gametechmods
Site Information => Site News and Feedback => Topic started by: Mr. AS on August 12, 2016, 03:28:44 AM
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Not gonna lie, GTM's gotten pretty stagnant over the past few months/years, and this is coming from a guy who's been trying to stay positive about the state of the forum, as opposed to pessimists (not naming names here) who would always say that "oh gee wow, the forum's dying, I bet GTM won't even last until 20XX". While they've been mostly wrong, I still feel like GTM has definitely been in a state of decline for a while now. Even if I haven't been really vocal about it until now.
So, what's the problem with GTM ATM? The members? The admins? RA3? Could it be the Illuminati??? Right now, there's several problems with both GTM and RA2. Firstly, I'll be starting off with GTM, and how we can Make GTM Great Againtm. The first step being to build a wall and make Advanced Robot Combat pay for it, of course.
GTM has so much random clutter and bloat. You have all of these forums and features, yet only 3/4ths of it gets used, if that. Let's go over a few examples:
- Reputation: Was largely unmoderated and only really served as a meme circlejerk to get people's e-peen up for nonreasons such as "he's cool". There was a reason why people dismissed guys like Goldenfox who complained about rep, since it was always "just a number bro calm down". This was until one day Trovaner decided that he has way too much time on his hands and manually deleted a fraction of the spam upvotes, and now hardly anybody uses it. Could this be because circlejerkers were the only people actually using it? Possibly. I do know one thing though, reputation distribution has slowed down to a crawl. Seriously, the first page goes all the way back to mid-May. From here, you could either reinstate reputation for every member (if only to get people using it again), or get rid of the system entirely (since reputation is basically just e-peen, regardless of if there's a circlejerk or not).
- RA2wiki: Almost completely abandoned. The past month of "editing" has resulted in a few meta-pages being edited, mainly member pages and forum stuff. Wiki editing really sped up while the Wiki Trivia contest was going on. Would love to see that be a weekly thing with an ongoing leaderboard, or at least for it to become more common.
- Member websites on the front page: Why are these still a thing? Beetlebros website I can understand, as it has a few tutorials and all the BBEANS stuff on it. Meanwhile the Starcore and Darkrat sites are just glorified download links, and the actual webpages themselves look like they crawled out of some Angelfire hellhole. The files for these can honestly just be thrown into the downloads section, if they aren't already in there.
- Just as an aside, Madiaba, Darkrat, Clickbeetle, ACAMS, and Starcore are admins, yet 2 of them aren't active, Clickbeetle only pops up once every year to drop a hot load of new stuff onto GTM, Starcore only shows up when his name is called, and ACAMS only shows up when Obama's name is called. I feel like these members would be more appropriate as Veterans. Even Trovaner himself has had some activity issues lately, but I'm gonna give him the benefit of the doubt for now considering he's the most active out of any of the admins.
- RA3 section: I understand this was all set up before the game was released. But come on dude, RA3 sucked. Everyone got salty, and I'm pretty sure all the guys that were showing up because of RA3 left a week after it was dropped, if not sooner. These boards can be condensed into one universal RA3 section. I don't see discussion blooming any time soon, especially when it doesn't seem that RA3 is getting updated any time soon.
- Game Development: lol this assumes any GTM member's gamedev projects have gotten past the tech demo phase. Subforum itself is also dead AF.
- Politics: Almost the entire front page of this is just ACAMS, MNB, and I sh**posting. The front page also goes all the way back to last year. This can just be part of chatterbox.
There's also the problem with the forum being flat out boring. There's no drama or huge forum reactions for the most part anymore, it's usually just "oh that's nice" and then you move on with your day. Last bit of drama I remember was RA3's release, and even then it was more so criticism of GI and the RA3 subforum rapidly fizzling out rather than forum drama. Remember DSL 2.2? The forum's reaction to that was nothing compared to DSL 3's release, and that was a beta! You didn't have an onslaught of people tripping over each other trying out the new components in DSL 2.2 like you did with DSL 3.
Right now GTM is that leftover flat soda at the party that nobody drank. There is a reason why you see older members rejoin the forum, only to leave again soon after. I've seen so many people do this over the past 5 years that I've been here. Usually they only stay for a month, 6 months at the very most. Vets drop like flies because there really isn't much to do once you've reached the top. Only guys I've seen actually come back for real is Redace, Geice and maybe Reier. 3 guys out of the something like 30 or 40 "hey guise remembah ME??" reintroductions we've had.
Another issue is just the game itself. When you think about it, RA2 is literally just rock-paper-scissors with robots. Imagine pokemon with only something like 10 pocket monsters, and half of them aren't even viable. There's a few pretty set-in-stone archetypes when it comes to Stock and DSL (although DSL is slightly more forgiving), and anything you can build in DSL is usually applicable to Ironforge as well. Metagame's not gonna change by adding more shapes to put on your robot, bro. You can argue that hybrids add more variety to RA2, but those are the worst of both worlds in most cases. Hybrids are what you enter when you don't want to look like a tryhard. People who actually want to win enter popups or SnS, sometimes HS if we're talking stock here. Not to toot my own horn or anything here, but the whole point of me making Retooled is to introduce new variables to the metagame that weren't previously available because of strict rules regarding certain components, like making car steering actually viable, or attempting to balance the cheatbot2 components. Beta release coming soon, lots of new stuff and bugfixes, promise.
Lastly, tournaments. People have actually been fairly vocal about the state of tournaments, and I keep hearing rumors of a league-based regularly-occurring tournament crop up ever since BBEANS, Battlebots and Clash Cubes fell out of grace (note: there has not been a BBEANS or CC tournament for over 5 years), what's the current state of this league/tourney series? Surely the mod team has talked it over quite a bit? I remember Kill bringing up a league a few months ago (maybe in late 2015), only for the idea to go unacted upon, and now apparently Yugitom is hosting it? I also remember Click tossing around the idea of a BBEANS 7 a few times over the years, but you know for a fact that BBEANS 7 is not happening any time soon.
tl;dr This isn't some "THIS WEBSITE STINKS, I FUKKIN HATE THESE PEOPLE" saltpost, just putting my 3AM largely insomnia-induced thoughts on the current state of affairs out there. Yes, this could have gone into FOTEPX's thread... but this way it's more likely to spark a conversation, and for you to actually notice it instead of just going "oh that's nice".
and yes, the title is intentional.
