Clickbate title, but an important topic.
If you make any new content for this mod, expect it to be played for a few weeks and then have it be forgotten for years afterwards. Nothing you make is going to be played because the communities that enjoyed hosting a variety of content have quit this game - being driven out by one-map only servers run by monolithic clans that can't reasonably be competed with at this point.
The problem isn't necessarily the clans themselves, but the one-map only strategy that made these clans so monolithic. The idea of democratically choosing the maps you want to play by choosing the right servers has gone out the window, at least on the US side. You either have the choice of choosing to play on these clan servers and follow their rules and whims for what they'll allow you to play, or fight a battle you can never win trying to encourage the community to play elsewhere.
This one-map strategy has been used for the longest time in this mod. It's seen several iterations over the years, such as Lunarbase 24/7, Cloudcity (old) 24/7, DotF 24/7, or Deathstar 24/7, etc etc., but regardless, the strategy works to improve the population of the clan servers while overall harming the health of the community and undermining the spirit of the mod. The process looks like this:
1.) New players look to find servers that are populated.
2.) They see one-map only servers are populated frequently, either by clan members or by other new players.
3.) They realize that these servers will be consistently populated, and perpetuate the population of these servers based on faith in these servers.
4.) Many new players leave due to lack of experiencing the content they expected. The people who stay either have hope to see more content, or have the strange mentality required to play the same maps forever.
5.) The people who have the strange mentality to play maps forever become members of the clans that host these one map servers, and perpetuate the population of these servers, which entices new players to join them.
6.) The clans that host these one-map only servers become very large and filled with dedicated players willing to perpetuate the one-map servers. Their sheer size becomes impossible for smaller clans and groups of players to compete with, even with great effort and co-ordination.
7.) Clans and groups of players that like playing variety leave, and the community degenerates in their absence, and these single-map style clans become even bigger and have less opposition.
8.) This cycle continues, the health of the community degrades further, and community based options for solving it become implausible.
9.) Further development of the mod becomes more and more pointless, as the majority of the community that now exists doesn't care about new things or playing variety. You'll catch a few new and returning players in the first few weeks, but they'll leave again shortly due to the aforementioned issue.
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...
...
10.) The game overall suffers a slow death due to entropy.
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In previous iterations of the mod, these server hosting tactics didn't matter much. There was enough of a playerbase around to allow these one-map servers and clans to coexist with variety servers hosted by variety-based clans receiving population from the sheer overflow of people playing. However, this isn't the case now. As time has gone on, people have left, partly due to natural progression of time and people's lives, but also a large part due to the aforementioned issue. There's simply not enough of a community left to either fight back against these clans by choosing to go elsewhere, and most of the dedicated players who would have been willing to have left due to that same issue.
There doesn't seem to be much hope left, for the US side. There's no democratic solution left for saving the US community from entropy due to sheer boredom.
If you make any new content for this mod, expect it to be played for a few weeks and then have it be forgotten for years afterwards. Nothing you make is going to be played because the communities that enjoyed hosting a variety of content have quit this game - being driven out by one-map only servers run by monolithic clans that can't reasonably be competed with at this point.
The problem isn't necessarily the clans themselves, but the one-map only strategy that made these clans so monolithic. The idea of democratically choosing the maps you want to play by choosing the right servers has gone out the window, at least on the US side. You either have the choice of choosing to play on these clan servers and follow their rules and whims for what they'll allow you to play, or fight a battle you can never win trying to encourage the community to play elsewhere.
This one-map strategy has been used for the longest time in this mod. It's seen several iterations over the years, such as Lunarbase 24/7, Cloudcity (old) 24/7, DotF 24/7, or Deathstar 24/7, etc etc., but regardless, the strategy works to improve the population of the clan servers while overall harming the health of the community and undermining the spirit of the mod. The process looks like this:
1.) New players look to find servers that are populated.
2.) They see one-map only servers are populated frequently, either by clan members or by other new players.
3.) They realize that these servers will be consistently populated, and perpetuate the population of these servers based on faith in these servers.
4.) Many new players leave due to lack of experiencing the content they expected. The people who stay either have hope to see more content, or have the strange mentality required to play the same maps forever.
5.) The people who have the strange mentality to play maps forever become members of the clans that host these one map servers, and perpetuate the population of these servers, which entices new players to join them.
6.) The clans that host these one-map only servers become very large and filled with dedicated players willing to perpetuate the one-map servers. Their sheer size becomes impossible for smaller clans and groups of players to compete with, even with great effort and co-ordination.
7.) Clans and groups of players that like playing variety leave, and the community degenerates in their absence, and these single-map style clans become even bigger and have less opposition.
8.) This cycle continues, the health of the community degrades further, and community based options for solving it become implausible.
9.) Further development of the mod becomes more and more pointless, as the majority of the community that now exists doesn't care about new things or playing variety. You'll catch a few new and returning players in the first few weeks, but they'll leave again shortly due to the aforementioned issue.
...
...
...
10.) The game overall suffers a slow death due to entropy.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
In previous iterations of the mod, these server hosting tactics didn't matter much. There was enough of a playerbase around to allow these one-map servers and clans to coexist with variety servers hosted by variety-based clans receiving population from the sheer overflow of people playing. However, this isn't the case now. As time has gone on, people have left, partly due to natural progression of time and people's lives, but also a large part due to the aforementioned issue. There's simply not enough of a community left to either fight back against these clans by choosing to go elsewhere, and most of the dedicated players who would have been willing to have left due to that same issue.
There doesn't seem to be much hope left, for the US side. There's no democratic solution left for saving the US community from entropy due to sheer boredom.
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