Octopus Overlords

It's like a few years ago, when the trend was to shove conversations off onto Facebook. Might be handier for companies who don't want to deal with forum upkeep, but IMHO it sucks for the end-user. I was part of an official community of a fairly large band, and a decision was made to close their forums in favor of Facebook. I think that decision killed off any semblance of community it had, and it seemed to be a decision made by someone not understanding communities overall. But about a year later the band broke up, and in hindsight management had likely made the decision to close the forums in an effort to gear down. In their last year, they'd performed their anniversary tour and released an anniversary box set, and that was that.

Sudy wrote: Tue Jun 08, 2021 1:46 am We've been discussing the lack of new blood for years, but it remains challenging to attract new membership without something external.

this hasn't been any sort of priority here for at least a decade now - the steadily declining membership seems to go over just fine, for some reason.

Community is a hard thing to judge. Sometimes the tail end up wagging the dog, so to speak. Reddit's subreddits have very different personalities all depending on the subreddit rules and the enforcement of the mods. Some end up being rules nazis where you get yelled at if your question was in an FAQ, and the answers are condescending as heck. A lot like StackOverflow. Others are nice and noob friendly.

I personally don't mind the lassez-faire style here.

Back to self-hosted stuff vs. FB... Some people just don't want extra staff running stuff... They consider that an expense, not cultivating a community. Must be bean-counters.

Moding a community is a full-time job, esp. when it comes to fairly contentious subjects. I remember when Serial season 1 (Adnan Syed) was hot, things are getting downright hostile when it comes to interpretation of certain evidence, and I didn't think mods were doing that good of a job, leading to creation of several splinter subreddits.

I hate Facebook. One of the things that I really hate is when a big company uses FB as its home site instead of making a real one. UGH.

reddit kind of fits the same role but with a much bigger audience and way more topics and traffic. Forums are seriously old school... like us.

hitbyambulance wrote: Tue Jun 08, 2021 3:18 pm

Sudy wrote: Tue Jun 08, 2021 1:46 am We've been discussing the lack of new blood for years, but it remains challenging to attract new membership without something external.

this hasn't been any sort of priority here for at least a decade now - the steadily declining membership seems to go over just fine, for some reason.

I don't see how we could reverse the trend even if we wanted to. Add a front page with content to bring in prospective contributors.

I wish I could merge the front end of GamingTrend with the forum of OO. Then there might be a chance.

That wouldn't be awful, although there would have to be a balance between GT's needs/rules and ours. I certainly don't want every story they write auto-posting a topic.

coopasonic wrote: Tue Jun 08, 2021 4:58 pm
I wish I could merge the front end of GamingTrend with the forum of OO. Then there might be a chance.

wasn't this seriously proposed, in the past? (and if i remember at all correctly, even Ron might have been open to the idea, but there were many here that were against it, for some reason)

Sudy wrote: Tue Jun 08, 2021 1:46 am
I kind of wonder if how even existing members use the forum has changed as media has evolved. We've been discussing the lack of new blood for years, but it remains challenging to attract new membership without something external. Do the youngest generations even use traditional forums anymore? (I don't see a lot of OO members' kids signing up, even though I think I joined GG when I was 17 or 18.) If established members continue to fade away, what is the future of OO? The less-used Facebook and Discord groups? An eventual subreddit when it's no longer financially feasible to maintain the forum? Why have we lost members in the last several years who stuck it out for the first ten (or more, going back to GG)? How much new blood would we actually want?

I’m not exactly young anymore but I am one of the younger members here. I used to post a lot more, but things have felt very one directional for a long time. Most threads seem more like a stream of consciousness instead of a conversation. This is fine for casual reading but doesn’t encourage much interaction. The other trend seems to be a focus on a very select number of high-profile titles that honestly don’t interest me even remotely anymore.

These days I spend a lot more time on Reddit where there are 10s of new threads every day and each comment tend to lead to a chain of discussion at least a few comments deep. The comments may not always be meaningful, but it feels more engaging and like the community is alive and interactive.

I think that is the main issue with attracting new blood. Younger generations want to be surrounded with information and discussions and most importantly they want to know immediately that someone has read what they posted.

Kasey Chang wrote: Tue Jun 08, 2021 3:39 pm
Back to self-hosted stuff vs. FB... Some people just don't want extra staff running stuff... They consider that an expense, not cultivating a community. Must be bean-counters.

