise it. I agree with many of your points, but the way you're raising them is a problem. Stop sniping at people. You're not going to accomplish anything.

[General Battuta]

Did you match that post with a contribution to an FS-related topic? (I matched this one!) No backseat moderating, brutha!

Stop posting about posting. Play! Post about playing! I'm accomplishing the only thing that matters. Join me! ****ing play a modddd

[xenocartographer]

Redacted.

[FrikgFeek]

Arguments will always have larger postcounts than campaign discussion threads. But if every person who posted here actually played and posted some feedback(either on the forums or IRC) on a mod in the last month HLP would seem a lot more active.

[General Battuta]

No, mate, I'm saying what had to be said after years of frustration and deadlock. The last couple pages (and the accompanying IRC conversation) made that very plain. If you want to poke at it further, take it to PM; if not, let's keep focused on the thread topic of how to make HLP better. Tone policing is a waste of time.

Now I owe one FS post, I am a sinner.

Arguments will always have larger postcounts than campaign discussion threads. But if every person who posted here actually played and posted some feedback(either on the forums or IRC) on a mod in the last month HLP would seem a lot more active.

Beautifully put.

[AndrewofDoom]

In regards to new people who want to get in, it's a reaaaaaaallly hard thing to start a project on your own and complete it. But, here's the problem. Making things easier would be joining a currently existing project. There's just one problem I've seen since 2011, there is absolutely no open recruitment for any project. I got involved in modding back in 2010, and as a new guy way back, I used to be very intimidated on working on any sort of project by myself so I joined Stellar Assault who was openly recruiting. And then it died a year and a half later, but either way it let me learn so many things. I want to do the same thing and start a project which openly recruits with a low barrier to entry, but I'm entirely sure how to go about that since I'm absolutely garbage at the charisma game.

I want to ask those newer at modding of any sort in FSO how do you feel about being (from what I see) alone for the most part?

[xenocartographer]

It's very disheartening, especially with the docs being so poor-to-nonexistent. Knowing that I have a story to tell is basically the only motivation I can find, and at the same time I'm aware that that's dangerously close to megaproject syndrome.

[JSRNerdo]

Hi I guess I'm a quarter of the eligible userbase of which can answer that. I honestly abandoned a good 80% of my projects because they were too overdone or conventional or just didn't interest me. I guess the trick is to just find a niche you'll start off good at and interested in, start small (both my releases are single missions) and build up from there!

Also joining a project from my current experience trying to join inferno is as simple as post you want to help, have a Polish dude direct you to contact the project lead then fire off a one-liner to the project lead. Admittedly a lot easier with just a pinned topic on how to apply or volunteer.

Will second the poor docs, though. I think basically the only thing that lead to the actual release of Last Stand being decent at all was me hanging out in IRC all the time and constantly bugging Axem for help.

[General Battuta]

Inferno wants FREDders real bad, so does BWO, and learning Inferno-level (i.e. retail plus a few tricks) FREDding is very simple and just a matter of practicing a few missions and dissecting a few more. Reliable FREDders are always in demand.

JSRN has been doing a good job posting single missions and getting some play and feedback. If you can do that you have a portfolio to show to a project. Lepanto got recruited by Inferno and BP on the strength of his own missions, but then dumped everything to go work on his own game.

[Spoon]

BWO is completely dead though, don't bother with that one.

[AndrewofDoom]

Okay, so Inferno is recruiting. But I don't see them openly recruiting with a thread saying "I NEED X,Y,Z". Which I think is the problem. New people don't see anywhere they can help, and that's part of my point.

[Lorric]

I wonder if there'd be some worth in having like a bulletin board sort of sticky thread, where the OP gets updated with the list of projects looking for people and what kind of people they want and people post into it about positions opening up, being filled, and asking questions about positions.

[Grizzly]

Arguments will always have larger postcounts than campaign discussion threads. But if every person who posted here actually played and posted some feedback(either on the forums or IRC) on a mod in the last month HLP would seem a lot more active.