(http://i.imgur.com/Idp0EtU.jpg)
edit: thanks for nothing sli.mg
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To be brutally honest, when you get down to it, GTM is a website dedicated to a relatively obscure game that received no major advertising that caters to a specific hobby, and that's putting it lightly. The fact that the RA2 community is going as strong as it is, considering it was released 12 years ago, is really a testament to the loyalty of the community to the game. Look at how much we've advanced the game from its initial starting point, and it's absolutely ground-breaking. I know that a lot of the members on here weren't responsible for these feats, but much as you watch the Olympics and feel pride when your nation wins a medal, we should give ourselves as a collective a pat on the back and commend ourselves for what we've done.
Have we done all we can do with the Robot Arena series? Robot Arena 1 is a dead-zone. Robot Arena 2 has been squeezed for almost every drop it has and been put on over-time, and Robot Arena 3 was a tragedy. I really appreciate the Re-Tooled pack you've been doing to increase the diversity of the game and hopefully add some more playtime hours to the game itself AS, and mods like the Robot Wars pack have been instrumental in increasing my interest in the game also. But the necessity for a new robotic combat game (one that is actually somewhat close to good) is really what we need now. There's only so many times you can fill the cracks of one game (especially such an obscure game), before people move on to other things and leave RA2 behind.
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With regards to tournaments, how do you expect a large one on the scale of CC/BBEANS to function when nobody even enters? I know I could certainly run a large tournaments, and I know there are other members willing to as well. We simply don't have enough people without a "big name" tournament.
I totally agree on the whole Meta thing. All I do these days in enter some tryhard 1WD bot unless it's banned and then I enter some funky stilt thing. I have no motivation to build anything new when I feel like I have a pretty good example of most archetypes already. I really want to get into DSL 2.2 but that seems to be entirely Mechavore discs which is even worse than the old razor tip meta.
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I do think that GTM has been getting a bit more active in the recent few months.
To address some points:
- I've noticed that there's still a lot of "he's a cool guy" kind of reputation upvotes(some upvotes also seem to be invisible?) and giving everyone the power to use it probably wouldn't be good. Having something between normal and advanced user would most likely help in this case. Funny enough, the one rep I got seems to be for a legit reason since I found out how to fix the F2 cam. Personally I don't care too much about rep but do find it nice to get some. It can possibly show that this member is just a cool guy or friendly user.
- I've been actually thinking about doing some wiki stuff, like adding my thoughts to some of the bots since I disagree with what the wiki writes there, or to add pages of other bots that took part in recent tournaments, however for one I think that this has all been established by veterans, so I would be that one new user that completely causes chaos or just adds pages of bots that aren't needed on the wiki(from what I've seen, only the big Starcore AI pack as well as only BBEANS and a few other big tournaments have pages)
- I wouldn't mind keeping those links there, sure the websites don't have your modern simple metro look(but honestly f that, it doesn't need to be modern style to look good) but they still work for what they're supposed to do.
- Don't really see anything negative in them keeping their admin titles, if it blocks new admins then simply increase the number
- RA3 is basically dead, but putting everything into one section wouldn't really work because showcases and all would be mixed, so I guess it has to be kept that way, either that or it's one section with sub sections similar to the RA2 showcase, that would work in that case.
- Hasn't gamedevelopent recently had posts with that robot combat test? While I don't see stuff ever reaching the final game state there, it can still be a nice section and give inspiration to other people, we might see something completed there some day, so keep it.
- I guess, haven't really seen anything of this section, but I thought it would be more serious than that.
- Drama isn't exactly needed. As for the forum reaction, RA2 is sadly a old game and after a while you've seen most of it. DSL3 was something completely new while 2.2 was a update. However I'd rather have a good small community than a big bad one.
- Yes that's true and it sadly limits the creativity you can do, however on the other hand people should enter bots even if they aren't the most effective things. With the recent tournaments which are easier than the older ones, you can try other stuff out, take my VS as an example, yet it still got far to 5th and 6th place. I've been thinking about a tournament which would encourage completely different build styles or if a weapon limit on popups and HS would change stuff.
@RTC
True. I think if RA2 was just a bit more stable or had modding tools easier accessable then this thing would still be going on, I do have a idea about online multiplayer(but guess it will be bad anyways). If a new game happens it would be nice if most of the stuff was plain text in the files, because editing a AI .py or quickly repositioning the arena hazards is much easier than having to repack files a thousand times.
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Everything dies eventually.
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I just came here to see a photo of the logo on a sofa chair... was not disappointed
With regards to tournaments, how do you expect a large one on the scale of CC/BBEANS to function when nobody even enters?
This is a valid point..
A major tournament isnt on my radar right now but I wouldnt even think about running another proper Clash Cubes unless I was confident I could utilise a 64 bot bracket with at least minimal byes.. anything too far backward from previous entry lists would basically tarnish the special feeling and history of CC or BBEANS.
Id much rather run a new idea to cater for the 16 of so dedicated entrants
But I can see the general point in this topic so Ill stick around and do whatever I can to help boost this website... whatever that may end up being
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AS's points are definitely solid and a lot better thought out than many other 'GTM is dead' posts. 100% open ears to what we can do to get the place foxed up.
(I realise I typoed that second to last word but considering I'm wearing my Foxic tee it's too fitting)
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100% open ears to what we can do to get the place foxed up.
You rang?
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I have returned, hopefully for more than six months too! Haha. Let’s see…
But you raise an interesting point. My return was largely based on the fact that Robot Arena 3 was releasing and Robot Wars was coming back on the telly. From looking into those it rekindled my love for this game and I had a “wow, I remember that” moment and I sought out a download of the game; I even forgot I had an account here and tried to make a new one…
The game itself is the biggest problem I think, but the problems the game faces I think robot fighting in general suffers with as well. The majority of “good” bots in both real life and in the game are spinners, or you get some crazy niche design that really shines in real life that can’t be replicated in the game, like Razor – This issue comes down to the game not being deep enough. Perhaps an expansion of the game is needed. More parts, more possibilities. I know we have the mods, but like you say, there are still standout designs in every version that everyone can just slap together – maybe a big stock expansion pack would go a ways to help? Flails, CO2 flippers, the flamethrower, crushing arms, more burst motors, I don’t know, maybe trying to migrate everyone over to DSL would be a start instead?