Yeah, that's what I alluded to. I understand it and why they do it, but those making the decisions likely don't realize the impact they have on a community. They're two very different interaction styles. Forums might be showing some slowdown, but I have to think they will rebound at some point when companies realize the value in archiving technical help.

GT has pretty much been dead to me since they merged their news stories with their forum.

Well, the forum is gone, now, too.

coopasonic wrote: Tue Jun 08, 2021 4:57 pm reddit kind of fits the same role but with a much bigger audience and way more topics and traffic. Forums are seriously old school... like us.

So much this. You search any game name and reddit pops up first, front and center dorwining out everything around it. Reddit is a younger person's forum for across the board conversation and it moves fast. I would think it will eventually turn the lights off on every one else but as large as it is, it's mounds and mounds of communities like in the days alt dot communities and warezing.

hitbyambulance wrote: Tue Jun 08, 2021 6:44 pm

coopasonic wrote: Tue Jun 08, 2021 4:58 pm
I wish I could merge the front end of GamingTrend with the forum of OO. Then there might be a chance.

wasn't this seriously proposed, in the past? (and if i remember at all correctly, even Ron might have been open to the idea, but there were many here that were against it, for some reason)

When GG shut down, there was a period where the debate was between merging the communities (Gone Gold -us, and Console Gold - as GT was known) and simply opening a new site. We (the staff at the time) decided that we were ready to run our own system after years of having to work around someone else's limitations (GG had lots of rules, some of which were contentious, because certain topics could impact Rich's business model.)

The funny thing is that the two biggest of those issues have become moot. Online distribution crippled piracy (although it didn't kill it), and societal change has killed our need for NSFW threads.

Am I the only Gone Gold-er who has posted thousands of times on OO but still feels like a lurker because I kind of just check on threads I've participated in? I'm not the best at regular ongoing discussion these days.

JetFred wrote: Wed Jun 09, 2021 12:55 pm Am I the only Gone Gold-er who has posted thousands of times on OO but still feels like a lurker because I kind of just check on threads I've participated in? I'm not the best at regular ongoing discussion these days.

You can't be a lurker. Everyone knows you as the largest collector of games on the board (Don't we? Or am I more out of it than I believe myself to be?). That's saying something for video gaming forum whose life spreads decades.

To be clear, I'm way up there on physical PC games and Steam digital library. I'm not even a blip on the radar of console games. For that, you'd have to meet my brother.

I did that for a while. Lately I've gone out of my way to start up threads on all sorts of things that have caught my attention (gaming and otherwise), just to encourage some discussion.

I play an online game where both general game chat and specific guild chat are on Discord. There's in-game chat with a more limited chat client, and only the most active leaders in the guild participate in the Discord chat anyway.

Isgrimnur wrote:Well, the forum is gone, now, too.

I was surprised to discover this just a few days ago. I was motivated by this thread to check it out for the first time in quite a while, and found that the forum is gone. The main site seems very active, with a lot of good news and review content, but the forum is no more.

I used to be very active at the GT forum, but two things happened that caused me to leave. They had a server meltdown that resulted in losing the entirety of their forum history, and as they rebuilt, they totally changed the forum software. The new structure tied the forums too closely to the main-page content, with new threads automatically generated for every front page story, and I didn't find it very friendly to navigate. It was too hard to tell empty auto-generated threads from those with new, meaningful content. A community that I really enjoyed for a lot of years lost its past, then became too cumbersome to rebuild. It's really a shame as there have been a lot of good people involved with the site. Oh well

Almost sounds like GT wants to be Boingboing of gaming.

JetFred wrote: Wed Jun 09, 2021 12:55 pm Am I the only Gone Gold-er who has posted thousands of times on OO but still feels like a lurker because I kind of just check on threads I've participated in? I'm not the best at regular ongoing discussion these days.

Not at all. You have nearly 3X as many posts here as I do. I still feel nostalgia for GG.

hitbyambulance wrote: Tue Jun 08, 2021 3:18 pm

Sudy wrote: Tue Jun 08, 2021 1:46 am We've been discussing the lack of new blood for years, but it remains challenging to attract new membership without something external.

this hasn't been any sort of priority here for at least a decade now - the steadily declining membership seems to go over just fine, for some reason.

We're never going to get new blood, and I'm pretty sure most of us have accepted that at this point.

We'll simply continue to shed a few more regulars each year until only Isgrimnur is left to fact-check the cyber dust.

JetFred wrote: Wed Jun 09, 2021 12:55 pm Am I the only Gone Gold-er who has posted thousands of times on OO but still feels like a lurker because I kind of just check on threads I've participated in? I'm not the best at regular ongoing discussion these days.

