Wanted: New Maps

Discussion in 'Mapping' started by vipervicki, Nov 29, 2016.

  1. Kidpaler

    Kidpaler Member

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    We should really be doing a push for ANY contributions to the game. Want to make a new small model? Great it will be appreciated. Anyone who has any talent or some skill or even willing to learn, you should hop on to help. We should be fostering a community that is promoted to help and appreciate those who do because they are completely unpaid and creating a game that you have played for, quite literally, thousands of hours of your life.
     
    vipervicki likes this.
  2. Xyaminou

    Xyaminou Member

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    People are going to hate me once again for crushing their misfounded enthusiasm but hey it's what I do...

    That's a great attitude, but I don't see any ideas in there. If you have a master plan that would somehow get people to contribute I'd love to hear it.
     
  3. Kidpaler

    Kidpaler Member

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    Yea I do, it's called "Volunteering". I did it, and others can as well.

    I talked to TacticalMoonDiaper last night and you know what? He said he wants to help out with the game! Surprising what a great attitude and hopeful outlook can do rather than a continuous "THIS GAME IS GOING TO DIE, IT'S SHIT, FUCK THIS GAME" outlook that promotes people to not give a shit and just leave the community. We should be fostering help, not shitting on people who do contribute. Example: Your post. Contributed nothing, shat on the whole idea of fostering a positive community for the devs to interact with, and didn't present any good ideas for the game or community.

    Note: I do not mean that you as a person are inherently bad, I am just saying that particular post, in a thread about people stepping up and contributing, contributed nothing to a positive atmosphere that would lead to people wanting to spend the time in their life to contribute to an old mod.
     
  4. Xyaminou

    Xyaminou Member

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    Again, all you're saying is "we should get people to contribute", you're not saying how, you're not giving any details, you're just stating an obvious fact. I'm just trying to get you to further develop your idea, but looks like you don't have any.
     
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  5. vipervicki

    vipervicki Member

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    X.. one way to get people to contribute is making threads asking for particular things, just like the screenshot thread, this thread etc. and usually some step up and volunteer. So far we know of a few people now, willing to and working on new maps.

    Also asking people directly we know who have skills to see if they want to volunteer for things that are lacking or needed is another way.
     
  6. Kidpaler

    Kidpaler Member

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    It's a mod that takes volunteers, there is no "idea" other than promoting a community that simply isn't toxic.

    We can't pay, so we can't entice people that way. We can't force people to contribute through slave labor. We can't even make promises to them. It simply is volunteer so there is no "idea" that can get people to contribute.

    I will tell you this, and it's something that the community gripes about, the dev's don't post often or at all because everyone is toxic. They don't want to post on their own forums because they view it as too toxic and it lowers the morale of the dev team making them work less and less. We need to tone down the toxicity, which in turn will be more beneficial for keeping noobs and hopefully promote a better relation of the dev team with the community. The dev team owes this community nothing, they don't have to do anything and us constantly shitting on them is probably the worst thing we could do for the game and community. We need to foster people who contribute, we need to support them, help them, test shit that they do, provide bugs etc. Talk to people if they have skills, coerce them into helping.

    There is no "idea" for getting anyone to do anything other than quit being toxic and quit derailing threads and quit always being negative about anything pertaining to this game.
     
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  7. Lazybum

    Lazybum :D Staff Member Moderator

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    I don't know of many threads where people were against the devs on a lot of things. The usual complaints are when things break like when placing buildings got super sensitive.

    I mean there was the threads on drastic changes like what catface was proposing a year ago, I don't see how people wouldn't complain about significant changes. When it comes to those things you better believe it's a good idea to talk it over or else you hear even more angry shouting when the game radically changes.

    About the getting people to help, it's not like many visit the forums so I assume any potential players that do know how to do something don't know that they can do something for empires. Maybe it might be nice if servers ran a little message along the lines of "want to help empires? Go to forums." or something, or even a message in the news feed on the main menu.

    After all most of the current forum goers have already invested all the time they probably want to helping out empires, you kinda need to draw in new people to get something going.

    As an aside, that mapper I mentioned hasn't lost interest in mapping, but kinda got sidetracked by other things. I assume school and just playing games, the usual culprits.
     
    Last edited: Dec 1, 2016
  8. Kidpaler

    Kidpaler Member

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    People gripe at the devs for everything. Blaming them for issues that arent even their fault and then complain they aren't fixing it when they are focusing on cleaning up the code so fixes can be implemented easier later on.

    Yea it is a good idea to talk about it, and I think they should but it also isn't good to be toxic about it. I would know, I called for Tama to RESIGN when he proposed "symmetrical" combat. Was totally uncalled for by me, but what came out of it was some good suggestions and a refinement of what I meant by stating that which has now lead to there being a missile and cannon variant of each weapon type.

    New people get driven away from here by the toxicity. Most of the forum goers may have contributed already, but then please stop being toxic. New people don't want to contribute because it's toxic, they come to the forums, see this thread for example and see how we derail EVERYTHING. Look at Neko's post for example. Could have been "Yea I was working on a map, but I decided to not" instead it read as "People were assholes to me for absolutely no reason so I stopped wanting to help this asshole community for being assholes. Oh, I'm an excellent mapper and I get paid to for Gmod". Big tone difference there, it derailed the topic and then lead to a bunch of people calling him out and making it overall more toxic.

    I hope he does map. I'd like some new ones. Let's get back on topic about maps now.
     
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  9. flasche

    flasche Member Staff Member Moderator

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    what a shame really
     
  10. Lazybum

    Lazybum :D Staff Member Moderator

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    I'm not so sure about that. Forums are fine for people if they don't have a huge attitude about stuff or make unreasonable demands. Yeah sure forums are bad, but I wouldn't really say it's any worse then it has been. I know this sounds like a case of not smelling the stink because you live in it, but in comparison to quite a few other places it's really not that bad. I just feel like the more recent new forum people have been rather over aggressive with their opinions and caught a lot of flak for it, so it just looks like we hate everyone.

