DaveV Wrote:Maybe, but the vast majority of those were in the General forum posting "Civ 3 sucks!" and "No it doesn't". Apolyton University (kind of a Realms Beyond community within the larger community) never had more than a dozen or so regular posters.
Off the the top of my head I can name more than a dozen. A lot of them played in the first PTWDG and so did become more hidden. However, the comment was on activity and not quality of posts so claiming that most people were saying civ 3 sucks, while not true anyway (I was around at that time myself) is irrelevant.
However, can't really prove it now that the admins deleted the old archives.
For example. Even the infamous PTW intersite demo game is still there but you need to have an account that was on that team.
Opps. They still record what threads where there but not the posts. How strange... I still think you can prove your point using the thread titles only...
It's a bit unfair making fun of Robert here. Without him Apolyton would have stopped existing at the time he agreed to take over. I have worked with him in the months before Civ V came out, and I have never met a more positive person who tries to run a site and stop it from declining. Like everyone else he had high hopes with Civ V, but he is realistic enough to see it's a failure. It just doesn't increase the traffic of a site when you flame around either.
I would have loved to see what Apolyton might have become again if Civ V had been great. I'm sure the league we designed would have been competetive and drawn some people to the place. Sadly, CiV V isn't great. End of story.
I'm sure that Robert is a fine person as an individual. However, the unending defensive tone and outright apolgetics for Civ5 irritate me. At some point, you need to stop talking about how it has potential, and how we all should just be patient and give Firaxis more time to work on the game. Some of the Civ fanatics remind me of battered women, forcing themselves to go back to the game over and over again, trying to convince themselves that they're having fun when clearly they aren't. It's very sad.
As for the other comparison with Apolyton in terms of forum traffic: I took a few screenshots to demonstrate yesterday. In the span of 24 hours, Realms Beyond's forum traffic looked like this:
Threads: 5 new (3981 to 3986)
Posts: 339 new (125,229 to 125,568 )
Members: 4 new (3078 to 3082)
There are usually about 40-50 people viewing the RB forums at any one time, with about half of them registered members and about half of them guests. Now the same numbers for Apolyton in the same span of time:
Threads: 16 new (158,065 to 158,081)
Posts: 438 new (5,199,015 to 5,198,577)
Members: 21 new (109,209 to 109,230)
There are usually about 100-150 people viewing the Apolyton forums at any one time, with guests far outnumbering registered users, by about 5:1 or 6:1 margin.
So while RB isn't generating more forum traffic than Apolyton, it is indeed producing very nearly as much in terms of posting content. RB has significantly fewer people, who are posting more on an individual level. We also have posts concentrated into fewer threads, as you would expect from the PBEM forums. Apolyton's posts are also diluted by being spread over many more forums, which makes the site appear less frequented than it actually is.
Note that this was not a scientific survey and should not be treated as such. But it's still pretty cool just how far the forums have come.
Sullla Wrote:Note that this was not a scientific survey and should not be treated as such. But it's still pretty cool just how far the forums have come.
I think the open-thread style Pitboss/PBEM games have been a huge draw here at RB. I remember when RB was practically dead in the Warlords era - the Civ forums went weeks without posts for awhile... Beyond the Sword shot up some Civ interest, and then the Pitboss 1 and 2 games were hugely responsible for bringing many, many new faces here (and bringing back many familiar ones), which has been quite nice. Combine that with many people coming back to Civ4 since Civ5 has disappointed, as well as the launch of PB4, and traffic here at RB is as good as it's ever been.
Registration was actually impossible until I PM'ed Sullla about it on CivFanatics. Not sure how long it had been that way, but IIRC the last member had joined months before.
For me personally, Civilization 5 has been a huge eye-opener. I've always been a fairly naive person, and so when Civ5 previews started coming out I fell pretty squarely into the fanboy camp. Hey, Firaxis made a great game out of Civ4, and the series has been improving pretty steadily over the years, so how could things go wrong? My line of thinking went along the lines of "Yes, you might think a global happiness system won't be effective, but you haven't even played the game yet, or seen the exact way the mechanics work! I'm sure Firaxis will work things out."