In terms of activity, users need a buzz like you say. When a new game comes out, everyone tries everything and tests it out. This is an old game now, everything has been discovered, all the weapons have been tested, the glitches have been mastered. DSL 2.2 should have had more of an impact admittedly, but what can you do?
The key is to promote interest in the game, get a reason for people to play. A forum wide tournament is certainly a start, get people talking, get members seeded (custom titles based on their seeding?), get peoples reps up for exceeding expectations, get the wiki updated with new and old member profiles that are now active, where’s my wiki page? Badger? R01? Boto? Wen needs a whole site dedicated to him for Christ’s sake. Remember the BBEANS parts you would win like pre-stacked supervolts? Incentives like that should be brought back as well.
All of this requires dedication from a group of reliable admins that will obviously be sacrificing a great deal of their time to make all this happen. It’s a lot to expect from someone, but keeping a game like this alive takes work! And I think it’s worth it… Definitely my favourite robot combat game across any format.
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There's also the problem with the forum being flat out boring. There's no drama or huge forum reactions for the most part anymore, it's usually just "oh that's nice" and then you move on with your day. Last bit of drama I remember was RA3's release, and even then it was more so criticism of GI and the RA3 subforum rapidly fizzling out rather than forum drama.
please tell me you didnt just cite lack of 'forum drama' for gtm going downhill. i don't think this community has lasted over a decade and a half because of an ample supply of 'drama' that is petering out. i feel like i had more to add to this but this melted my mind a little bit and im frankly unsure of where i am or why
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I was trying to quietly run around and organise what I'm about to divulge but I guess that now is the best time as any to start working with the community on this one.
Not too long ago, I started talks with the admins and mods about a GTM tournament. This would be an official tournament in which members would receive prizes for doing well. Not only that but it would also debut a tournament ranking system. I will probably detail both of these concepts in more depth in a later post when I have the time and a keyboard.
I hate to think that, due to the state of entrant apathy at the moment, that the stature of the tournament alone wouldn't revitalise interest in most builders. So, I'd like to call to action now, and possibly at a later date in its own thread, all builders in the RA2 community to get stuck back into building and really make it clear what you expect from this official tournament and what it would take for you to join, even if it's just telling me your favourite metagame, it would be really appreciated. In return, I will promise that I will do everything I can to make sure the project will go smoothly.
The RA2 league (Kill's, not GK's) hasn't been completely abandoned but Kill has expressed his interest in helping me with this project over the league. Btw, I was on the hosting team for that but Kill was always the host.
Really hope I can help the state of the forum with the influence I have.
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ohh right okay now i think i remember where i was going. i agree with some of the forum reorganization related stuff, i posted a map of sorts as a suggestion myself in the other thread. the ra3 thing i disagree, collapse the middle two sub forums but leave it be. idk. just read my post in the other thread i guess.
i like the wiki thing too.
the admin thing and the website thing can be left as is. it's not something that's a huge deal, so long as we have one active admin and the websites still work. you don't need an army to police a quiet village. society isn't crumbling over here
oh, reputation. is that what happened? someone went through and kind of just flipped through all the positive rep in the forums for the last year and tossed out what they considered 'spam'? so many more important things that could be done. and spam, as it seems most people on this forum define it, seems to be 'anything i don't immediately like, or that might be a joke'... so what has screwing with the system achieved but mildly annoying some people and confusing others? put it back and let it be or don't have it at all, being a weird little puke about such meaningless nonsense is the kind of sh** that drives people away q.e.d.
and not to do something that i absolutely hate but: this could probably be mashed together with the other thread that was having the same exact discussion... ew. don't make me post like that
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just for anyone reading who didnt catch the other thread: https://gametechmods.com/forums/index.php?topic=19219.0
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I honestly enjoyed reading Mr. AS's post. I can proudly tell that you guys aren't going to get rid of me. I'm going to stay in the community as long as I have passion for Robot Combat. Now I'm completely aware that I haven't been doing much in the forum but I did release the texture pack. I hope people will give it a try. Also what you guys said about having a big tournament similar to BBEANS, with ranking and all, we really need one. I feel like it could make the community more competitive.
I would also like to add that I kind of agree with the drama thing. That's what brought people together and kept the forum more active. And what comes to the reputation and ranks? Well you've heard my opinion over million times so I don't need to add anything to that.
Ps. I would love to see the entire forum getting rebuild and having less categories.
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Anyone who doesn't like drama has obviously never seen venko's old showcase before it got cleaned. good times
Serious tho, I agree with AS. Drama probably isn't the right word, but I agree that nothing intresting really ever happens anymore. Not really sure how you're gonna fix that though.
I like the idea of a official tournament, but I can see it being pretty depressing if we only get like 16 entrants.
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Bring back playground
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Nice to see that the forum-wide tourney idea isn't completely stagnant. I personally think Ironforge would work pretty well as a place to start (since it's so balanced), or DSL 2.2 (since you'll probably get more people to enter). If you need tourney prizes, just hit me up in my PMs or on the ole discord.
Bringing back playground might be something to consider. It was certainly one part of the forum where you (and a lot of other members) were able to have fun. It just kind of disappeared one day for no real reason other than Trov not liking it.
There's also the problem with the forum being flat out boring. There's no drama or huge forum reactions for the most part anymore, it's usually just "oh that's nice" and then you move on with your day. Last bit of drama I remember was RA3's release, and even then it was more so criticism of GI and the RA3 subforum rapidly fizzling out rather than forum drama.
please tell me you didnt just cite lack of 'forum drama' for gtm going downhill. i don't think this community has lasted over a decade and a half because of an ample supply of 'drama' that is petering out. i feel like i had more to add to this but this melted my mind a little bit and im frankly unsure of where i am or why
Yeah, like Geice said, maybe "drama" wasn't really the best word to use there. Not talking about petty YouTube-tier drama here, I was mainly referring to widespread forum discussions as a community, rather than a few guys giving an apathetic "yeah ok buckaroo" and that being all there is to any given thread. People throwing sh**fits at each other 24/7 obviously wouldn't be good for the forum in the long run.
With regards to tournaments, how do you expect a large one on the scale of CC/BBEANS to function when nobody even enters? I know I could certainly run a large tournaments, and I know there are other members willing to as well. We simply don't have enough people without a "big name" tournament.
