[General Battuta]

Yes, there are. They are people I am 100% certain you would be very sad to see go.

[swashmebuckle]

Sounds like the community is having a midlife crisis here, maybe it's time to buy a sexy new spaceship?

[NGTM-1R]

I think the change of late is most apparent in the total death of Gen FS.

The death of Gen FS was at least partially mandated, however. Moderation at the time got mad about seeing the same topics discussed and made it known. Gen FS proceeded to die off over the next few months.

I have no idea whether we'd still want to talk about FreeSpace or not, it's been dead a long time, but it probably died at least some before it was ready to.

[karajorma]

I wouldn't be worried about people complaining in general, but I am worried about the specific people complaining - the creators now rather than the consumers.

Sounds like a bunch of them have formed a sewing circle and decided that the game is on the way out despite all evidence to the contrary to me.

Once there is a perceived feeling amongst a group that something is on its way out then its pretty easy to find arguments to justify that belief. Especially if they talk amongst themselves and reinforce that belief. You of all people should understand that!


Simple fact is that I haven't seen the slightest bit of proof that HLP is in a worse state than when UT went off about a similar issue years and years ago. Funnily enough, we're still here and occasionally, so is he.



So instead of whining and complaining about how HLP is dying (which it isn't at all) we should be working on how to get ourselves more attention and more new users. Chris Roberts new game looks exciting but it won't be out for another 2 years. We have content now we should be figuring out ways to pull those people into the community now.

[Mongoose]

So in other words, we need to shamelessly whore ourselves out to those Kickstarter supporters.

[karajorma]

Absolutely.

I'll go get the mini-skirt and stiletto heels.

[General Battuta]

What the **** happened to my last post? 

[General Battuta]

well anyway here it is again

I wouldn't be worried about people complaining in general, but I am worried about the specific people complaining - the creators now rather than the consumers.

Sounds like a bunch of them have formed a sewing circle and decided that the game is on the way out despite all evidence to the contrary to me.

You don't know who's saying it, and you don't know what 'it' is. I'd be careful about burning bridges with people when you don't know who they are and you don't know what specifically they've worried about, or in how much depth, or with what evidence.

Once there is a perceived feeling amongst a group that something is on its way out then its pretty easy to find arguments to justify that belief. Especially if they talk amongst themselves and reinforce that belief. You of all people should understand that!

Of course I understand that, please don't think I haven't given it consideration.

I'm a little hurt by the way this discussion is going, especially with someone so notionally open as Mongoose. Surely if people feel something's wrong it's at least worth engaging with them? The alternative is that we're totally expendable, which I suppose could be true, but would make me feel pretty damn awful about the time I've put into this place.

[karajorma]

You don't know who's saying it, and you don't know what 'it' is. I'd be careful about burning bridges with people when you don't know who they are and you don't know what specifically they've worried about, or in how much depth, or with what evidence.

So come out and explain. Right now all I'm hearing about is about a shadowy they who from the sounds of it are self-reinforcing this idea that HLP is on its way out.

And this isn't new. I've been hearing this particular story for years. From content creators. And it's always been proved false.

I'm a little hurt by the way this discussion is going, especially with someone so notionally open as Mongoose. Surely if people feel something's wrong it's at least worth engaging with them? The alternative is that we're totally expendable, which I suppose could be true, but would make me feel pretty damn awful about the time I've put into this place.

I don't think anyone is expendable. But people come and go, that's 100% natural on a board like this. People have always predicted the end of HLP when they noticed that many of the old guard had left. That's just the way of things.

Is HLP poorer without those members? Of course. I don't want anyone leaving this community and it's always sad when someone stops coming, especially someone who creates stuff for the community. But will new people replace them, in the way that people replaced Blaise Russel and Venom, etc? I see no reason not to believe it. There are plenty of up and coming modders and FREDders.

So for that reason I don't see much point in trying to persuade someone to stay who has already made up their mind to go. Either the fire is there, or it isn't. There's been plenty of times I've been tempted to leave, I've always come back because I still enjoy what I do. If someone isn't enjoying what they're doing, I can't see anything we can do to change that. Best thing to do seems to be to leave them to it, and hope they come back.

And if there is something I can do, how about telling me what it is.



TL;DR HLP isn't dying, and if you feel it is, why not talk about why?

The death of Gen FS was at least partially mandated, however. Moderation at the time got mad about seeing the same topics discussed and made it known. Gen FS proceeded to die off over the next few months.

When did this happen?

[niffiwan]

You don't know who's saying it, and you don't know what 'it' is. I'd be careful about burning bridges with people when you don't know who they are and you don't know what specifically they've worried about, or in how much depth, or with what evidence.

