TL:DR Ra2 is sucky

[Mystic2000]

potentially what you can do, is have a small selection of components, but each component has several visual models with the same hitbox, that way, you have an easier time balancing it cause there's still factually 20 or so components (random number obviously), but since each component has several "skins" you have variety for making cool looking stuff

[cephalopod]

how could i resist a thread title like this...

first off: kill, you were the best and did the best you possibly could. problem was the community undermining you constantly with sh**posting across the internet. i cared about this community even after i stopped caring about the game (hop's right btw, nobody will ever 'fix' it, but it can still be fun), but didn't feel welcome here anymore. and that's become synonymous with the brand of gtm - a place where outsiders of a certain clique feel unwelcome. i don't know who, if anyone, is to blame. but that's not the point. i pop through every now and then out of nostalgia but haven't played the game in a long time and have no real desire to.
bridges are burned between this place and, let's be real, most others. it's either time to move on, or time to let someone come through and really shake this place up in the biggest way possible.
but yeah tl;dr go build a robot and idk slowly you start realising gtm ra2 whatever... don't matter...
bye xo

[Hoppin]

yeah tl;dr go build a robot and idk slowly you start realising gtm ra2 whatever... don't matter...
bye xo

You got it

[09090901]

it's either time to move on, or time to let someone come through and really shake this place up in the biggest way possible.

I've said it before, but if someone wants to take over running gtm then none of us have really any issues with it

one thing i really wanted was a more diverse leadership in regards to community representation (as in somebody from pws,ow, and whatever else the other big servers are). obviously I don't want to force taking an administration position on anyone, but I think it could be a step I'm the right direction

[Hoppin]

it's either time to move on, or time to let someone come through and really shake this place up in the biggest way possible.

I've said it before, but if someone wants to take over running gtm then none of us have really any issues with it

one thing i really wanted was a more diverse leadership in regards to community representation (as in somebody from pws,ow, and whatever else the other big servers are). obviously I don't want to force taking an administration position on anyone, but I think it could be a step I'm the right direction

This is whats been happening in the OW discord. So thats a start

[090901]

here's my hot take as i was told to post one:

1. Like it or not, forums themselves are a dying breed this day in age, which I assume in a way has to do with just how the internet has changed back in the decade. Pretty much all of us """boomers""" on this forum got introduced to the internet before the real rise of reddit/social media/discord/etc over the past decade (going from slightly under 1 billion users in 2010 to over 3 billion users this year) and back then if you wanted to have a discussion about it you had to join a forum, there was no facebook group/discord/reddit/whatever for something. Now that there is other platforms that conveniently with also host all other communities in one place as a central hub there just really isn't any reason to go even look up and find a forum.

2. RA2 itself is just an old old old game with not much left in it (at least for me). Any sort of "competitive" meta (Stock & and DSL-S) really isn't fun to me anymore as everything has been perfected and there's nothing more I can do with them, at least in an AI based tournament. Meanwhile IRL at least has some creative draw but the fights themselves with how the bots have become are either a curbstomp or just constantly havok restarts until someone gettings pitted or something just because of how dumb the AI is. I honestly cannot stand watching AI fights for IRL tournaments because it's just so awfully boring and you see the AI literally kill itself so often. I rather have a tournament where just 2 people drive all the bots since I know PvP is a bitch to organize than have the AI do it because it at least adds some sort of human element to it and makes it feel less artificial and dull.

3. As others have said GTM users have had a uh, "unique" style of posting that isn't the most welcoming. I won't even say it's a recent thing, because I honestly  saw way worst sh** when I joined back in the day (if you don't believe me he's one of the countless threads I can pull up lol), but people now have options as GTM isn't the only RA2 community around. I also again feel like it has to do with just how the internet itself has changed over the last decade and how things how our lives online have become more increasingly interconnected with our personal lives, how literally half of us know each other on a  first name basis and could probably pull up someones facebook profile easily if they wanted to so there's no really screen name to hide behind when you wanna talk sh**. Then you got the fact pretty much all the robotic communities are interconnected now and how other people will literally look down on people for even associating with the "sh**posters on gtm" (which to me is pretty messed up, but whatever, I can't be the moral police) and you got a reason why people don't wanna join and why people who have moved onto IRL robotics will want to distance themselves from this place.