Obviously it's a far cry to make a new tourney series and expect 64 entrants the first time around, but I'd like to remind you that the first [RA2] battlebots tourney had 16 entries, and the first BBEANS only got something around 25 or 30. I think that as you host more and more tournies under a familiar name, more and more people will enter. I only started entering battlebots after Freeziez/MassimoV had already hosted 4 or 5 of them, because it was still the hot new thing. I even thought that IRL was hella dumb at the time.
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I was trying to quietly run around and organise what I'm about to divulge but I guess that now is the best time as any to start working with the community on this one.
Not too long ago, I started talks with the admins and mods about a GTM tournament. This would be an official tournament in which members would receive prizes for doing well. Not only that but it would also debut a tournament ranking system. I will probably detail both of these concepts in more depth in a later post when I have the time and a keyboard.
I hate to think that, due to the state of entrant apathy at the moment, that the stature of the tournament alone wouldn't revitalise interest in most builders. So, I'd like to call to action now, and possibly at a later date in its own thread, all builders in the RA2 community to get stuck back into building and really make it clear what you expect from this official tournament and what it would take for you to join, even if it's just telling me your favourite metagame, it would be really appreciated. In return, I will promise that I will do everything I can to make sure the project will go smoothly.
The RA2 league (Kill's, not GK's) hasn't been completely abandoned but Kill has expressed his interest in helping me with this project over the league. Btw, I was on the hosting team for that but Kill was always the host.
Really hope I can help the state of the forum with the influence I have.
honestly i think just a double elim tourney with no gimmicks and unlimited entries in some widely used metagame would work for this, like BBEANS - even people who do not build often (like me) would at least be able to re-enter an old bot, to at least make the tournament bigger and encourage people to enter. if you can get this idea off the ground and get it to work well then it would be great.
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I have returned, hopefully for more than six months too! Haha. Let’s see…
Was thinking about mentioning that in my post. I'm sure there are members here who will be here for a long time
The game itself is the biggest problem I think, but the problems the game faces I think robot fighting in general suffers with as well. The majority of “good” bots in both real life and in the game are spinners, or you get some crazy niche design that really shines in real life that can’t be replicated in the game, like Razor – This issue comes down to the game not being deep enough. Perhaps an expansion of the game is needed. More parts, more possibilities. I know we have the mods, but like you say, there are still standout designs in every version that everyone can just slap together – maybe a big stock expansion pack would go a ways to help? Flails, CO2 flippers, the flamethrower, crushing arms, more burst motors, I don’t know, maybe trying to migrate everyone over to DSL would be a start instead?
True, not that much is possible. I've thought about how one would build a robot combat game, and some features would just be very complex and time consuming to add. RA2 was good for it's time(it did lack some stuff back then, but most was luckily addable via mods) but for a game from today's time it sometimes seems to lack features, like having actual chassis armor instead of a simple hp bar that finishes off your robot once it reaches zero.
Some things like crushers sadly won't work well, I'm thinking about trying something out with the 180 degree beta motor, but even then it would be hard to get grip on an enemy and hold it(this is the biggest problem of crushers/clamps), dunno if tyres will help with that.
Another big problem is that this game is a perfect representation of the battlebots judges, they don't care if you flipped and rammed that bot, if you didn't do damage you don't win. Via all kinds of glitches we've been able to build very damaging bots, defense on the other hand hasn't really got anything(in fact even less since DSA is the only choice). The game is just so focused on damage which is why we see so many SNS, Spinners or Popups.
I personally think that people should be encouraged to try out new designs, you mentioned a stock pack(which I was originally thinking about as well) but the closest thing we have to that is DSL, which might be worth checking out. Sadly Frenzy Hammers as well as Mechavore discs are currently completely unbalanced. Doing Co2 flippers isn't really possible, I would've loved to give burst motors a co2 usage instead of electrical, so the closest you would probably have is what I did with my Atomizer series, using burst pistons on burst motors.
In terms of activity, users need a buzz like you say. When a new game comes out, everyone tries everything and tests it out. This is an old game now, everything has been discovered, all the weapons have been tested, the glitches have been mastered. DSL 2.2 should have had more of an impact admittedly, but what can you do?
The original DSL as well as Ironforge were two completely new games while 2.2 was more of a balance patch with only a few small new components, so it didn't interest people as much, also the community wasn't as big as it used to be when it got released. I've heard that DSL turned a bit into what stock is, having 3 main types of bots that were just the best and I have a feeling that this resulted in many builders not being interested anymore.
I wonder if limiting the weapons of spinners or certain other stuff would help, then again I wouldn't exactly want to limit creativity either.
The key is to promote interest in the game, get a reason for people to play. A forum wide tournament is certainly a start, get people talking, get members seeded (custom titles based on their seeding?), get peoples reps up for exceeding expectations, get the wiki updated with new and old member profiles that are now active, where’s my wiki page? Badger? R01? Boto? Wen needs a whole site dedicated to him for Christ’s sake. Remember the BBEANS parts you would win like pre-stacked supervolts? Incentives like that should be brought back as well.
Heh, I was thinking about that, however looking at the existing members, those are old veterans, sometimes legends, and I wouldn't feel right to have a page on there.
As for the prizes, I've seen them, and while they're interesting in one way, they are mostly there to remove annoying stuff(which raises the question why there isn't a mod for that anyways?) and I feel like this would cause builders to build super efficient main meta stuff again. Will post more in yugitom's part of the reply.
All of this requires dedication from a group of reliable admins that will obviously be sacrificing a great deal of their time to make all this happen. It’s a lot to expect from someone, but keeping a game like this alive takes work! And I think it’s worth it… Definitely my favourite robot combat game across any format.
Quite a lot you mentioned is something that members need to do and not admins :P Of course there's still a bit of admin work requred, but the forum can be perfect, if the members just don't want to interact then it will stay quiet.
I was trying to quietly run around and organise what I'm about to divulge but I guess that now is the best time as any to start working with the community on this one.
Not too long ago, I started talks with the admins and mods about a GTM tournament. This would be an official tournament in which members would receive prizes for doing well. Not only that but it would also debut a tournament ranking system. I will probably detail both of these concepts in more depth in a later post when I have the time and a keyboard.
