The Ylands community is dying...

[RedEagle_P1. 905]

I've been concerned for a while now that the ylands community is dying out. Bringing this up with the developers often leads to, “yes, this is expected to happen between updates.”

However two new updates have brought very few users to the game. Without enough users playing online new users will have no one to play with.

Now there are very few users around to even report bugs. 

We need a vibrant passionate community, that sees the survival of this game at something important to them and I really think more can be done. 

Ideas:

1) Weekly meetups to bring the community together
2) Award coins for bug reports
3) Award coins to @Stephenw1992and others for making great content
4) Promote and support awesome servers like that of @Baz Foobar, advertise them.

If anyone else has ideas, please post here. 

@Ane @Aleš Ulm @BigBoss87

Edited March 29, 2018 by RedEagle_MGN

[Baz Foobar 102]

I think it would be fantastic if BI would provide some community support in the methods described above.  Maybe we don't need to give out compensation, but certainly some kind of recognition would go a long way.

That all said, I think I would draw the line at idea #4 - even though Red called me out personally as an example (Thanks Red, I appreciate it!) I don't think I deserve that kind of recognition.  My server is made up of the players who inhabit it - I merely provide the opportunity for their ideas to foster and community to flourish while keeping an eye on tidying things up.  I also am not sure I would want a game developer to be singling out servers in that regard, as it could lead to some belief of favoritism or unfair advantage being provided.  Instead, I would suggest that we, the Ylands Gaming Community, should take on that responsibility of recognizing the servers that have helped make the community strive the best.  That kind of recognition would go a long way and mean a lot more coming from that audience (no offense intended, BI!)

In any event, I welcome the notion of enhancing the Ylands Community.  Ane has a huge opportunity here, and I think we can all help her out in this regard.  After all, the community is ultimately ours.

[TheSparkPlug 128]

I never play online (except with family), and I wouldn’t judge the state of a community by the number of people wanting to join a server.

Don't get me wrong, I believe that people like you and Baz Foobar provide a wonderful service - as do the creators that post their wonderful builds/tutorials here, but I would judge the state of the community solely on the activity going on here.

IMHO: One of the biggest threats to that is unnecessary negativity. You’ve raised a perfectly valid topic to discuss, but I cannot help but feel you might have chosen a better title for the thread. 

 

[Kage'd 9]

I never play online. The wonderful thing about Ylands is the content, other than a social gameplay, is the same for Single Player as it is for Multiplayer. I have friends that also play everyday but they too keep it single player.

The decrease in community "online" players can not be judged based on a server. You must look at all aspects of communication. There are folks in Discord that don't use the forums and the same can be said for a lot of people who don't even know what Discord is or that Ylands even has it's Official, Unofficial Server.

Ylands will be fine. All games go through this stage of population decrease. They come and they go but I don't think it will get as bad as you might imagine. 

[WijkagentAdrie 384]

I'm playing in the editor for now, and to be fair not that much. As soon as we get a rewarding MP experience things will grow really quick! The main reason I believe the last few updates haven't brought that much multiplayer activity is simply because there's still too much critical problems in MP, but as soon as we get good MP fixes things should be better, community wise! The latest Q&A video, which was released today, has given me a lot of good hope for the future. Automation like factorio, airships, and combine this with a good MP experience and this will be my #1 game for the next few years  

Adrie

[Energritz_ 107]

Hmm

I believe that due to the 0.7 MP/DS issues it hurt the community quite a bit, now that 0.8 is out, and is running really nicely, its what we should of had in 0.7.

It will take some time to get people back in the game, however people need to be informed of such fixes in order for them to come back and try it out,

they won't come back by themselves, unless they have stuck it out like the active people here have.

 

I'm no PR/HR/marketing person, but if the team wants more players playing their game, they need to promote/spread the game through various channels, however

you don't to do that if you have a game with game breaking bugs, which 0.7 introduced... hopefully with 0.8 they can turn that around.

naturally if you're a supporter of the game you can chose to spread the news about the game through social networks and forums, every bit helps.

 

Also  I've seen many "dying" threads in many games before, where the active/playing community shrugs it off, and and any new potential players on the forums and

see's this and thinks "whoa... maybe i should rethink about this game" a better title would have a good choice, but no human is perfect.

 

[Kage'd 9]

I have internet friends that make comments about not owning Ylands and have wanted it for awhile but lack the funds. Every chance I get I'm always talking about it. Word of mouth is the best advertisement in the world!