Err.. if we don't know who has the issue, or what their specific issues are, how can we engage with them?  The only comment which I feel I could somewhat address would have been from Spoon:

Motivation comes from many things but I've noticed that HLP is actually a pretty strong place to get demotivated from. Admins and SCP coders that seemingly can't be bothered to get involved in any of the mods. Old members that stopped playing but refuse to move onto the great beyond. And all those things that is funest for a continued healthy modding&player community.

From my viewpoint, as an SCP coder who isn't involved in any mods (i.e. I don't have a mod badge), I feel that I don't have the time to spread myself thin.  I'd like to be able to fix bugs in the codebase, and help make sure that FSO continues to run well on Linux.  I feel that if I devoted myself to a mod as well, then I'd not have the time to get much done either for the mod, or for the SCP in general.  I'm at a stage in my life where I don't get heaps of free time, I have two young kids, a day job with oncall, etc.

I have played a fair bit of the recently released material, I've got through (looking at the 1st page of the highlights forum) The Antagonist, Wing Commander, WoD, Fall of Epsilon Pegasi, Burning Heaven, BtA Demo & Vassago's Dirge (which isn't on the 1st highlights page but totally blew me away).  I'm still in the process of completing Diaspora, LCW & the early JADs (which I'd like to finish before moving onto 2.2/2.21/etc).  I've liked all these releases (even if Spoon managed to indue a rage-quit on me in the last mission of WoD  - my crappy old joystick and sub-par situational awareness were to blame though!) and I appreciate all the effort that the creators have gone to however I haven't commented on the release threads because I don't feel that I have anything insightful to say.  I don't tend to analyse my gaming that much, it's simply a like/dislike without wondering too much about the why.  If you want some critical literacy/feedback, then ask my wife, she's the one of the two of us that's good at that   (and I fear that I turned her off flightsims years ago in a disastrous experiment with X-Wing Alliance...)

So.. umm...I think I'm rambling and I don't know if that's going to help the problem here, but maybe it gives a bit of insight into how I feel about one of the issues that was raised in this thread...

[Mongoose]

I'm a little hurt by the way this discussion is going, especially with someone so notionally open as Mongoose. Surely if people feel something's wrong it's at least worth engaging with them? The alternative is that we're totally expendable, which I suppose could be true, but would make me feel pretty damn awful about the time I've put into this place.

I don't want it to seem like I'm being totally closed-minded about this or anything.  Like, I completely agree that this is a discussion worth having.  But the thing is, it's kind of hard to actually get down and discuss this when all we have to go on is your statements about a mysterious "them."  Don't get me wrong, I completely understand why you're not naming names, because I wouldn't want to try putting words in other people's mouths myself.  But do you think it would be feasible to request that some of these content creators (beyond Spoon, obviously) post their own thoughts in their own words here?  That way, we can get all our opinions laid out and examine them on their own merits.

Come to think of it, I wonder if I should split this whole thing out starting with Spoon's initial post, or at least change the title to make it jump out more.

[General Battuta]

I don't really feel comfortable sticking other people out here to roast. I'll let this be, I don't think I'm going to contribute anything useful.

[Nuke]

me and my scrotched earth policy and i dont even see this community dieing any time soon. the fact that this thread is still here allowing pretentious community members to sling poo at eachother is proof enough of an indication to me that the community is good and well.

[General Battuta]

jfc

[General Battuta]

The miscommunication here has been pretty dreadful, which I think comes from one side arguing basically against itself.

I'm not sure 'the community is ****ed' is so much the point of concern. Rather it's 'are we losing people [for whatever value of 'people'] for a good, necessary, or inevitable reason?

[NGTM-1R]

When did this happen?

At least a couple years ago? Maybe longer? You're asking me for a specific time on an event that by nature wasn't fixed to a single point in time. There was more than one blowout and more than one "we've discussed this before shut up" ending to a thread. People *****ed about rehashing arguments a lot and then arguments stopped. It's not like people got banned, it's chilling effect.

The FreeSpace 3 threads through the ages might provide a good barometer, since they usually come from the more enthusiastic and newer converts to the game. They went from an openly hostile response when I arrived to kinda chill for four or five years and they've veered in the direction of "stop being dumb" the last couple years.

[karajorma]

I'm not sure 'the community is ****ed' is so much the point of concern. Rather it's 'are we losing people [for whatever value of 'people'] for a good, necessary, or inevitable reason?

And as I keep asking, what do you want to do about that?

[Mongoose]

Or even before that, what do you think the possible reasons could be?  I don't intend to roast anyone here, Battuta...if there are people who have a certain view on what's going on in the community, I'd like to at least know what that view is, so that we can talk about it collectively and maybe figure out if there's something practical we can do to change things.

[mjn.mixael]

HLP can't die yet.. I haven't finished the cutscene upgrades.

[Colonol Dekker]

Absolutely.

I'll go get the mini-skirt and stiletto heels.

Like the last time we went clubbing
Hun xxx