I hate to think that, due to the state of entrant apathy at the moment, that the stature of the tournament alone wouldn't revitalise interest in most builders. So, I'd like to call to action now, and possibly at a later date in its own thread, all builders in the RA2 community to get stuck back into building and really make it clear what you expect from this official tournament and what it would take for you to join, even if it's just telling me your favourite metagame, it would be really appreciated. In return, I will promise that I will do everything I can to make sure the project will go smoothly.
The RA2 league (Kill's, not GK's) hasn't been completely abandoned but Kill has expressed his interest in helping me with this project over the league. Btw, I was on the hosting team for that but Kill was always the host.
Really hope I can help the state of the forum with the influence I have.
I'm not exactly too happy with having a tournament ranking system like that, I feel like it would only encourage more to be successful and as such lead back to the classic sns, spinner or popup designs, while I'd rather encourge more free building with completely different designs.
Not too sure about the prizes either, I was thinking about doing some for my tournament idea but am not too happy about it, would much rather have stuff available to everyone.
If you look at the BBEANS one, the batteries are basically ones that remove annoyance and technically would fit better in a tournament mod(where such stuff would already be added to make building easier) than being something like that.
Even with just cosmetic/reskin items, are we really going to turn this into a mobile free to play where people will be like "it's just reskins"? It goes to the above point, if people really want those things they will go for the most effective designs, and honestly I think it kills off activity to see the same HS design winning every time.
Nice to see that the forum-wide tourney idea isn't completely stagnant. I personally think Ironforge would work pretty well as a place to start (since it's so balanced), or DSL 2.2 (since you'll probably get more people to enter). If you need tourney prizes, just hit me up in my PMs or on the ole discord.
Bringing back playground might be something to consider. It was certainly one part of the forum where you (and a lot of other members) were able to have fun. It just kind of disappeared one day for no real reason other than Trov not liking it.
Good luck trying to build something in ironforge that doesn't flip itself over and ends up crawling up the wall while being upside down.
I originally loved the mod when I got into it, it seemed like a better stock and gave you a lot of freedom with the smaller components.
However the more I got into it, I started missing some things like having triangle armor pannels from DSL, caster wheels and all that stuff and building a robot that's actually stable turned out to be an impossible task.
Isn't chatterbox supposed to be the playground replacement?
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Isn't chatterbox supposed to be the playground replacement?
Back in the day there was both Chatterbox and Playground. Playground wasn't very moderated though.
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@R01 The idea is to get participation to spike in the competitive area and hope all others follow. I do see where you are coming from, though.
Thank you to everyone that has given their input on the tournament! I'll be sure to definitely flesh out what I already have concerning the details of the tournament when it's a bit more convenient.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eIbRUFwLKe0
rest in piss gtm, never forget.
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One thing people should take note of is that the average age of the fourm is probably a lot older than it used to be in 2008-11. A lot of regulars here are in their late teens or somewhere in there 20s and have more important irl stuff to deal with like work/school.
Usually there's enough of a younger "generation" that joins to take their place, but right now we've been kinda hurting for new members.
I'd say the lack of top-tier builders probably isn't helping the showcase section either. Doesn't help that most of the good builders are in the same category as the former.
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One thing people should take note of is that the average age of the fourm is probably a lot older than it used to be in 2008-11. A lot of regulars here are in their late teens or somewhere in there 20s and have more important irl stuff to deal with like work/school.
Yeah, when I joined the community, I was around 12 or 13. Now I am in my late twenties. Yick! Just as I am moving ever further away from my youth, RA2, too, is forever aging. It isn't a hot new game. Kids don't see it on the shelf at Target and think, "Cool, that's like Battlebots!" Hell, kids don't even buy PC games from Target anymore. They go on Steam. If they stumble upon Robot Arena on there, they will instead find the disappointment that is RA3.
RA3, in many ways, both built and cursed this community. It was always a hypothetical; a representation of our hope. When the game launched, hope was tarnished. Even with the resurgence of Battlebots and Robot Wars, we will never get the RA3 we wished for. We are no longer anticipating or wishing for anything.
Without a change of focus, we'll simply be a forum dedicated to a thirteen-year-old budget title, and numbers will continue to decrease.
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One thing people should take note of is that the average age of the fourm is probably a lot older than it used to be in 2008-11. A lot of regulars here are in their late teens or somewhere in there 20s and have more important irl stuff to deal with like work/school.
Yeah, when I joined the community, I was around 12 or 13. Now I am in my late twenties. Yick! Just as I am moving ever further away from my youth, RA2, too, is forever aging. It isn't a hot new game. Kids don't see it on the shelf at Target and think, "Cool, that's like Battlebots!" Hell, kids don't even buy PC games from Target anymore. They go on Steam. If they stumble upon Robot Arena on there, they will instead find the disappointment that is RA3.
RA3, in many ways, both built and cursed this community. It was always a hypothetical; a representation of our hope. When the game launched, hope was tarnished. Even with the resurgence of Battlebots and Robot Wars, we will never get the RA3 we wished for. We are no longer anticipating or wishing for anything.
Without a change of focus, we'll simply be a forum dedicated to a thirteen-year-old budget title, and numbers will continue to decrease.
In a perfect world, RA3: DSL would come in after RA3's hype. But we don't have that hope anymore, it's not even hypothetical at this point.
Who has the gumption to mod it? I know I've said this before. For one reason or another (and I don't mean to sound dismissive in that sense) we no longer have the DSL dream team that wrought the original DSL from iron. Sure, we still got Click, but Click put his hail mary's into DSL2.2. It's time for Click to rest- I don't mean it like "alright you're dead click get the hell out already", but I know before releasing 2.2 he definitely made a post like "I'm putting all I have left into DSL".
Who else, then? 123 dropped the mic, dabbed and backflipped off stage with Ironforge. I don't think the RA2RW team is interested in doing a TC in the same manner. Joeblo is too backed up to lash out at the aftershock of RA3, and I don't know what Naryar or AS plans to do.
That's all of the people who've done large-scale mods/retools in the last like 4 years as far as I know. Unless someone with hunger in their eyes and a fire in their heart steps up, the last of the hype trains have left, and it left like a bad orgasm with a 4/10 hooker who doesn't know a wang from a toilet brush.
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We should stop talking about how this forum is dying and start working on keeping it alive. I've already contacted/bothered various people regarding this situation.