[Onedown 28]

I feel like if a game developer delivers a fun and engaging product it will become popular and profitable. On the other hand I've seen games die simply because the devs could not get a handle on solving problems they promised they could solve then they fail and shut down.  The success of a game does not depend on the community it depends on the quality of the game.  If the quality is high the community will grow with the caveat that the devs did not alienate too many consumers along the road.  In the end we who play ylands are not just gamers we are also consumers.

[Aleš Ulm 1725]

Thanks for bringing this up, guys - it's definitely something worth discussing (and thanks for the ideas as well!  )

Since both Friday and Monday are Easter holiday here, I'll be ready to discuss this more in detail starting next Tuesday (everyone's getting some rest these days since many of us have been working both on features/fixes for 0.8 and 0.9 at the same time to make sure both are released asap). That being said there are two things I just want to say right now.

First thing is - there are indeed various things that we can do but so far we've mostly done things focused on our current community only (like the videos we're making are mostly seen by our player base) for a simple reason - the game is not in a good enough shape yet for us to put a lot of effort into bringing in new players. We could bring more people by advertising the game but doing anything bigger right now wouldn't make much sense (we might do that to some lesser extent just to bring enough "new blood" to the game to get some "first hands on experience" feedback ).

And secondly there's a thing that also needs to be said - the one thing you don't have to worry about is that Ylands would shut down anytime soon because of number of active players dropping. Ylands is a long term project and even though we would love to see our community grow strong right now we know that we have a lot to fix before we things change. It surely is a bit frustrating but that's how it is. Objectively things are getting better though and the big picture hasn't a bit (actually, if anything, the Ylands team will probably grow more in 2018 than we originally thought).

I'll be ready to talk to you more on Tuesday - in the meantime have a great weekend and Easter holiday   

[kimbuck 746]

I am being positive....   despite a few minor issues and a couple of  time out disconnects,  my  day today was more  enjoyable.  I noticed the predators  are more aggressive and there were a few times  when logging in  after a  battle loss with a  puma, the   process stuck at 78%  recalling   buildings . Task  manager was  used to quit Ylands  and  a re  join  ......and all was ok .

I have not tried  sailing yet, but from the others  comments  the  map is  welcome, and so far no  black ship  reports.

Its  worthwhile  coming back and  giving it a go,  folks.

[RedEagle_P1. 905]

11 hours ago, Aleš Ulm said:

Thanks for bringing this up, guys - it's definitely something worth discussing (and thanks for the ideas as well!  )

Since both Friday and Monday are Easter holiday here, I'll be ready to discuss this more in detail starting next Tuesday (everyone's getting some rest these days since many of us have been working both on features/fixes for 0.8 and 0.9 at the same time to make sure both are released asap). That being said there are two things I just want to say right now.

First thing is - there are indeed various things that we can do but so far we've mostly done things focused on our current community only (like the videos we're making are mostly seen by our player base) for a simple reason - the game is not in a good enough shape yet for us to put a lot of effort into bringing in new players. We could bring more people by advertising the game but doing anything bigger right now wouldn't make much sense (we might do that to some lesser extent just to bring enough "new blood" to the game to get some "first hands on experience" feedback ).

And secondly there's a thing that also needs to be said - the one thing you don't have to worry about is that Ylands would shut down anytime soon because of number of active players dropping. Ylands is a long term project and even though we would love to see our community grow strong right now we know that we have a lot to fix before we things change. It surely is a bit frustrating but that's how it is. Objectively things are getting better though and the big picture hasn't a bit (actually, if anything, the Ylands team will probably grow more in 2018 than we originally thought).

I'll be ready to talk to you more on Tuesday - in the meantime have a great weekend and Easter holiday   

Thanks for the reassurance

Just hoping that in this in-term period we can still keep ourselves active enough that players who invested so much into making scenarios and servers won't feel like their effort was in vain. I think we can do it as a community. The people who play this game are just fantastic. 

Hope you enjoy your Easter! 

 

[Kage'd 9]

6 hours ago, RedEagle_MGN said:

Thanks for the reassurance

Just hoping that in this in-term period we can still keep ourselves active enough that players who invested so much into making scenarios and servers won't feel like their effort was in vain. I think we can do it as a community. The people who play this game are just fantastic. 

Hope you enjoy your Easter! 

 

Reset assure RedEagle that anything you make, I will be at least one player who will check it out. Also don't let player count ever be a deterrent for creating Scenarios as it should only be done for enjoyment and not fame. Now I'm not saying anybody has done this yet but those who do it just for fame tend to make pretty bad, time wasting modifications/scenarios.

[bojo2736 1016]

I had a really enjoyable time this weekend playing after the upgrade. There are still a few glitches mostly in the area of the ships, the water and sharks. They're still glitchy. But really everything else was more stable and just way more fun.