Shoot a firework rocket ~ Winners!Make a forum zoo! |
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| Why is the community dying?; And what can we do to save it | |
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| Topic Started: Jul 5 2017, 11:16 AM (2,502 Views) | |
| zerosvalmont | Jul 5 2017, 11:16 AM Post #1 |
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Lack interest in new generations? Too much exigency to designers? Is the game too old? Selfishness in the community? Bad management in forums? Lack of time in today's society? Laziness of new designers? Is there nothing new to do? Take your time to reflect and give your opinions constructively and without fighting, I have already opined many times and I'm not realy part of this community some time ago, but I would like to know what current users think |
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| Red Tycooner103 | Jul 5 2017, 11:37 AM Post #2 |
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I haven't been part of this community for very long and I can't say for sure about the forums but lately the Youtube portion has been booming. Thanks to people like Animal Genius and Nicknack Gaming many people have become inspired to start playing and recording videos. That's why I started. |
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| Piano | Jul 5 2017, 11:56 AM Post #3 |
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They stayed up late; they trashed the house
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I've never been a top poster but I've been around in the community since the Zoo Tycoon series was born and have no intention of stopping my daily check-in any time soon. If you think the community is dying now, you should have been around for the shutdowns of some of the major community sites back in the day. ![]() We are a stubborn bunch. |
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| magpiealamode | Jul 5 2017, 12:26 PM Post #4 |
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No good hero is a one-trick phony.
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I've been in and out of the zoo tycoon community since about 2008? I was out for awhile because the forum I was a part of fell to pieces, but I still played for several years on my own. After awhile I started downloading mods again, then spent a few years not playing the game before putting it on my computer again and becoming active here around the January. So I've had an interest in the game for a long time. The fact of the matter is, while I am interested, I'm not that interested. Having known the game since 2007, I've seen and done pretty much everything there is to be done. The only reason I still hang around here is because I enjoy the community. While I do like seeing what cool stuff designers and zoo-builders come up with, and I mean that, it only holds my attention for so long, because this is just a game with little if any lasting value to me. And then of course the issue is maturity. The members here are either mature enough to realize that this is only one part of their life and many other things take priority, meaning that they can only be here when time permits, or they're not mature enough and probably aren't much fun to be around. Additionally, while I hate to say it, this game is geared towards younger folks. I only play it to get out a creative thought or relax for a moment. I do play other video games, namely Overwatch, and tend to get more into those. One last thing that I know applies at least to me: the reason I got into zoo tycoon in the first place is my love of animals. I've always been fascinated by wildlife and the game presented good outlet for that, especially when I was younger. Now I'm of age to start pursuing a career in that interests, so it's time for me to move on to that. Anyway that's my rationale for my waning interest in the game. As for the community, well, it does seem to wax and wane, but my guess is, the longer it's been since the game was released, the less average interest there will be. |
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| zerosvalmont | Jul 5 2017, 12:29 PM Post #5 |
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As an old man I am, I remember past times in which there were two or three big forums competing for users, In which forums could easily have 100 or more active users, In which several great teams of design fought for the admiration of the users, In which several design and zoobuilding contests could be seen simultaneous and all this in which in my opinion was not the best time of the community, probably is nostalgia but I miss the first forums where with a red panda painted in black 4 fences and a lot of imagination you had a wonderful tasmanian devil exhibit. I lived the age of revolution, where the quality of the designs improved while designers were lost, where the S& Tbecame more and more realistic while increased the use of objects and plants of private use to give exclusivity to them. I think the bar was set too high for most artists in this community, The new ones were excluded and few maintained the spirit of further improvement, While the old glories (like me) left the community little by little for our responsibilities. I am the first one that resist to disappear definitively, for the only reason that I like to design, but I have not done for a long time to improve or help the community, I have even left my own forum to his luck for lack of motivation. But I think my work is over here and I have the right to a sweet retirement and to do just what I like as a good retiree. |
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| Zoo Tycooner FR | Jul 5 2017, 01:03 PM Post #6 |
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#Lithopédion
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To be honest, the community is supposed to die anyway (as any other community). We can only make it live longer with contests, new releases and stuff... |
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| Yukon | Jul 5 2017, 01:08 PM Post #7 |
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insta: yukons_designs
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I don't want to whine, but this point of view is very interesting... |
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| Imperator Furiosa | Jul 5 2017, 02:04 PM Post #8 |
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Chaos Theory
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I think its mostly an issue of game age and community age. Zoo Tycoon 2 is nearly 13 years old and the last official expansion was released in 2007, and there haven't been any games to occupy the same niche unlike some other older games. Even if the original game has lost popularity or become outdated there are new ones to take their place like Planet Coaster and Cities: Skylines did for RCT3 and SimCity. There's really nothing to take the place of ZT2. And even though there are some potential successors in development its hard to say if they'll be able to recapture the popularity of ZT2. Beyond that a lot of people formerly in the community have matured or lost interest in the game. Many people who were active as teenagers or young adults have university and careers now. On occasion these older people will come back but they tend to leave after they lose interest again. And for some people a major life event gets in the way of them remaining active in the community. I'm unfamiliar with the YouTube portion of the community but I can't imagine its anywhere as active as many other YouTube gaming communities, some new people may be brought in through that but its not like the number of people who are introduced to Overwatch or Minecraft through YouTube. I also feel like the community can be very divisive at times which pushes people away. There's nothing wrong with having groups of friends but in the ZT2 community there's an Us vs Them mentality a lot of the time. I'd like to think that I have a decent relationship with people in several groups but other people I know don't have that. And unfortunately if you don't fall in with a particular group or certain people after a point it can be hard to feel like you're fully accepted. |