If you guys really care about this forum, then you should start talking to people about saving this website. It could be the starting ground for a whole new generation of new robot builders to come about, helping robot combat stay relevant in general.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZXsQAXx_ao0
(INB4 someone calls me out for being too optomistic and stupid.)
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i'm too old now to feud with nary in all caps so yeah this forum is boring
now i can vaguely play dsl2.2 i'm up for enterring tournaments (probably only HW ones cus sub HWs are boring for me personally)
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the fact that this game is aging and that every option and attempt at making it interesting (well unless Retooled succeds in making this game fun and interesting to tinker with) has already been tried isn't really gonna help with the forum s'present state, a wide-scale tournament could help to kick the forum activity back up, but it will only last so long cause it will still end up being the same boring game in the long run, and making mods and sh** won't change that, i recall 123 saying after he released IF that even with this mod, it was the same boring thing again, really at this point, it's a new game that is required, but now that RA3 is proven to be a massive pile of sh**, i don't think there really is much hope left
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GTM will stilll keep going for another few years at least. It's a good forum, it's just in a quiet period which I'm guessing is common. I'm only here like once a week now compared to when I used to check it practically every hour of everyday when I had interest in RA2. Now it's only because of forum news and able to talk about games.
This and the fact that my position here has been sealed here for a few years now.
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Only thing I could see that would give more interest long term is working multiplater. RA3 kind of has that even though I've never seen it actually work.
We could try organizing some RA2 online tournaments. Have everything divided into regions to reduce lag as much as possible and maybe have third-party hosts to make things fair. Not really sure how well it'll go but I'd be willing to try.
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We could try organizing some RA2 online tournaments. Have everything divided into regions to reduce lag as much as possible and maybe have third-party hosts to make things fair. Not really sure how well it'll go but I'd be willing to try.
I'd also like to do this. I remember a few of us did an organized online ra2 thing once, i quite enjoyed it.
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This and the fact that my position here has been sealed here for a few years now.
Attitudes like this don't help the appearance of the forum man
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One thing people should take note of is that the average age of the fourm is probably a lot older than it used to be in 2008-11. A lot of regulars here are in their late teens or somewhere in there 20s and have more important irl stuff to deal with like work/school.
Yeah, when I joined the community, I was around 12 or 13. Now I am in my late twenties. Yick! Just as I am moving ever further away from my youth, RA2, too, is forever aging. It isn't a hot new game. Kids don't see it on the shelf at Target and think, "Cool, that's like Battlebots!" Hell, kids don't even buy PC games from Target anymore. They go on Steam. If they stumble upon Robot Arena on there, they will instead find the disappointment that is RA3.
RA3, in many ways, both built and cursed this community. It was always a hypothetical; a representation of our hope. When the game launched, hope was tarnished. Even with the resurgence of Battlebots and Robot Wars, we will never get the RA3 we wished for. We are no longer anticipating or wishing for anything.
Without a change of focus, we'll simply be a forum dedicated to a thirteen-year-old budget title, and numbers will continue to decrease.
In a perfect world, RA3: DSL would come in after RA3's hype. But we don't have that hope anymore, it's not even hypothetical at this point.
Who has the gumption to mod it? I know I've said this before. For one reason or another (and I don't mean to sound dismissive in that sense) we no longer have the DSL dream team that wrought the original DSL from iron. Sure, we still got Click, but Click put his hail mary's into DSL2.2. It's time for Click to rest- I don't mean it like "alright you're dead click get the hell out already", but I know before releasing 2.2 he definitely made a post like "I'm putting all I have left into DSL".
Who else, then? 123 dropped the mic, dabbed and backflipped off stage with Ironforge. I don't think the RA2RW team is interested in doing a TC in the same manner. Joeblo is too backed up to lash out at the aftershock of RA3, and I don't know what Naryar or AS plans to do.
That's all of the people who've done large-scale mods/retools in the last like 4 years as far as I know. Unless someone with hunger in their eyes and a fire in their heart steps up, the last of the hype trains have left, and it left like a bad orgasm with a 4/10 hooker who doesn't know a wang from a toilet brush.
I've thought about that, while that's true it doesn't have to be a bad thing.
A lot of people who originally watched Robot Wars are adults now, so are a lot that played this game.
As an adult you sadly don't have that much time anymore, but more and more have started to still play videogames. We're (hopefully) no longer in a age where people say "you're playing videogames? That's for kids" and having a adult fanbase can be a good thing as stuff can be discussed without situations like "mods, that guy made a better bot than mine, ban him", you know, we can actually act like adults and I wouldn't mind having this forum be like that.
Of course, new games allow for new things and refresh the fanbase that way, RA2 however still allows for a lot and I think all this meta stuff is part of the reason why it got killed off. Since we're adults now we know if a bot is fair or not, and I'd love seeing a tournament where people try to focus to make all kinds of different designs of bots, with them being in the same effectiveness category.
I've seen this "update=new hype and activity" before, let me take Terraria as example. Originally in that game you would end up having many weapon choices for the endgame, as time went on however it turned more and more into a game that lived on getting new updates, it turned into this "new update out, new better weapons, all your old stuff is useless now", 1.2 somewhat fixed that by adding weapon variety, but the halloween and later xmas update did the same thing again and even in it's current state the game is like that, only getting a small few updates that flesh out the game which disappoint a big part of the community.
Said part is one that requires the updates to keep on playing the game(it doesn't help that the game doesn't have much variety either), so don't be surprised that the forum gets inactive over time because no such updates happen anymore. RA2 does have a lot of variety, but with only a few designs being the meta I feel like that's what caused some people to no longer be interested in building stuff.
I don't know if RA2 was really known that well back then(personally I don't think so, which makes me wonder how it got it's original popularity) but one thing I noticed is that if you do a youtube search for RA2 you will find some small LP's(which never really got to good bots, even for stock ai levels) Nerd3cubed's videos and a few videos of people playing with the DSL AI, all of which are rather old, you won't find any of the tournaments because they don't have that in the name and I doubt they appear near any Robot Wars or Battlebots video.
Adding Robot Arena 2 to the tags could maybe change his, of course adding Robot Wars or Battlebots shouldn't be done as it would end up showing only those videos instead of the content that the user wants(but YT seems to have a different system for this anyways), but I feel like seeing some new stuff or different creations could interest some people in this game.