Hi JetFred, welcome to Octopus Overlords! We apologize in advance if anyone accuses you of being a bot.

Skinypupy wrote: Thu Jun 10, 2021 11:21 am We're never going to get new blood, and I'm pretty sure most of us have accepted that at this point.

If we could, would we want it? What if it were young people with their annoying slang and unimaginative memes?

Unfortunately I think our history is going to be a deterrent to anyone new. They'll probably feel as if they can't fit in unless they have some connection to an existing member. We don't really do anything different than "internet discussion venue x" around here, we just arguably do it better. The old way.

We'll simply continue to shed a few more regulars each year until only Isgrimnur is left to fact-check the cyber dust.

This is the black dwarf scenario I was talking about.

Skinypupy wrote: Thu Jun 10, 2021 11:21 am

hitbyambulance wrote: Tue Jun 08, 2021 3:18 pm

Sudy wrote: Tue Jun 08, 2021 1:46 am We've been discussing the lack of new blood for years, but it remains challenging to attract new membership without something external.

this hasn't been any sort of priority here for at least a decade now - the steadily declining membership seems to go over just fine, for some reason.

We're never going to get new blood, and I'm pretty sure most of us have accepted that at this point.

We'll simply continue to shed a few more regulars each year until only Isgrimnur is left to fact-check the cyber dust.

But we are growing old together and I really really appreciate that!!!

+1

Sure, but as one of the younger members I'm going to feel lonely and abandoned once you guys are gone and I don't have any forum children to usher me down the river. The last living being on the failed generation ship who slowly loses his mind to solipsism syndrome.

I wasn't sure where to stick this.

Lorini wrote: Thu Jun 10, 2021 11:43 am But we are growing old together and I really really appreciate that!!!

Agreed. The collective ups and downs this group of random internet strangers has been through together over the course of nearly two decades is honestly pretty amazing.

I truly appreciate my digital OO family.

stessier wrote: Thu Jun 10, 2021 11:57 am I wasn't sure where to stick this.

First of all, that's what he said.

Secondly, consider a new thread, appropriately titled, maybe? You're killing your forum, Larry!

Sudy wrote: Thu Jun 10, 2021 11:55 am Sure, but as one of the younger members I'm going to feel lonely and abandoned once you guys are gone and I don't have any forum children to usher me down the river. The last living being on the failed generation ship who slowly loses his mind to solipsism syndrome.

We need a tax base and fast food workers to support us as we leave the workforce. We elect you.

Had enough Hardspace Shipbreaker for now, got to max rank, did all there is to do.

Decided to play Tank Mechanic Simulator instead. Will start a new thread for detailed comment and review, but let's just say, it seriously NEEDS A MANUAL.

Skinypupy wrote: Thu Jun 10, 2021 11:58 am

Lorini wrote: Thu Jun 10, 2021 11:43 am But we are growing old together and I really really appreciate that!!!

Agreed. The collective ups and downs this group of random internet strangers has been through together over the course of nearly two decades is honestly pretty amazing.

I truly appreciate my digital OO family.

I very much agree. This is absolutely my internet home.

Anyone else struggle with motivation to play games you get from subscription services (Gamepass, PS Now, etc.), or is it just me? Even if it’s a game I was interested in, the moment I download it from a sub service, my interest plummets.

I downloaded Monster Train, Solasta, Crusader Kings 3, and Spiritfarer from Gamepass…and suddenly have absolutely no interest in playing them at all, even though they were high on my wishlist.

It’s the weirdest mental block that I have a hell of a time getting past.

It might just be a malaise towards gaming in general. It might be you just need a break. I know that I had barely played anything for a good while. The ME Legendary Edition is the first lengthy gaming I have done in months. You may need a break from gaming or maybe you would be better served revisiting an old favorite. Just my 2 cents.

So far, Tank Mechanic Simulator has just BARELY enough to keep me playing. It's becoming a bit of a grind, Basically, I just wait for the "email" to show up indicating I have an excavation mission, and I go dig myself a tank (or armored car). Then I spend the next hour or two restoring it, to put it on display in my museum. If there are no excavation missions, I then take on outside assignments: fix up tanks from other collectors for a price.

I've already bought EVERY upgrade available for the workshop and museum, there's nothing left to buy. I also have several MILLION bucks which may not be enough to buy every blueprint for every tank in the game, but I can buy at least half a dozen of them, which basically allows me to build my parts, and thus, build my own tank from scratch. But why? I have money, I can afford the parts, why do I need to make my own parts? It's not as if there are parts that are simply not available, or repair orders under a tight deadline.

