Is the Zandro Community dying?

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Re: Is the Zandro Community dying?

#21

Post by Samurai » Mon May 29, 2017 5:42 am

I quit Doom to play Pokemon Go full time.

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Re: Is the Zandro Community dying?

#22

Post by Lollipop » Mon May 29, 2017 12:56 pm

Something that is a personal problem for me is that there are other thing staking up a large amount of my time. Studying takes a lot of time and mental resources, especially around now with the exam times where it is the last chance to brush up on things before the exams.

New, unique and inspiring content would also help. I know it's hard, and I haven't personally contributed to this due to the above, but it would be the absolutely best chance there is to regrow the community, which in turn would add more people that could contribute to such a development.

Just my two cents added from what was on the top of my head. There are probably oversights in it as well.

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Re: Is the Zandro Community dying?

#23

Post by Konda » Mon May 29, 2017 1:07 pm

I swear there needs to be a stickied thread titled "No, Doom is not dying" so we can link it every year in a zan thread someone makes about doom dying.

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Re: Is the Zandro Community dying?

#24

Post by Ivan » Mon May 29, 2017 1:35 pm

Ænima wrote:When my newest mod drops, it's gonna revitalize the community, bigly. Believe me. Nobody builds 'em better than me.

We're also gonna build a great, great wall between us and the MM/BD/Complexers (by giving them their own master server) and we're kicking them out of our forum. I am also calling for a complete and total shutdown of Let's Play-ers entering our community.

We're gonna bring the real players back, folks. We're gonna start putting Zandronum first.

We're also gonna hire more developers so we can catch up with GZDoom in a matter of weeks, and we're gonna make Graf Zahl pay for it!

Are you with me? Are you ready to Make Doom Great Again?
I laughed more than I should've to this :D
=== RAGNAROK DM ON ... uh... dead forever? ===
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Re: Is the Zandro Community dying?

#25

Post by Galactus » Mon May 29, 2017 3:17 pm

Samurai wrote:I quit Doom to play Pokemon Go full time.
Don't know what's more dead to be fair

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Re: Is the Zandro Community dying?

#26

Post by Gul Dukat » Sat Jun 03, 2017 10:18 pm

The doom community has been on a slow downward slope to obscurity and popularity since mid 2000s. You couldn't even convince people who've never ever played doom online to play online. The game is old, the community is garbage (most of the time) and there's nothing incentive a person to come back and keep playing.

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Re: Is the Zandro Community dying?

#27

Post by princetontiger » Sun Jul 30, 2017 6:43 pm

Let me see if I can explain the Doom community:

When Doom came out in 1993, it was an instant hit. Doom II came out, and I remember preordering it at EB Games. Unfortunately, my parents wouldn't let me play online with other folks. I mainly played by myself for most of the 90s, but I remember having my dad download a few mods (like Barney) and playing them by myself. I eventually got bored of single player Doom around 1996, and by then was mainly playing console games. This was probably the height of the Doom community. Based on my reading, thousands were online via DWANGO or whatever.

Fast forward to 2002, and I picked up a copy of the Doom Collection. Doom 3 was going to come out at some point, and a lot of people rediscovered the game.

ZDaemon from 2002 - 2006 was MASSIVE. Total server population during week days could be 100 - 200, and on weekends it easily spiked to 400. By 2008, the population declined significantly, and I would occasionally join a game. In 2012, I moved to Skulltag/Zandronum.

ZDaemon is very small today... I noticed Zandronum was pretty popular in 2013 and 2014... But since the past year, it's definitely declined.

I was in a survival game a few days ago on Friday, and the server population didn't break 10. This never happened in 2014 and 2015.

Will the population continue to decline to ZDaemon levels? Maybe. ZDoom is no longer supported by the same developer, and I see many of us getting older. I'd suppose it will take another decade for the servers to only be organized matches.

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Re: Is the Zandro Community dying?

