How to make that game more popular?

[Mecca]

@Word:

I don't think the majority of today's online gamers are adults. There are quite a few older players though.

A lot of gamers don't have time to play all day err' day, which is why games like WoW have made it easier for casual players to still have a good time.

Even if you exploit how customizable this game is, people need to enjoy playing it, or they will leave and spend their time elsewhere.

@psy

+1

The Fortress community in this game is very unfriendly to noobs.

[Word]

I don't think the majority of today's online gamers are adults. There are quite a few older players though.

I just said that soon there will be as much adults as teens who regularly play video games.

A lot of gamers don't have time to play all day err' day, which is why games like WoW have made it easier for casual players to still have a good time.

...

...when you're adult you most likely don't have enough time or dedication to win a lot of tournaments - you just want something you can do in your spare time

Even if you exploit how customizable this game is, people need to enjoy playing it, or they will leave and spend their time elsewhere.

Most people enjoy something they can contribute to, or that they partly create it by themselves.

The Fortress community in this game is very unfriendly to noobs.

Going to disagree here too, if you consider pickup-boycotters like me part of the fort community...there are still a lot of very helpful players in every server.

[Mecca]

A lot of gamers don't have time to play all day err' day, which is why games like WoW have made it easier for casual players to still have a good time.

...

Seriously, games don't require nearly as much dedication as they used to. People don't have the time to spend 5+ hours raiding every night on WoW just to be an average player.

...when you're adult you most likely don't have enough time or dedication to win a lot of tournaments - you just want something you can do in your spare time

Even if you exploit how customizable this game is, people need to enjoy playing it, or they will leave and spend their time elsewhere.

Most people enjoy something they can contribute to, or that they partly create it by themselves.

You can contribute to just about any other game, as far as I'm concerned. Look at http://www.mobafire.com/, TONS of player contribution. Not the same way players contribute to Tron, but players can still feel like they are contributing to something.

The Fortress community in this game is very unfriendly to noobs.

Going to disagree here too, if you consider pickup-boycotters like me part of the fort community...

I'm talking about how new players tend to get kicked or suspended from fort servers because they have no idea what they're doing. People tell them "Sit and watch how we do it", which would probably be good for them in the long run; but chances are, the new player will just leave the server and try to find a server they can play in, or just go do something else.

Maybe attitudes toward new players has changed since I was active, but that was one thing I noticed when I played a lot.

[compguygene]

I have had the chance to play some more Fortress in the last 3 days, and I watch the server browser for friends to play with, routinely. I have seen a real change in the last 3 days, people are starting to play more matches in MB53's Fortress Server. This is really nice to see. Like word and many others, I am a pickup boycotter for now.
Would I would like to see, is MB53 to remove the need for authentication. If this server is supposed to replace the "Fortress Cafe" server, then some things really do need to change. Fortress Cafe was a place a noob could show up, and start to play, risking getting kicked for not following directions. Considering that today we have the ability to suspend players, it should be possible to engender a "friendlier to noobs" attitude in the server that has replace Fortress Cafe.

[Word]

A lot of gamers don't have time to play all day err' day, which is why games like WoW have made it easier for casual players to still have a good time.

...

Seriously, games don't require nearly as much dedication as they used to. People don't have the time to spend 5+ hours raiding every night on WoW just to be an average player.

?!
I didn't disagree with you, I just said the exact same in my post...(see quote)

[matchbox53]

I have had the chance to play some more Fortress in the last 3 days, and I watch the server browser for friends to play with, routinely. I have seen a real change in the last 3 days, people are starting to play more matches in MB53's Fortress Server. This is really nice to see. Like word and many others, I am a pickup boycotter for now.
Would I would like to see, is MB53 to remove the need for authentication. If this server is supposed to replace the "Fortress Cafe" server, then some things really do need to change. Fortress Cafe was a place a noob could show up, and start to play, risking getting kicked for not following directions. Considering that today we have the ability to suspend players, it should be possible to engender a "friendlier to noobs" attitude in the server that has replace Fortress Cafe.

I dont really see how authentication will affect anything at all. And even in the days of G5's mega fortress nobody objected on it as i recall. Fortress cafe is also different in the manner of how wide is the hole and i did replace G5's mega fort server with the exact server settings with what he had.

[sinewav]

I dont really see how authentication will affect anything at all.

Well, you would get more new players wandering into the game. Personally, I don't think authentication is necessary in regular Fort now that pickup exists. Authentication is just a barrier. A better use of auth in Fort would be to use it similar to CTWF; you don't have to login to play, but you get special privileges if you do (ladder, shuffle, etc...).

At this point, there is little difference between completely new players joining a regular Fort game and completely ignorant old players joining a regular Fort game. The other day I saw a "pro" player in MegaFort (was it slov?, can't remember) say "brb" then instead of going spec, just went afk for 3 rounds until we suspended. Seriously. W. T. F.

[vov]

I dont really see how authentication will affect anything at all. And even in the days of G5's mega fortress nobody objected on it as i recall.

I did. And I see a lot of players asking "how can i play?" that then leave for being too lazy to set up all the bunch of authentication settings.

