[[SQD]dynomite33]

One of the biggest things that I have found to contribute to games (not just UrT) lack of popularity is age. A lot of people I recommended UrT to decided not to play it simply because it was "too old". It happens with every game in existence. CS 1.6/CS:S have lost huge chunks of players over time, most people only buy CS:S nowadays for using its assets in stuff like Gmod. Call Of Duty has started to fall by the wayside starting in 2012. Another thing is nowadays a lot of people associate true free games like UrT, where all the content is provided free of charge, with f2p or freemium games. Where the base game is free to download but a lot of the content is locked away behind a paywall. Games like TF2, World Of Tanks, WarThunder, Heroes&Generals, fall into this category.

The few things that would "revive" UrT's popularity:

1. UrT HD gets released on Steam. People unfamiliar with Quake/UrT see this new game and hopefully like it, they find out it's a "sequel", they visit the official website, maybe make an account or download UrT 4

2. Large youtubers (500k+ subs), discover UrT and make videos on it, attracting more people to the website and downloading the game

3. Advertising. Sure ads are annoying but their effect can't be ignored, while writing this post there are ads for Hearthstone and SWTOR on the bottom and top of the site, both of these games are quite popular and marketing was without a doubt a large contributor.
Urban Terror, as far as I know, has practically 0 marketing effort. The peak of 350-500 players daily and the fact that I don't believe I have ever seen an advertisement for Urban Terror show this. The only reason I know of UrT is because my dad played it back in the day.

This post has been edited by Biddle: 22 July 2016 - 03:24 PM

[Magister]

Although 4.3 will still be an "old" game in the way that dynomite33 describes, it's still a new release and I think it's an opportunity to reach those 4.1 players who refused to come along for 4.2 as well as hopefully adding more new players. There is a lot that can be done for free to promote 4.3 and not all marketing requires money. Anyway, I hope there is some strategy involved with the upcoming 4.3 release as far as all that goes.

[fr.Biddle]

magister, on 04 July 2016 - 01:36 AM, said:

There is a lot that can be done for free to promote 4.3 and not all marketing requires money.

I'd like to hear what you're thinking of on that one.

[Magister]

You guys have done a lot of what can be done already such as having a development blog, a facebook account, twitter account, RSS feed, but there is more free stuff that can be done. One thing that would go a long way is a quality trailer showing off the best of UrT, to give potential players out there an impression of this game's unique gameplay, movement, and "Fun over Realism" style that makes it special. Along with the trailer, create a whole fresh package of new screenshots, videos, and a game info sheet that summarizes what Urban Terror is, a description of team Frozen Sand, a brief history of the game, and the future "vision" for it. Create a fact sheet with links to the website, the dev blogs, twitter and facebook accounts, twitch.tv channel, youtube channel, the current competition leagues, and FS public email addresses. All of that is free in terms of money, but it does take some time and effort. Take this whole kit and send it to places where it will potentially get attention and exposure. I can off the top of my head think of several sites that are geared toward indie and freeware games and you could contact them:

https://www.rockpape.../free-pc-games/
http://indiegames.com/index.html
https://www.tigsource.com/
http://indiegamemag.com/
http://www.pcgamesn.com/indie
http://theindiemine.com/
https://indiegamerchick.com/
Reddit is huge and has a subreddit here: https://www.reddit.com/r/indiegames
I'm sure there are others. Obviously PCGamer Magazine is not going to give you any attention, but there are lots of review sites and I bet most won't mind at least tagging UrT in their database of games.

How many forum accounts do you have that you can send out an informational email letting the user know about the new 4.3? Thousands I think. Do all of this simultaneously with the release, refresh all twitter, facebook, twitch.tv, youtube, dev blogs with new activity. Make it a big coordinated effort. I think you do have a team member responsible for marketing, right?

[Ikslorin]

If there's anything I can do to help with the marketing, I'd gladly help. : >

[fr.Biddle]

Thanks magister!

Well these are neary for each of them things we can indeed do to get a decent 4.3 release.

