Has TF2 slowed down, or is it just us? Or me?

Armadillo of Doom

Group Founder, Lover of Pie
aa
Oct 25, 2007
949
1,228
Maybe it's just me, but I feel like we've kinda entered a slump. The active membership has gone down, as has the number of threads/posts per day. Is it TF2 specifically, or have a lot of people just taken a break? Does anything need to be done to rev up the community again? The main ideas I've been toying with are a collaborative map, and a contest w/ real prizes. So what are your thoughts on the matter?
 

Diddly

L1: Registered
Nov 5, 2007
29
1
I'm always checking this site out, but I'm not doing any particular mapping right now so that's my excuse for no threads/maps etc.

Been waiting for feedback on my map - but no news is good news I guess ;-). I'll get round to finishing ctf_hallofgiants_b5 as there's a few entity tweaks I need to do but that's all for me as far I can see on that map. Love to see it hosted somewhere (hint). I might do a CP map next so you can expect some pleading for help guys. cheers Happy New Year!
 

Intraman

L4: Comfortable Member
Nov 4, 2007
191
0
Well the past week has been a holiday, so people were probably busy with visiting family and just generally being away. I wouldn't be surprised if we see a raise in activity in the coming weeks.
 

DJive

Cake or Death?
aa
Dec 20, 2007
1,465
741
I don't believe its that bad. Its a mix of actually gaining regulars to the site/forums/steam chat instead of seeing 20+ random people who do this for a day or week and quit.

Plus lets be honest, Hammer isnt the most startup user friendly program out there =) you have to want to dedicate some time, some people.. and more so around the current holidays.. are wicked busy and do not have much time to spare..

The main ideas I've been toying with are a collaborative map, and a contest w/ real prizes. So what are your thoughts on the matter?

great idea on both IMO. It could be simple prizes, IE having your map on a *popular* server rotation for a set time. Setting up Poster credit. I used to run a Vbulletin for a while and there are a TON of really nice mods/add-ons to help better the community and give recognition to certain posters for a job well done.

Lets also be honest, the site/forum and hell .. game are still "new". Both the game and the forums will grow larger in time, so long as your regulars stay active and continue to post and push out grewat maps.
 

drp

aa
Oct 25, 2007
2,273
2,628
actually the rate of thread/posts has been up. the visitor count has decreased by about 10 to 15%. Im guessing this is because of the holidays. I for one have been busy with holiday stuff and work.

i still keep an eye on this forum and sometimes have it open on my browser when mapping as a reference.
 

Kernel

L1: Registered
Nov 7, 2007
35
2
omfg a collaborative map would be freaking sweet! i would love you if u did that!!!

i'm just waiting to finalize the details with, immortal on this, all mappers are welcome to join in.
 

Godling

L2: Junior Member
Oct 26, 2007
55
14
I've been busy helping admin a couple of servers and haven't had time to post here much or edit my own map. I still check out the forums daily and use this place as a resource for new maps on the server.

After a format/reinstal next week, I hope to start full bore on my map... /me crosses fingers.
 

A Boojum Snark

Toraipoddodezain Mazahabado
aa
Nov 2, 2007
4,775
7,669
I haven't done much in the realm of Steam related things in a couple weeks because of the obvious, and special events happening in other games. I should return to activity in a few days.
 

ZargonX

L3: Member
Nov 30, 2007
109
4
Well, I'm getting ready to work on my next, bigger map project, so I'm sure I'll be bugging everyone with more questions in the near future ;)
 

lerlerson

L2: Junior Member
Nov 27, 2007
75
7
Perhaps for a collaborative map, we could do something different (I use the term 'we' lightly. I doubt I'd help, due to my mapping skills not being as good as the rest of all of yours here.), like maybe a new gametype, or a conversion of a TFC map that is different.

I was thinking maybe doing an 'Escape' map, the entities are there, it couldn't be that hard to do... maybe have it that Blu team needs to escape the area by boarding a boat, and the boat is right outside Red's spawn, way across the map. Red has infinite spawns, Blu has to conserve. It would mean Blu would really have to use teamwork to get to the end. Red could have all sorts of traps available to them to cause Blu team members to die (think things like a bridge that collapses, and under the bridge is a river that you can't get out of, somehow causing death.) Red wouldn't have that many areas that they could directly confront Blu without having the terrain turned against them... bah, I'm rambling.

Maybe a Dustbowl-like map? Have a few members work on each segment? The possibilities are endless, and I'd like to see a collaborative map made. (But none of that crap where it's like 'Cp_Tf2maps.net_Snowbowl. Seriously. I'm looking at you, mass '420' maps.)
 

ryodoan

Resident Bum
Nov 2, 2007
409
117
I was in a guild wars guild that was extremely active during the Alpha + Beta for the game. Since most people (including me) were not actually in the full time Alpha / Beta we hung out on the forums and had an extremely active forum.

There were about 15-20 of us who were really active, then suddenly 1-2 weeks before the game came out we lost 5 of our most active people in quick succession, then the people who had been in the Alpha / Beta and had started the guild got sick of the game and quit, then WoW was released. All those things really was like dumping the forum (and guild) into ice water. After that we never really got any new members and the forum slowly died. (you can still see a remnant over at www.ridethestorm.net, its a ghost town). At the very end there were about 5 people still semi-active and 4 of them moved onto WoW, since I knew WoW would be gaming crack to me and I didnt want to pay a monthly fee I stayed away.