CTWF is way more popular to new players
I think that is because of the many different maps and settings*; regular fort looks boring against that to some people (and even I sometimes have more fun there).
And: It doesn't need authentication, and even though authentication messages are really spammed in there, only like 20% of the players do it.

EDIT (sine's post): /me approves; authentication as a benefit (I'm on the ladder, I can shuffle) rather than a restriction (I can't play without it) looks like a nice solution. And, of course, be nice to newbies then

*Yes, of course also the colourful name ^^

[-*inS*-]

@psy maybe if everyone is as nice and encouraging as I am, we wouldn't have that problem

@vov I think most "noobs" join CTWF because of the colors in the server name

[Phytotron]

I don't think the majority of today's online gamers are adults.

Several demographics surveys have shown the opposite. A few snippets:

• http://www.theesa.com/facts/gameplayer.asp

The average gamer is 37 years old and has been playing for 12 years. Eighty-two percent of gamers are 18 years of age or older.

•

The PopCap study showed that 55 percent of all social gamers in the U.S. are women, as are almost 60 percent of those in the UK. The average age in the U.S. is 48, which is substantially older than the 38-year-old average in the UK, and 46 percent of American social gamers are 50 or older, compared with just 23 percent in the UK. Only 6 percent of all social gamers are age 21 or younger.

• Even regarding your MMORPGS:

[T]he average age of MMORPG players is around 26. In fact, only 25% of MMORPG players are teenagers. About 50% of MMORPG players work full-time. About 36% of players are married, and 22% have children.

So, if as it seems, Armagetron is overrun with teenagers, that is a severe anomaly—and, not incidentally, a turn-off to a lot of "older"-aged players, both past and potential. That is, that's the apparent make-up these days. When I first started playing, it was a much more mixed-age crowd (also in terms of 'culture,' types of people, by the way), with a higher average age. In fact, I would guess the majority were over 20. That all changed when all the 2.8 special game modes and "open" came about.

Well, this game has very low appeal to anyone who isn't already interested in tron IMO.

That may have been true in the earlier years, again say pre-2.8 (definitely pre-0.2.7.1), but I'm not even sure that's true, anymore. There was an uptick of interest based on Legacy, but before and since, I got the impression a very sizable proportion of players (mostly teens) had never even heard of Tron.

[INW]

There is actually 1% more game players over the age of 50 than under the age of 18!

[sinewav]

There is actually 1% more game players over the age of 50 than under the age of 18!

*Dramatic Music*
Dun Dun Duuuuuuuuuuunn!

[Kijutsu]

I have had the chance to play some more Fortress in the last 3 days, and I watch the server browser for friends to play with, routinely. I have seen a real change in the last 3 days, people are starting to play more matches in MB53's Fortress Server. This is really nice to see. Like word and many others, I am a pickup boycotter for now.
Would I would like to see, is MB53 to remove the need for authentication. If this server is supposed to replace the "Fortress Cafe" server, then some things really do need to change. Fortress Cafe was a place a noob could show up, and start to play, risking getting kicked for not following directions. Considering that today we have the ability to suspend players, it should be possible to engender a "friendlier to noobs" attitude in the server that has replace Fortress Cafe.

I dont really see how authentication will affect anything at all.

Really? You really don't see how that would affect anything? Open your eyes, dude. DS Mega Fortress used to be packed every day, n00bs would join and people would cry about non-grinders but some of the noobs actually stayed and played regularly. When DS/G5's pro came along, there was already an obvious decline of new players due to the "how do I play?!" issue. Now in your server, there's never a new person joining anymore.

Removing authentication would help A LOT, imo. Let's start with that.

[þsy]

It's your server MB53, you can do what you like, but it seems the majority of people fail to see much use in authentification - are you going to change it? If not, I could try and get the Speeders server de-authenticated and we could use that as the main public fort server instead

I have seen a real change in the last 3 days, people are starting to play more matches in MB53's Fortress Server. This is really nice to see. Like word and many others, I am a pickup boycotter for now.

Yeah I've been keeping an eye on it, and we've definitely improved a lot! The other day when everyone left MB53s to play pickup, I stayed and played with the 4/5 who remained - and we had a really good alternating attack/defence session, I forgot how good that can be

This is really encouraging! It's great that we're pulling together, let's keep discussing this and sharing ideas

[-*inS*-]

It's your server MB53, you can do what you like, but it seems the majority of people fail to see much use in authentification - are you going to change it? If not, I could try and get the Speeders server de-authenticated and we could use that as the main public fort server instead

I have seen a real change in the last 3 days, people are starting to play more matches in MB53's Fortress Server. This is really nice to see. Like word and many others, I am a pickup boycotter for now.

Yeah I've been keeping an eye on it, and we've definitely improved a lot! The other day when everyone left MB53s to play pickup, I stayed and played with the 4/5 who remained - and we had a really good alternating attack/defence session, I forgot how good that can be

This is really encouraging! It's great that we're pulling together, let's keep discussing this and sharing ideas

I think our servers already don't have mandatory auth (strange way of wording that), but yeah they are great, I get sub 100 ping in them from across the ocean .