Regarding the video though, our focus being on HD progress, we don't have anyone in the team working on a great gameplay 4.3 promotional video.

The first 4.3 RCs are available to everyone. Any community member that has decent video editing skills and is interested in working on such a thing, is more than welcome to do so. Let us know :)

[Mod Iye]

Biddle, on 04 July 2016 - 03:28 PM, said:

Regarding the video though,[...]

The first 4.3 RCs are available to everyone. Any community member that has decent video editing skills and is interested in working on such a thing, is more than welcome to do so. Let us know :)

Just make Rocket load a demo in 4.3 :P

I guess if one could make the q3 movie maker work with urt (i remember there being a post/threat about that ages ago), then stick a few nice flythroughs through maps together with fragshows (we should have a few of those, i guess you could even pick slightly edited ones). Sadly i have zero experience in that field, so i cant even judge on how much work that is. :)

One thing i have to agree with, we really need new (at least HD res) screenshots of 4.2/3. All the other ones are really low res ones, at best showing a few 4.1 character models.

[hydr0]

I am a player who competed in UrT competitions and played everyday on a public server during the decline of this game's popularity I can assure you that ringel is spot on and is 100% correct as far as how everything went downhill.

4.1 was already losing it's popularity but 4.2 was the straw that broke the camel's back. Half of the remaining playerbase quit the game when FS shutdown 4.1.

The major cons of 4.2 are as follows

1. Animation. My absolute number 1 pet peeve is that the model doesn't match where the player is looking. For example in 4.1 I can clearly tell if my opponent has noticed my presence or not and based on this I can choose whether to sneak up on him with the shots.
In 4.2 the opponent is clearly looking the other way and all of the sudden he's blasting away his shots at me. In fact even when they are shooting at me they aren't even looking at me. I find this very strange.

2. The new lighting/design on turnpike,casa and uptown. Why are they all so light and strange looking? These maps in 4.1 was far superior.

3. Groin and butt shots. Very unnecessary. 4.1 damages were perfect. These new targets with higher damages just creates more randomness to the game and it lowers the skill ceiling as even noobs can kill you with luck shots.

This post has been edited by hydr0: 04 July 2016 - 09:07 PM

[KroniK]

hydr0, on 04 July 2016 - 09:06 PM, said:

2. The new lighting/design on turnpike,casa and uptown. Why are they all so light and strange looking? These maps in 4.1 was far superior.

Not sure what you are talking about. Uptown was the only map that got updated with 4.2. Both turnpike and casa are exactly the same and were never touched.

[Mod Iye]

KroniK, on 05 July 2016 - 05:33 PM, said:

Uptown was the only map that got updated with 4.2. Both turnpike and casa are exactly the same and were never touched.

Weren't those changes to uptown 4.1.1? But yes, i dont think anything has changed on those maps whatsoever.

hydr0, on 04 July 2016 - 09:06 PM, said:

1. Animation. My absolute number 1 pet peeve is that the model doesn't match where the player is looking. For example in 4.1 I can clearly tell if my opponent has noticed my presence or not and based on this I can choose whether to sneak up on him with the shots.
In 4.2 the opponent is clearly looking the other way and all of the sudden he's blasting away his shots at me. In fact even when they are shooting at me they aren't even looking at me. I find this very strange.

I, for myself, dont really have had problems like you describe here.

hydr0, on 04 July 2016 - 09:06 PM, said:

3. Groin and butt shots. Very unnecessary. 4.1 damages were perfect. These new targets with higher damages just creates more randomness to the game and it lowers the skill ceiling as even noobs can kill you with luck shots.

While agree that those new hitzones werent a good thing in general, and even with the current RC4 changes, some dmg balancing might at least need a reconsideration (not saying that i would vote for big changes), i doubt that the addition of new hitzones has really decreased the "popularity" of UrT.
After all, if you were "pro" before, the addition of new hitzones isnt really going to affect you and likewise if you were just a "casual" player.