4. As for the future of GTM itself, what I mainly see is it just being a resource for RA2 files (like it always has been, since there site was started to literally to host the DSL mod) and potential just a place to advertising their tournaments as a central hub or something since as a """boomer"""" I hate the fact I have to join a new discord server for like every god damn tournament to know whats even going on but that's just me 

5. Echoing what Somebody said, at the end of the day even if it truly does "die", this place has lived a hella of a long time for one community considering it basically ended up being a continuity of the original RA2 forums that came around in 2002 and closed in 2008 (GTM itself being around since 2004). It's funny to think this website itself is actually older than some of the people that use it, lol. The fact it's still alive even though it's on life support at this point is pretty amazing considering the amount of different admins/mods/users/etc that have passed thru over the years. Yeah it's probably my fault why it's even more sh**ty now due to coming under the same amazing apathetic state of mind to it that basically ever past mod and admin has went into when they realized there's not much they can "fix" about this community without getting sh**ted on by someone.

tl;dr this is probably somehow my fault and i apologize and i am a bad person sorry guys and if theres is someone thats wants to be admin please raise your hand

[playzooki]

ra2 is on life support, go outside and let it die

[CodeSilver23]

Would it be helpful to adjust the visual presentation of GTM? You know, make it look more "modern". I mean, it still has that 2009 vibe to it. Personally, GTM kinda looks like a place that'll give your computer a virus(No offense).

[Enigm@]

hey kids since every old farts coming out of the woods for this thread why not add to it

i guess is should preface this by saying i dont  give a sh** about ra2 and haven't given one for it since about 2017. i only kick around because of folks like chris, geese, matt, and a few others are fun to chat with in discord.

anyway- i think it's fairly remarkable that gtm's still around even though it's a shell of itself. (and this has been a slow decline thats been going on since ~2013, if you don't believe me, look at post statistics by posts/year and the fukken drop they take around then)
even though i dont really know any of the kids that still play this gay game it's honestly flooring that there are people that still care about it, and i'm not sure whether that's sad or something admirable to say for the site and the users of it.

i've been using the internet as a means of sh**posting since the early 2000s when a was a lil boy and i've seen dozens of forums that i've been apart of come and go within years of starting up, and the staying power thru sheer autism that gtm has had is remarkable. and especially one thats for a ****ing 15 year old robot combat simulator that has a sh**ty physics engine and graphics from 1998.

i guess i'm (maybe) part of why gtm turns people off since i'm  a culprit for sh**posting but honestly that's just the attitude i have about the internet; take everything you see with a grain of salt and don't get mad at it because its ultimately just text on a screen, i don't believe in "toxicity", if people don't like sh**posting and can't take joke than that sounds pretty boring to me.

so why you should read anything that i'm saying? you  shouldn't, my impact on this site is minimal, i've done nothing to innovate on this site, and the only noteworthy thing i have about me on here is that i've been internet-buddies with the mods for years.

instead of worrying about gay sh** like this, go outside, go for a walk, enjoy life people.

[Badger]

Thanks, boomer

Honestly Kill was right when he tried to make GTM more of a hugbox. Maybe the best idea would be to move all the RA2 (or just IRL?) stuff to a new/different community that's more friendly and not stuck on an archaic communication format. The splintering of communities is already an issue (cheers Orc), if GTM isn't a suitable hub for everything RA2 anymore, for whatever reasons, then maybe a new one is needed. Having everything decentralised is bad for almost everyone, and it feels like GTM has become toxic or at least nonessential to the continuation of RA2.

[RpJk]

Was there ever an idea of moving the community to Reddit? Keeping here as resource website.

[CodeSilver23]

Reddit will bring in even more toxic people than we could handle.

[RpJk]

Reddit will bring in even more toxic people than we could handle.