#28

Post by Zakken » Sun Jul 30, 2017 11:18 pm

princetontiger wrote:ZDoom is no longer supported by the same developer, and I see many of us getting older.
ZDoom may no longer be worked on, but its QZDoom and GZDoom forks are still very much alive and well. At the very least, that part of the community isn't declining just yet. c:

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Re: Is the Zandro Community dying?

#29

Post by Frits » Tue Aug 01, 2017 9:31 am

Everyone is getting a life, sad!

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Re: Is the Zandro Community dying?

#30

Post by Catastrophe » Tue Aug 01, 2017 9:56 am

Go make a fun mod that isn't a survival/co-op rehash. Then I'll play again.

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Re: Is the Zandro Community dying?

#31

Post by Doomkid » Tue Aug 01, 2017 11:19 am

tfw i've been seeing this exact same thread ver batim for like 15 years now across various forums and yet there's still a bunch of people mapping / playing / generally doing doomy things etc

Zand itself may be on a minor decline (too many cancerous turd-sniffers in the community over the years, very sad indeed) but Doomworld and other Doomy places have been getting more activity than ever before, so Doom is decidedly not dying. I also want to get us back up to those "300 players at peak hour between Zand and ZD" numbers from 5-6 years ago but seen too many people turned off by doucheyness in recent years and that's definitely a shame. Places like Doomworld have a much more fostering environment for newbies and big shock, many of them stick around and even become good mappers and stuff rather than being like "fuck these assholes" and moving on forever. Assholey banter between friends is funny as hell but just the general overall attitude seems to suck a big fat dick these days for no good reason, newbs see that and understandably want no part in it

EDIT
r4z0r wrote:Real talk tho I find a big contributor to the "doom is dead" thing are the people that endlessly push that sort of message and refuse to play. Granted, people don't have to play if they don't want to, I'm not trying to force people to play a 25 year old game. [...] The declining population of this game is caused by the mob-mentality of people spreading the message that doom is dying and as a result most of the community joins in on the banter and as a result doesn't play.
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seriously, if we stop telling everyone doom is dying then everyone will stop assuming doom is dying, baffling concept to many apparently
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Re: Is the Zandro Community dying?

#32

Post by jdagenet » Tue Aug 01, 2017 2:29 pm

Doomkid wrote:stuff about doom dying
But... Doom isn't dying, the Zandronum community is.
I don't know who goes around saying Doom is dying but it's definitely not me lol the singleplayer community is thriving right now with their fancy new weapons like QZDoom and ZScript.
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Re: Is the Zandro Community dying?

#33

Post by Razgriz » Tue Aug 01, 2017 10:16 pm

Multiplayer Doom is dying, it's just dying so slow you don't realize it yet. The biggest indicator everyone sees first is that compet is dead, which is semi huge since things like Duel, T/DM, T/LMS, CTF fall under that. These things won't start up easily on their own, or even most of the times at all despite being well known game modes. SP and MP survival is thriving on the other hand, but even that is on the decline with dwindling interest over time along with new shiny mods (except megaman). Maybe you'll get small groups who do their part in playing and gathering interest but in the long run, when those groups lose interest and grow out of the game, then you have a predicament where people are just tired of playing period.

I can agree that toxic behavior has driven people away, but now things are calm since that part of the MP community has pretty much vanished. Survival Coop will end up being the main mode being played aside from Megaman, and you think I don't know what I'm talking about you can launch ZD and take a look at what gets played daily and frequently nowadays. ZD used to be a hub for MP Pub/Priv CTF and Duel, and now it's just a large survival hub with the occasional DM or Duel on the side.

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Re: Is the Zandro Community dying?

#34

Post by Galactus » Tue Aug 01, 2017 10:53 pm

Maybe if the team finally decided to release 3.0 it wouldn't be dying, the final beta was supposed to be released on the 26th of June more than a month ago.

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Re: Is the Zandro Community dying?

#35

Post by Ru5tK1ng » Tue Aug 01, 2017 11:10 pm

It would have been released but LCA is coded like shit and people want to use over 130 cvars. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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Re: Is the Zandro Community dying?

