[cruntett]

Hi

I'm not a big video game player anymore but I still try to spend at least one or two hours per week on urban terror. First because I still have fun after six years playing it. Secondly because i'm a bit of a nostalgic and I had my first and best gaming experiences on it, growing in a fantastic comunity.

Today I'm a bit sad seeing the evolution of the player base.

http://www.urtstats....uration=6months

On that graph we can see three important informations : the average number of players has been decreasing constantly for the last six month. The 4.1 is the only one decreasing. The 4.2 is just stable.

I was pretty disturbed by those stats. I couldn't understand why people would stop playing the game after the appearance of a new version. My first thaught was that cheaters were stopping due to the upcoming "cheat clean" version. But that would mean that their were a lot of them to start with. My second thaught was that maybe FS didn't comunicate enough on it.

It has often been said that communication was not FS strongest asset and I was wondering if a communication plan was scheduled. I really think that Urban has potential to find more players but need more visibility.

[FS Frankie V]

cruntett, on 16 December 2013 - 12:16 AM, said:

Hi

I'm not a big video game player anymore but I still try to spend at least one or two hours per week on urban terror. First because I still have fun after six years playing it. Secondly because i'm a bit of a nostalgic and I had my first and best gaming experiences on it, growing in a fantastic comunity.

Today I'm a bit sad seeing the evolution of the player base.

http://www.urtstats....uration=6months

On that graph we can see three important informations : the average number of players has been decreasing constantly for the last six month. The 4.1 is the only one decreasing. The 4.2 is just stable.

I was pretty disturbed by those stats. I couldn't understand why people would stop playing the game after the appearance of a new version. My first thaught was that cheaters were stopping due to the upcoming "cheat clean" version. But that would mean that their were a lot of them to start with. My second thaught was that maybe FS didn't comunicate enough on it.

It has often been said that communication was not FS strongest asset and I was wondering if a communication plan was scheduled. I really think that Urban has potential to find more players but need more visibility.

Well we do talk all the time but I'm under the impression most are not interested in listening. ;)

We get a lot of inquires to do interviews and say “sure set it up” and that’s the last we hear from them.

As for stats player activity goes through cycles over the course of a few years and not just a few months and does not necessary means the player base is falling off.

Traditionally you will see a fall off of players from the summer time into winter based on a division of free time.

Summer time = students on summer vacation Winter = Christmas season and players spending more time with their family.

The trend will probably bottom out mid February and we should begin to see an upwards trend back into summer.

At the moment the trend is normal but as Seven of Nine likes to say “Urban Terror dying since 1999”

[psyp.Brainie]

At first I thought this game lacks advertising and that's why we don't have a lot of new players around. Add it the fact that 4.2 is now stable and really playable, why shouldn't we talk about it around just to attract some people in testing it?

So I went on Esreality which is a gaming community mostly oriented on Quake stuff. Here's the returns I got from these people: http://esreality.com...o-urban-terror/

Notice that some people know about the status of the community (too much trolls, idiots, kids, whatever you call them).

Just to finish, I have a question to Frozen Sand. Are you planning to make some advertisement somehow (not necessary by paying for it) just to tell people to try the game (at least) before you release the HD or after? By "before the HD", I mean way much before you release the HD. Are you even planning to let the people from the outside world know about this game?

Cheers!

[Fredrik]

In a perfect world, Frozen Sand would never have considered quitting development on Urban Terror and 4.2 would have been released much earlier than it was. The world is not perfect, nothing is.

4.2 is not a bad product and is an improvement to 4.1 but i guess people expect it to be even better because it took so long to release. But things happened within the team so there was an halt in development and people need to understand and accept that.

Also the code is old and it's messy, i don't know much about coding but i know that it consist of text.
Different people write in different ways, different people code in different ways.

With that analogy i can imagine the code looks like a paper written by several 5 year old's over several years.
If you were a teacher trying to clean the writing on that paper than you would pull your hair.

In the end UrT is a great game and I'm sure many want to play a game like it, they just don't know it exists.

[FS Frankie V]

Brain yes of course at some point in the future we will be putting in a lot more effort in promoting and advertising but as the saying goes you only have one chance at making a good first impression.

All the ideas put forth are great but personally I just don't think we are there yet.

Fredrik, on 16 December 2013 - 04:07 AM, said:

Also the code is old and it's messy, i don't know much about coding but i know that it consist of text.
Different people write in different ways, different people code in different ways.

With that analogy i can imagine the code looks like a paper written by several 5 year old's over several years.
If you were a teacher trying to clean the writing on that paper than you would pull your hair.

You sir are 100% on the money. It can take longer to figure out how and why someone wrote what they did, in most cases with out proper comments or documentation, and is easier at times just to write the entire code block from scratch.

[rYuuJiN]

I feel like an extinguished dinosaur..

[cruntett]

Quote

Brain yes of course at some point in the future we will be putting in a lot more effort in promoting and advertising but as the saying goes you only have one chance at making a good first impression.

Happy to hear that. I think that if a good advertisment come with the HD release Urban Terror will live! it's a fun "product" and it definitly should have a place in gvideo game comunity.

About the player base decreasing i'd like to be as positive as you, but since it's constant I have some doubt. And it's not only the player base decreasing, it is mostly people not switching to the newer version. beccause the player base on 4.2 is stable.

In the end i don't think a game still in dev can ever die. A new version (the HD?) can change everything and bring new people to play it, and old one to come back. I was just worried by the current state of the game where it is sometime hard to find places to play.

[rYuuJiN]

We keep looking at a cause in urt or frozen sand, perhaps it's just that first person shooters on the PC are dying in general.

Currently there are only 4266 players world wide online on the newest call of duty.

Think about it..

[=jF=docDude]

rYuuJiN, on 16 December 2013 - 08:25 AM, said:

I feel like an extinguished dinosaur..

RawrRawr, I'm an extinguished dinosaur!

[cruntett]

Quote

We keep looking at a cause in urt or frozen sand, perhaps it's just that first person shooters on the PC are dying in general.

yeah you have a point. I didn't know FPS were that unpopular these day. Maybe the genre need to be renewed.