    In short if you really look at all the content threads of people doing things, anything positive is usually met with great enthusiasm. Just check any of the threads in mapping or art. In general the suggestion threads are the ones that catch the most crap because a lot of people end up suggesting things that aren't very empires like, are super radical changes that most didn't really ask for, or did a very poor job of explaining their thought so it ends up looking like an unreasonable demand. I'm just making the point I don't quite think it's the community preventing people from doing things for empires, it's the lack of people with the skill, knowledge, willingness to do things on old ass source engine, on a game that doesn't see a huge influx of people. In short what you need are people who really truly love empires to work for it, and no amount of community niceness is going to magically get them to appear.
     
  11. vipervicki

    vipervicki Member

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    sorry lazy I disagree, people who have contributed, scripters, server owners, mappers, devs get ripped a new one many times over. Until ones really gets involved and contributes on a regular basis one doesn't know how bad it can get.
    Now constructive criticism is fine but nasty rude insults when someone is volunteering their time and or money goes over the line of decency.
    Its a large part of why I shut down VIPER and why I would not host another server for empires.
     
  12. Kidpaler

    Kidpaler Member

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    Fostering a community that stands by most of the dev's decisions/provides actual feedback other than flaming is what I am advocating for. This community is one of the worst in my opinion for a game/server, and I have had my share in gaming communities, even managing some. People just out right ignore others here, people bring in personal slander, and the general attitude seems to be not caring about anyone. When I joined, and I had stayed off this community for years simply because the forums have always been a toxic cesspool, it seemed to be worse than the Xbox community, simply because I at least knew that my mom wasn't actually going to get fucked by the 3 year old telling me he was going to fuck my mom. Remember the whole "Vicki is a kike" thing that spammed the server page causing VIPER to go down? Yea... that's the community I am advocating against. Security gets non-stop bitching, if you don't like his scripts make your own and then we could compare them like Scar. The programmers get called out for not fixing shit when they log on, and everyone wonders why they don't play.

    Yea, people are posting "positive" things, but the overall theme of the community is still toxicity. I guarantee you if we, as a community, clean the shit up and get less toxic and more willing to help, communicate, and prolong the mod, the Dev's will once again start posting here and holding a dialog with us. They have been demoralized over the years. by this very behavior of the community, and only recently have they actually started looking up because 1. Fresh people are coming aboard to alleviate them and 2. Toxicity is STARTING to die. Should we start a safe-space for them? Hell no, but we should be constructive in our criticism, and if you can do better go ahead and prove to us you can.

    I do believe it is the community. We as a community drive away new players because we are toxic, if it wasn't for JGF, Kermit, Misfire, Senor, and a select few others who play during the Wee hours, the game would be dead for 20 hours of the day. They are some of the nicest players to new people, sitting out rounds to educate them or joining up against stacked teams to help even it out and make the games fun for the noobs who come on. The in game community bitches about change, but then doesn't do anything to contribute and instead just drive away new players (IE Neko last night who, when I played for 2 short rounds kept saying the game was utter shit). We all need patience to explain to newbies, we all need to encourage people who we either know have skills or we know could learn something to step up and help out. Take, for example, how I messaged you privately Lazybum asking if you would help setup Beta Pug's for the future for testing purposes. This is the behavior we need to foster, asking people to help out and including them so that they stay, only we need to do this down to the level of that new player who just installed it 5 minutes ago and figure out a way to get them to stay.
     
  13. Lazybum

    Lazybum :D Staff Member Moderator

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    I'm standing by what I said about this forum. The ingame community is probably worse then these forums, and that's a critical point I feel many are overlooking here. I won't disagree about the amount of hate people who do stuff for empires get, but I hear 80% of it in the game itself, on those servers. Many of the people who really complain about map or art or whatever currently don't really post on this forum, so I don't see why anyone keeps saying this forum is the main problem.
     
  14. vipervicki

    vipervicki Member

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    I never said the its the forums, I said toxic people should be removed meaning from the community which includes forums and servers.
     
  15. vipervicki

    vipervicki Member

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    I am going to ask someone to lock this thread since neko baron started his daily drama fix and ruined my thread which is about new maps not him being insulting to people on the server and then whining he is not treated fairly.
     
  16. Lazybum

    Lazybum :D Staff Member Moderator

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    Ah I get that. It's just my original comment was about kidpaler saying the forums scare away potential contributors and I say that's a load of baloney. I really don't think it's the community scaring away anyone, it doesn't help but it's more the lack of people who can contribute. I am solely talking about potential people who would be willing to something for empires here.
     
  17. Smithy

    Smithy Developer Staff Member Administrator

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    Why does every thread have to end up this way?
    Someone makes a comment bound to irritate people, then the whole thread goes to shit... :/

    What kind of maps are needed right now? I had some ideas for some new maps a while back but I just don't have the kind of time needed to work on them anymore.
     
  18. vipervicki

    vipervicki Member

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    new comm maps would be great for midsize population (during the week) and large size (for weekends) populations. People are getting tired of the same maps even though most are great maps we haven't had a new comm map in a long time.
     
  19. ScardyBob

    ScardyBob Member

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    Maps that work in the 5v5-15v15 player range imo. That means inf-only/escort type maps or smaller comm-maps, though I think the priority should be on the former since its hard to get two decent comms with small populations.
     
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  20. Sgt.Security

    Sgt.Security Member

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    We need more single-lane comm maps like crossroads.

    Multi-lane comm maps aren't feasible for low population.
     

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