Re: Where did everyone go?
Posted: 2020-03-11 19:18
I disagree. Salient points - but people treating other people like dicks is not something that more players joining would solve. FastJack directly referred to those "Elitist" types, and they are the biggest detrimental factor to gaining new fans of PR and building up this player base above and beyond the learning curve for PR vs. standard FPS games. I'm not talking out my arse here, I've helped run VG for around a decade and plenty of people know I don't play PR so much as I manage a PR Server and our gaming community/website these days, but before I moved on to other games at VG, I had logged well over 180,000 minutes (>3000 hours) in PR at VG and the old Hardcore Clan Deployment server, and when I drop in for events, it's no different than riding a bike (again). New maps may have changed, a few systems might have been tweaked, but it's still the same great PR.DogACTUAL wrote:What you just described is not something that would be a problem in the slightest if more players would be coming in through publicity like they used to.
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If we had more new players joining again all those problems would solve themselves.
From my experience, I'm of the firm opinion that humans are a competitive tribal lot, and it takes effort to rise above that and treat others not-on-our-level as just another friend we haven't yet met. Admins dropping the ban hammer out of emotional knee-jerk reactions, not providing new players the benefit of the doubt, not taking the time to correct behavior and taking the easy (read: lazy) route to just remove them from the situation with a kick/ban/resign, are part of the ongoing problem in any online PC game and PR is no exception, regardless of the player base size.
Every community here gets to run their server as they see fit, and the R-Dev's allow us to police our servers in our own way so long as it's within the scope of the PR Server License Agreement. But it's the new players that suffer when they are not welcomed, when they are not encouraged to learn the very different way PR runs vs. Battlefield games that random players may already be familiar with.
Some say it's their own fault for installing and joining a game they do not understand (yet) or have not read even briefly the PR manual - I disagree and feel that it's up to EVERY fan of PR to promote it while playing, to demonstrate through action and example how and why PR is something different, something way better than your bog-standard FPS military game.
When a new player is turned off by those "Elitist" types, it's truly a sad thing and we all suffer the loss of a new potential regular PR player. All we can do is continue to promote PR in our own ways, and to encourage our individual communities' members to welcome new players, to not judge too harshly and to give the benefit of the doubt to new players, and to continue to be teachers as much as players.
It's totally understandable to be upset when numbers are skewed from a larger ratio of knowledgeable players to a larger number of inexperienced players, but on a whole, people who believe that it is possible to one day play ANY public online game among a player base that is only filled with those with the same experience and knowledge base as they possess are deluding themselves, and leading themselves to frustration if they allow themselves to become intolerant those who are new like they themselves once were.
But IMHO no influx or increase in players is going to remove that factor of those people who treat others that way, and that's just a fact of being Human. Some people are not so discerning of those they promote to Admin their servers, while others may not mind an "Us versus Them" attitude with regards to their Clan/Admin Members and their servers general player base, and again, it's the new players who suffer, and therefore all Servers suffer from each lost potential PR fan.
We're all different, some people are just not so open to new people - it sucks - but it's true.