I've seen my fair share. So would be risky?

[CodeSilver23]

Reddit will bring in even more toxic people than we could handle.

I've seen my fair share. So would be risky?

Most likely.

[ACAMS]

Would it be helpful to adjust the visual presentation of GTM? You know, make it look more "modern". I mean, it still has that 2009 vibe to it. Personally, GTM kinda looks like a place that'll give your computer a virus(No offense).

WHAT, I will have you know I spent hours making this look like the original 2001 site! .... so it has very historic vibe to it!

[RpJk]

Would it be helpful to adjust the visual presentation of GTM? You know, make it look more "modern". I mean, it still has that 2009 vibe to it. Personally, GTM kinda looks like a place that'll give your computer a virus(No offense).

WHAT, I will have you know I spent hours making this look like the original 2001 site! .... so it has very historic vibe to it!

Looks better than anything by Google, I can admit that much. Do think the logo needs a bit of colour.

[yugitom]

as a """boomer"""" I hate the fact I have to join a new discord server for like every god damn tournament to know whats even going on but that's just me

****ing this

I wouldn't mind if GTM weren't the only place to go for RA2 if I didn't have to go on a scavenger hunt to find the other ones. I swear the OW and PWS servers aren't public and they're apparently the most thriving places for RA2. I could be wrong by now (since I last checked) but I just can't be arsed to check and go on said scavenger hunt. I don't know how the current community puts up with it.

kinda off-topic but

I know RA2 doesn't have the best standing with ARC/Garry's Wars from what I've seen/heard so we can only try and improve if they want to do the same.

Hi, GWars representative/admin here. Just saying that, whenever anyone bashes GTM/RA2 in our community, I always defend them because we'd be nowhere without the GTM members that founded it.  I'm pretty sure RoboBowler (the owner) thinks the same way as well. Just getting that out there. Sadly there are some people in the server that hate RA2 with a passion but I'd like to think they'd get over it if they had to.

[Badger]

Good to see ya around, yugi

as a """boomer"""" I hate the fact I have to join a new discord server for like every god damn tournament to know whats even going on but that's just me

****ing this

I wouldn't mind if GTM weren't the only place to go for RA2 if I didn't have to go on a scavenger hunt to find the other ones. I swear the OW and PWS servers aren't public and they're apparently the most thriving places for RA2. I could be wrong by now (since I last checked) but I just can't be arsed to check and go on said scavenger hunt. I don't know how the current community puts up with it.

qft

[09090901]

as a """boomer"""" I hate the fact I have to join a new discord server for like every god damn tournament to know whats even going on but that's just me

****ing this

I wouldn't mind if GTM weren't the only place to go for RA2 if I didn't have to go on a scavenger hunt to find the other ones. I swear the OW and PWS servers aren't public and they're apparently the most thriving places for RA2. I could be wrong by now (since I last checked) but I just can't be arsed to check and go on said scavenger hunt. I don't know how the current community puts up with it.

pretty much anyone who is remotely active and not a complete idiot/reject/boomer  is on those servers (which tbh theres only like 2 or 3 major ones)

i think there's an argument that invite only policies hurt the community in the long run, but i don't see this changing anytime soon as most people support them as a necessary evil to keep the community somewhat sane (which i tend to agree with to an extent)

[Badger]

as a """boomer"""" I hate the fact I have to join a new discord server for like every god damn tournament to know whats even going on but that's just me

****ing this

I wouldn't mind if GTM weren't the only place to go for RA2 if I didn't have to go on a scavenger hunt to find the other ones. I swear the OW and PWS servers aren't public and they're apparently the most thriving places for RA2. I could be wrong by now (since I last checked) but I just can't be arsed to check and go on said scavenger hunt. I don't know how the current community puts up with it.

pretty much anyone who is remotely active and not a complete idiot/reject/boomer is on those servers (which tbh theres only like 2 or 3 major ones)

Doesn't make it much better. It's also not great for newbs that stumble upon GTM, only to find a super quiet forum and maybe a dead discord server link.