Community dying out?

Interesting topic.

Its a quiet accurate observation actually.
Freelancer has become old and in the past year many servers did close... servers which had many players in the past.

The activity, mostly in modding communities clearly was not the best. Even at sites such as TSP there were many weeks without any activity. This is a general problem these days.
There is only a handful of mods which are in development and many small projects die because of the lack of support.
The big modding projects barely come up with mod related questions as the people working there have pretty much every knowledge at their hands.
A personal observation i made with new modding projects is that the modders want to "run before they learned to walk". They come up with overly complicated topics about destructible universe and hook related questions while they dont seem to know the basics of modding such as working with ids or utf.
However thats just my observation... dunno.

The game however is not dead, the participation of 2 Freelancer mods in the Top100 voting at the mod awards clearly showed that Freelancer is not dead and that people are very interested in new developments.
Thats good.

The activity here was pretty much a catastrophy in 2013.
Well, that means the active "we want to do something" or "i have question" -like activity.
The activity like forum visits was actually pretty high which means that TLR is still a good source of knowledge. With more than 5000 hits per day the site is far away from dead.

The question is how to deal with everything in future.

Ive already presented plans to the SWAT Portal staff members about what I intend to do in 2014 for the Portal.
These plans involve massive upgrades. Many new features and a new structure that would make everything more user friendly and allow us to offer new services to the members.
Now the question is now TLR fits into this and how can it support if we decide to include TLR into these plans.

We had such a topic here already and there was a poll about it.
Do people want merge the community frameworks?... do both sites benefit from it? etc.
Result from that poll where 50% for it and 50% of the votes against it.
So... hmmm?

If you ask me to keep the status quo has not made it better in the past.
A community always needs development... so if we want to revive TLR we have to go new ways... try something new and use chances.
TLR was the number one Freelancer site and its still a great source of knowledge today. Thats something that wont change.
But probably we can initiate changes which can give TLR a future again.

If I were to see that old thread, I'd love to be the 1% missing to get more people that are for merging the communities.
I haven't been here for a few weeks, even more, and it seems not a single thing changed.
Also been to TSP, only thing they found is a new way to ban me from *logging out*. Can you believe it? So much hate...

Anyways, I'm still giving a push to my TimeLancer project sometimes, though time is a rough matter (ironically enough).
I think that we should make a stand, and get people together for a greater purpose. Ever since I entered the Freelancer community I've been bothered by the fact that there is one too many communities. And the rivalry is so absurd, I don't even know how to describe it. Either you choose a side, or you're hated by both. No gaming/modding community has ever been torn apart so badly by admins who want to prove themselves better. I think it's time to put an end to this, once and for all.
Who's with me?

To be honest, Im absolutely not up for any TSP discussion.
Ive learned to ignore and since that live in peace. Everything else just consumes time that i could use for something constructive instead.

I think that a dying community is way more important than someone's pride, but sadly nobody ever agrees with me.
If you improve the forum, make things look really epic and everything, expand the database beyound anyone's knowledge - only 3 people will probably see it: both of you and I. It seems like we're the only beating hearts left here.
Are you still working on Crossfire 2 back there in SWAT team?

Im not quiet sure what pride has to do with that.
Its not about pride... its about doing constructive work instead of doing never ending discussions with people that dont even listen or get personal on every minor shit.

Ive decided for myself that i dont need such a crap.
I do my stuff and let them do theirs... and the people which benefit from that are the players in the end. And only that matters.
And it is simply not true that ppl dont see the stuff that we are doing. The numbers of vistors is pretty high here... not to mention the amount of ppl at the SWAT Portal.

Crossfire 2.0 is almost finished btw.

Yeah, I guess you're right...
When I said "pride" I meant that they do get all personal about everything, and claim that you are insulting them. So they "protect their pride" by acting like assholes towards you. And you protect yours by not making any contact with them. This is all wrong imo, and I have no choise but to respect it.

And that's great news, I can't wait to play it already

So your main concern is that people are not participating in the forums/discussions any more?
Do you have any ideas how we can establish a community which will participate more actively? (I know I've been away myself for a long time.)

i am working on something... yes
but that needs some time

I wonder what's on your mind, OP

Ho Hum...

Old game, old user list... It's the same for every old game, as the years roll by the people drift away, sure there are new players still even for old old games, but they want answers to simple questions, most of which are covered already in the forums.

As for the mods, little 1 dev mods are a thing of the past, now it's big modding teams doing big mp mods, that often have their own forum sites.

Then there's the feuds, as the community shrinks, the remaining diehards are more and more likely to be the sort of strong minded ones who WILL get into feuds with others, and then walk away. I did, over "Despot Dave and the Disco Exile Cabal", Gibbon did over the 24color+8alpha=32bit splash screen argument, and so on.

*shrug*

I'm in the player - not modder category. I came to Lancers to find mod information a few years ago, and I am not surprised the community engagement drops. Playing in the sunset generally means darkness approaches and its goodnight time. Having said this, I like to try reminisce and load my old games. Heroes III is another favourite with their Wake of Gods community mod, and MAME seemed to a have big development gap before being picked up again. My abandonware folder slowly grows as I rediscover older favourites as well. I even popped into Everquest for a few months.

What impresses me is that you guys are still around and working on the mods and the boards. You probably don't get much kudos, but its well deserved, keeping these games interesting.

Like most things, business or community,I think you should consider some more proactive reach outs to the community with what you guys are doing, try maybe running a workshop on modding (I have no idea where you guys even learn this stuff), launch a new server to try to avoid historical in-fights, get a poll pop-up (if the site can handle that) to see how you can get some feedback or ideas from your visitors, remind people where they can download the software, recommended mods. I'm here today because an annual reminder said happy birthday If you are getting 5000 hits a month it might be worth a try.

Now to find my freelancer CD... its here somewhere....

In a few weeks Ill have the work on my mod finished and will take care of the community issues again.
Your suggestions sound interesting and certainly are worth a try.