In any case I think one of our biggest mistakes was not finding a way to direct traffic to the website. In order to gain new members you need to have a way for new members to find your website and, this is in my opinion the most crucial, you need to be active in welcoming them to the community.

The way our guild had really gained lots of members is they made a post on a larger Guild Wars forum saying, "Hey if you are interested in a mature community of gamers come to www.ridethestorm.net " I dont know if any of yall are active on any larger TF2 forums, or some other gaming forum, but if you are it might be a good idea to make a post directing people here if they want to learn more about creating custom maps, find new custom maps, brainstorm, and / or just hang out. Maybe in your postings to FPS bannana you can drop a link back to www.tf2maps.net at the bottom of your map postings (before the change log, who reads the entire changelog anyway?) or maybe someone could make a post somewhere on the Valve forum directing people here.

As many of you know I am not really a mapper but I do really like to play custom maps and if I have a place were I can both get the hookup with fun custom maps AND offer feedback that makes the maps more of what I like, then its a Win-Win for me. And in final thoughts I really dont want this forum to go the way of the dodo bird (not that I think it will)

Sorry for the meandering reply but I have a lot of thoughts swirling around and I just kinda started typing.
 
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YM

LVL100 YM
aa
Dec 5, 2007
7,135
6,056
The portal mapping comunity has taken a hit since the start of december although things are begining to kick off again. I myself shifted from portal to TF2 at about that time, although I thoroughly intend on keeping my portal projects going. I will hate myself forever if i don't.

I like playing custom maps, after all, the best maps are customs All we need is time for TF2; the amount of poor quality, unfinished TF2 maps is huge right now and we need to knuckle down and get everything finished and polished off so that its every bit as good as the official maps. Mappers need a load of encouragement to continue their work and finish their maps once they go beta.
 
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DJive

Cake or Death?
aa
Dec 20, 2007
1,465
741
I dont know if any of yall are active on any larger TF2 forums, or some other gaming forum, but if you are it might be a good idea to make a post directing people here if they want to learn more about creating custom maps, find new custom maps, brainstorm, and / or just hang out. Maybe in your postings to FPS bannana you can drop a link back to www.tf2maps.net at the bottom of your map postings (before the change log, who reads the entire changelog anyway?) or maybe someone could make a post somewhere on the Valve forum directing people here.

Ya that sounds good. Something along the lines of "To see changes, Progress and feedback check out tf2maps.net/forums/12345" People seem to know about fpsbanana well enough. I think if as many people knew about them knew about tf2maps.net MORE people would be here... TBH im sure non of you use fpsbanana as a feedback/improvement site.. Most people do it to get there "product" out there.
 

l3eeron

L8: Fancy Shmancy Member
Jan 4, 2008
593
88
Im totally promoting tf2maps.net at the ville.org


In the near future, we will be hosting "custom nights" where we (the ville) provide a full server (cuz Im going to market the hell out of this) and you guys give me the best of the customs out right now. Then map authors can join in on the game and come to either tf2maps.net or theville.org to retrive their priceless feedback.

Basically, I will be making posts like this:

*Attention, we will be full scale testing cp_XXX and ctf_XXX this wednesday on server XXX

Kind of like a collaboration between tf2maps and the ville. Will definitly give you guys some exposure and help keep the custom community types like yourselves kept in the loop. I really want to see this site stay around for a long long time. Ill do what ever I can to see that happen :)

P.S. I hate fpsbanana but I have my map on there....
 

YM

LVL100 YM
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Dec 5, 2007
7,135
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Just emailed Control Point (A TF2 podcast) And they talk about custom maps they play and various websites and stuff, I did some name dropping, also mentioned the competition so tf2maps might get a mention in a future podcast....
 

ryodoan

Resident Bum
Nov 2, 2007
409
117
This is an old thread from around the holidays when traffic HAD slowed down.

Since I am working on the chat logger pretty regularly I had noticed a drop in chat room traffic, we went a couple days with only a few people in the chat room, however if we compare chat room activity from December 20th - Jan. 10th to the chat room activity in the last 20 days, there is a huge difference.

You can see for yourself at http://caffeinesystems.ath.cx/TF2Mappers .
*Note* On Jan. 26, 2008 I updated the chat logger app to create a new HTML page every day, and switched the chat loggers time zone to GMT (rather than EST (GMT-5)). This makes finding a certain date easier, however it makes finding an old date a little harder since the old files where named with numerically, rather than by date.

*Note Note* You can see chat logs from 12/24/07 - 1/01/08 at this link:
http://caffeinesystems.ath.cx/Tf2mappers/index18.html

More recent chat logs are easier to find since they are named by date. As you can see though, every 30 minutes the chat logger was running and only picking up 0-15 lines of chat, now its getting a crazy butt load every 30 minutes.

I would say we are doing well, but more advertisement can never hurt.
 

YM

LVL100 YM
aa
Dec 5, 2007
7,135
6,056
On the advertisment thing, someone should email all the TF2 themed websites [that are half decent] and demand an exchange of affiliate logos. Because: why wouldn't they want the extra coverage and we could certainly use it :)