The game has a severe lack of British tanks. There were only 2, I think. And one's an armored car that seems to be from WW1. German tanks seem to have gotten the most love, while only the somewhat more iconic American tanks are included... M26 Pershing, M4 Sherman "Easy 8" variant, US Halftrack, M10 Wolverine (TD). No M3. Soviet tanks are there, but in less detail.

The detail level of each vehicle varies greatly. Panzer IIc's engine has like 150+ parts down to pistons, piston rods, shaft holders, valve arms, valves, spark plugs, etc. . The M10 Wolverine's engine has like 30, all of which are OUTSIDE the block (magnetos, intake manifold, generator, etc.)

Rebuilding a tank is a matter of a) get it back to the workshop b) de-rust the surfaces you can reach c) sandblast the surfaces you can reach, 4) prime the surfaces you can reach 5) paint the surfaces you can reach 6) remove every last part you can reach, inside and outside, including removing the engine and turret (if present) 7) repeat the same parts removal for engine and turret respectively. 8) either self-repair the parts in workshop or outsource repair 9) order any parts that are missing through the analysis screen 10) Reassemble the vehicle, turret (if present), and engine 11) struggle with the UI as you inevitably missed a few parts here and there, as part assembly order is NOT enforced (on some vehicles you have to assemble the transmission casing, THEN put the gears inside) 12) reinsert the engine and turret into the vehicle 13) check again to see if you missed anything (the status should be 100%) 14) deliver the vehicle (either to yourself or to the client)

If you own the vehicle, then you can stuff it either in your warehouse, the "yard", or in your museum. The museum can be expanded to get space for more tanks, and you can curate the background boards, the display boards, the posters, and the display cases with collectibles you pick up from the battlefields you excavated on. They may be near the vehicle, or they can be totally elsewhere on the map. Some weapons can be reinstalled onto vehicles as "props", esp. HMGs. You can also find medals, helmets, pistols, rifles, and so on.

You do charge admission for your museum, so don't overcharge. OTOH, you make so much money from the repair orders, there's almost no reason to charge for admission. I guess if you want a virtual walkthru of your museum, you want it to look really good, so you need to match up the tank with the right display board and the right collectibles.

I finally did figure out the excavation controls properly, and the tools offered are a bit of "meh". I think I'll continue this review later.

Skinypupy wrote: Sat Jun 12, 2021 5:20 pm Anyone else struggle with motivation to play games you get from subscription services (Gamepass, PS Now, etc.), or is it just me? Even if it’s a game I was interested in, the moment I download it from a sub service, my interest plummets.

I downloaded Monster Train, Solasta, Crusader Kings 3, and Spiritfarer from Gamepass…and suddenly have absolutely no interest in playing them at all, even though they were high on my wishlist.

It’s the weirdest mental block that I have a hell of a time getting past.

same thing for me with albums on streaming services. if i have the physical album object (LP, CS, CD, etc) here, i'll listen to it. if it's hosted on some company's website........meh...........

Nothing like making a great first impression for a new game! Final Fantasy Origin PS5 demo is corrupt and unplayable.

As promised during Square Enix’s E3 2021 presentation, the playable demo for action game spin-off Stranger of Paradise Final Fantasy Origin has been available for download on the PlayStation 5 since yesterday afternoon. Unfortunately, the demo has been corrupt and completely unplayable the whole time. Square Enix is aware of the issue and working on a fix.

Players eager to shout “Chaos!” at the top of their lungs while wearing the sort of clothing you could pick up at a T.J. Max have been disappointed by constant warnings of data corruption and suggestions that they delete and reinstall the demo from the PlayStation Store—an action that in my experience always leads right back to the same “data is corrupted” screen. I’ve uninstalled and reinstalled five times since the demo became available to no avail.

During my 4 months with Gamepass I found I could get into games that I knew I'd only play once. Greedfall and Wasteland 3 were worth the price by themselves. But games that I think of as huge ones of the type I will keep coming back to, Phoenix Point and CK3 particularly, didn't click. Especially CK3. Knowing that I didn't own it and it would disappear after a couple of months made it a slog to learn the new systems.

A couple of indie games that look really good to me.

Slipways: simplified space 4X (Windows)



Gnosia: single-player Werewolf/Among Us (currently on Switch, coming to Steam)