We might not attract many young people with this anymore, but that doesn't mean that we can't get adults to join this forum and still have fun with the game.
As for RA3, Serge has actually done some stuff for it, but I doubt that we will ever see a full mod for it.
I'm personally interested in modding RA2 but think it would require a lot of time of effort for a game that's really old and not exactly stable/not allowing some things to work properly due to it's mechanics.
I did think about online multiplayer before and how well non hamachi multiplayer would work but I haven't had time to test that yet.
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For my part I must say that I lost motivation for the game. Motivation not interest. I caught myself enjoying gmod alot more recently.
I haven't started the game for a few months and I visit this site very rarely. So much so that my mod title should be in question.
Also I agree with frezal on pretty much everything
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doesn't help that we basically hit an efficiency wall basically a couple years ago so the more competitive area of ra2 is boring as hell
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The DSL Reborn AI for me was one of the last things I just had fun doing. The competitive scene for RA2 is just not interesting to me anymore. I might be able to crank out new bot for a tournament (or just to make something I know will be trash just for the sake of making a bot for funsies), but because you need to have wedges to make anything good anymore. When the wedge is trash, then all that effort in making an interesting robot is pretty much gone and it drains me. The last time I actually had fun building something for a tournament was my Tricycle Takedown entry since I didn't really take it seriously but it was still fun to watch it fight.
I hate to say it myself, but I think I might be retiring from RA2 if there is nothing left that I am really looking forward to most likely by the end of the year (assuming GTM lasts that long).
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if retooled get's finished let's do the tourney in that mod like a week after release. There would be no meta and it would be exciting. Have multiple hosts to speed up production, dedicated AI team to get through that phase quickly, and perhaps even commentary.
Putting a tournament on one person's shoulders has been the norm but really it doesn't make sense
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The DSL Reborn AI for me was one of the last things I just had fun doing. The competitive scene for RA2 is just not interesting to me anymore. I might be able to crank out new bot for a tournament (or just to make something I know will be trash just for the sake of making a bot for funsies), but because you need to have wedges to make anything good anymore. When the wedge is trash, then all that effort in making an interesting robot is pretty much gone and it drains me. The last time I actually had fun building something for a tournament was my Tricycle Takedown entry since I didn't really take it seriously but it was still fun to watch it fight.
I hate to say it myself, but I think I might be retiring from RA2 if there is nothing left that I am really looking forward to most likely by the end of the year (assuming GTM lasts that long).
Sad to hear that, for me you were always one of the great almost veteran members who is still playing. My post is apparently too big to be read, so let me quote some important parts:
A lot of people who originally watched Robot Wars are adults now, so are a lot that played this game.
As an adult you sadly don't have that much time anymore, but more and more have started to still play videogames. We're (hopefully) no longer in a age where people say "you're playing videogames? That's for kids" and having a adult fanbase can be a good thing as stuff can be discussed without situations like "mods, that guy made a better bot than mine, ban him", you know, we can actually act like adults and I wouldn't mind having this forum be like that.
Of course, new games allow for new things and refresh the fanbase that way, RA2 however still allows for a lot and I think all this meta stuff is part of the reason why it got killed off. Since we're adults now we know if a bot is fair or not, and I'd love seeing a tournament where people try to focus to make all kinds of different designs of bots, with them being in the same effectiveness category.
When I wrote that part about fair bots I was thinking about your AI bots, how we would have all kinds of different designs that don't all have a wedge/half sheet glued on to them. Those bots would be like FIVES.
If we got advanced AI coding(everyone seems to mostly copy existing ai nowadays) or working online multiplayer(which might be possible) we could have more intelligent fights where strategy would play a important role instead of clash of wedges, whoever gets under the other bot first wins.
if retooled get's finished let's do the tourney in that mod like a week after release. There would be no meta and it would be exciting. Have multiple hosts to speed up production, dedicated AI team to get through that phase quickly, and perhaps even commentary.
Putting a tournament on one person's shoulders has been the norm but really it doesn't make sense
Then it's basically who gets the best working bot first, and I feel like spinners and wedges will still be the best working thing anyways.
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Then it's basically who gets the best working bot first, and I feel like spinners and wedges will still be the best working thing anyways.
maybe maybe not. in the last two stock tourneys I entered I won with a stiltz hammer and got runner up with a giant VS. sometimes the meta can be broken- especially when there is no meta
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if retooled get's finished let's do the tourney in that mod like a week after release. There would be no meta and it would be exciting. Have multiple hosts to speed up production, dedicated AI team to get through that phase quickly, and perhaps even commentary.
Putting a tournament on one person's shoulders has been the norm but really it doesn't make sense
That's actually a really good idea. I've started to work with AS already, so I'll see what I could arrange.
In terms of having a hosting team, I'm not too sure if it's necessary. Even though one would be receiving a lot more entries than your average tournament, you're not receiving them in bulk and shouldn't be that big of a job for one man. I'm not entirely against the idea but I may need a bit of convincing to have one.
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I'm happy to help with hosting or to host the whole thing if it would help, you know I'm fast with my AI and videos so it wouldn't be an issue.
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words
Eh, she's all right mate. The proof is in the pudding - we're still here a good 13 years after the game's release.
Don't take things too seriously.
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I would love to see a small tournament of well build bots where each bot gets some attention before the tournament like the real battlebots. Would be interesting to see how that evolves over time
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if retooled get's finished let's do the tourney in that mod like a week after release. There would be no meta and it would be exciting. Have multiple hosts to speed up production, dedicated AI team to get through that phase quickly, and perhaps even commentary.
Putting a tournament on one person's shoulders has been the norm but really it doesn't make sense
Commentary, you say? I would love to do some of that :confused:
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commentary would be fun i might help. i like the idea of actual online play minus ai as well, i saw that brought up. what keeps coming to mind for me is the aceuplink tournament when the game first came out where bots had their own dedicated little page and w/e with the brackets and whatnot. the inter-forum spar with the four person teams had it's own website completely iirc. what if i create a rival website to run you all into the ground with insanely sick robots in battle. lets go to war ****ers :vista: :dance:
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Alright, I was thinking about this the other day actually. I know the Battlebots would draw large numbers of bots and excitement from the community in the past. But I really don't know if I could do it again. The meta-game for IRL right now is kind of fragmented. With there being both DSL 2.1 and DSL 2.2 coupled along with the fact that Serge released the Ro7 breaker, I don't really know the rules to the IRL game anymore honestly. I think hat's what's slowed down IRL building honestly.