#36

Post by Galactus » Tue Aug 01, 2017 11:15 pm

Sounds like a shitty reason to not release it, getting rid of a bad mod and releasing 3.0 sounds like a good deal to me

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Re: Is the Zandro Community dying?

#37

Post by Mobius » Tue Aug 01, 2017 11:37 pm

Razgriz wrote: I can agree that toxic behavior has driven people away, but now things are calm since that part of the MP community has pretty much vanished.
I believe the "toxic" part or the competitive scene was what kept things interesting for the most part. The forces that thrived on destroying "the other guy" are all but gone once the "singularity" occured when a specific group finally got rid of all of its enemies. A victory for sure, but at the expense of now a dying community. Honestly, it would have been one way or another and the removal of such toxic elements accelerated an already dying problem.

The same problem I happened upon when I made this thread here

Zandronum is dying, but not for any of the reasons stated in this thread. First and foremost it's the summer time so NO ONE WANTS TO STAY HOME AND PLAY DOOM.. but here is a much more ominous possibility.

Multiplayer Doom or Zandronum as we know it isn't fueled by the demographics that we once affiliated this port with: 13 year olds. The main activity of our side of Doom has been underage snots with TOO MUCH TIME ON THEIR HANDS playing Doom and not doing anything outside, but since I've joined I've had the pleasure of watching many of you grow up.. and that's what killed Doom. Everyone here is OLDER and have responsibilities. You lot got jobs or school and NO time to play Doom as rigiously as before. There's no incentive. Think about it? You are a 13 year old kid with a decent or ok PC so all you really could afford was Minecraft, League, and Doom but, and I say this from both experience watching and even having, since everyone has played BETTER GAMES ESPECIALLY FOR MULTIPLAYER why the hell would you come back to waste your time on this limited shit? Single Player can do MUCH MORE than Multiplayer can (no online means less bugs and compat problems). Do any of you really want to come home to play bad graphics on a dated engine anymore or play like OverWatch or Mass Effect. Shit I found more enjoyment playing Street Fighter Alpha 3 and X-Com 2 than I've find in Doom since I got my new PC.

I remember Bluewizard came up with a theory that most of the mods occupied by Mexicans on Zdaemon was attributed to them having bad PCs so they import whatever they could barely play over and this much is somewhat true. Everyone is growing up and their taste is becoming sophisticated and really: we're TOO saturated in Doom. We've been needing to "grow out" of Doom for a long time which is why Odamex is such a success of having 2 players per year over say Zdoom which makes our multiplayer look like Odamex. The fact remains: there's nothing we haven't already done and got tired of it now that we can do far more in other places. Don't even think about Competition that was dead when IDL had its final season in Zandronum: a ironic but fitting burial site to be sure.

There's no one to really blame or nothing to blame and honestly: why is it a bad thing? Why do any of you GIVE A SHIT if Zandronum is less populated? We've all moved on at different times roughly at the same time to observably see Zandronum struggle to have its once robust playerbase, but we've all gotten a little older now and don't have the time to tolerate it. Zandronum 3.0 will be more of the same as I predicted. You will get a influx for awhile and then run back to this thread made by someone else because there isn't a whole lot of ambition involved and really: to who? The only concerns we should have is whether or not there's even a zandronum server to come back to when we pine or even feel a tang of longing to play not how many people are in a server we really won't be occupying. We've had this discussion every year and it's always a blame-game on a mod or some dumb shit. The real issue isn't the mod it's the game itself.
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Re: Is the Zandro Community dying?