I actually didn't know the value of this (it probably helps that I only once created a thing and that it was a table mod). I'm often late to the party when it comes to playing campaigns so when it's all over I don't feel like I can say something that other people haven't already said.

... Does this mean I have a backlog of praise for campaigns alongside the backlog of campaigns? 

[xenocartographer]

I wonder if there'd be some worth in having like a bulletin board sort of sticky thread, where the OP gets updated with the list of projects looking for people and what kind of people they want and people post into it about positions opening up, being filled, and asking questions about positions.

!!! Throwing my support behind this, for whatever it's worth!



Joshua: Speaking as a creative type here, I doubt you can ever go wrong praising someone's work Besides, if we're gonna try to attract people, there should be more people playing through older mods, so it'd be great to get that precedent out there!

[AdmiralRalwood]

I'd just like to chime in that I also agree that we need more people playing and talking about mods (I myself have a sizeable backlog of FSO mods to play that I'm kinda hoping to start tackling once 3.8 is out) and do not understand why asking people to play FSO on HLP is seen as "sniping"... but I digress. I actually want to talk about something specific that might have gotten buried by the new page.

I played BtA...and then stopped because Freespace kept crashing.

I couldn't find any posts by you since BtA's release talking about a crash (except this one); if I missed it, feel free to link it to me. However, this brings me to another point of Battuta's I want to reinforce (and this is for everyone, not just Unknown Target in particular):

Did you have crash problems with BtA? Post a debug log, let's get to fixing them!

If we don't hear about crash problems, we can't fix them! Did FSO crash for you? Did it just do something weird? Was it frustrating? Was it just annoying? Well, if you don't post about it, I can virtually guarantee that nothing will change. If you're lucky, though, it might be a known problem and somebody can fix it for you, or point you to the fix! It might be a known bug that was already fixed (and maybe the fix will even be in the next nightly build), or it might be a completely unknown problem that we wouldn't have known needed fixed if not for you. So post your debug logs!

[karajorma]

Re: Sniping. Yes, people need to play more. But getting more people into the forum is important too and shutting down people's ideas just because you feel they haven't played enough just makes this place look bad to anyone who is new here. When you're shouting at someone with only around 100 posts that they need to play FS2 in order to be allowed an opinion, it's not the most welcoming thing you could do.

There are ways to get people to play more. And shaming them into doing it isn't a good one. I mean I could point out that neither Battuta nor any of the people who agreed with his posts (except for Ralwood) have actually posted on the What Freespace are you (Re)Playing Now? thread and tried to act like that made them bad people. But that's not productive. I'd just rather ask nicely for people to post on there a bit more.

I wonder if there'd be some worth in having like a bulletin board sort of sticky thread, where the OP gets updated with the list of projects looking for people and what kind of people they want and people post into it about positions opening up, being filled, and asking questions about positions.

That's actually a very good idea. It used to be that any promising modeller or FREDder would get bombarded with "join my mod!!!1111" posts cause everyone was desperate for new team members. At some point it seems that we decided that was gauche and stopped doing it. But since it was never replaced with anything a lot of teams have ended up not hiring new blood to replace those lost to attrition.

Anyway, I like the idea and if no one has any issues I'll make a new board along those lines tomorrow.

It's very disheartening, especially with the docs being so poor-to-nonexistent. Knowing that I have a story to tell is basically the only motivation I can find, and at the same time I'm aware that that's dangerously close to megaproject syndrome.

What are you having problems finding the documentation for?

[Spoon]

There are ways to get people to play more. And shaming them into doing it isn't a good one. I mean I could point out that neither Battuta nor any of the people who agreed with his posts (except for Ralwood) have actually posted on the What Freespace are you (Re)Playing Now? thread and tried to act like that made them bad people. But that's not productive. I'd just rather ask nicely for people to post on there a bit more.

It wouldn't be very effective shaming method either, because Battuta has been making posts in the BtA discussion thread recently. It's not like he isn't putting into practice what he is preaching.