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| Reptileink | Jul 5 2017, 02:07 PM Post #9 |
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(Feral Designs/DeepSix)
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While my track record in running forums for ZT2 has been......controversial at best, I no longer feel there is a need to have multiple forums anymore. There should never have been any competition between boards, a point I never understood. In my time in the community (WAY longer than I want to admit), that was one aspect that bothered me. While my recent closing of Immerse was abrupt, I felt the writing was on the wall. Forums are only fun when they are active. I don't for once think that people were only a member at Immerse, or Feral Designs, or any other forum I opened and not a member at other sites. I mostly had my own forums to host my own downloads as sort of a designer's page. I do agree with zero that the demand for "true to life" items/animals took off and forced a lot of designers to walk away as they were not inclined/able to create what was being created by some of the bigger names in the industry. I felt that sting as well. Even now looking back on my older downloads, I can't believe that I put them out there, but again, that was a different time. People were more interested in content versus graphics. This game came out so long ago, that modern day gamers don't even know what it is. We are a small group of survivors that don't want to seem to let go of the game in a HUGE sea of gamers that never placed an albino tiger in a lush enclosure on their PC screen...lol. There should really only be one site at this point, the biggest around right now is still TRT. Being in the community since ZT1, I've seen my fair share of people "die off", it comes in waves. Plus, if new gamers are not buying the game, or even know about it, they don't find or look for forums, hence the drop in activity/involvement. Summer has also been a dead time for forums in general as there is normally too much to do than sit in the house and play. |
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| zerosvalmont | Jul 5 2017, 02:09 PM Post #10 |
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Perhaps your case is one of the few hopes of the community, being very young not only are you interested in this game, but also you are one of the great designers of the community, a pity not to count on 5 like you to continue the design part, Although I understand that to be practically the only young designer with great talent and desire of learning and improve can be frustrating. and to work alone, although in the long run it is the best, sometimes can discourage. The only advice I can give you is also AD, where you are the youngster try to gather a handful of young designers with Ilusion and teach them everything they are willing to learn, Only then the zt2 modding can continue. I honestly do not think that I as a designer can teach you anything, since you had the best teacher and I would have more than learn from you, But in my experience in the community I can tell you never stop enjoying this, you will be better at everything you do if you do it for fun and not to be the best. |
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| Gerben | Jul 5 2017, 02:24 PM Post #11 |
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I was young and an actress
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This community is dying for some years already, it actually surprises me it's still here.
I do miss these times though, a lot more was happening, there even was some idiotic drama (loved that), and the 'competition' between design teams actually made me get off my lazy ass and do something. As for what to do to save it, I don't think there's honesly anything we can do about it really. We tried reviving Gaia a few years ago, don't think anything ever failed as hard haha (which had nothing to do with the amazing staff and members we had there). In the past year I haven't been much active, and when I came 'back' I still saw a whole lot of new, active members, some people I never heard of were even staff (sorry, it's me, not you!), and that's great. It means there are still new members who got interested in playing the game and desigining. Let's enjoy it while it lasts
Edited by Gerben, Jul 5 2017, 02:36 PM.
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Jul 5 2017, 02:48 PM Post #12 |
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Honestly I think it's a mix of various things. The stupidly high bar for both download and zoo quality I think is definitely the biggest, though. Back in 2007 when I joined the community, basically anyone could become a designer if they wanted to, because a recolored bison to make a cow was considered fantastic quality and let anyone make what they wanted. This allowed many people to actively get involved in designing. Likewise for zoo building, the high bar caused the same issue but with people who do not design as well. It just has gotten to a point where people literally do not care unless your zoo is an absolute masterpiece, and that's an issue because what is considered a "masterpiece" is not even viable in the vanilla game because of how many random mods it takes just to place things a certain way or keep the animals happy. Finally I do think that the lack of new things to do is also an issue but this is partly caused by the fact the game has shifted from what was intended to what we have now. No one really cares to learn about how the game works because half the community doesn't even use animals to know how amazingly their AI is designed. |
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| stargatedalek | Jul 5 2017, 03:04 PM Post #13 |
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I'm not slow! That's just my moe!
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I for one actually think having multiple sites was a good thing, largely because as Flish and Gerben were saying it gave people more things to do. At once time there was always a forum for more casual players, a forum that was more design oriented, an extinct oriented forum, and a few times sites designed solely for showing zoos even popped up for a while. |
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| SLGray | Jul 5 2017, 03:27 PM Post #14 |
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I have noticed also that many of the non-English forums have disappeared. |
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| Sahara | Jul 5 2017, 03:45 PM Post #15 |
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I think it's just because most of us have grown up. I started as a ZT youtuber, touring my own zoos and adding really gross captions with WMM. I was probably 10 or 11 at the time. I later discovered the forums, from Zoo Tycoon Unleashed to Environ. Though I don't think I gave myself much of a name in the community until the AD forums boomed. Then came NS, then Gaia, now we're here. Everyone's just gotten older, other things are taking priority, and life is just beginning to get more stressful for most of us. It's scaring me out of a lot things I used to like to do before, but don't worry, I wouldn't say I'm depressed... most of the time. I don't play video games nearly as much as I did as a kid though, but I guess I've just become lazy. I've become what some call 'skinny-fat'. I need to hit the gym fo real yo. I couldn't even bother myself to read more than two sentences from each of your posts. You people use a lot of smart words, it's kind of scary. It's that laziness and lack of interest that has been keeping me away from the community the most. |
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