#38

Post by Doomkid » Wed Aug 02, 2017 9:38 am

You are a 13 year old kid with a decent or ok PC so all you really could afford was Minecraft, League, and Doom but, and I say this from both experience watching and even having, since everyone has played BETTER GAMES ESPECIALLY FOR MULTIPLAYER why the hell would you come back to waste your time on this limited shit? Single Player can do MUCH MORE than Multiplayer can (no online means less bugs and compat problems). Do any of you really want to come home to play bad graphics on a dated engine anymore or play like OverWatch or Mass Effect.
I agree with a lot of your post, but I'm not so sure about this bit. In the ancient year of 2001 there were already games significantly "better" than old Doom commonly played online - Quake 3, Counter Strike - the equivalent back then of the modern stuff currently being played, yet myself and a bunch of other pre teens/teenagers were still choosing Doom over the then-new stuff. I think there will still be enough new youths getting interested in the game (especially with how 'retro gaming' is such a craze in recent years, combined with doom actually becoming relevant again with a new title) to pass the torch on to, so to speak. I just don't want them to be turned away because they think the Zand community in particular is basically unapproachable. It's not nearly as bad as people act imo (funny as hell and entertaining actually, generally speaking) but I've heard various people saying they avoid this place because it seems too hostile or pretentious or some other shit along those lines, people who I'm guessing would otherwise play online at least occasionally.

I don't even really agree with that but the reputation is definitely there and I wish it wasn't. Maybe it was the exact same story when I was a kid and I just didn't realize it, I kind of hope that's the case since it means some sort of pulse is likely to remain in the coming years but the MP Doom community in general just seemed more open and welcoming back then. That's just my take on it though. As far as needing to "grow out" of Doom - there were a lot of people in their 20s/30s in the community when I first joined who aren't around anymore, I was part of the batch pretty much taking their place. I want us to foster a vibe in this place that allows that cycle to continue, essentially. How to go about doing that? I honestly don't know. I'd much rather have things they way they are/were than some 'safe space' bullshit though, with all that said.
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Re: Is the Zandro Community dying?

#39

Post by Lollipop » Wed Aug 02, 2017 3:39 pm

I, too, chose Doom over anything else. Doom has a special approachability to it that no other games can live up to in the same manner, not to say the approachability of the modding.
Sure, the modding might not be able to do everything in the universe, but never have I seen modding for a game that had the same amount of capability with such a comparably low bar of entry. I haven't look at that many games in that regard but I have looked at a few and AAA games just don't do that kind of shit, really. It never gets more complex there than prop hunt or things that come off as blatant hacks in attempts of even remotely hinting at their source of inspiration. The only game I can think of that has thorough modding is Minecraft, and even that requires forge to be injected into it, and the thing even requires that you know java to do anything at all, which imposes quite the bar of entry for a lot of people that don't have such a background. Doom in comparison comes off as easy to get into in this regard, heck even I got into basic ACS when I was a mere 13-14 years of age, and DECORATE is even easier to mess around with. This accessibility is further amplified by the accessability of assets to exercise these things with, such as Realm667, even though those assets don't do much for the end user experience anymore due to high exposure (which can also be said for vanilla assets).

So yeah, if my perception of all this wasn't already clear, I think the balance between capability and entry requirements into modding, and mapping for that matter even though I didn't mention it above, provides a point of strength for Doom that other games, even the newest titles, cannot match.
And when Zscript comes into zan sometime in a decade or two we will also hold that possibility space, despite it being much heavier with a higher skill level requirement, which can be offset by DECORATE experience to some extent from knowledge of how actor states work in general.

Oh and one of the things I really like about Doom modding, even over programming in general, is the documentation. There is a reason people on IRC and so on just refer to it for most questions. It is a damn masterpiece that I still have to find an equal for. Everything useful is explained down to each argument, some of it even visually, and most of it has examples of usage with explanations.
The accessibility provided by that documentation is actually what has gotten me into programming and not I am studying computer science at a university.


The only other thing can be done here is advertise that core strength of the ports to the world around us. Our weakness of outdated competitive won't appeal to anyone, but the strength of our modding and its accessibility could perhaps do something for it.

Just my two cents here.

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Re: Is the Zandro Community dying?

#40

Post by Galactus » Wed Aug 02, 2017 4:56 pm

I'm on the same boat as lollipop, right now I definitely play a lot more different games, but I still enjoy Doom the most.

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