I've seen lot of community veterans quietly give up on DXMP after official servers went down, but generally that is limited to players that haven't been active in game for years. Still, loosing such backing is bad even for playing player. Not much to do that, playing players focus on games that can be had.
The issues our game has are now pretty commonly understood by most all players: game performance has seen some fixing and could perhaps even be improved further with a simple idea I had. In any case technically we are in much better shape than two years ago, in this regard. And, playing players. Well, with official servers down its bad news, but in theory we've had enough players for years. Why that hasn't been the case in practice, is my next point.
Most all clans, not including the generally very easy-going HK current lineup, have significant beef with one another, leading to decreased motivation to play in current active servers or outright blocking them. What this means? Lot less players, lot more friction, lot more dead dx. We can view clans and players as a resource we need to have our daily fun games. So what resource we have?
As a current base [BB] is seeding activity, [HK] is generally up for games. Problems with some BB founding members aside, that is some active players for daily games. To improve that situation, the stalemate with other clans has to go. Because it is largely down to fairly dumb issues or fears, it is a shame - and has always been - that we cannot have a proper professional server where admins don't fsck shite up and players can focus on game.
Okay, so I've mentioned BB and HK; A!B is not playing. They could play, and I understand the significance of loosing Ste, but for his own reasons the clan leadership doesn't promote interest in playing in his clan. That should, or could change, but for past years it has not. I personally don't give a shite if Monkee aliases or not, spams shells all map or whatever, real server doesn't prosecute against the use of shells or aliases. What we all care about is having skilled players in our games.
What next, THC. Blade is upset about the feedback from his paid server and how the games played out. Yes, I criticized his server, but on grounds that any experienced shooter game admin in any shooter game can understand. If mistakes were made, a man moves forward and comes back stronger and wiser. If THC with its few but important players chooses to blockade the game, it is a loss for both them and us, and a significant loss.
Hivemind clan with its original members is retired for about a year now, since and before server went down. To some degree I could do my part to get some players to play more, but I too have a problem with the game and other clans: I don't have any interest in playing a game that endorses cheating, nor do I intend to lead a clan in such a game. The issues with the lacking community have led me to take several longer breaks this year. From Hey's server (and hopefully hivemind's) we see that it is possible to host a server where players can just play. While I do not intend to bring my clan to non-miniMTL server nor can really recommend it until Alex makes a small tweak to ANNA, it does seem possible to just have a game.
So we've covered BB, HK, A!B, THC, Hivemind. Normally for competitive gamers that would be end of list - don't take it personally, I am really just saying as it is! - but I've put quite a lot of effort into getting FGS into that list of considerable clans as well. Maybe it is because game is on its deathbead, or maybe because of my annoying rants here - or both -, but quite a few FGS players have been playing in atdm servers lately. At least, some players have shown slight changes in attitude towards our game. So, I would very much like to list FGS in this list of clan resource for our everyday games. Problem with that is both lack of activity on leadership level what regards promoting clan activity, as well as umm.. slight lack of experience maybe? You know what I mean.
Or if I sum the last paragraphs up quickly: we have 2 clans playing, 3-4 clans are not playing for solvable reasons. This is significant.
It is also important to note that these ideas deal with the here and the now, without proper community development support there will be no longevity to it, but thats another (old) topic.
So an ideal roadmap to Winter 2014/2015 games, not including any impact from the predictable ddos attacks from phantmoon (tm), would be the following:
:: a server with sufficient patches to counter common issues (ideally, ANNA would receive minor modification in shape of dt display)
:: somehow getting all 6 clans listed to play
:: preparing a package with necessary player patches/binds (i got an idea how to do that but won't be setting up an exe myself.. if someone can do that at some point)
:: ban all clearly and blatantly detected cheaters because if 6 clans play then even the most morally confused players can admit to having a decent game (anna mod should greatly aid in doing so)
This entire roadmap assumes that somehow it is possible to get through to clans that theoretically exist but do not play, as well as clearing out the reasons as to why they don't. Cheating won't be an issue with miniMTL or theoretical ANNA update, and a banned cheater doesnt matter.
Anyone who promotes or supports cheating and cheaters is simply killing off any activity there could be had, even if it gives the false illusion of having slightly bigger games in the short run.
ps: I'd appreciate if admins cleaned the thread of any posts where Phantom's minions start launching verbal attacks against me again. Otherwise every thread will turn into flamewar.
pps: While having some degree of success with any of it would be very nice, the thread is primarily meant to showcase what issues bottleneck even the current activity as-is, and not really written with the imagination that tomorrow it's going to be different. In all likelihood, everybody will still want to play in their tiny corner where they have admin and server log access.
SHOUTBOX
LINKS
The team
Birthdays