Er. Ahem. Well, this is difficult for a stubborn, bitter hypocrite such as myself to say, but I was wrong. Completely. I mean, damn.
Allow me to draw a comparison here. There were two game coming out in September that I was really excited about: Civilization 5, and Halo: Reach [developed by Bungie]. So how did the two compare, in terms of their development process? Well, Firaxis made Civ5 completely closed to the public and relied on internal testers, mostly from the casual SP crowd. Bungie held a massive Public Beta, and constantly tweaked the game to eliminate new-found bugs and imbalances. Firaxis rushed to get the game out even while firing staff members, while Bungie pulled in everyone it could to get everything done. Civilization 5 had a glitzy advertising campaign, based around the all-new combat system and the brilliant graphics. Reach had a glitzy advertising campaign, too, but a lot of the hype was based on the hugely-expanded versions of old fan-favorites like Forge and Firefight. Both games emphasized the greatly increased AI capabilities. So, both then released to huge fan expectations and massive sales. What happened?
Well, Civ5 was riddled with bugs, which Firaxis had to scramble to fix. I don't recall a single major bug with Reach, except maybe the problem with discs [which I think was the manufacturer's fault anyway]. The AI in Civ5 sucked, and people called it out immediately, while Reach's AI for the Covenant worked completely as advertised; admittedly, the AIs were way different in complexity, but Civ5's AI was an integral part of the game, while in Reach even if the AI for the Covenant was totally broken you could always play MP and Forge. Firaxis and Bungie both promised to deliver new features to online play, such as Pitboss for the former and new playlists for the latter. Bungie delivered within a month or two on everything, while Pitboss seems to have been set on indefinite hold.
Pretty soon after release, people were starting to raise significant issues with the balance of Civ5, to which Firaxis could only respond with sporadic nerfs in infrequent patches. Reach had several mostly minor imbalances [most of them only on higher-level play] as well [I'm not totally sold on Bloom, but I admit that Armor Lock was kinda OP], but Bungie responded quickly and fixed great majority of them. Besides, in Reach many of the "balance issues" could be fixed quite easily by simply altering the settings ['no armor abilities', check], while Civ5 could only be modded [a fun experience in and of itself ]. As for continued support for the games... well, Firaxis is still attempting to fix imbalances from the original release, while Bungie has steadily been updating and adding playlists and supporting fan creations with things like the Forgetacular contest. Firaxis released a few piddly over-priced DLC civilizations that screw up multiplayer even more, while Bungie released several new and interesting maps [of course, those were arguably over-priced as well, but not nearly to the same extent]. And furthermore, while continuous support for Civ5 from Firaxis is doubtful, Bungie has shown the same dedicated support for Reach as it has for all the past Halo games, even though Microsoft's 343 Industries is taking over the series.
Now, this may seem like comparing apples and trash cans, but the fact remains: Bungie has treated the blockbuster Halo series and its fans with the time and energy it deserves, while Firaxis has trashed the acclaimed Civilization series by treating it like just another Strategy Game 5: The Cash-Milking. I never thought a single game could turn me into a jaded cynicist about new games, but Firaxis did it; and it will take a HIGHLY recommended game for me to ever touch them or 2k again.
Thank goodness I only had the money at the time to buy Reach.
Played in: PBEM 4 [Formerly Jowy's Peter of Egypt] | PBEM 10 [Napoleon of the Dutch] | PBEM 11 [Shaka of France] | EitB XVI [Valledia of the Amurites] | PB7 [Darius of Rome] | Diplomacy 3 [Austria-Hungary] | PBEMm/o vs AutomatedTeller
]. As for continued support for the games... well, Firaxis is still attempting to fix imbalances from the original release, while Bungie has steadily been updating and adding playlists and supporting fan creations with things like the Forgetacular contest. Firaxis released a few piddly over-priced DLC civilizations that screw up multiplayer even more, while Bungie released several new and interesting maps [of course, those were arguably over-priced as well, but not nearly to the same extent]. And furthermore, while continuous support for Civ5 from Firaxis is doubtful, Bungie has shown the same dedicated support for Reach as it has for all the past Halo games, even though Microsoft's 343 Industries is taking over the series.