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massimo we still need to do that retarded human controlled tourney sometime
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the main reason i havent been very active the past few months has been of course irl stuff (i got a job working at a summer camp and that's over now) but even besides that the last time i touched ra2 was like march. the game just doesn't speak to me anymore. between gmod and arc i've had a lot more fun (and freedom) building stuff in gmod and rhino. also those communities arent filled with shi*posters (also why the hell cant we swear on here i feel like i'm in middle school) and children but instead people i can actually discuss the hobby with that are generally cool people to talk to. honestly on gtm now there's like 3 or 4 people total who i can kinda identify with and i dont talk to on another site.
i'd probably come out for another bbeans or clash cubes but other than that idk man i'm just bored of this game
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the main reason i havent been very active the past few months has been of course irl stuff (i got a job working at a summer camp and that's over now) but even besides that the last time i touched ra2 was like march. the game just doesn't speak to me anymore. between gmod and arc i've had a lot more fun (and freedom) building stuff in gmod and rhino. also those communities arent filled with shi*posters (also why the hell cant we swear on here i feel like i'm in middle school) and children but instead people i can actually discuss the hobby with that are generally cool people to talk to. honestly on gtm now there's like 3 or 4 people total who i can kinda identify with and i dont talk to on another site.
i'd probably come out for another bbeans or clash cubes but other than that idk man i'm just bored of this game
You basically can swear, mods stopped giving a ****
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I getcha Badnik. I think, personally, it'd be wise for GTM to start drawing a little more attention than previous to the real robotics and games sections.
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the main reason i havent been very active the past few months has been of course irl stuff (i got a job working at a summer camp and that's over now) but even besides that the last time i touched ra2 was like march. the game just doesn't speak to me anymore. between gmod and arc i've had a lot more fun (and freedom) building stuff in gmod and rhino. also those communities arent filled with shi*posters (also why the hell cant we swear on here i feel like i'm in middle school) and children but instead people i can actually discuss the hobby with that are generally cool people to talk to. honestly on gtm now there's like 3 or 4 people total who i can kinda identify with and i dont talk to on another site.
i'd probably come out for another bbeans or clash cubes but other than that idk man i'm just bored of this game
You basically can swear, mods stopped giving a ****
Think the main reason was the site rating on google? As far as I know it's ok as long as you don't use it too much.
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I think the concerns about a major official tournament not getting a lot of entrants is definitely something to consider, but when I was trying to garner some attention to my league tournament project, I had a lot of people who expressed interest in some form of official competition. I think if we put something together with enough hype behind it, a lot of people would actually be interested. It would get people like me to build something new. My generation, the generation that isn't particularly active as builders anymore because we haven't had a good reason to do so, I think you'd see a lot of us spend some time in the bot lab if something big and official was going on.
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Yeah, that reaction from older builders is what I was banking on. I also just want to keep talks going and constantly remind the forum that it's going to happen (if it does happen.)
Forum pessimists, don't just let mods do the fighting for you. If what I am proposing actually gets off the ground, get stuck in. I really do feel as though, with enough community support, this can keep interest in RA2 going (even if it's just one time a year.)
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Bit of a necro but so are most things in this forum. Right now I'm just here procrastinating writing my paper but I'll share my opinion, which can be boiled down to this:
There's also the problem with the forum being flat out boring. There's no drama or huge forum reactions for the most part anymore, it's usually just "oh that's nice" and then you move on with your day.
I came back after hearing about RA3, made a ton of posts about it, got some nostalgia and reinstalled RA2 to try it out. Turns out DSL 2.2 was a thing and that was neat so I went on with it even though it looks like nobody cares about DSL 2.2? Anyways, Serge's amazing Component Freedom kept me around for a bit too since that's what I always wanted. I tried making some DSL-S bots that are more space efficient using that. Then, as always I posted them to my showcase and... ... Nothing... ...
Granted, my bots have always been boring. Since day one I've been making extremely similar popups with one or two halfway novel but useless bots a year so there's really not much to say about what I made when I came back, but still, I used to get pretty good advice and back-and-forth back in 2010 with DSL 2.1. There is really nothing to do here; RA2 has always been pretty bad at actual gameplay so the big thing about it was you showcase your stuff and enter tournaments. Looking at showcases now what you mostly find is "Pretty good" or "That's nice" which at the end of the day boils down to nothing. Tournaments take weeks or months to "pay off" with 2-3 minute videos and a simple "you lost" or "you won" because the battles are just 2 bots charging at each other until one dies. If the host wanted they could just retry until the bot they want to win finally wins and then show that.
Right now there's the Official GTM Tournament going on of which the main attraction (HW) is Retooled. I think its great that we are changing up the meta a little bit but what do we know about Retooled and where can we even talk about it besides the thread in RA2 Modifications? There's no showcases and there's no stuff such as the old posts of wedge testing and such. I actually want to enter the tournament for the heck of it (plus, I want to play RA2 with a purpose) but as far as I know I have nowhere to easily get info on Retooled quirks (if it even has any) or post my stuff to get critique... Even if I dig hard and find out all the info I want to make a good bot will I get anything more than a "Nice"? Because you know I'm going to be making an uninspired-as-hell popup regardless of what mod you throw at me.
There's just nothing much going on unless you're the Naryar, Serge, Mr. AS, etc. types that like to fully dissect the game aside from just playing it or are so bad or creative/novel that you get actual responses to your horrible or weird bot. At least that's my view of the whole thing as a guy that's always just wanted to just play and has always been bad/mediocre at the game and comes back from time to time to try it out (and TBH I was never really big on the community anyways so I'm just talking out of my ass right now really).
Right now my goals with GTM are: Install Retooled. Make a bot. Enter it in the Official GTM Tournament (without knowing if its even good). Disappear.
Maybe I'll get around to actually finishing a team for once (which is what I was doing a couple of months ago until I realized it was pointless) and finally submitting something to NarAI once my bae Naryar starts taking non-replica teams because I've always wanted to do that but never managed. There really is nothing else to do here for me which is why I'm not around...